Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #404: Where Does Consciousness Come From Part 2.

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Being Catholic #404: Where Does Consciousness Come From Part 2. · Catholic Spirit Radio

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This is Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston, and you're listening to Being Catholic right here
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on Catholic Spirit Radio, 89.5 FM and 92.5 FM in good old McLean County in Bloomington Normal,
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We're going to have a great show for you today. I'm here with my wife, Lynn.
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And I do want to wish everybody out there a belated Father's Day.
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I hope everybody had a great Father's Day last week. I forgot to mention that.
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Last Sunday. So I hope it was good for everybody. And I think it was a pretty
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nice day, wasn't it, Lynn? Yeah.
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And we're going to talk again today about where consciousness comes from.
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We talked about it last week and speculated on a few things, and I'll get to that.
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But before we start, I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the things
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that are going on we should pray for in our country.
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And pray for our country, and it needs our prayers, and the things that are
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going on in New York and other places.
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This movement, this sort of ugly socialism, communism rearing its head.
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And I hope it doesn't spread and take over.
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But one of the things that is happening, I think, all over the country with
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people, especially people of smaller means and poorer people,
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is especially with the housing.
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There is a scarcity of housing in the country. Part of it is,
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of course, because we have brought so many people into this country illegally
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and came across our borders, and those people have to stay somewhere.
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But even worse than that.
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We have so many regulations about housing and restrictions on where it can be
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built and how it can be built that drive up the cost of it and also make it
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more scarce and harder to build.
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And the same thing with rental properties.
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And I think that's hitting some of our biggest areas, such as New York and other
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areas where we have high population density.
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And the property becomes extremely more and more expensive, especially,
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you know, the better property.
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And builders have a harder time getting permits to build and they have a harder
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time finding places to build and, you know, put houses and so forth.
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So all of that drives up the price. And when, you know, prices goes up,
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of course, when there's a scarcity of anything, prices will rise,
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not only because it costs more, but also by the very fact that they're scarce.
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And then you have people that own property like myself and others.
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And there's a tendency for people that own property then to vote along the lines
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of keeping the property restricted because, of course, they have an interest
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in keeping their property values up.
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And they don't see that that can have a huge negative effect and cause some
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of the things that are happening in New York.
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So that's one of the things that really needs to be addressed.
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And I think we've had politicians that have got into a sort of rut protecting
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the people that already have property.
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And putting restrictions on further housing being built and rental property
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being built and catering to one side of the equation and not catering to the
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other side of the equation.
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And when that happens, you get a displacement and you get somebody that's going
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to come along one way or another politically and take advantage of that.
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And I think that's what we see that is happening.
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And we see people coming along that are probably academic or intellectual.
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Marxists, they still exist on our campuses throughout the nation.
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And then when something like this happens, they see an opportunity to step in
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and say, aha, I told you so.
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You know, this is what's wrong with capitalism and so forth.
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And it really isn't. It's a political problem.
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And because our politicians are not solving these problems, they're being,
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you know, dumped on the taxpayers and dumped on the people who are unable to
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afford the housing and so forth and causing a problem.
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And people will come in and propose extreme things, especially along those lines
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of Marxism or communism gives them an opportunity to propose solutions.
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And of course, those solutions aren't going to work. I mean,
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the first thing now that Mom Domini in New York has done is put on rent controls,
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freeze the rents and so forth.
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All that is going to do is make sure that there will be even more,
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potential builders of rental property that will decide not to do it because
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they'll see that there are going to be restrictions on what they can charge
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for rent, and they'll be worried that they won't be able to recoup their investments.
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And so they'll put off building, and there'll be less property than there was
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before, and the problem will get worse.
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And then, of course, the only solution is for more of the Marxist-oriented peoples
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to scream that the government needs to do something,
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and you'll have all kinds of property being built by the government at taxpayers'
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expense, and people all over the country having to pay for it.
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And of course, when something is so-called free and costs nothing,
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that's exactly how people treat it.
