17: Near Death Experiences And ACIM with Robert Perry

Does the thought of death ever freak you out? It used to terrify me! Fears of death were an undercurrent to my anxiety issues in the past. But learning about near death experiences (NDE’s) turned that around. In this episode, you’ll learn some incredible stories that cannot be explained by science, and we’ll dive into the parallels between and A Course in Miracles and NDE’s.

Transcript

This is From Anxiety to Love Radio,

The show about undoing anxiety through a course in miracles and other pathways of love.

Gain insights and tools to deepen your awareness of the peace that already exists within you.

I'm your host Corinne Zupko,

Author of the award-winning and best-selling book From Anxiety to Love.

Hey spiritual family,

I am thrilled today to be interviewing Robert Perry about near-death experiences,

Also known as NDEs.

Robert Perry is the lead editor of the new complete and annotated edition of A Course in Miracles,

Which is based on the original handwritten notes of the scribe Helen Schucman.

Robert is one of the course's most respected teachers.

He is the founder of the circle of atonement and he's authored or co-authored over 20 books and booklets on the course and he's written hundreds upon hundreds of articles on the course and has lectured throughout the USA and internationally as well.

When I found out that Robert was as captivated by NDEs as I am,

I knew I needed to interview him.

Learning about NDEs has done so much for my fears about death.

These fears were often an undercurrent of all my other anxiety issues in the past.

When I couldn't fly in an airplane,

When I was phobic of germs and sickness,

When I was phobic of even ingesting medicine because I was afraid of side effects,

All of this had an undercurrent of fears of death.

That was the ultimate fear,

Was fears of dying,

Suffering,

And not knowing what comes next.

So learning that we literally live on after a seeming transition from the body has always been incredibly,

Incredibly comforting to me and some of the stories you're going to hear are just really profound and aren't explainable by science either.

So I am thrilled to have Robert on the show.

Let's tune in to our conversation.

Robert Perry,

Welcome to the show.

Great to be here.

Thank you for inviting me.

I'm so excited to talk about near-death experiences with you because this topic has helped me so much with overcoming my fear of death.

Obviously,

A Course in Miracles has helped tremendously,

But hearing experiences from other people who know nothing of A Course in Miracles and they have these near-death experiences that sound very similar to what the Course is teaching and where the Course is leading us,

I am just so excited to dive in because I really feel like this is going to be of help to our listeners.

So thank you for being here.

Oh,

It's great to be here.

I hope it will be.

I mean,

Even apart from A Course in Miracles,

These experiences,

I find them quite convincing.

And if you are afraid of death and what human being isn't,

And you hear a convincing story from someone who purports to have visited the land after death,

How can that not affect you?

Yeah,

Yeah.

It's affected me in such a positive way.

So that's why I'm so happy because I learned from my friend Emily Bennington,

Who's the executive director of the Circle of Atonement.

I learned from her a while ago that I think I said to her,

I'm obsessed with NDEs and she's like,

Oh my gosh,

You have to interview Robert.

And so I knew from that moment a while ago that I wanted to talk to you about this because although I'm obsessed with NDEs,

You might be more so in a scholarly capacity because I have a 30-page article that I printed out that Robert and Greg Mackey,

I believe,

Wrote on near-death experiences,

Which we will link in the show notes if listeners want to check that out.

But I would love to begin with just hearing how did you get into studying near-death experiences?

Okay,

Well what happened to me was that in my late teens I got really into the question of,

Is there a spiritual reality?

Does God exist?

Is there something more than just matter and energy?

And so I was reading in all kinds of areas that seemed to provide some kind of evidence for that.

And what I found was that whenever somebody peered through a window beyond the physical or seemed to,

In whatever time period,

In whatever culture,

Whatever kind of personality,

They seemed to see a roughly similar landscape.

And I found that incredibly convincing.

And the landscape they described,

Which had to do with a God and with everything ultimately being one and us going on some kind of an evolutionary journey to realize that oneness and realize our own true nature,

Which was part of all that,

It was nothing that I'd been taught in church or anywhere.

And yet it seemed like anytime somebody had a glimpse beyond the physical,

They glimpsed something roughly like that.

So that convinced me that there must be a spiritual reality.

And right about that same time NDEs were just coming into cultural awareness.

So,

You know,

I read the books that were available back then.

This is like late 70s.

I did an independent study in college on NDEs.

So I spent a semester studying them and writing a big paper.

I joined the International Association for Near-Death Studies,

Which was just beginning.

They just started back then.

So I really got into them then.

And then I kind of largely moved on.

I mean,

I would kind of dip in from time to time,

But not continuously until about,

Oh,

About 10,

12 years ago.

And then I kind of got back in for good.

Got back in for good.

That sounds like our dedication to A Course in Miracles too.

We're in it for good.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

And I relate to what you're saying too about the,

It's so interesting,

Like you just said,

Across cultures,

Different types of people having the same type of experience.

It is very,

Very compelling and very comforting.

I'm wondering if a good place to start,

Do you have any NDEs that stand out to you that you can summarize for us,

Talk about,

To kind of get us going?

I have one in mind,

Which I love,

But there are so many.

What I like doing,

The biggest database of NDE stories is at nderf.

Org.

It's Near-Death Experience Research Foundation.

And they have like thousands,

I don't know,

It's more than,

It's like a few thousand,

I think,

By now.

I'm not sure.

