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Follow Along with the Transcript – Episode 533
Dr. Janice Holden 0:00
What are called near death experiences can happen under a variety of extreme circumstances. That in his NDE, he got what he had been searching for all his life, he was left alone. It is a particular kind of hell getting into like, why do people even have nde?
Alex Ferrari 0:19
Get out of my head. I was about to ask you that question.
Dr. Janice Holden 0:22
When people have a near death experience, they almost always leave organized religion. And he said, Today, I am a different person than I was five years ago. And he said, nothing short of that experience would have transformed me a lot of indie years. Can't wear watches afterwards because the battery dies.
Alex Ferrari 0:43
I like to welcome to the show Dr. Jan Holden, how you doing Jan?
Dr. Janice Holden 0:56
I'm good. Thanks very much Alex.
Alex Ferrari 0:58
Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for making it out here to Next Level Soul Studios. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Janice Holden 1:03
Yeah, worked out well,
Alex Ferrari 1:05
Yes. So you have been studying near death experiences for like, a year or two, right?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:10
Just, just a year or two, yeah, yeah, since the mid 1980s
Alex Ferrari 1:16
Since in the 1980s when it was cool to be studying, yeah, right. I mean, I could only imagine from 19 the 1980s I mean, I think Raymond, Dr. Raymond Moody, he released that, that pinnacle book, or the seminal book in the 70s, like 75 that's right somewhere on there, right? And he's the one who coined the phrase near death experience. But between that book and the 80s, it's still very brand new, the concept of go to the light that all that stuff that's in Zeitgeist now, that's right, was not what brought you, what kind of attracted you to this, first of all, weird at that time, extremely weird. And woo, woo space.
Dr. Janice Holden 1:59
Well, I had, first of all, just growing up, I was always interested in phenomena that were difficult to explain. And I grew up in the more liberal branch of the Lutheran church. So I was, you know, raised in in religion and and then in 1978 I read Moody's book, and it really captured my imagination, especially the phenomenon of veridical perception, where, when people are in this near death experience, and they're they've experienced their consciousness functioning apart from their body, and They perceive things in the material world, or the trans material world that involve information that they couldn't have known from any normal means, but then is confirmed as accurate. It's like, not only is is the experience subjectively very real. You know, people will sometimes say that it was realer than real, realer than this reality, but that there was evidence for objective reality of the experience. So, so that just kind of sat in my mind. And then in the mid 1980s I was finishing my doctoral degree in counselor education and and had to do a dissertation. And long story short, I ended up doing it on something related to near death experiences. And you know, a lot of people, when they do a dissertation, by the time they're done with it, they never want to see the subject again because it just, you know, it was so grueling, but I was absolutely hooked. And even today, in the International Association for near death studies, members receive in their email box a monthly NDE where one of our volunteers goes through our archive of NDE narratives and finds one that is of particular interest for some reason or another, and then sends it out to the membership. And even today, after I've, you know, heard, read, interviewed, like probably 1000s of near death experiencers, I just almost always drop everything and to read that another, yet another account of a near death experience is just endlessly fascinating to me.
Alex Ferrari 4:20
That's fascinating. Yeah, so, so when you, when you have been, you mean, you've done 1000s of interviews, or read 1000s, I mean, you've done so many different you're deep in this. I'm deep into it. Is deep into it? What is the most I know this is a hard question. What is the most profound one that really sticks out in your head, you're like, Oh my God. Because out of the you know, when you first read the first one, or you you hear a first one, you like, Oh my God. But after 1000 they start to melt together. So there's like this ocean of many of them. And for me, I've done 120 maybe 130 interviews. There's few that that will start to rise above. Of the rest, not because I'm diminishing the less, but they just have either a uniqueness to it, there's a connection to the energy, the heartfelt, what happened to them, loss of family, or who they met, on the other side of the lessons they brought back. What was that for you? Is there one that really connected?
Dr. Janice Holden 5:16
I really can't choose one. Does any put your mind, but some of the ones that I think are most potentially influential to people who were wondering, you know, like, Is this for real? Are like, Dr. Mary Neal, have you interviewed? Oh, yeah, she's, yeah, she's, she's,
Alex Ferrari 5:38
She is a force of nature.
Dr. Janice Holden 5:39
She is, she is, and as she I love when she says, You know, I'm not an imaginative person, so I could not have made this up. And because she's a physician, you know, physicians are among the most trusted profession, and so to hear a physician talk about the kinds of things she experienced and and learning that her son, Willie, was going to die before his 18th birthday, and when he was only, I think, five, at the time of her NDE. And just a lot of aspects that she experienced, just very, very convincing, and also that her nd e occurred when her body was underwater. And they now have figured out that she was underwater for just a little over 30 minutes, so she was dead, dead, dead, you know, and and then to have this vivid experience that had these veridical components, like Willie's passing and so forth. I think it's very influential for people who are really wondering, you know, what can I can I really believe in in these phenomena,
Alex Ferrari 6:54
Right! And there's not just one or two of them there at this point, 10s of 1000s, exactly, right?
Dr. Janice Holden 6:59
Yeah.
Alex Ferrari 7:00
What is the longest time someone's been out your record?
Dr. Janice Holden 7:05
I don't know, but I
Alex Ferrari 7:07
30 minutes is a long time.
Dr. Janice Holden 7:08
30 minutes is a long time. And I think Mary's is among the longest. There have been cases of people who whose bodies actually were brought to the morgue, and then, you know, they're they, and their bodies in a bag, and someone sees a little bit of movement and and so I know George rodenia, who's now passed, he's Russian guy, had that experience. So there have been a few where the people have been without any cardiac activity for many minutes.
Alex Ferrari 7:43
There was one that I heard that I don't know if you've heard this one or not, but the person had the woman had died. She was in the morgue, and her brother came to recognize the body, to identify the body. And I think it must have been at least a 10 hour window. I mean, it was a while. And when he came in, he was looking at her, and he noticed that tears were coming down her eyes. From her point of view. She said she was in the body, but the body, it was taking time to restart. Like it like everything. It was like rig motors to start. It said in, I mean, this is, this is an extreme version. It is. And then that he goes, Doc, is this normal? Do do corpses cry? No. And they started to work on her right away. And got her engine running again, got the blood flowing again. It was fascinating, but I've heard those like really long, and they've been hours, 90 minutes to so for people to understand that, I mean, you're after, supposedly, after seven minutes, you're done, yeah, you're a vegetable, yeah, you're never coming back. Yeah. And there's documented case after document a case after document a case that this is, it's pretty remarkable.
Dr. Janice Holden 8:55
It really is. And then for also that when people have been gone that long. If they do recover, they usually have no normal functioning. They might just be in a coma or something for Yeah, and then and to have perfect healing. And, you know, everything come back. I think too of Anita Moorjani, and have you had a chance?
Alex Ferrari 9:18
Yes, yes. She's going to be coming back next week actually,
Dr. Janice Holden 9:21
Wonderful. Wonderful.
Alex Ferrari 9:23
Yes, she's her story is extremely special because of the healing aspect. Yes, can you tell a little bit, just a little bit about that?
Dr. Janice Holden 10:27
Well, just that she was in end stage lymphoma and in a coma. She had lumps all over her neck area and lesions all over her body and her organs were shutting down, and and the they, the medical professionals absolutely expected her to die. And, and one of my favorite aspects of her experience that I haven't heard in any other experience, she at the near the end, she's with, I believe, her father and her deceased father, and they're looking, they're in the hospital room, looking on the situation, and, you know, seeing her body down there, and her father says to her, it's time for you to decide if you're going to stay here or go back into that body. And she's like, how could I go back into that body? It is so wasted. And she said, plus, didn't a nurse just come and draw blood and, and that blood test is going to show whether my organs are continuing to shut down, and or or not. And, and her father said to her, what you decide right now is going to determine the outcome of that blood test, we normally think a blood test, you know, the blood's there. The answer is in the blood, it's written in stone. But that some aspect of our will, or whatever can influence the physical world,
Alex Ferrari 11:58
Well, even something that's is something that is Stone. Stone is still not stone.