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And usually that property is poor and it's not taken care of and nobody really
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owns it and it's poorly managed and so forth. We've seen it before.
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And you get slums in terrible areas and so forth. Then the problem just gets worse.
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Yeah, we've seen it happen before in Chicago, just up the road.
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There we have, you know.
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The big, like, Cabrini Green and so forth. It was a high-rise slum.
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Yeah, that same place. The people were stuck there.
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They could get out of it if they wanted to. And I've seen nice neighborhoods
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in Chicago. You know, those four flats, walk up four flats and so forth,
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where friends and stuff lived that we used to go up there. They were nice neighborhoods.
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They were just, you know, ordinary middle class or lower middle class neighborhoods.
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They didn't cost a lot, but they were clean and they were nice.
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And people lived there and they were like little towns unto themselves.
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You had four or five blocks and there'd be a sporting goods store and,
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you know, a lumberyard maybe and some grocery stores and so forth.
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You could shop right in those areas. You didn't even have to have a car.
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You know, if you stayed right in that area, you could walk to almost everything
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and so forth. It was nice.
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And all of those, because of rent control and all kinds of other restrictions
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and regulations and so forth, eventually became deteriorated. People left them.
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Poor people, you know, that couldn't afford to pay the higher prices moved in
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and the rents fell and rent control was put in and so forth.
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And they just deteriorated and it didn't solve the problem at all. So.
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No, it didn't. You know, in that area, it was right on the south side there,
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right around Midway Airport. Yeah, right. Nice, nice neighborhoods.
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Right in there, they were very, very nice. They were, yeah.
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And so, these solutions, I mean, first of all, the problems are artificially caused.
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And the solutions, of course, are political solutions that don't work.
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And the best thing we can do is encourage the market to build more housing at
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lower prices and expand and more territory open up and so forth.
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You can't increase the population without having an expansion of the housing for that population.
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And that's what we have done by bringing all of these people in.
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Our actual birth rate is going down.
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It's 1.6 per woman now. And so we're actually at a rate of birth that isn't
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going to keep up actually with the replacement children for our society.
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And eventually our population will start to fall, but it's still rising at this
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point and it hasn't reached that point yet.
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And so it hasn't peaked and it's starting to peak out around now.
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And And then when you add to that with these people coming in illegally,
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and allowed to be here, and then when you have all kinds of government programs
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that make it possible for all these people to stay and so forth,
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there has to be a place to put these.
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And so when you don't have enough housing and you still keep on all the old
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restrictions and so forth and don't do anything to meet those problems, that's what happens.
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And then people start getting tired of nothing being done.
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And so when somebody comes along with extreme solutions, people will start to
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believe in them and latch on to them.
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I think that goes a long way to explain a lot of the things that are happening.
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That's true, very true.
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Right here in Normal, housing, they keep saying housing, we need more housing and land was...
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Appearance on Shelbourne even. The land was divided and so forth and zoned and everything.
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The people, the investors can't get the money to build. How come?
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I don't understand. It doesn't make any sense.
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You know, out in California, you have the same thing. You have,
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you know, these houses of people in areas burned down and then people can't
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get permits to rebuild even because of all the regulations and so forth.
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So it's a huge, huge problem.
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And you have people who own the land or own property who have a tendency,
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again, to want all kinds of regulations to keep the property they already have high price.
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And they think that that's a good idea. But in the long run,
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And it even hurts them, too, because when you start getting bad politics and bad.
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People running things and all kinds of government spending money to try and
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solve the problem in ways that really don't solve the problem,
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the people that think that they're going to profit from having higher prices
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for their property and for their housing and so forth end up paying all kinds
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of higher taxes and more money out and having a less quality.
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Way of life and so forth on account of what they cause and all of the political
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problems in the long run all of this attempt to try and hang on to things and
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make them better than they ought to be doesn't work.
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I'll look at the Pacific Palisade area there after that fire.
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I don't think a quarter of those homes have been rebuilt yet. They're waiting for.