But people go on and tell their story and answer a lot of questions.

And I just check into that pretty much every couple of days for the latest ones.

And they just have some amazing stories on there.

But I have a lot of favorites.

My current favorite,

I think,

Is from a woman,

It's on YouTube.

I don't even know her name,

But I can provide the link.

She's older now,

But she tells a story from when she was 20.

And she was swimming with friends in an Arizona irrigation ditch.

And she lost her inner tube,

Got swept into the water,

And more or less drowned.

She left her body,

And then she saw this pinprick of light.

And she felt entranced by and drawn to this light,

Which grew larger and larger.

And then she realized it was God.

And she felt like this was not only God,

But was like her father.

There's a very fatherly feeling to the light.

And she had this incredible experience,

Which she's still clearly deeply moved by decades later,

Of totally merging with the light in this ecstatic,

Joyous experience.

And she said then when she was filled up and couldn't couldn't get fill up anymore,

They kind of separated a bit,

Her and God.

And she was like,

What do we do now?

And he said,

You know,

I'm going to take you through the life you've just lived.

And so he showed her all these events in her life from a higher perspective.

And this is the life review that people talk about a lot,

Which I find extremely fascinating.

Because generally in the life review,

You don't just review the events,

You re-experience them.

And you re-experience them from inside yourself,

From inside the people that you're interacting with.

You get to experience the effect on them of your actions.

And you often experience it from several other viewpoints as well at once,

Like looking down from a higher physical perspective,

Looking on it from a higher spiritual perspective.

You could have multiple perspectives on the same exact event at once.

So she talks about one event that she reviewed where she laughed at her grandmother,

Who fell rather painfully.

She was a teenager,

And she felt terrible about it.

But she and God talked at great length about how that and other events in her life were just learning experiences,

Not to feel guilty about them.

We're just here to learn from these experiences.

And then God said,

You know,

You have to go back now.

And she had just had this whole schooling in being selfless,

You know,

Thinking about more than just herself.

And she was like,

I'm not going back.

I like it here.

I'm staying.

And God said,

What about the people you'd leave behind?

And she was like,

They'll be fine.

She was like,

She obviously had learned so much about being loving when I was like,

Yeah,

It'll be fine.

Who cares?

And then he showed them how much pain they would be in if she died.

And she said,

I can't be responsible for that.

I will go back.

And she said,

What do I do?

And he said,

Just love people.

If you just show them love,

That's what I want you to do on earth.

And then finally,

One of my favorite bits,

Actually,

The whole thing,

It's only 15 minutes,

It's totally worth watching,

Is she said,

I've,

Can I ask a favor?

And in her,

In her report,

God says,

Sure,

What?

And we can imagine God seemed like,

You know,

The God of the,

Like the burning bush.

And she says,

Could we come back together again,

Like we did at the start of this?

And he said,

Yeah.

So they merged again,

Because that was obviously the pinnacle of the experience for her.

And then she found herself tumbling over again in the water,

And she,

She was okay.

She didn't need to be resuscitated.

Anyway,

Fascinating,

The effects on her are fascinating,

And the whole experience,

And so many,

I mean,

There are amazing stories,

Thousands upon thousands of amazing stories out there that most of us will never hear.

That's beautiful.

I was able to watch that video when you sent the link,

And it is extremely,

Extremely powerful.

And there's so many questions now that I want to sort of go into.

And this idea,

I'll start with this idea of merging.

Now,

I feel like there's an idea now,

I'm kind of,

I'm kind of bringing A Course in Miracles into it,

With this description of her,

You know,

Merging with God and then separating from God.

That's really interesting,

Because in some schools of thought about A Course in Miracles,

There's just the oneness,

Like,

And that's it.

And I feel like that can bring up sort of annihilation anxiety that like,

We're just going to disappear and poof be a part of the sea of oneness.

And,

You know,

It's all bliss,

And it's all the same,

And that's it.

And what these NDEs describe is something different than that,

That there's still a sense of self and yet oneness at the same time.

Can you speak to that a little bit?

Sure,

It's a really important topic that I've had my eye on in the Course and in NDEs for forever.

Basically,

As I think you know,

NDEs routinely say I had no body,

Sometimes they'll say I was formless,

Had no limits,

But I was still me.

Like,

You hear that again and again and again,

Even talking about being completely one with God and yet still being themselves.

And it's a very intriguing idea.

It's not what you would sort of make up conceptually,

Because there's a paradox to it,

Right?

I'm me,

Yet I'm completely one.

And yet in the Course,

You see the exact same thing,

Just not in the same language.

You know,

The Course is very clear that God created us,

That He's the Creator and we're the Creation.

It says He created one Son,

But within that Son,

He created an infinite number of parts or sons.

So,

With each one of us being one of those parts or sons.

So,

He created us,

In some sense individually,

And that word is used a couple of times in that context,

Even though these parts are one with the whole and in some sense are the whole and contain the whole.

So,

They aren't parts as we know them in this world,

But the point is that each of us was God created as us.

And so,

When we wake up,

We will be a Son of God,

One of an infinite number.

We will somehow be the Son of God.

All the sons together will be that.

And as the Son will be one with God,

But we won't be God.

That's hard for us to wrap our limited minds around,

For sure,

But it's so comforting because that whole idea of annihilation anxiety can just go out the window to think that we still retain a sense of,

Not the small self,

But some kind of individual sense of self.