Dr. Janice Holden 12:03
Yeah, yeah.
Alex Ferrari 12:04
You know it's, it's still something. It's molecules. It's movable. It's you technically should be able to put your hand through it, because, on a quantum level, you should,
Dr. Janice Holden 12:14
That's right, that's right. And that that manifests in spoon bending, which it's I teach a course at the University of North Texas for counseling students on the transpersonal perspective in counseling. And I start the course with a movie called something unknown is doing we don't know what? Which is a great movie that's available online for anybody who's interested. It's a 90 minute movie about the evidence for paranormal phenomena. And in it, they they show spoon bending. And some of my students get inspired and try it at home. And then a few of them have come to class with their bent spoons and said, you know that they that? And then, of course, what we talk about is, you know what was happening when this when the metal became like rubber, and you could just, you know, bend it and twist it and that sort of thing.
Alex Ferrari 13:07
It's, I come from the film industry, so I always have movies in the back of my head. And the one scene that comes to my mind when you're saying this is in the movie The Matrix, when Neo is visiting the Oracle and he sees a bunch of little monks, little kid monks, and they're playing with spoons, bending the spoons. And this profound statement, he's like, how do you do that? He goes, the question is not how you do it, but I think it was like, if, and I'm massacring it, but I think it was like, the real question is, is that even a spoon? Is it even exists? Once you understand that, then you can bend it, yeah, yeah, because you understand, then the nature of
Dr. Janice Holden 13:44
Yeah, yeah, the plasticity of reality, exactly.
Alex Ferrari 13:48
It's fascinating. It is. Now, one thing that I've always been fascinated about with near death experiences is the people, quote, unquote, people, entities, beings that show up, from relatives to deities to angels to animals and so on. I always joke that Jesus is the hardest working man in show business, because he tends to show up on all of them. My absolute favorite Jesus and the story ever is there was an atheist, hardcore atheists who died. And when he goes to the other side, Jesus is there, and he's wearing a suit with his hair pulled back, and he goes, and he knew who, what Jesus was, but he didn't believe in him. He goes, Jesus is Jesus? Yes. He goes, Why? Why are you asking the suit? He goes, it's the only way you would take me seriously
Dr. Janice Holden 14:36
Exactly, exactly,
Alex Ferrari 14:38
Which I find so fascinating. Yeah. But my question to you is, you know, nd is at least the stories that I've seen, especially a lot of the people I've spoken to, are much more from the western side of the world, not meaning the east. So how many near death experiences have you encountered, from India, from Africa, from, you know, a. Aboriginal, you know, native near death experiences, as opposed to, kind of the Raymond Moody story that we've and I'm sure there's overlap, but that's the story that we always hear. And I always get asked, Well, what about you know, why is Jesus always there? You know? Yeah, but she was showing up, and so has Buddha and so many others, yeah. But I'm curious, what's your experience?
Dr. Janice Holden 15:20
Yeah, there. We now have collected lots of NDE's from non western cultures, and one of the best sources to read those is on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation website, which is Jeff and Jody Long's website. Anybody interested, can just go to nderf.org, have you? Have you intrerview them? Oh, wonderful. Yeah. Is amazing, yeah. And so, so people can read, actually read, because they've translated a lot of them from the original language to English. So we can actually read non western nde's. And the scholar who has most studied these is Gregory Shushan. You've had him too. So so he has collected, and I don't know how he does what he does. He finds these most remote, near death experiences in these hidden, away documents that it's just amazing. So we have them, not only from other cultures, but from ancient history as well.
Alex Ferrari 16:32
Yeah, question how, what's the oldest recorded nde?
Dr. Janice Holden 16:38
I think it's in, it's some, I can't remember. It's, it's something that I made a note of the last time I talked with Gregory. But
Alex Ferrari 16:48
It's up there. There's not gonna be ancient Greeks.
Dr. Janice Holden 16:50
It's, yeah, it's a BC kind of thing. Yes,
Alex Ferrari 16:53
It's over 2000 years old. Yeah, yeah, because it makes sense. Like, well, why haven't there's negative experience has been around all the time. Well, because people will have a heart attack, they die, right? Yeah, there was no CPR. There was no way to recover, yes, so rare. So once, it must have been a very rare experience.
Dr. Janice Holden 17:11
It was very rare, which is what makes his work so precious. And he and I have come to the same position independently. I use the he doesn't use this concept, but I use the concept of deep and surface structures that comes from Noam Chomsky work on linguistics, and the meaning that what he discovered is that children all over the world learn language in the same way, and that's because languages have a deep structure that's universal and then, but they're expressed in a surface structure that's the particular language of the culture and and so what I found is the same is true of Near Death Experiences. There are certain features that are broad, general features that you find across cultures and throughout history, but they manifest in a way that is reflective of the culture of the experiencer. And then beyond the cultural level, there's another one, more surface structure level, which is personal, and so even within the same culture. So the example I use is one of these universal features, is there's movement from through space. And in the West, it's very common for people at some point in their end, their nd to talk about moving rapidly through a tunnel or some kind of enclosure, something like that. So, and that tends to be, it's not only in the West, but it's much more commonly reported in western nds. So that's a cultural manifestation of movement. Now, just to take a minute to say in there's an example from a Maori woman, indigenous New Zealander. And in her NDE she flew rapidly over Aotearoa, which is the name, the indigenous name for New Zealand, to the jumping off place of stone of souls. I'm sorry, it's the leaping off place of souls. So she flew over, and she talks about seeing all the rivers and things that she saw. So she didn't go through a tunnel, but she moved rapidly, you know, through space. So back to the Western NDS, moving through a tunnel is seems to be a predominantly Western cultural expression of that, that universal theme of rapid movement through space. But if you hear three different people talk about the tunnel, you will not hear the same thing. And so there's a little boy who is five years old, and he. Said, then I went really fast through a Big Noodle. That was his reference point. That was his reference point. A trucker said, then I went, then I zoomed through a giant tailpipe, sure. And then another person who said, you know, I went through this thing that had light and or it was dark and there was light at the end. And everybody describes the tunnel differently,
Alex Ferrari 20:22
But there's, there's, yeah, exactly so. And I like those three levels that you were talking about, because on that third level, the personal level also is dictated by your belief system.
Dr. Janice Holden 20:32
Absolutely, yeah. And I would say, I wouldn't say dictated, I would say influenced by because there also have been some great articles written about focusing on aspects of nd ease that not only were not anticipated by the nd year, but directly contradicted their beliefs. Jesus ensued like Exactly, exactly. So. So it's influenced by Yeah, and so we tend to see, perceive what we're prepared to perceive.
Alex Ferrari 21:05
And to my understanding too, it's kind of designed. It's a custom designed package, yeah, for every single one, yeah, because it's about making you feel comfortable for the most part. And we'll get into the negative ones later, but, but generally, it's like, no, we want you to feel comfortable. That's why grandma Nana is there, you know, and your dog is there, and or your deity that you believed in is there to kind of walk you through, or an angel, or whatever, that thing that makes you feel comfortable,
Dr. Janice Holden 21:36
Yeah. Help you adjust.
Alex Ferrari 21:37
Help you adjust. It's because it's a pretty abrupt, you know, from this reality to that reality, it is definitely shaking, yeah, yeah, like walking out of the water onto land, yeah, it's,
Dr. Janice Holden 21:49
It's different.
Alex Ferrari 21:50
It takes a minute to acclimate, yeah, if you've been in water for seven years,
Dr. Janice Holden 21:54
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right.
Alex Ferrari 21:56
It's pretty remarkable, yeah.