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Clearance to build, I guess.
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And so this is sort of off subject and everything, but I thought we'd say something
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about it because it does affect the church and it does affect us as people.
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We should be open to, if you're going to have more of a population,
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you have to have a place to put this population, and you have to have reasonable
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regulations that allow for enough expansion to do those kinds of things.
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Otherwise, you simply cause people to act and behave in manners that they ought not.
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And then we have politicians that will always cater to that kind of thing.
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And you get worse and worse politics. And you get more and more people dependent
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on those worse and worse politics.
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And you have a society that starts to decline and go downhill. And you have more crime.
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And you have a decline in your whole population.
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And it's simply not a good thing.
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And so we have, that's why we have regulations in the first place.
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And that's why we have borders. And that's why we have a reasonable means of
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allowing people to come into a country and assimilate
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and obey the laws and have good laws to try and regulate things in such a way
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that people can get along with each other and have a reasonably.
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Good place to live.
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And America has always been along those lines and hasn't been perfect,
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but it's accomplished an awful
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lot, and we ought not deviate from that and think that somehow or another
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we can have a government that can run everything in a socialist or communist
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way, and it will be better because it won't. No? No.
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That's the people that have lived under socialist government.
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And that's the other part of it is our educational system.
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We have too much in our educational system that have these still ideas that
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are being taught to our children, and they're not being taught our proper history.
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There's too much of an emphasis put on all of the things this country has done
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wrong, and not enough emphasis on the things that it has done right and not enough emphasis on.
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A good outlook for the future and so forth. And that's what we need to get back to.
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And every country has its good points and its bad points. People make mistakes. We have made ours.
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You can't live with them forever.
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There has to be a means of forgiveness. And that's one thing about the church, you know,
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The idea that when you make mistakes, you can pick yourself up,
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confess those mistakes, and change your behavior, and go on and be done with it.
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And we need to do the same thing in our society as well.
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So, at any rate, I've gone on for the whole section here, but I think it's something
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important for people to think through that all these pie-in-the-sky solutions are not going to work.
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They're not going to make things better. They're going to make things worse,
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and what they're doing in New York,
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the mandami and the socialist agenda simply has been tried before, and none of it works.
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What does work is simple, practical solutions like if there are more people, make more housing.
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And when you have borders and so forth, enforce those borders.
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Have a proper means of allowing people into the country on a regular way.
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There's no such thing as some kind of a panacea that's going to solve everything
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all at once. It simply isn't.
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And you have to take the time to do things right. So,
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Anything more that you want to say? No, no, I'm all right.
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Okay, so we'll stop here, take a break, and we'll come back and we'll talk about
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the second part here of where does consciousness come from.
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I want to talk about a couple of things I mentioned last week and expand on that a little bit.
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And then I think we'll finish this topic in the next couple of sessions here. So stay with us.
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We'll be right back. You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston
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Hi, this is Bob Johnson. You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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We're going to talk about where does consciousness come from.
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We were talking about it last week, and of course I.
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Deviated a little bit in the first part of the show here and talked about some
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of our problems that we're having politically and some of the problems that
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we're having with the high cost of housing and so forth going up.
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But we're going to spend the rest of the show here talking about the finishing
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where consciousness does come from.
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I do want to mention what we talked about last week.
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I did want to be sure that everybody understands that this is sort of a mystery
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topic and an interesting topic, and it's fun to address.
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And there's a lot of scientific information now coming in on this topic.
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And we're learning more and more about that the universe is a strange place
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and may work in ways that we never before understood.
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But at the same time, I want everyone to understand what we're doing here is mostly speculation.
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Some of it is anecdotes that are told by people that actually experienced certain
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things, and we're not sure exactly what those experiences were.
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So I don't want anyone to think that somehow or another I'm talking about Catholic
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theology here in some definite or certain way. We're not.
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And we're just speculating. And I talked about possible wormholes in space.
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People talk about those kinds of things.
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And space warps where you can move from one place to another.