I don't have language for it.

Yeah,

And I don't think we have,

We can have.

In fact,

The Course does say a few times that this is something,

The fact that,

You know,

One mind is all minds,

You know,

One brother's all brothers,

Every mind,

I forget the exact language,

But it's like every mind contains all minds.

Then he says you can't understand that.

But the Course is aware of that,

What you call annihilation anxiety.

I like that term because a lot of us have it.

We think I'm going to this oneness and then I'll just dissolve and there won't be a me anymore.

And I think that's what the Course would say is the core anxiety of the ego,

Right?

The thought that,

Okay,

Well,

My ego passes away,

I'll pass away.

And the Course even responds to that.

At one point it says,

Basically,

Yet how can yourself be lost by being found?

So when we wake up,

We find ourselves.

We don't lose ourselves.

That's really nicely said.

That's really,

Really,

Really beautiful.

You know,

What's coming up for me at the moment,

Have you ever read the book,

The Afterlife of Billy Fingers?

No.

It's,

So this is interesting.

It's a woman whose brother passed and she can still hear his voice.

And she,

Through his description to her,

He described,

You know,

Being in this other realm.

But he could also go into what I'm,

These are my words,

Not hers.

I read the book a while ago.

He could also sort of go into like the oneness.

And at that point,

She couldn't hear his voice.

But he could also come out of that to be that more sense of self and communicate with her.

And so it was just interesting to me.

It made me wonder,

Are there sort of levels of,

You know,

When we transition into that other realm,

Are there sort of levels of oneness?

I don't know if I can describe.

Oh sure.

You think there are?

Well,

I mean,

They're talked about in traditions all over.

You know,

They talk about the,

What is it,

The subtle and the causal.

You know,

I think it's pretty clear from all kinds of information and from different NDEs that there are many levels.

If you think about this earth,

It's so,

Everything is so separate,

Solidly separate.

And we're talking about what the Course sees as reality,

Which it also calls heaven,

As being completely formless.

There's a lot in between totally separate and totally formless.

And different traditions,

We'll talk about it.

I saw a really fascinating video online on YouTube of a guy who's trained himself to leave his body and he's learned to go up and visit the different levels.

He talks about how,

You know,

At a certain level there's no gravity anymore,

There's no like chairs to sit on,

You know,

And there's no like physical form.

And I just think that that's logically how it would work.

But what the Course would say is that even the topmost level short of heaven is still a dream realm.

So even in the level where there's like the subtlest of form and there's no more bodies,

You're just light,

There's no chairs or tables or trees or anything,

Even that level is a dream realm.

Interesting.

So would that be,

Would those dream realm levels be the real world that the Course talks about?

Well,

Interesting question because one of the things that's been a little minor interest of mine is that a lot of the descriptions of the afterlife,

And I'm talking about in NDEs,

I'm talking about not like a realm that has only the barest hint of form,

But most the NDE descriptions are of these beautiful landscapes,

You know,

With maybe magnificent cities or,

You know,

Buildings of learning,

Expanses of beautiful nature scenes,

Which I think is a level not too far from the level we're on now.

But the descriptions of those environments sound a lot like how the Course talks about the real world.

Because in those descriptions they often will talk about,

You know,

All the flowers in the grass are like alive and glowing with their own sentience and loving the person describing this.

And that sounds a lot like the Course's description of the real world.

So I feel like,

Yeah,

Those other levels,

I guess,

Are the real world more fully visible.

Interesting,

Very,

Very interesting.

So what about with this idea of these different levels,

And again,

I'm just thinking of because I've spoken with some of my listeners and readers before about this idea of like,

Not wanting to just like,

You know,

Be in this sea of oneness and that annihilation anxiety sort of kicking in.

Do you think that it could be safe to say that as we maybe grow or progress through these levels that you're only going to experience what you're ready for?

Like,

If there's still some fear,

You're not necessarily,

You're not going to know the vast oneness because you're still sort of blocking it.

Is that safe to say or not?

I think that's what's going on now.

True.

True.

Actually,

We're afraid of it.

We're afraid of ego annihilation thinking that means our own annihilation because we identify with ego.

We think the ego is us.

I'm not realizing that we'll feel way more ourselves without an ego.

We'll feel more fully ourselves,

More fully real,

More present,

More alive without this encumbrance of the ego.

But yeah,

As long as we're afraid of something,

You know,

The law of the mind is we just won't go there.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Okay,

That makes sense.

So this work that we're doing now to undo fear really is,

I mean,

We're waking up and doing this work now to come to know the truth of who we are,

But that can continue.

And so all the work that we do,

I feel like now is helping us even,

I don't want to say later because I know there is only now,

But you know what I mean.

Like I perceive myself in a form,

In a body right now and so maybe later when I don't,

Using that term very loosely that all the inner work that I'm doing now is only going to be helpful then.

Well,

Of course,

Otherwise why are we doing it?

Right.

I mean,

I know it's an illusory journey in the course,

But it's still a journey.

We still have to get from A to Z and our efforts now contribute to that as long as we're making those efforts and going forward and we'll keep doing it until we're back.

When whatever form or realm we find ourselves.

Yeah,

Beautiful.

You know,

Another thing that I wanted to touch upon with this NDE that you just summarized for us is how God gave this woman the message that she had to go back to love,

To even in the smallest encounters to be kind.