Dr. Janice Holden 22:00
Well, I was just going to say about that thing about Jesus a few years ago, I did a little informal study. I never published this but, but I was taken by how Jesus appeared different to different people. And so I actually went to Jeff Long's website, enderf, and pulled all the ones that I could find that referred to Jesus and then referred to a physical description of him, and then compared, and I think I found something like 18 or so, maybe more and and so. In a nutshell, no two people described Jesus the same. He had brown hair. He had blond hair. It was long. It was short. His eyes were blue, his eyes were brown, his eyes were Piercing Light. His voice was the lyrical music. His voice was the sound of a locomotive and and I, and I got the, what I think was the key, from two different nde's people who presumably didn't know each other, but in their nde's, they reached a point they were with a spiritual entity who said, You're about to meet Jesus. How would you like him to appear? Right? Yeah. And it's that same theme, yeah? And so, so, yeah, absolutely. I think there's a benevolent intent to help us adjust back to what people usually eventually realize they already knew they're, you know, a place that already that felt familiar to them, but maybe not right at the beginning.
Alex Ferrari 23:38
Yeah, and they're doing this even though, though they might know that you're gonna go back, yes, it's still right, even we're gonna play the game as if you're not going back and then and then. And have you noticed that I found that it's always, almost always a choice, but not always a choice to come back, because sometimes it just like, yeah, nope, you can't stay go.
Dr. Janice Holden 23:59
That's right. Is that right? That's right. So what I usually estimate that it's about a 50-50, proposition. About half of people are given a choice to come back, and when they decide to come back, it's virtually always because of a love connection on earth that they still need to do something for that person or fulfill something, and then the other half of people either are forced to come back against their will. And there's a really funny, I don't know if you've ever interviewed Kim Clark Sharp, yes, but yes, yeah. Kim Sharp, yeah, and, and she talks about how she got to the point where she was arguing with saying, you know, I'm not going back. Yes, you're going back. I'm no, I'm not. Yes, you are. And she says, and then she says, You see who won so but then there are also people who return just with no forewarning whatsoever. It's almost like they're in the middle of the. A movie, and the the projector goes off, and they're just back in their body. So it all depends, yeah, yeah, it all depends.
Alex Ferrari 25:08
So you mentioned that you were you raised Lutheran. I was raised Catholic. I'm a recovering Catholic, as I always like the joke, how has the the field of Near Death Experiences affected religious beliefs around the world, because it does throw a lot upside down from the Catholic point of view. And I'm assuming that Lutheran as well, this is not in the Bible. Well, technically, Jesus had a near death experience,
Dr. Janice Holden 25:35
Yeah. And so did Paul,
Alex Ferrari 25:38
So did Paul, exactly, but, but generally it's not talked about that this is the other side, or, let's God forbid, talk about past lives or karma or reination, none of that stuff. So there's a lot of ideas and concepts that are introduced in a near death experience that go strongly against dogma of all religions around the world. What's your experience with that? How is this kind of really affecting the world in general?
Dr. Janice Holden 26:04
Yeah, well, as you've undoubtedly observed, when people have a near death experience, they almost always leave organized religion, not out of anger or, you know, that sort of thing, but just because they discover that what they now know is too big for their religious doctrine to accommodate. And so, so they, they, they move on. And now I do know some nd ears who got more involved in their religion. Yes, I have a really good friend in Chicago who became a deacon in the Catholic church after his NDE, but his first homily was about near death experiences. So, you know, he was trying to bring it into the church.
Alex Ferrari 26:49
I had a, I had an experience like that as well. I've had, I've had somebody here in studio who was a near death experiencer, but they went harder into Catholicism or Christianity, because Jesus was very predominant in their near death experience, so really reinforced it. And I was kind of thinking about that like, Okay, I wonder what the reasoning for that is. Because you're right. Most leave organized religion because it's just when they see everything, yeah, this is too small. It's just it's too small. But then I was like, Okay, so what's that that soul's journey? It's like, oh, maybe his journey is to bring this into his flock, yeah, and preach that way, to kind of see these ideas. Because I have a lot of friends who are Mormon and who are, you know, deep into the Christian faith in whatever flavor you'd like, and they look a near death experience. It's like, oh, cool. It's like an extra Oh, yeah. That makes sense, until you start talking about reincarnation or past lives. Yeah, that's what. It starts getting a little wonky for them, but generally, like, oh, Jesus showed up. Oh, of course, Jesus showed up. Yeah, nothing. Yeah.
Dr. Janice Holden 27:59
I also think that a person's own spiritual developmental level influences how they interpret even their own experience. And so, you know, did they see Jesus the concrete person, or did they meet with Christ consciousness? That's a much more universal concept or phenomenon, but not not recognize it as such yet, or for now. So you know, there are a lot of a lot of questions about interpretation there too.
Alex Ferrari 28:37
What from your experience doing research for as long as you have, what is the long term effects?
Dr. Janice Holden 28:43
Yeah, so I like to talk about After Effects as like, PS, after a letter, PS, PS. So the first P is psychological changes. In psychological changes, and these include especially value changes. People become less materialistic, more concerned about others, and lose their fear of death because they now know that their consciousness is going to continue after their bodies demise and other kind of psychological changes. And then the first S stands for spiritual. People become more spiritual, usually less religious. But as we just said, not always and become often, like people will say, I just, you know, read one and one thing after another. I just, you know, had this hunger to immerse myself in spiritual books and movies and things like that and and also, people develop what in some religious contexts are called spiritual gifts, so they develop the ability to see the future. And also things that are questionable in some in some religions, like the ability to communicate with deceased entities, you know, medium, yeah, like, like a medium or or after death communication, which is after death, is the direct communication with the person who is for personal reasons, and then mediumship is where I communicate with a deceased person that I probably don't know for the purpose to, yeah, communicate,
Alex Ferrari 30:31
Okay, so, yeah, that's a very distinct clarification I want to put there. Thank you for bringing that up, because mediumship is I can talk to the other side. Jan, oh, your great grandfather. He's here. He wants to talk to you. I don't great grandfather, right? That's a medium. But after life, communication is I'm talking to my grandmother, who I knew in this life. Yeah, and being able to talk to or my my wife, right? I've had people on the show that have a direct connection to their their spouse, their spouse or their child, yeah, that's afterlife communication, and that happens sometimes with a near death experience, but also sometimes it happens without having
Dr. Janice Holden 31:09
That's right, that's right, yeah. And that's another, that's another whole area that I've done research in after death communication. So we could go off to that, into that rabbit hole too. So, and then the next P is physical, and people, a lot of times after a near death experience, people say that their metabolism changed, their need for sleep changed, their dietary preferences changed, and they become more sensitive a lot of times to not only environmental things like noise and, you know, visual things, but even medication, where they can they take a lot less to get the same effect that used to take require more and that sort of thing. And then another really interesting physical after effect is the electromagnetic After Effects, where the person, especially when they become emotionally aroused, electronic things in their environment, go fluy,
Alex Ferrari 32:10
Because the field is getting that much more powerful?
Dr. Janice Holden 32:13
Well, I mean, that's that's a good possible explanation for it. We don't know how to explain it yet.
Alex Ferrari 32:20
And they bring back a little piece from the other side.