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It would be possible if there are aliens out there somewhere to get to us from.
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Far, far distances. You know, space is so big and things are so far away and
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light years and so forth that a lot of people speculate.
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How could people, if they did exist, ever get here from distances like that.
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And the only way, of course, would be to have things like wormholes in space
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or something where space is warped or there are different dimensions and people
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can move across those. But that's all pure speculation.
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There isn't any proof that any of these things actually do exist.
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And so far, all of the things, the aerial phenomenon and so forth that are reported,
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we don't really know what they are.
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And we don't know that they're, you know, they're aliens from some other planet.
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And it's easy to think things like that.
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But we have no idea that that's the case. They could be something else.
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They could be something that we might be able to explain, some form of energy
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and so forth that we don't understand right now. And we could explain that way,
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just ordinary thing that we simply don't understand.
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Or they could be something dimensional from some other dimension in some way
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that we don't understand.
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They could be spirits to an extent and some people explain things along that
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line and that's a very good possibility.
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So we're just talking about possibilities here and we're not talking about definite
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facts and as far as one of the things that we should understand is.
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Before I get into this, I want to mention something about the Shroud of Turin.
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It hasn't been that long ago that the sample from the Shroud of Turin was taken,
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and it was put to radioactive carbon dating to see how old it was and so forth.
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But it was found out that a piece of the shroud was taken from a repair that was made to that shroud.
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And that repair was made more recently than the shroud was made itself.
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And so you know it really didn't give an accurate picture of how old the shroud was,
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and I read some articles on it and I don't have them in front of me but if I
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remember correctly there were some of the people that examined it scientists
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that examined it said that the.
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Image on the cloth was first of all something that was three-dimensional in other words It wasn't,
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when we say, you know, some people say it was, you know, a fake or something,
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people painted something on it.
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If that were the case, it would have been painted probably on a, you know, flat surface.
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But the image actually shows that it was made three-dimensionally.
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So if it was painted on there, it would have been painted while it was still
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hanging over a dead body, which is sort of unlikely.
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And secondly, there's no evidence of what kind of paint it was.
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And finally, the threads on the cloth are only colored and, you know,
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darkened. They're not really colored, darkened to give that image on the very surface of the threads.
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And one of the scientists said that the only way he thought that that possibly
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could be made was if there was a burst of light so bright that it would have
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taken some kind of atomic energy to make it.
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You know, that's the closest thing that we, you know, that understand in our
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times could have made it a burst of light made, you know, by an atomic flash,
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like a flash from the atomic bomb.
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And so we certainly know that there wasn't any atomic bomb going off back at
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the time that the shroud came into existence.
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And so how did a burst of light come like that?
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Well, if it came, it meant that there was a burst of light in the tomb when,
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whoever made the image in that cloth actually moved through that cloth.
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And that's exactly what one of the scientists was saying.
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We can't prove that, but that's an explanation that seems to fit,
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and it's an explanation that we can understand, and people back at the time
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that it happened could never understand in the same way we can because we know what an atomic flash is.
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So if it was something like that, we know that it was not something that was painted or faked.
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And so that's something I can't prove, but that's a speculation.
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Made by a person who examined the cloth.
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And it's very difficult to try and explain how that image got on there.
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It certainly doesn't seem like it was ever painted on there.
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And it certainly was made in some way that we don't know.
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True. Similar to Our Lady of Guadalupe down in Mexico.
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I mean, that cloth is not deteriorated. it seems to regenerate itself it's the colors and so forth.
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They match the stars in her mantle match where the stars were when she appeared it's exactly it's.
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We can't explain those things. Yeah, and that is made from some kind of reed
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or something down there, isn't it?
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Yeah, I don't know if it's a reed, but— Or some kind of vegetation.
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Yeah, vegetation. I mean, it's not—or leaf or something like that.
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I mean, it's not made from wool or anything like that. No. Along that line.
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And the thing is that the thing is made from that very fabric that it's made from.