And this is where I have so enjoyed learning from you because this idea of miracles being shifts in perception and how I feel like I latched on to that definition for a long time and missed the far more frequently referred to definition of miracles as expressions of love.

Really diving into that more,

I've had,

I mean,

You know,

Some of what I had shared at the Boston conference that we both just spoke at for the Community Miracle Center.

I have experienced some profound healing in my relationships with opening up more and more and more to this idea of miracles being expressions of love.

And it's so neat to hear that that's the message.

And I feel like isn't that usually the message that God is giving these people who experience these NDEs about,

You know,

Loving more and being kind and then here that's what the course is teaching us to express love.

Yeah,

I mean that the crossover between the course and NDEs,

It's amazing.

It's down to fine levels of detail,

But one of the details is that we're here to learn how to love.

We do that through learning how to forgive and that means the love exchange,

Even in seemingly minor encounters,

Is like that's the show here,

That's what we're here for.

And conversely the hurtfulness exchange in seemingly minor encounters is the big thing to outgrow and avoid.

That,

In that life review when you were describing her experience and how she re-experienced things from her perspective but from the other person's as well,

I'm sure many of us were thinking,

Oh no,

You know.

But it's so nice though to hear her experience and others that,

And what the course is teaching us,

That God is loving and only loving and wholly non-judgmental and that these can be looked at as learning experiences and like the course says,

What's the quote,

The happy learner cannot feel guilty about learning.

So it's not,

We're not shown those to increase guilt,

Right?

We are,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Interestingly,

I mean we could go in so many directions,

But one of the things that I think is quite interesting is that Jesus went through a day with Helen and Bill that was kind of like a mini life review.

And you see this in our edition,

The CE,

In one of the cameos,

If people know what those are,

They're essays at the back of the book that are organized around personal guidance to Helen and Bill.

So one of those cameo essays,

Which is number 14,

Basically is like a day review for Helen and Bill that was very much like the NDE life reviews because he goes through these little encounters that they had during the day in a very similar fashion to an NDE life review.

Mm-hmm.

Can you quickly summarize that for us or just highlight a couple things?

It's an awesome cameo.

Well,

You know,

He goes through a situation where Bill ideally should have offered for a woman that he and Helen worked with named Dora to share their cab as kind of a peace gesture,

Where Helen was judging a girl who kept causing a door to be held open longer than it needed to be,

And Helen got cold air blowing on her,

Where Helen laughed at someone,

Just like in that NDE story where she laughed at her grandmother,

Where they were arranging a lunch date and Helen was supposed to do it in a way that was completely courteous to Bill,

Who didn't really want to go,

And it just went on and on.

Helen was supposed to not have been taking dictation in front of her husband because he was uncomfortable with the whole thing.

So rather than sort of claiming her power and say,

I'm gonna take my dictation in front of you,

No matter what,

She was supposed to not do it in front of him.

So he just went through a number of situations in the day,

Some of which she did well in,

One or two,

But mostly it was like,

You could have done this.

But it,

You know,

It looks,

The values,

The focus are very NDE-like.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

Certainly.

I would love to just share one of my favorite,

This isn't necessarily an NDE from the perspective of the person who experienced it,

But I just want to share this quick story.

Roger Ebert,

Do you remember Siskel and Ebert?

Of course,

Yeah.

Roger Ebert,

When he was passing,

He was coming in and out of consciousness,

And maybe you've heard this before,

But maybe you haven't.

It's fascinating.

I actually read the quote in John Mundy's Miracles magazine and then looked up the story online.

He,

At one point when he sort of came back to consciousness,

He turned to his wife and he said,

This is all an elaborate hoax.

And she thought,

Okay,

You know,

Maybe they have them on too much medication,

Or maybe,

You know,

Something's going on.

But she realized,

No,

He was talking about this world,

That this world is all an elaborate hoax.

And I just,

I still get goosebumps when I think about that because I just,

That's so clear and succinct.

And clearly he was having some type of,

You know,

NDE when he was out of consciousness and was able to give us that message.

Yeah,

Or the beginnings of a DE.

Yeah,

Yes,

Well,

Yes,

He did,

He did,

I think,

Pass shortly.

Well,

You know,

What's interesting,

Since Greg and I wrote that paper that you referenced,

I realized that I really think there is a direct reference to NDEs in the course.

It's in Lesson 132,

Which is all about there is no world.

There is no world,

That statement's found five times in one lesson,

Okay.

And he's talking about how people get the lesson that there is no world.

He says some will get it from the course,

But he says some see it suddenly on point of death and rise to teach others.

So some people on point of death,

They're dying and they suddenly see,

Oh,

There is no world.

It's all elaborate hoax.

It's all a dream.

And then rather than dying,

They rise and teach others what they've learned at point of death.

I mean,

What does that sound like?

That sounds like an NDE.

Yeah,

Yeah,

And the fact is,

And what really surprises me,

One of the surprising things about NDEs is that so many people are shown that this world is an illusion.

And these are like normal,

Oftentimes normal Americans,

You know,

Brought up in church.

No one's ever said to them this world's a dream,

And yet that's revealed to them in their NDE.

How interesting.

That's really interesting.

That's really interesting.

So I'm wondering now if we want to talk,

Well,

I'd love to go in the direction of talking more about the parallels between A Course in Miracles and NDEs.

Before we do that,

Are there any other stories that you want to share,

Or should we move on?