Dr. Janice Holden 32:22
Yes, well, I think it does change them. I mean, here we have to get into things that are beyond research, so I have to, this is opinion, you know. But apparently it changes their electromagnetic field, their energetic field, and so that when their emotion, especially when they're emotionally aroused that it's an intensification of energy that has an effect on electronic things in their environments. So I had a near death experiencer who I was actually interviewing her on, on recording it, and mentioned this after effect and and while we were sitting there, she's like, Oh my gosh, that happens to me. And I said, well, and because I had started by saying, I notice you don't wear a watch, and a lot of indie ears can't wear watches afterwards, because the battery dies. And they'll, they'll put a new battery in, and within a week, that battery is dead, and they finally just give up. And and she said, Well, yeah, that. And she said, Yeah, that. That started after my NDE that I couldn't wear a watch anymore. And I said, Well, have you noticed any other things? And she said, Well, my boyfriend and I, they live together, just bought a TV, and he complains that when I'm in the room, nobody's touching the remote, and the TV volume will go up and down and the and it'll switch channels just on its own. And he said it only happens when I'm in the room, and that's that's her electromagnetic after effect. People have had. I had a she didn't have an NDE, but she'd had other transpersonal, mystical experiences. And she was in a counseling session one day, and she was, she was the client. She was talking about something very emotional, and in the lamp next to her, the the light bulb exploded. And so, so, you know, people lights dim and and just all kinds of things. The the scariest one I heard was somebody who was in a two seater airplane, and something started to go wrong, and the pilot was getting concerned, and the nder got really fearful, and all of the instruments went to zero, and that's not good. So nders, a lot of times, have to learn how to, you know, calm themselves. And she did, and the instruments came back. And of course, they landed safely, or she wouldn't have been there to tell me the story. I. Um, but it's a, yeah, it's a, it can be very inconvenient. There was an indie ear who was worked in a medical lab, and she had, they had noticed that whenever she walked into this one room that had a lot of electronic equipment, the equipment would go bad. So they bought a D static ing thing for her to stand on, and she would go and stand on that for a half a half minute or a minute or so. And I don't know whether it was the D staticking Or the fact that when she stood there, she was just, you know, getting kind of centered and everything, so that when she went into the room, she didn't create nearly as much trouble as she used to. So, yeah, so it can have, it's a really, it's a really interesting effect, and we've researched it, and know that it's a thing and that it does happen when people are more emotionally aroused, which, you know, people know that emotion emotions are energetic. You know, when we feel intensely angry or intensely depressed, there's an energetic intensity about that, and somehow that's manifesting.
Alex Ferrari 36:12
With with the After Effects. What is your experience with psychic phenomenon?
Dr. Janice Holden 36:17
Yeah, so that's back at the spiritual where people develop like precognition, telepathy, a lot of nd ears after, I don't know if I should say a lot, but certainly a good number after their nd, e there. It's like their boundaries between themselves and others and the world are have kind of weakened and thinning of the veil, thinning of the veil and and so a lot of indie ears can't go to parties because just being in a room with everybody, with all their stuff that they get affected by, and so
Alex Ferrari 36:57
They become more empathetic.
Dr. Janice Holden 36:58
That's right. That's right, and sometimes have to spend some time withdrawing socially in order to build up their their boundaries, their psychic boundaries again, and be able to manage social interaction. So so it can be, you know, a lot of us think, oh, wouldn't it be wonderful to see the future or know what people are thinking? It's, you know, we're given these boundaries, I think, for reasons that enable us to function in this world.
Alex Ferrari 37:31
I've been reading comic books for most of my life, and these stories, I've learned the lessons from those characters that you don't want those powers
Dr. Janice Holden 37:38
You want it you Yeah. So an nder was just telling me last week that she after her nde and she could see the future. She asked for it to stop because she really didn't want to know, because it was, it was distracting and
Alex Ferrari 37:55
Changes the trajectory of your life. You know when you're gonna die? Let's say I don't want to know my exit date or time, yeah, how? I don't want to know any of that, yeah? Because if you did, it would absolutely change your life. It changed the trajectory of your life exactly. If I tell you you have two weeks to live, those two weeks have changed, yes, dramatically if you didn't know that. If that's right. So it kind of goes against why we're here, yeah, in the first place, exactly.
I have to ask you, this is a question I get asked tons. And I'm sure you've had this question asked to you. With the rise of near death experiences, especially as far as the reporting of them, especially in the last five years or so, it's gotten much bigger. I mean, it's exponentially growing the knowledge people knowing about near death experiences, people coming forward with near death experiences. How do you know when one is someone's just making up a story and when someone is actually telling their true story? Because it is. It's the elephant in the room with a lot of this kind of stuff. And by the way, that goes for everybody on the show with all How do you really know she's a psychic? How do you really know he's a channel but, but this is an interesting thing, because, I mean, I've had a lot of people on the show, and I'm gonna say most, if not all, I believed, but sometimes you just go, yeah, or the audience will just go, this is not feeling right, yeah. So what's your what's your experience with it?
Dr. Janice Holden 39:16
Well, I think what you what you just said that most people are sincere and and I think a real litmus test is that when somebody actually has to pay a price for coming out as a near death experiencer, yeah, they're not, clearly not doing it for attention or to, like, write a book and Make Money or anything like that. They're they're actually reluctant to come forward because they might professionally pay a price. And so, so when people like Mary Neal, or what a book that I'm probably going to be writing with the leading nd research. Or Bruce Grayson is a collection of physicians near death experiences, because these are people who were schooled in materialism, you know, believing that everything is physical and and you know this, anything spiritual is woo, woo. And then they have their experience. And they're, they're transformed and and they have to have the courage to come out in in a professional environment that's going to be hostile, not necessarily, but, but, but very, very likely, hostile. And, yeah, so, so we, you know, why would that person do that if they weren't, if they hadn't genuinely had the experience they had that was so transformative.
Alex Ferrari 40:50
I agree with you. There's a lot of doctors, scientists, engineers, people who are in hard sciences, right? That it's very difficult. I mean, if you were a tarot card reader and you had a near death experience coming out, not so much, yeah, deal. But if you were in the Bible Belt as a doctor, I mean, I've heard these stories. It is so difficult to come out of, I call it coming out of the indie closet, yeah, because some of them hold on to these stories for decades, and it is, and I asked them. I asked a lot of them, I go, how do you deal with it psychologically? Just, you know, just like if you're whole, you're holding a deep, dark secret, and you're carrying it with you. That's a weight, that is a baggage that you carry along and you're not free until you finally come out. What's your What are your experiences with that?
Dr. Janice Holden 41:45
Yeah, well, much like yours that that it is, I call it spiritual constipation, you know, because they really want to talk about the experience most of the time, sometimes not, but, and, but just don't feel safe that they're going to be believed, accepted and so forth. And for some people, the experience is, for many people, it's so precious that to express it in a hostile environment, it is. It's just so painful, and they just don't want to do it, so, but it's getting better.
Alex Ferrari 42:23
Oh well. I mean shows like this and other show and the work you're doing, and I end is definitely made it normal or normalizing. We're trying to normalize it as much. Yeah, these conversations normalize this. Yeah, in a big, big way. Yeah. One thing I've heard a lot too, in is the doctors at hospitals, when this stuff happens, probably not the best to talk to about this. That's right, but the nurses, the nurses are, as a general statement, I always like the nurses, because they're in the weeds. They're in the trenches. You know, they don't just come in for five minutes and leave, sorry, Docs, but they're really with the patient longer, yeah, and they see things that only someone who's there for hours, yeah, and days can see. I had a story, one that in the year came back, and the first person he saw was a nurse, and he had to, had to say something, and he said, I don't know what just happened. I went to this place, and she's like, Oh, darling. You just went to the other side and came back. It happens. And just like this nurse been doing it for 30 years or something like that, and she was so a matter of fact about it, because you see so much of it at a certain point as a professional, you just got to go, there's something here. Yeah, you know, yeah, it's something here. It's, it's pretty it's pretty interesting.
