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Welcome, Well, well do para truth Truth, What's up everybody,
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and welcome to a brand new episode of Paratruth Reborn.
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This is a pre recorded show on one oh seven
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point seven FM, New Orleans and the United Dates. I
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did Public Radio Network. My name is Eric, and today
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Justin is running a little late, and honestly, he may
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not even be able to join us today. So we're
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gonna hold out and hope that he shows up. But
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if not, we're gonna have a good time anyway. So
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today we're speaking with Chris Carter about his book, The
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Case of the Afterlife. Chris Carter is an Oxford trained
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philosopher and is the author of four highly acclaimed books
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and several scholarly articles. His latest book is The Case
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for the Afterlife, which argues that the case for the
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afterlife can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt entirely on
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the basis of evidence. So, without further ado, I introduced
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to you Chris Carter. Chris, welcome to Paratruth th Reborn.
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Thank you for joining us, for joining me.
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Yeah, thanks for having me, Eric.
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So the first question I pretty much ask everyone this question,
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but what led you to start research the afterlife, and
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why did you decide to write a book on it?
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Well, Suction my fourth book. My three books are actually
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a lot longer. What got me started into it? Well,
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I guess the unusual experience of living in a house
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which was purportedly haunted. This was in another country, and
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one night a friend of mine we're living. I was
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there for two years, and one night a friend of
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mine was where he's the fellow fellow student, and he
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was trying to convince me to join him and two
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other grad students to spend our next year living in
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a farmhouse owned by our college, which layout just outside
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of town. I wasn't really comfortable with the idea. I
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wanted to live closer to town in college, but he
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was very persistent, and he ended up telling me that
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the place has a ghost. His words caught me by surprise,
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and that basically said, is anyone seen anything? And he
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said no, but there's been a lot of strained sounds reported,
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And so I headed out to the farm to see
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the place for myself. It turned out to be a
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medieval stone house, two stories, quite large.
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And.
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While I was there on the property, decided to speak
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with the college carpenter who at his workshop near the house,
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and after a short chat, I came straight out with it.
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I just asked him. I just said to him, I
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hear the place is haunted. He said, well, I don't
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know myself, but the carpenter before me he swore the
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place was haunted. And to make a long story short,
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that was enough for me, and I spent the next
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year living there. I did see and hear some unusual
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things which I could not readily explain. Nothing particularly dramatic,
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but these experiences did spark my interest, and so when
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I returned to my own country, I began to reflect
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on my strange experiences, and I made a visit to
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the local library, where I was surprised to find an
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enormous amount of number of books on the subject, an
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enormous volume of research. Specifically, most impressive was the enormous
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volume of research gathered by the British and American Societies
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of Psychical Research. These were both founded in the eighteen eighties.
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The British Society was founded in eighteen eighty two by
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Henry Sidgwick, he was a philosopher at Cambridge, and two
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years later, in eighteen eighty four, the American society was
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founded by William James at Harvard University, and these two
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societies membership list read like a who's who of the
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intellectual elite on both sides the Atlantic of the day scientists, philosophers, historians, lawyers, scholars,
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and the membership included people on all ends of the spectrum.
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People who were diehard skeptics, people who were quite inclined
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to believe the data, and people who were basically neutral
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but open minded. To make a long story short, despite
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the often repeated lie that the British American societies never
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found anything, the truth of the matter is they found
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an enormous volume of research meticulous. They gathered the research
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meticulous first rate, and it was enough so that by
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the early years of the twentieth century, almost all of
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the members were convinced of the reality of survival, including
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several of those who started off as diehard skeptics.
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Wow, yeah, oh, that's pretty incredible. Well, now, how did
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your background in philosophy and science actually influence your approach
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to this topic in particular?
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Well, the strange experiences that I had in the farmhouse
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didn't fit in very well with some of the materialist
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opinions of several philosophers that I'd struggled, that I'd studied them.
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Sorry with sorry, but I was open minded enough to
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admit the possibility that these experiences were of exactly what
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they seemed to be, the lingering presence of someone who
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had lived in the house in days long ago. I
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guess just affected my approach. My approach is not based
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upon my own experiences. My approach is basically description of
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various cases, an analysis, and most of all, a critical
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examination of the arguments of the so called skeptics.
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Well, and with that said, what kind of reactions have
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you actually received from both the skeptics and the believers
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since publishing this book or any other works?
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Well, the skeptics are not nearly as influential or as
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outspoken as they used to be, say back, I don't know,
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twenty thirty forty years ago. They seem to have mostly
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receded into the background. But it's important to remember that
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most of these so called skeptics are actually militant atheists,
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and one of the fundamental pillars of the atheistic belief
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system is the ancient doctrine of materialism. That's the idea
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that all events have a physical cause or at least
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ultimately have a physical cause. And it follows from this
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that the mind is produced by the brain, and so
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when the brain is destroyed, the mind ceases to exist. Now,
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any evidence to the contrary threatens the doctrine of materialism
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and thus threatens the collapse of the entire atheist worldview.
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And it's this, more than anything else that I explains
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their vehement opposition to the data that falsifies materialism.
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But now, in the chapter that's titled the Mind Body Relationship,
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speaking of the mind, what is the evidence that indicates
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the actual relationship between the mind and the brain and
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how do they work cohesively? Are they separate from each other?
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I think that the impudence indicates that the relationship between
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the brain and the mind is that the brain is
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a receiver transmitter for the mind, a two way receiver transmitter,
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sometimes from body to mind as a sense perception, other
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times from mind to body as in willed action. And
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this isn't just my opinion, this is the opinion that
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the philosopher William James argued very strongly for this. He
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was the first, as I said earlier, the first president
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of the American Society. It was also the opinion of
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Sir John Eccles. He won the Nobel Prize in physiology.