I don't think there are other stories,

And there's so many great stories,

And I have a ton of favorites.

I love,

And I've,

You know,

I don't have a lot of new ones that are coming on,

But I've loved for years going on YouTube and finding people's latest sharings,

And you know,

New ones come on occasionally.

It's great to just spend time doing that.

I love going on the NDE-RF site as well.

One thing that I will say,

Which is not a topic we've addressed yet,

But I think should be said,

Is that I think there are outstanding reasons for taking these experiences as actual,

As what they say they are,

Rather than as the hallucinations of a dying brain.

It's a whole topic,

But from where I sit,

The dying brain idea never comes close to explaining the evidence.

One of the things I find very telling,

A researcher on NDEs named Jeffrey Long,

He's a medical doctor,

He's noted that there are about 22 different theories of how NDEs are produced by the brain,

And his point is,

If any of them were really good,

Wouldn't they just gobble up all the attention so there was one theory?

The reason there are 22 is none of them work that well.

They don't explain the evidence,

And they even,

They have very tortured attempts at trying.

Like,

You know,

One of the really interesting things about NDEs is people will,

While claiming to be out of their body,

They will come to know information that they should not have been able to know,

Either because it was taking place elsewhere in the hospital,

For instance,

Or because they were,

At that moment,

Their heart had stopped and they should not have any awareness whatsoever.

And they'll often know things in tremendous detail,

Unlikely things,

That it seems like,

As a routine,

Totally check out.

And if you see skeptics trying to explain how they knew those things,

It just gets really tortured and strained.

And to me,

The simplest explanation is,

They're right,

They left their body in some sense,

And they saw this,

And,

You know,

Why are we saying that could not have happened?

Isn't the whole issue here whether we can leave our bodies or not?

Why assume that we can't and then try to find some really strained,

Convoluted way of showing how we can't?

I'm so glad you brought this up.

I didn't even think to go here because,

To me,

I take NDEs seriously and take them as,

You know,

Solid evidence.

But you're absolutely right that bringing up this idea about the theory of the dying brain is really important.

And you just reminded me,

I haven't thought of this story in years because I feel like I learned about it when I was really young,

Probably in the 80s,

Where I remember hearing about an accident,

It was a car accident,

The woman involved in the accident left her body and saw this light just pouring out of a car that was nearby that sort of could see,

You know,

This other person in this car could see that this accident had just happened.

And the person in the car was praying for the woman who was in this car accident or whoever was involved.

And the woman out of her body saw the license plate number of that car and remembered it.

And later on,

When she recovered from the accident,

Actually sent that woman flowers based on having been able to track her down through the license plate number.

And that is a perfect example of what you're saying.

How can somebody get information that they should not be able to access when they're having these experiences?

I mean,

How do you explain that?

Well,

What you do as a skeptic is you try to poke holes in the story.

Uh-huh,

Right.

And you basically try to find some way to say either they could have known through normal means or this has been falsely reported.

Right,

Right.

The problem is there's just so many good stories that are so well attested.

There's a story,

Just briefly,

Where a woman was being resuscitated in a hospital room.

She claimed she left her body and she floated up and from a vantage point near the ceiling,

She saw the serial number on top of,

I think,

Like a respirator machine,

The top of which was about seven feet tall.

Okay,

And she apparently was,

You know,

A bit of an anal-retentive type and she decided to memorize the 12-digit serial number on top of that machine.

And then when she came to,

She asked the nurses to write it down.

The nurse who told the story was one of those nurses.

She's now a PhD,

So,

You know,

She has some credentials.

And they wrote it down and kept the slip of paper and then sometime later when a tech came in to remove the machine,

They said,

Hey,

Can you come up and check the serial number for us?

And he read it off and it was right digit for 12 digits.

Wow.

Now,

The odds of that,

That couldn't happen like once in the history of the universe by normal odds.

You know,

How can you get 12 digits right?

And there are tons of stories that are amazing stories like that.

And this just,

I get so excited just hearing these things.

There is no death.

There is no death and that is just,

These stories have done so much for healing my anxiety surrounding death.

That's great.

And well,

They should for all of us.

Agreed.

Agreed.

So I'm wondering,

We've already touched on some of the parallels between A Course in Miracles and NDEs.

The idea that the world is an illusion.

We touched on that.

Even the message from God of being more loving,

Obviously miracles as expressions of love,

That's another parallel.

Are there other parallels that we can dive into for a bit?

Yeah,

The list is extremely long.

And that's where this 30 page article that I will link in the show notes can be useful for people to look at,

But I'd love to explore some of them with you.

Yeah,

I do recommend people reading the article,

But I'll just mention the ones that stand out for me and there's a lot.

The first one is the nature of God.

I mean,

We're in a culture that has a major kind of God focus in the past,

But I think our culture right now is largely God-avoidant.

You know,

People,

If you're not going to a fairly conservative church,

Chances are you have a certain amount of reticence or avoidance around God.

In spiritual circles,

I think God is largely either renamed,

Downplayed,

Depersonalized.

In A Course in Miracles circles,

You know,

We are not an island.

We are part of our community as part of the larger alternative spiritual thing.

And so we Course in Miracles students have inherited that God-avoidance.

Course students don't talk about God that much,

Don't relate to God that much.

You know,

We find ways to talk about how God is very distant and we focus instead on the Holy Spirit.