Dr. Janice Holden 43:44
It is very interesting, yeah, and, you know, another aspect of ndes that's really important to me, is, is this phenomenon of veridical perception that you know, going back to your question about sincerity, that question comes up only if we're limiting ourselves to ndes as a subjective experience and, and certainly I've, I've seen some people that I, you know, I question to whether they're sincere, but they're very much a minority. And, but, but in addition, we can look at objective evidence for near death experiences that then, then makes that sincerity question less less important. And recently, I ends has collected over 120 cases of vertical perception during near death experiences. And it's, it's in a book called The Self does not die. We're in our second edition now, yeah, and, and, I would say, for people who are just our question. Listening or just interested in you know, are these? Are these experiences for real reading? These are cases where the there was verified paranormal phenomena during the near death experience? So I'll give you some examples. One of my favorites is a person who was in surgery went into cardiac arrest, and and was when he they, you know, resuscitated him, finished the surgery. And of course, during this whole time, person's completely anesthetized, you know, their eyes are taped shut and all that stuff that happens in surgery. And afterwards, he told his nurse that he was during the surgery. He was outside of his body, watching as they were like resuscitating him. And he said that he saw his surgeon, who he recognized, flapping his arms as if trying to fly and so and the nurse is like, okay, so she this happened to happen at the University of Virginia, where, as I said, the leading researcher, Bruce Grayson, was on faculty at the time, and so, and she knew he was an NDE researcher, so she called him, and she said, you know, you probably need to come over and talk to this guy. So Bruce went over. One of the reasons I like this one is because it happened right there. He, you know, right right away, he was interviewing the person and and was able to investigate the case. So indeed, the guy told him the same thing. He's like, my surgeon was like, flapping his arms. Looked like he was trying to fly or something. So Bruce is like, okay, and he didn't know this particular surgeon. So he found out from hospital records who all had been in the room. And he started with the kind of least person, you know, like a technician, worked up through the nurses and and last point, went to the physician. Everybody said the same thing, which the physician corroborated, but he also explained why he had been trained internationally, and which is it? And they were trained differently than in the US. And there they were trained that once they sterilized their hands, they put them on their chest and on their sterile gown, and they would back into the operating room and and his assistants would be doing all the initial stuff, you know, opening the patient and all that stuff. And then when the time came that his part came, then he would, you know, do it. So while they're opening the patient, the patient goes into cardiac arrest. So he's saying, Get that scalpel and move that thing over there and do this and do that. And he's pointing with his elbows and to the to the patient, it looked like he was flapping his arms as if trying to fly. So it was, this is what the kind of case that's very evidential, because it was investigated right away by somebody who knew how to investigate and be like, not lead, yeah, not lead people or that sort of thing. And it was information that was very idiosyncratic that nobody could have imagined. Who would ever imagine that their surgeon would be doing this? And so it's just very, very convincing that when the guy says his consciousness was out of his body, it really was because his body was laying on the table, dead, with his eyes taped shut and and a curtain over most of his body, except just where his heart was. It was heart surgery. So, you know, it's just like so anyway, in this book, when you read one case after another, it's just very impactful. It was even, even though I provided the all the cases that I had collected initially as the basis of this book, they they added many more, and it's really turned into something much bigger than than my little kernel of of contribution. But even I, who have studied these, it was impactful to me to read them.
Alex Ferrari 49:04
Yeah, so like Dr. Eben Alexander, yes. He's a very, very famous one, because he was a Harvard neurosurgeon, right? And he had a very evidential, that's right, thing that they corroborated and everything he actually had a brain virus or brain disease.
Dr. Janice Holden 49:20
He had meningitis, something that was basically your brain is absolutely yeah. He said his brain was, sorry to be graphic, but he said his brain was pus, yeah.
Alex Ferrari 49:30
It was like, basically, yeah, Caterpillar turning into a butterfly was complete, yeah. And yet he was able to come back.
Dr. Janice Holden 49:38
Yeah, extreme and a very vivid experience at a time when, according to current neurosurgeon, neurosurgical or neurological theory, there should be no complex perception at all. And he had this complex, very intense experience while his brain was so. Offline, and yeah, the vertical part of his was that this attractive woman was with him on the butterfly wing, as they were, and he later recognized that that was his deceased biological sister, whom he had never met in physical life, and it was after his nd e that he became reunited with his biological family. His sister had already passed like, 10 years before, but they showed him a picture of her, and he's like, Oh my gosh, that's her. That was the woman who was with me so and that kind of thing is not uncommon. People, people perceive. One of the things I like to clarify about vertical perception is that it can be perception of the material world, like the, you know, the surgeon, or it can be perception of the trans material world. People have met deceased loved ones who were not yet known in the physical world to have died. There's a case where a young in fact, it's Elizabeth Kubler Ross, the famous death psychologist from the 1970s and so and so forth. Anyway, she was treating this boy who had he and his brother and his mother had been in a car accident, and the her patient had been brought to her hospital. The brother had been badly burned in the accident, had been brought to another hospital, but they specialized in burn treatment, and the mother had died at the scene, so she's treating this boy. He comes in in a coma and so forth, but then he regains consciousness, and she says, you know, how are you? And he said, I'm fine. He said, My mother and brother are waiting for me. And she's kind of like, okay, sweetheart, you know? And so then he loses consciousness, and a few minutes later he dies. So she finishes all the stuff that doctors have to do in that case, and then she walks out. She walks by the nurses station. Nurses on the phone. She says, Oh, Dr Kubler Ross, this call actually is for you, and it's from the other hospital, letting her know that the brother had died about an hour before. So at the time that her patient came, you know, regain consciousness. His brother was already with his mother in the afterlife. He knew it, but nobody else did at the hospital yet. So there are a lot of cases of like that, and and cases where people just learn information, like Mary Neal knowing that her son was going to was going to pass, she thought before his 18th birthday, and it actually ended up having happening shortly after his 18th
Alex Ferrari 52:50
It is also people. I've had people come in talking about, I saw the assassination attempt. Yes, I see the future. I see this president being elected, I see that economic downfall. I see the pandemic I saw. And there's a lot of that that happens on the other side, meaning that they were shown these in the other side. But also, after they get back, they have this thinning of the veil, where they're being sent these ideas and messages.
Dr. Janice Holden 53:19
Yeah, there can, there can still be access to knowledge of the future and the past.
Alex Ferrari 53:25
I always, I always tell people when, because I've heard this from so many people. On the other side is that when they're there, they have all knowledge instantly, whatever they ever wanted to know about the quantum physics. I instantly understand it, yeah. And they have all this understanding of, I understand what, how the whole thing works. Now, this is fantastic, but when they come back down, they can't remember. They might have a snippet or two here or there, they might have some teachings here or there, but the generalized amount of information, they just can't bring it down. And I would tell people, well, because we run a five and a half inch floppy down here, yeah, yeah. And that's quantum computing up there, exactly, right? Yeah. It's not that big of a vast, if not larger vast, but that it's an as a example, yeah.
Dr. Janice Holden 54:11
And sometimes people are even told like you're, you're gonna have this experience of knowing everything and yeah, you're not going to be able to remember it when you go back,
Alex Ferrari 54:21
Because the brain can't really comprehend that. Yeah, it can't. It's just not. Hardware is not there. Yeah, it's not. We're a five inch floppy Yeah. Now one thing that's one area of near death experiences have always fascinated me is that most, I would say most, are very positive. Most are very positive. Loving experience. There's no judgment on the other side, other than whatever you judge yourself while going through a life review or something along those lines. But there is a small percentage in my research that are negative and somewhat hellish sometimes. What is your experience with those because we. People was like, You see, there is a hell. And then most of those people that I've spoken to always say I went through that because that was my belief system, that I needed to go through that. What is your experience?