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I think for discovering how neurons brain cells communicate. They
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do so with chemicals which crossed the synaptic gap between neurons.
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He killed these neurotransmitters. He believed that. So did the
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great Canadian brain surgeon Wilder Penfield. He won the Nobel
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Prize in medicine for his work with epileptic patients. And
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today there's other there's other philosophers and scientists who accept this.
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Kurt two Gas, Bob Almeter, Neil Grossman, physicist Henry Stapp,
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and Evan Harris Walker. So yeah, So I think the
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true relationship in the mind the brain is that the
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brain is the instrument of the mind, uh and the
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brain the Wilder Penfield described the brain as this as
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this fantastic biological computer. In other words, the mind programs
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the brain to handle certain automatic tasks. And we've all
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seen this before when learning a new skill. If you're
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learning how to drive a car, takes a great deal
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of concentration. We have to about everything. You know, put
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the car in gear, you know, apply the gas, look
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over your shoulder and all that sort of thing. But
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once you've been doing it for a while, then it
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becomes almost automatic, and we can drive the car on autopilots,
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so to speak. And same thing with playing a musical
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instrument or learning a new sport. At the beginning requires
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a lot of concentration on the basics, but after we've
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mastered the basics, we programmed our brain to handle the
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more routine tasks which freeze up our mind, our minds
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for other things such as, I don't know, holding a
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conversation while we're driving, or thinking about how we want
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the music to sound. Do you want sound, what mood
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do you want to convey? Don't play it fast? Slow? How?
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Or playing a sport thinking about where we're going to
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place our next shot instead of how to make the shot.
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So yeah, I think the brain is the instrument of
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the mind.
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So there's been I know, there's been arguments between skeptics
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and various scientists believers that the mind may or may
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not exist without the functioning brain. Is that something in
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you in your studies that you came across that the
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mind can indeed exist without a functioning brain. That'd be
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kind of like the spiritual realm of things you know,
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there's been discussion amongst some friends of mine that say
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ghosts are actually just the mind of the person that
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was left behind, rather than a spirit, and there's been
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a lot of arguments about that. What do you place that?
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What do you think?
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Well, you've mentioned a few different things. There the evidence
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that the brain and the mind are separate entities, and
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that the mind can exist apart from functioning brain. There's
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a great deal of evidence to this effect. And we
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don't even have to bring in the so called paranormal.
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We don't have to bring in near death experiences, apparitions
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and so forth. I mentioned in my book the medical
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phenomenon of terminal lucidity. Now this has been known for
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thousands of years, and you know, the ancient classical writers
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wrote about it. What it refers to as this, when
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someone with a diseased or damaged brain is approaching death,
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what often happens in the final days, hours, and minutes
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of their life is that they suddenly become lucid and
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seem to regain their normal consciousness. I mentioned a case
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in my book about a woman who suffered from severe Alzheimer's,
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so much so that it damaged parts of her brain,
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and she'd spent approximately the last ten years essentially doing
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little more than staring at the space and babbling about nothing.
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But one day her nurse walked into the room and
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found her completely lucid. She quickly phoned her daughter and
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explained that her mother wanted to see her. Her daughter
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rushed over to the hospice found her mother completely lucid,
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and she said it was like talking to someone who
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had been asleep for ten years. Shortly afterwards she died
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and yeah, and parts of her brain were destroyed. That's
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only one example. I give another example of a This
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is from the nineteenth century, I believe, late nineteenth century.
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In those days, mental hospitals were called insane asylums were
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lunatic asylums. And this fellow one day got a message
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from the director of the asylum saying this brother wanted
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to speak to him. Well, his brother been a little
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more than a vegetable for the past several years. He
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was intrigued. He rushed over and found his brother speaking
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to him perfectly, normally, perfectly lucid, and the director took
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him aside and saying, I've seen this before. This is
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a sign of impending death. I don't think your brother's
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gonna last very long. Sure Enough, shortly afterwards his brother,
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his brother died, and they did an autopsy on him,
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and they found that his brain was almost entirely superrated,
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meaning that it was almost entirely filled with puss. And
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so this fellow's name was Suria. He essentially asked, how
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did how did this fellow with what did this fellow think?
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So it's well known. This is not something that's uh,
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that's sort of some sort of freak occurrence. It's well
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known among people who work with the dying and so
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terminal lucidity anyway, and I also mentioned it was it
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was This has been known for thousands of years. Hippocrates,
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the father of medicine, wrote about it, Galen Cicero, and others,
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and they all took the view that in the final
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moments of life, these are cases in which the mind
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or the spirit whatever you like, is disengaging from the
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restrictions of a material brain. That seems to be what happens.
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And this is mainstream medicine. This, this is not necessary
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to bring in other forms of evidence, such as the
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near death experience.
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So do you think that this is the case in
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terms of like individuals who might be close to dying
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who say they're seeing shadows or seeing angels appear all
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of a sudden Is that because their mind is now
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drifting into away from the materialistic aspect of the world
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and it's moving into the spiritual or I know sciences
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have some sort of chemical reaction that causes those beliefs
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or those visions.
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Okay, well, now you're moving into the so called paranormal evidence.
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The evidence is extreme outside of mainstream science. In my book,
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I discussed five different lines of evidence deathbed visions, the
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near death experience, apparitions, children who claim to remember a
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previous life, and communication parent communication from the deceased via
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human mediums. These five lines of evidence are all very
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different from each other, yet they all point in the
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same direction that essentially, the mind can operate in the
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absence of a properly functioning brain, and after this life
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we can expect a lot more.
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Okay, well, now it's going on with the paranormal a
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little bit here, Like regarding near death experiences in particular,
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how does the near death experience actually support the argument