But what I find so interesting,

The first thing I find most interesting,

Is that in NDEs,

The God that people encounter is totally non-traditional,

Not the traditional God who's loving and angry,

Who's kind and wrathful,

You know,

Who is distant and somewhat fearful like,

You know,

The great and powerful Oz,

But he's also,

He or it,

They'll use he and it,

But he's also not the impersonal God of much contemporary spirituality.

And he's this third alternative that is,

I can't find any difference between what NDEs experience and God in the Course,

Who is aware,

Alive,

Personal in the sense not of having a body or being limited,

But of being,

You know,

Intelligent,

Like being a kind of being,

Even if a limitless being,

And being absolutely pure,

Unconditional love.

Both NDEs and the Course talk about this love as being simply beyond our comprehension.

And what I find interesting is that both sources,

The Course and NDEs,

Say that this love is like the best love on earth,

Just multiplied endlessly,

But if you do that,

You get a love that is so beyond anything on earth that there actually is no earthly parallel.

So the idea of it's parallel to the best love on earth,

But there is no earthly parallel,

Can be found in both things.

So I mean,

That I could just talk forever about the whole God thing in the Course and NDEs.

Another major point of similarity.

Before you move on,

I want to talk about that a little more because I relate to what you're saying about being a spiritual student and thinking of God as just this vast,

You know,

Oneness and it being very impersonal.

And it was,

Again,

Through listening to you talk about the references in the Course to God being a personal God,

A God that loves us,

Loves us,

Like actively loves us,

Not just is,

You know,

Love,

But actually loves us.

Really,

Again,

I feel like deepened my sense of connection with God,

My relationship with God.

So I do want to thank you for that because I do agree with you that we tend to go in the route of God being impersonal.

And I think,

Again,

Here is a place where we don't have language because to say God is a being,

My brain immediately creates a picture of a form.

And for you to say a,

What did you say,

Limitless being,

A limitless being,

You know,

Formless being,

That captures it,

I think,

A bit better and also speaks to how I can't comprehend,

You know,

How I can't comprehend what that is.

This is similar to me,

I'm digressing for one quick moment,

But there's a book called Hyperspace by Michio Kaku,

A physicist.

And I remember in this book,

If you are a two-dimensional creature,

Like I'm holding up a piece of paper right now,

If you're a two-dimensional creature and you just exist in this plane of paper,

If somebody strikes a pencil through this paper,

You're only going to see that sliver.

It's going to look like you can't even maybe tell that it's a circle,

But you can maybe,

You'll be able to see just the sliver of that pen.

You can't see the whole pen.

You don't have that concept of up and down because you're a two-dimensional creature.

And I feel like this is where we're constantly hitting our limits of trying to describe this because we don't have the words or aren't able to conceptualize it.

So limitless being,

I think,

Is a great way to describe God.

And I just want to thank you.

And I hope that for listeners that this really opens up your hearts to this idea that God is a personal God who loves us,

Who wants a relationship with us,

And that's just so healing for me.

It has been for me too.

And that's been a long journey for me because I,

For a long time,

Assumed that when the Course talked about love in heaven,

That it must be like a really subtle love so that you could like be in heaven and not quite realize it was love.

Because I was used to more Eastern-oriented teachings that often will talk about just this the sea of oneness.

Avoid.

Avoid,

Right.

Even Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart,

Famous Christian mystic,

He talked about,

You know,

I think the divine desert.

And so we're,

You know,

We're taught in certain circles to think,

Well,

The highest level has to be a place where it's just complete like impersonal oneness and there's no relationship and there's no love.

And I assumed that,

Well,

That's got to be the highest.

And so when the Course talked about,

You know,

Love of quote limitless intensity,

Like limitless intensity and that being love,

That doesn't sound like that top-level view of the Godhead.

And so NDEs gave me permission to read the Course and take it at face value,

Which I wasn't giving myself permission to do with this topic.

And suddenly I thought,

You know,

These guys are having genuine spontaneous experiences of,

Consistently they report a love that is so overwhelming there's no way to describe it.

And they consistently talk about take the best love on earth and multiply it.

And I've looked this up on the NDE RF site.

They say multiply it by thousands,

Some say multiply it by millions,

And some say multiply it by billions.

And that's not a subtle love.

It's not boring either.

It's not boring.

And the idea that that's how I'm gonna spend eternity being loved like that by God,

You know,

How could it be any better?

I love that.

I really,

Really love that.

That is just beautiful and so again so comforting because I sometimes get the question of,

Actually I said this in my book,

You know,

Sometimes we think of that what you just described instead of it being that intense burning love,

We think of it as cosmic oatmeal,

Bland and boring,

You know,

There's just nothing and what you're saying is totally the opposite.

It's the opposite.

One of my favorite NDEs,

And you can look this up on YouTube as well,

Is by Beverly Brodsky.

She's got a number of great YouTube videos.

She had a powerful experience of being one with God and she described it as,

She like passed into this eternal state.

How did she say it?

She described it as where she was God's object of adoration.

She was his child that was his object of adoration.

So she's in this state of complete oneness and yet God is still adoring her and she said that that this life is like the dream compared to that.

You know,

It's like that's what that was way more real than this is.

Awesome.

That's awesome.

Are there other,

I know there's a lot,

And again we have the link to this article on the show notes,

But are there other parallels that you can sort of sum up for us?

Yeah,

Well it just goes down the line.