Dr. Janice Holden 55:12
Yeah, well, so I'm just as a little prelude, I'm going to be using the words pleasurable and distressing, because even distressing experiences usually eventually bring about positive after Correct And conversely, pleasurable experiences can be very disruptive to people's lives and be quote, unquote negative, at least in the short term, when they come back, when they Yes, right? So, so pleasurable experiences, as you said, dominated by feelings of peace, joy, love and and those sorts of things, distressing experiences dominated by feelings such as terror, horror, isolation, that sort of thing. And there's been research about distressing ndes, so I can can speak to the results of the research, and we know that there are at least three types of distressing ndes. The most common, most commonly reported, isn't that bad, in the sense that it has the same features as a pleasurable nd, but for some reason, the person is seems to be resisting, and that's creating negativity, like they're moving rapidly through a tunnel, but they don't want to be moving rapidly through a tunnel. They're like, digging in their heels, and it's making the experience unpleasant. Resistance, it's Yeah, and resistance seems to be a factor in many, many of those cases. And we also know that in some cases, the person decides to just like relax and let it happen, and when it does, then it turns completely pleasurable. So when they let go of the resistance, it's good. So that's what's most commonly reported. Next most common are experiences of being absolutely alone forever. So it's an experience of absolute eternal isolation, where there is complete clarity and consciousness of being absolutely alone forever. And it is a particular kind of hell, because there's, you know, there is nothing and and no hope of anything. And the first distressing nd I ever heard from, directly from a person, was of this type, and it was in a support a nerd, an i n support group. And so the guys telling that he had went through some kind of medical crisis and and he was out in an absolute Dark Void, totally hyper aware that he was absolutely alone forever, and he said it was horrifying and and then it was over. He was back in his body and but he said that had been about five years before. And in the five years he had, of course, reflected on this a lot, and what he realized was that he had been raised in a really abusive family, and the best thing he could do was to be as invisible as possible. If nobody notices you, then nobody can abuse you. So he developed an approach to life just that he wanted to be left alone, and he took that mode of operation into when he went to school, when he grew up, he was in a kind of a job where he worked alone and had very little contact with other people and and what he said was that he realized that in his nde, he got what he had been searching for all his life, he was left alone, and only in that experience did he realize that that really wasn't what he wanted. What he wanted was safe, connection. And he said, After that discovery, he reoriented his entire life, he learned, instead of putting everybody on the untrustworthy end of the spectrum, that people range and he would find people that were relatively more trustworthy, he learned how to disclose things about himself, to make connections with other people, how to listen to other people, To make connections. And he said, Today, I am a different person than I was five years ago. And he said, nothing short of that experience would have transformed me, because he was just locked in this world view, that the that nothing was safe and his only safety was to be left alone. So. So it's an example of one of the books that was written about distressing ndes was called blessings in disguise, and that a lot of people after a distressing nd e end up feeling very grateful for it, because nothing short of that could have helped them in a kind of spiritual course correction. Now, that isn't true for absolutely everybody, but for a lot of people, it is. It is true, and some people just continue to go through life struggling with the existential message of their distressing nd, such as one of, probably the leading researcher of distressing nde's, is Nancy Evans Bush, and she's written two or three books on it. She had one herself. She's a minister, and she had a distressing nd II in which she, I don't remember exactly, but she was out in space. There were these beings that were flipping back and forth that somehow that was conveying to her that nothing was real, that she wasn't real, the life she'd had wasn't real. And she was convinced, and it was a horrible you know, like, if nothing is real then, then what's the point of anything? And, and so she came back, and she's really just been processing that, you know, for all these years, and she's come to some, some, you know, ultimate, optimistic perspective. But it's just taken a long, long time, and so, so and then that. So that's the isolation. Ones are the second and then the least frequently reported, but but reported are involving torment of some kind. And I've only heard one case that invite involved actual fire, you know, like fire and brimstone kind of thing.
Alex Ferrari 1:02:05
Yeah, I've never heard of fire. I've heard of demons. I've heard of Yes, dark entities. Yes. It rings back to the movie Ghost, yeah, those dark shadows creatures.
Dr. Janice Holden 1:02:16
Yeah, exactly,
Alex Ferrari 1:02:18
By the way, another writer, Bruce, he's been on the show of ghost. Oh, he's wonderful. And he's a Tibetan meditator now, and but he had the craziest psychedelic experience that he went to the edge of the universe, met God, and came back. And then you could start seeing all the movie he wrote, Jacob platter. He wrote so many of these movies, and ghost is is one of the seminal projects. But he, he got it right, because those, those creatures, yeah, are kind of what I've been hearing in some of these distressing ones, right? But I'm never fire and brimstone. Has never, there's never been a devil poking, yeah. It's always experiment, experiential, yes. Um, wasteland, yeah, you know, like a burnt down city. And, you know, kind of vibe is that kind of what you hear?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:03:08
Yeah, yeah. And, like I said, I've only, only come across one that involved, involved actual fire. Everybody else, it was torment by, by entities of, of some kind, and like, Howard storm, I Yeah, have you ever I have not in every Yeah, he's very fit. He's famous, and his, his nde is available online if people want to see it. And he, he was an atheist, and and had was, was really tormented in ways that were profoundly traumatic, and that still is still difficult for him to talk about. And he's and he's even said that he's never, he's never described some of the things that he experienced, because it's just too horrible, and he doesn't want to relive it in the description. So. And he also, eventually, you know, had a a pleasurable, profoundly pleasurable experience. So he left that. And there also is another form, like Matthew davel, had an NDE in which, in part of it, he was, he was free falling through space. He landed on what he said was sort of like tennis court material, and he split into four hymns. One was him over here watching, and the other three hymns were experiencing encounters with people from the past who he had hurt, encounters with people in his current life who were affected by his death, and he this happened during suicide, but should not be associated with the because we know there's no relationship between the nature. Of the n, d, e, and the physical circumstances of it. But in his particular case, he had attempted suicide, and then in the future, seeing how his suicide was going to affect people. So he said, In the first case, he would, he would, and he said this went on for three days and three nights with no let up, and this him over here was just writhing in agony over what the other three hymns were experiencing. So the first one, he said, for example, he'd be standing there, and someone from his past would come up here and come up and bump his chest, which he later said was kind of like a heart chakra connection, and he would relive how he had hurt that person, any any experience being them and receiving what he had, you know, sent to them, and it was agonizing, and he also saw how what he had done to them had reverberated through their life and created pain for other people. So it was just this awful experience. In the present one, he saw how his mother would respond when she got the news that he had killed himself. And in the future, he saw his daughter, who, at the time, was a baby. He saw her on her graduation day, sitting in her room crying, because here was another event that her father wasn't there to to watch. He eventually, what happened was that he he had had a near death experience before, when he was a pre teen, in which he had met Jesus, and Jesus had told him it was time to go back and finish his work. And as a, you know, 11 year old, he's like, What was he talking about? But he remembered that Jesus, and after this three days and three nights and and he called out to him, and as often happens in distressing nd ease when the person calls out, and not always, but but very often when they call out, they're rescued. And he said this hand just came out from above, grabbed him, pulled him up, and the minute he left that surface, they all coalesced into him again, and he and then he had another conversation with Jesus and so forth. So
Alex Ferrari 1:07:12
That's the one thing I've heard from the distressing. Distressing was that they go through a hellish or really rough scenario, but they always come out of it. They don't like and we're back. Yeah, they don't leave there and come back into their body, and that's the only experience they have. Is that from your case as well? Or have you heard of
Dr. Janice Holden 1:07:30
I will like that guy who had the void experience. He that's all he had in his n, d, e, and he and came back. So, yeah, I think some people do come back with but, but I think it's very rare and, and also that, you know, getting into like, why do people even have nde
Alex Ferrari 1:07:50
Get out of my head. Why on a souls journey? Mm, hmm, what's the purpose?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:07:57
Yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts well. And this is where, again, I have to clarify that I'm not speaking from research. It's just my personal opinion, after all these years, is that they're facilitators of spiritual development. And whereas some people can be facilitated with a pleasurable experience, some people need a distressing experience. And it's just like, I've heard, I don't have children, but I've heard people talk about how they have to discipline their children differently. You know, there's the child who all you have to do is look at them and they're like, straighten up and fly right. And the other one that, you know, you can kick them out of the house and they're still struggling. And so I think that at a spiritual level, there's a wisdom about what's known about what this person needs, and they they get what they need. And like in life, yeah, like in life,
Alex Ferrari 1:08:52
Like, like in life, I don't know about you, it hasn't been peaches and cream for me the entire ride. So there's certain things that come in our lives that are negative at the time, yes, or even distressing at the time, are traumatic at the time. But when you look back, you go, oh yeah, I'm who I am because of these events. Yes. So absolutely, imagine nd ease are the same. Absolutely I heard, I've heard from multiple nd years, that the nd is a lot of times are exit points in the blueprint. So as a soul blueprint, the concept of soul blueprint, you're on the other side before you come down, then you sit down with a council of light, council of elders, if you will. Like, okay, in this life, I want to be a doctor. My name is Jan. I want to I want to study near death experiences. I want to bring this out to the world, because it needs it at this time in history for humanity, and I really want to do my part in this. And like, Cool, all right, you're gonna have this, this and this. So you're gonna have these mile markers along the way. How you get to those mile markers are up to you. Have fun, but these are things that have to happen. You're gonna meet your husband, because they have you guys have business and lessons to learn. You're gonna go to this school. You're gonna live in this. All that kind of stuff, from my understanding with near death experiencers, is that in that roadmap, there's off ramps that are put in space just in case things have going awry. Meaning, like, you know what, I really want to be a musician this live, Jan, you know. And like, you're like, you know, I don't want to do Indies. I saw, I saw the Rolling Stones, and I want to be a rock star now. And you've gone off the rock star path, been very difficult, very hard, because it's not your life. That's not what you suppose. And you can't sing, but you're stubborn, and you're going down this road, that's when you have a go to a party, you OD, and there's your inner because you're like, that's your exit point. And then they go through, there's you go through this, you go to the other side and go, Jan, this is not what you're supposed to be doing. You, you You wanted this path. You're going down this path. Do you want to leave this life and start again? Or do you want to get on the path you agreed on? Is anything I say makes sense?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:10:57
Yeah, I think, I think a lot of indie years would agree that that's, that's kind of what's going on.