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Normally deteriorate in about 60 or 70 years.
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And this has never deteriorated. It's still just as it was when it was first, you know.
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Brought to the bishop. Right, brought to the bishop. So that's something,
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again, too. So there are things going on that we really can't explain.
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And these articles here about where consciousness came from are just speculating,
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but based on facts, based on things that, you know, are hard to explain otherwise.
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On how things, you know, that we don't understand could possibly work.
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And that's what we're talking about here.
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And more and more scientists are beginning to understand that the universe has
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aspects to it that we don't understand at all, and that our consciousness in
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ourselves, our own minds,
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our brain is one thing, a physical thing, but our mind is another.
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And that our mind and brain are two different things.
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And consciousness, you know, is not so easy to explain. It isn't just a bunch of electrical things.
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Charges that are operating inside of our head through our nerves and so forth.
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And a good, I think, example of that is the fact that AI, artificial intelligence,
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is really not intelligent.
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It's really not self-aware.
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It's really not, doesn't have intentionality.
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It can't decide or act on its own.
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It operates on algorithms that are put into it.
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And so electrons are electrons. They're just, they operate the same way in AI
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as they would operate in an electric circuit or anywhere else.
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They don't have that living intentionality that our consciousness has.
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And so AI is not conscious in the same form, in the same way that a human being is.
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It doesn't It doesn't understand, you know, it's self-aware,
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it can't make decisions, it can't decide to do something outside the algorithms
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that it's been given, and it operates electrically.
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And so, therefore, if all we had was electrical impulses going through our brains,
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we really wouldn't have the kind of consciousness, it doesn't seem, that we do have.
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Because in AI itself or in computers or anything else, electrons simply don't
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give that kind of intentionality and that kind of consciousness.
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And if it's not there, it's not there.
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And you can't get it by rearranging. You know, it's like I said before,
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if you had a set of blocks and they were all one color through and through,
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if you had a set of blocks that were all blue and there was no red.
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And you could rearrange those blocks any way you wanted, chop them up in small
29:54
pieces and make them powder and everything else.
29:57
But no matter how you arrange them, you're not going to get something that isn't there.
30:01
And so if consciousness is not there, it's not there. So, you know,
30:05
if it's all we have is our flesh and electrical impulses, where is the consciousness?
30:13
And how do you explain it? Where does it come from? And the fact is,
30:15
is that no materialists so far have ever been able to explain it.
30:20
And if you really think it through, and I've read books on it.
30:24
And that you're just not going to be able to explain it from a material point of view.
30:30
And it's like saying that, oh, someday we will.
30:33
It's like saying, oh, someday four, two and two will equal five instead of four.
30:38
It's just not going to happen. That's all there is to it.
30:41
So consciousness has to be something more than that. And now scientists and
30:46
others are speculating that maybe some of our consciousness comes in effect
30:51
from the universe itself.
30:52
And, of course, the church would say our consciousness is not just coming from the universe.
30:57
It's coming from God because God is the motivating factor of the whole universe.
31:03
You know, the mind of God is what makes the universe exist in the first place.
31:08
And so that our consciousness, in effect, is coming from the universe through the mind of God.
31:15
And that's pretty much what we're speculating here.
31:18
Do you want to comment on that at all? Well, go back to the biblical.
31:24
He breathed life into a pile of dust. And what do you have?
31:31
Man was created in the image and likeness of God.
31:39
In the beginning was God. When you think about it, the Christian Bible gives
31:43
an explanation of the universe and an explanation even of our own world and so forth,
31:50
far more scientifically understandable than any.
31:56
It's not just a creation myth. It's not a story of giants or fantastic things.
32:04
It's actually, if you translate it to words and so forth, it's actually pretty close to.
32:13
Describing a way that the universe and the world and so forth actually came into existence.
32:20
You know, it has to be in someone's mind, you know, in the mind of God.
32:25
Just like you can have, as I said before,
32:29
You can have a carpenter, and he has the entire house within his brain.