I mean the courses view of the world as being an illusion and yet being a classroom is also found in NDEs.

The courses view on the power of thought and the power we have to heal and give healing,

The power of prayer,

That's also in NDEs.

And you've already alluded to it,

The courses view of like our purpose on earth,

You know,

That has multiple,

Multiple parallels with NDEs.

You know,

From the focus on learning to love,

The importance of everyday interactions,

To the idea of what the course calls our special function,

You know,

Which is a our part in God's plan to save the world that each person is given individually.

NDEs routinely come back saying,

You know,

I was told I have a mission.

And almost,

Not invariably,

But almost invariably their memory of it gets blanked out.

So they don't know what it is.

It has to be really frustrating.

It is apparently very frustrating,

But they had this overwhelming conviction there on earth for a mission to play their part.

And they want to find out what it is and you hear them talk about going through phases of thinking it might be this,

It might be that.

It's unfortunate,

But that sense of mission is incredibly similar to the course's idea of a special function.

Could it be that they don't remember because they have to grow into remembering,

You know,

Like through living and performing miracles and growing into their purpose?

Like if they were just given it right away,

Maybe they wouldn't be quite ready for it,

For where they're at?

Any idea?

I suspect it's something like that.

There's a lot of discussion among NDEs about about things they were told being taken out of their memories for when they came back.

So it's not just about the mission,

It's about all kinds of things.

Okay.

Well,

Like you,

You watched that woman's NDE where she said all her questions were answered.

Right,

Right.

Right,

But she wasn't allowed to come back with it all.

And I think the reason is that if,

If,

If we had the information,

It's almost like it would compromise our learning.

Like if we already knew,

Then we wouldn't go through the learning process.

Right.

So it seems to be something like that because it's very common.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Interesting.

You know,

Another thing,

And you alluded to this already,

But another parallel between many lessons and teachings in the course and NDEs,

That this world is not our home.

Right.

Right?

Another big one.

Big one.

Yeah.

And it's really interesting to hear just how many NDEs say,

I felt like I'd come home.

Or even,

I felt like I,

I'd been away in some distant country and I'd come home from that at last.

And that sounds like the prodigal son story,

Which the course references.

So the,

The notion that,

That even though we feel like this is home,

This earth,

I mean,

It's not a great home,

You know,

It's a pretty hard place to live in,

But the notion that we would go somewhere totally different from here and think,

Ah,

This is home.

That's so counterintuitive and yet it's so much like the course.

Yeah,

That's awesome.

You just reminded me and just saying how it's hard to live here.

I was joking around my roommate at the Boston conference one morning,

We were just chuckling about like how high maintenance the body is.

Like you gotta feed it,

You gotta wash it,

Like it's endless,

It just goes on and on.

And yeah,

It's,

It's high maintenance to be here.

Well,

And,

And NDEs almost to a person will say,

I didn't want to come back.

And some of them will say with some shame,

You know,

I like insisted on staying even though that would mean living,

Leaving my kids and my family.

Some of them say I felt like I had to come back,

Not that I wanted to because it's so much better over there,

But that I really need to for the sake of the people in my life.

But no one says,

This place is preferable to that.

And the that they're talking about,

I think is still a dream realm.

It's not where we're ultimately going.

You know,

For the most part,

Some people experience that merging with the light,

Which is where we're ultimately going.

But for the most part,

They're in a,

They're in a realm that's still got bodies and trees and things and it's,

But it's way better.

So you know,

One of my favorite ones is this woman said,

I don't want to go back there.

She's talking to a group of beings that are trying to reason with her and going back and she says,

You know,

It's nasty and people are mean.

And doing anything is like getting anything done is like moving through molasses.

And I've often thought about that because it's all true.

Yeah,

Yeah,

It is.

So just to go back to what you just said,

And I just want to get really clear on this,

Again,

For anybody who has that,

That subtle hint of being afraid of the oneness.

When you say that,

You know,

Levels beyond this one are still part of a dream realm,

Ultimately,

We're going to the oneness.

Even in that oneness,

Would you say that there's still that sense of self and one at the same time?

Like,

Is that ultimate?

Do we think?

Absolutely.

I believe that's absolutely ultimate.

And of course,

Different traditions will tell you different things about this.

But based on,

Of course,

The miracles,

If that's our path,

Then absolutely,

There is still a me in the oneness.

Okay.

At that ultimate level.

At that ultimate level.

And that's why in the course,

God created us.

God created us because he didn't want to be alone.

So he wants relationship.

He just wants relationship that's so perfect that it's also oneness,

But still relationship.

Love it.

Love it.

Love it.

So I'm looking at the time we're about at the top of our time together.

And I'm just wondering,

We have a few minutes from studying near death experiences,

And thinking about people like me in the past who have had a lot of anxiety surrounding death,

Surrounding transitioning surrounding what comes next?

What advice?

What advice would you offer?

What words of wisdom would you want to share with people who are scared of death?

Well,

Perhaps the main words of wisdom are what you started with,

Which is I would read NDEs,

Watch online videos of NDEs.

I'd like to give you a website that a friend of mine has put together with lots and lots of great videos.

But there's no reading about them,

Like all together,

Like studies of them.

That's helpful.

But I find the actual stories,

You know,

From individuals to be the most impactful.

And the,

You know,

The picture you get from these people is they've experienced something very real.

They say consistently it feels more real than this feels.