Alex Ferrari 1:11:03
Yeah, it's kind of like a, I don't know about you,
Dr. Janice Holden 1:11:06
Course correction.
Alex Ferrari 1:11:07
A course correction, because as we walk through life, there's occasionally when we're going off the path, there's a whisper, there's a tap, there's a shove, eventually a sledgehammer comes to hit you, or a car rear ends your deep owns you. Yeah, to wake you up, there has to be some event to just go, No, yeah, you're this is not you. This is not where you need to go, right? And in these is the, I guess I'm the ultimate version of that.
Dr. Janice Holden 1:11:32
Yeah,
Alex Ferrari 1:11:32
Coming back, it's one of those things, yep, yep, absolutely. So let me ask you for, I mean, you and I are talking about nde's because we both are fairly experienced with them. Can you explain to someone who's never heard this might be their very first time listening to any NDE content, because they're curious? Can you just go through a typical and I know that's hard to say, but you know an NDE that has those elements that are now kind of typical or historical, in these, in the research that everyone generally has a version of or at least one or two of those elements in their nde.
Dr. Janice Holden 1:12:05
That's right, and you just said that really well, because there's this kind of model NDE, but nobody has, I don't know about nobody, but it's very rare to find somebody who has all those elements. But if you look at hundreds of NDE's, you see this pattern of experiences. So, yes, so typically, the person is in a medical crisis, although we now know that what are called near death experiences can happen under a variety of extreme circumstances, and maybe, maybe the best facilitator is a near death episode, but it's not the only one.
Alex Ferrari 1:12:43
Cumulative psychedelics, well, medicine, those places, maybe, yeah,
Dr. Janice Holden 1:12:47
Personally, I believe that psychedelics can facilitate these experiences, but that isn't, hasn't been really confirmed exactly through research, but but extreme, even extreme anger. I heard one guy came to an ions conference. He was in the midst of a this intense, violent, not not physically, but verbally violent, argument with his girlfriend. He was just consumed with with jealousy. And in the midst of it, he suddenly was out of his body, communing with this spiritual entity. And he said a conversation that went on for a few hours, and during which he got a completely different perspective came back to his body and finished the sentence he had started. So Earth time and that time are not like, not the same. And
Alex Ferrari 1:13:43
OBE, though, would have you out of body experience.
Dr. Janice Holden 1:13:45
Well, he didn't. He didn't experience it as an out of, I mean, in the sense that his spirit was out of his body, yes, but he didn't. But I often, I this is where the tech, the terminology gets complicated. I usually, I think people usually think of an out of body experiences observing the material world. And so, yes, he was out of his but, and I say that near death experiences are extended out of body experiences that include perception of the material world and perception and interaction with beings and environments, not of the material world Fair enough. So, yeah, so anyway, he comes back. He said the way he finished the sentence was very different than the way he would have finished it had it not been for that experience. And he said, from that point forward, the their interaction just completely, you know, was completely different. So he was, he was not physically near death, he but he was in, he was maybe near egoic death, or, you know, I don't know how to how to explain, he was just in the extreme jealousy. And people have had this experience when they're extremely peaceful. They might be, you know, medit. Tating and have a quote, unquote near death experience, but they're not physically near death. So we still are using the term near death experience, because that's the term that has has all the research and everything behind it, but we qualify that to say that you don't need to be near death physically to have a near death experience.
Alex Ferrari 1:15:20
I've heard of a near death like experience, and yes, and ndle
Dr. Janice Holden 1:15:25
NDLE and just to know that research shows that those experiences are indistinguishable from N, D, E, S that occur during medical crises. So So again, the medical crisis may be the single best facilitator, but the most frequent facilitator, but certainly not the only one. Okay, so typically, as I said, persons in some kind of crisis, they typically will first leave their body. Now some people leave they perceive themselves leaving their body. Some people are just suddenly out of their body and become conscious out of their body. And my hand is up here, because usually they find them their consciousness above the scene of the physical situation, looking down at the same time they have and one of the things from my research is we now know that they have what I call normal plus perception. So red looks like red. You know, if you're in your body or out of your body, if it's red, it's going to look red. People out of their body can read. At least half of people say they're sure that they could. And so all those perceptions, but they also perceive globally. So like, right now, I can't see my fingers, but if I were my body, I would be able, even though there's no eyes there, yeah, there's no eyes there, they can see, both see and see through solid objects, like walls. They can hear things that are happening at a very great distance from their physical body. So it's normal perception, plus all these other ability and speed movement occurs at the speed of thought. So if the person thinks of something zoom, they're there, and they're there, and they can perceive any you know, things that you know very far distances from their body so, so there's that physical perceiving the material world, and then at some point they'll they might start to feel themself rising. They might see off to their left behind them, a light that they start moving toward. But there's some kind of movement, and it might be eventually through the tunnel, like we talked about, and and on the other side of that movement is the trans material world, where they will perceive and interact with environments and entities that are not physical. So they might find themselves in a preternatural environment where every blade of grass has consciousness or emanates light. They see colors like they say don't exist on Earth. They hear music like they never heard on Earth and and that and they meet entities. It might be deceased loved ones. It might be spiritual entities of another sort that they that they may or may not label spiritual. But, you know, I prefer the just the term trans material they're, you know, but some people perceive them as spiritual. Some of these entities they might recognize. Some they don't recognize. Even if they don't recognize them, they still have might have this sense of familiarity, like I this person and this entity and I know each other like from forever and but sometimes they're identifiable, like Jesus or Mary Bucha, yeah, exactly so. And during, usually it's during the trans material aspect that the person has a life review, where they review and simultaneously re experience and simultaneously observe from a from a kind of third person perspective, typically, every moment of their life, and recall things that they had, you know, in normal life, like completely forgotten about and but also experience being on the receiving end of their actions. And probably this is the most impactful thing from an nde, is to know that when I do to it's not just to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. It's that when I do unto you, I do unto me. Me and that that is, you know, like a guiding lesson in life and so then and in the life review, the people report that they don't feel judged, but they they feel absolutely known and understood, but not judged. People judge themselves. Are disappointed in their in their own behavior, but but feel just absolutely supported and just just unconditionally loved, and they say that the love that they experience is beyond anything that could possibly happen at an earthly level. And the knowing, the knowledge you know, as you mentioned before, is beyond any earthly capacity for comprehension. So so there are these very unearthly things that happen, and then eventually the person returns to their body. They might, as we talked about, be given a choice, maybe not. Some people actually experience themselves returning to their body. Some are just suddenly back in their body, you know, like I'm back and and don't have a sense of how they and I'll just say one other thing that about leaving and returning to the body, people do it all different ways. I've heard, you know, through the navel, through the just lift out of the whole body, through the top of the head, you know, yeah, it can just or you just wake up and you there, yeah, or you just wake up and you're there. And the same thing with returning, that people return through different parts of the body and in different ways. So yeah,
Alex Ferrari 1:21:49
Did you have you also come across the point of no return?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:21:53
Yes. Well, that, yeah, that's a good point that often people get to a point in their nde where they perceive that if they, if they go further, they're not going back to Earth, like they could see their relatives and, yes, on the other side and
Alex Ferrari 1:22:11
Distant field or something, and they want to go, but like, yeah, if you pass this threshold, right, you're done. Right, right, right. Yeah, really. And a lot of times it's a, it's not even just an from my understanding, it's not like a an invisible line, no, there's usually a window, a door, a path,
Dr. Janice Holden 1:22:27
A river. It could be a mountain valley. It could be there's something, some barrier, or, yeah, something that there that would need to be crossed.
Alex Ferrari 1:22:37
And then there's and for everybody who has pets, yeah, animals, yes, all sorts, not just dogs and cats, but every animal that meant something to you, right? Is there? Was there?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:22:49
Yes, and sometimes even not like I've heard people say that they encountered horses in and were to had telepathic communication with the horse. And horses were never part of their life. So in this light, in their physical life, yeah, but, but often people do meet deceased pest pets and and animals that that were important to them in their physical life.
Alex Ferrari 1:23:12
I've also heard of the the beautiful music, yeah, beautiful sounds, yeah, the vibrant colors that don't exist here. Yeah, as well. Is another thing that you can almost feel everything. So every blade of grass you are feeling it, yeah, every every brisk wind that goes by, yeah. And when I say brisk wind, it's from again, my understanding is this reality, this construct that we're in, is a reflection of the other. So it is. It takes a lot of those elements, the trees, the the grass, the animals, the these kind of things that they're they're kind of a reflection,
Dr. Janice Holden 1:23:52
Yes, and and that, as we talked about before, people often bring their earthly perceptions and project them into the afterlife. And Mary, I don't know if Mary talked Mary Neil talked about this when, when you interviewed her, but there was one point in her nd e where she's walking along in this beautiful environment with the spiritual entity, and she looks behind her and she realizes that whenever they get past a certain point, it just disappears.
Alex Ferrari 1:24:19
It's like it's rendering. It's rendering. It's like a video game. It only renders what you see, not the entire world. You couldn't run the planet.
Dr. Janice Holden 1:24:27
And that she, she communicates like what's going on, and that's what her spirit guide says, you know, well, we're rendering this so to help you feel, you know, more comfortable and make your adjustment here. And so, yeah, yeah, it's, it is amazing. So, and there's a one other thing, that communication in the trans material domain is telepathic completely, and it seems to be kind of instantaneous. Like, I don't have to, like, pose my question and wait for your reason. It's, yeah, I have this question, and you know it, and you respond to it immediately. So there's, you know, the. It sounds very rapid, like would be kind of overwhelming for five, yeah, yeah, right, right, exactly. But yeah, it's, it's fine there.
Alex Ferrari 1:25:10
So I have, I have to ask you, there's, you know, the universe is a fairly large place. We are on one planet, but there is now proof out there that there is billions of earth like planets that we can even see, and that's only a small percentage. So it's almost an infinite amount of other realities, other planets in any of the nds. Have you heard? Have there been non human entities on the other side that they met there, you know, in a past life, or anything like that? I don't want to put the tinfoil hat on, but it is something that is discussed. And I have heard people talk about like, you know, I've met my spirit guide, not spirit guides, but my spirit guides, but also my council of elders that we've we've talked about that there are members there that have never been on Earth, yes. So what is your experience with that?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:25:59
Yeah, just, just what you said that some nders say that some entities they know were previously human, and some they just they know or are told that they never lived human, a human existence. And some recently, some nd ears have talked about in one gal who she said in her first nd, she actually met aliens, and there was a spaceship behind them. So, so happens, yeah, it happens, right?
Alex Ferrari 1:26:32
It happens, it Yeah, so it is part of the of the conversation, yeah, it's not often, no, right. It's not often, but it is part of the conversation, and I guess is needed for that soul, like it's what is needed, right, in that experience, right? Right? Yeah, so Jen I'm gonna ask you a few questions I ask all my guests, okay, what is your definition of living a fulfilled life?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:26:52
I think it's having a sense of what my purpose is and fulfilling it so a combination of being guided and making choices that seem to fulfill a higher purpose.
Alex Ferrari 1:27:08
If you had a chance to go back in time and talk to little Janice, what advice would you give her?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:27:12
Oh, it gets better. Yeah, yeah. And yet, you know, like we were saying that that ignorance was important for for processes that unfolded in my life and and helped me be who I am today. So, so, yeah, I, I think everything has been, maybe that that really would be the better is just to you're good, it's, it's good, it's gonna be all right. Yeah, it's gonna be all right. Just, just hang in there.
Alex Ferrari 1:27:48
How do you define God or Source?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:27:50
It is the all that is. You know, a about a year and a half ago, I did three ketamine assisted therapy sessions for personal growth. Nice. Yeah, it was nice. Oh, so let's another episode. Yeah, and in one of them, I, I'll just tell you what I do. We have time for me to say a little bit. Okay, so I'm I'm out in space, you know, I'm not connected to my body anymore. I'm out in space, and there's a darkness over here. And I said to my therapist, Julie, I'm suspended outside of darkness. So I was just hanging there. And that was fine, but at some point I moved into the darkness, and as I moved deeper and deeper, I said to Julie repeatedly, I'm losing my sense of myself. I'm losing and then at one point, I said, I'm not me anymore. Now that doesn't really make sense experientially, it made perfect sense. I was not me anymore. I actually tried to remember how I got here, and I could not remember who I was, and I had no concept of Jan or that identity at all. And I and I said to Julie, I'm one with the darkness that is nothing/everything. I was in this darkness that was the pregnant void, the the source of everything before it manifests into phenomena. And it was an experience of absolute peace, very crystal clear awareness there was nobody, nobody, because every nothing had manifested yet. So and I, I was still a center of consciousness. And also I have to say, and also, immediately I have to say, and part of everything so. Yeah, it's not like I was just this, just me any it was I wasn't me. I wasn't me anymore. So that for me was God. That's all that is. It's the everything before it manifests into anything.
Alex Ferrari 1:30:19
Beautifully said. Thank you so much for sharing that, for listening. Where can people find out more about you and the amazing work you're doing to awaken this planet?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:30:27
Well, I do have a website, janholden.com, so people can go there. And you know, I'm on LinkedIn and other for people who are into that sort of thing,
Alex Ferrari 1:30:40
And you work with IANDS as well.
Dr. Janice Holden 1:30:42
I'm currently serving as president of IANDS and and I highly recommend people interested in nde's to go to the iands.org, website.
Alex Ferrari 1:30:54
What does that stand for for everybody,
Dr. Janice Holden 1:30:55
International Association for Near Death Studies.
Alex Ferrari 1:30:59
Beautiful, yeah. Do you have any parting messages for the audience?
Dr. Janice Holden 1:31:03
Well, you know, for me, probably the most important thing that comes from near death experiences is the message that a lot of experiencers, not everybody, but a lot of them say, which is that each of our lives on earth has purpose. Purpose is to advance in our capacity to love and also to acquire knowledge, like loving and learning, but loving is definitely the first one that's really our purpose as we move through every moment of our lives and interact with each other and make decisions at every level, from the personal to the global, you know, through organizations and governments and all that and just that. If, if love, which I define as investment in the well being of if ever, if all of us were invested in the well being of each other, the world would be such a different place. So that's, that's, I think, the most important thing of all of this.
Alex Ferrari 1:32:05
I appreciate that that's such a beautifully said. I appreciate you coming down here, sharing your knowledge and wisdom with all of us and experience, and I appreciate you and everything you're doing to awaken this planet. So thank you again.
Dr. Janice Holden 1:32:16
Thank you Alex, thanks for having me.
Links and Resources
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