The stories are not like drug experiences.

They are very intelligent and coherent as stories.

They look like they're written by a higher intelligence.

They don't look like they're,

You know how dreams are where everything doesn't make sense?

They don't read like that at all.

They read like highly intelligent real experiences.

And from those experiences,

You get the sense that we are not these beings.

We are something much greater.

This life is not the sum total of life.

It's a brief,

It's a blip in a much larger process.

And that being out of these bodies,

Being in an expanded state,

Is being more natural,

Is being closer to home rather than it being some alien weird disorienting thing.

This is the alien weird disorienting thing.

And there's a much,

Much bigger,

You know,

Picture of existence going on.

And in that bigger picture,

We are forever.

Beautiful.

And as we touch upon that,

How can anxiety not fall away?

It has to fall away.

That anxiety must.

Yeah,

Exactly.

Yeah,

Beautiful.

Robert,

Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

This is so helpful and enlightening.

And all of the links that Robert shared,

All the resources we will have on the show notes page.

So thank you so much,

Robert,

For being here.

Thank you for having me.

It's been great.

So much fun.

Oh my goodness,

Wasn't that an amazing discussion?

Robert is a scholar and I so appreciate learning from his expertise.

He has just helped my study and experience and practice of the course in more ways than I can possibly articulate.

All of the resources we mentioned,

Along with Robert's 30 page article on NDEs can be found in the show notes at fromanxietytolove.

Com forward slash 17.

That's one seven.

Now before I go into our takeaways,

I must mention a very exciting opportunity to work with me and Robert not together but separately,

Because we are both presenters in the presenter series.

This is a 12 month online program brought to you by the Teachers of God Foundation.

So the way it works is that each month,

A different presenter provides exclusive weekly content on a course inspired topic.

So to give you an example,

Robert's month of teaching is on vision.

I got to interview him and oh my goodness,

It's such an incredible interview.

I had so many aha moments because of it.

My month when I'm teaching,

I'll be talking and teaching on tools for healing anxiety and fear.

Now this program is dirt cheap.

It's like 20 something dollars a month.

It's absolutely incredible.

So if you are interested in signing up or learning more,

Just go to the show notes and you can find the link there.

Or you can go directly to fromanxietytolove.

Com forward slash presenter series.

That's all one word.

Again,

Fromanxietytolove.

Com forward slash presenter series.

If the shopping cart is not open,

You can just hop on the waitlist.

The cart opens every single month.

So on to my takeaways.

Number one,

People all over the world from different cultures,

From different countries report similar features in near-death experiences that science cannot explain.

For instance,

Some people learn information that they should not know when they are out of their bodies.

For instance,

The serial number and the license plate number examples that we spoke about.

This is just always just so comforting to me because it really speaks to me that there is no death.

Takeaway number two,

Reality is not boring.

I've heard people ask this question before and a consistent theme in near-death experiences is love and intense love that's so much greater than anything we can possibly know here in this world of form.

There's no quote unquote cosmic oatmeal that is bland and boring out there.

That's something that I mentioned in my book.

So it's not that way at all.

It is loving,

Holy loving and more intense love than we can possibly comprehend.

Takeaway number three,

Parallels.

There are so many parallels between near-death experiences and A Course in Miracles.

For instance,

God is a personal God and loves you deeply.

Another example of a parallel is that this world is not our home.

NDEers consistently don't want to come back here and the world is,

To borrow Roger Ebert's words,

An elaborate hoax.

Many NDEers experience that and obviously the Course is teaching that as well.

Another parallel is that we are here to learn and to love.

There's more parallels so check out Robert's article on NDEers.

And takeaway number four,

This is a big one.

You do not lose your sense of being.

I know that many of us who have struggled with anxiety might fear being swept away into an ocean of oneness.

Not so.

We only experience what we're ready for and at the highest level,

According to Robert,

We are both one and many.

But this is something that we can't wrap our heads around with our limited perception.

So I would love to hear your takeaways from this episode.

Come on over to our Facebook group at FromAnxietyToLove.

Com to keep the conversation going.

You are so loved.

If you benefited from this episode of From Anxiety to Love Radio,

Someone else you know can benefit too.

The biggest compliment you can give is to share about the show on social media and to leave a review on iTunes.

Thank you so much for doing so.

I read every single review.

Now if you are ready to take your inner work to the next level,

Pick up my book From Anxiety to Love anywhere books are sold and sign up for my free crash course on undoing anxiety with A Course in Miracles.

It's available at FromAnxietyToLove.

Com forward slash crash course.

Thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you on the next episode.

Reviews

Loved this show. Very similar to my own experience. Didn't know about NDERF!

Excellently presented with a great topic and two wonderful and well spoken people! I’ll follow you and share you both!

This was super interesting, I had a NDE and then I discovered ACIM like 6 months later and it was able to describe in words what I had experienced but could not find words to describe or really comprehend so this was very cool to hear. Unfortunately about halfway through this, it disrupts Robert in the middle of him telling the story about the woman leaving her body and seeing the serial number of the medical equipment and starts replaying the whole thing again from the beginning. I thought maybe I had restarted it to the beginning but I didn't, the second half of the track is just a replay of the beginning for some reason so just thought you should know. I am going to check out the last half on YouTube ! Thank you! 🙏💜✨

Very insightful

Very interesting take, as I deal with these issues, the message brings comfort.