32:37
So, you know, he goes to sleep, and he's lying on a couch asleep,
32:42
yet the entire house, the carpenter,
32:45
is contained when we're talking about an entire house or whatever other structure
32:51
that a carpenter is able to build and so forth, is contained.
32:55
He's a human being, and he's walking around with hands and eyes and so forth,
32:59
But actually, he's a walking house in the sense that everything that's necessary
33:04
for a house to be put together,
33:06
and come together and so forth in an.
33:11
Organized way is in the carpenter's brain.
33:15
You know, it's in the carpenter's mind. I shouldn't say brain.
33:18
It's actually in the carpenter's mind, you know, in a non-material form before
33:25
it ever comes into existence in a real form.
33:27
And that's how the Bible explains God in the same sense. In the beginning, there was the word.
33:34
In other words, there was the thought.
33:36
There was the concept, the blueprint for the universe and so forth.
33:43
And when God thought, it came into existence. Just like when a carpenter decides
33:50
and builds, the house comes into existence.
33:53
And so, you know, maybe the analogy isn't perfect, but it shows how the immaterial
33:59
is transformed into the material from the carpenter's mind into reality in the real world.
34:07
And from God's mind, the Bible explains how the universe and so forth and the
34:14
world and everything came into existence. Right.
34:19
I'm going to read from this article here while we're getting almost through
34:22
the second part. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if I'll be able to finish it or
34:25
not. Why don't you take a break and then do it? Yeah, then I'll do it.
34:30
So, yeah, we're coming pretty close. So it's just a few minutes until the end
34:37
of the second session. So we're going to stop here and take a break.
34:40
So stay with us. We'll be right back. You've been listening to Being Catholic
34:44
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Hi, this is Bob Johnson. You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic
37:22
Superior Radio, and we're talking about where does consciousness come from.
37:26
And I'm going to go ahead and read from an article here in the Epoch Times,
37:31
and it's the June 10th, the 16th, 2026 edition of the Epoch Times,
37:37
and it's the last part of a series on where does consciousness come from.
37:42
And I'll just go ahead and read it.
37:46
And it says here, at 37, Ned Doherty seemed to have it all, a Mercedes-Benz,
37:54
a private jet, and a well-known nightclub in the Hamptons.
37:57
Then he met death and nothing was ever the same. On July 2, 1984,
38:03
after a fight with a business associate, Doherty collapsed on the sidewalk.
38:08
He felt like he was falling into a dark, endless pit.
38:11
Medical records showed that he had respiratory and cardiac arrest and was clinically
38:16
dead for an hour and six minutes.
38:19
I was literally dead in every sense of the word at that point,
38:22
Doherty told the Epoch Times, and my journey on the other side began.
38:27
According to Doherty, his consciousness left his body, traveled into another
38:32
dimension, and was enveloped in a brilliant golden light, more resplendent than
38:38
the sun, yet causing no pain.
38:41
Doherty was suddenly joined by his deceased best friend, Daniel McCampbell,
38:46
who had passed away during the Vietnam War.
38:49
McCampbell communicated to Doherty, I'm here to show you the way.
38:54
You have a mission ahead of you in your life. After Doherty woke up,
38:58
he became a different person.
39:00
He sold his clubs, gave up drugs and alcohol, and started volunteering.
39:05
He even did the jobs he once looked down on, such as taking out the trash,
39:10
cleaning bathrooms, and directing traffic.
39:13
For the past 40 years, he has spoken and written about his experience,
39:18
not to prove anything, but because he believes that he returned with a purpose.
39:24
Doherty's transformation is not unusual. A 2024 survey by the Near-Death Experience
39:32
Research Foundation, the largest existing database on the question,
39:37
found that nearly 80% of near-death experiences report major to moderate life
39:43
changes after their return,
39:46
reordered priorities, new vocations, even transformed worldviews.
39:52
The after-effect is so consistent across decades that it has inspired entire research programs.
39:59
These are profoundly changed people, Dr. Jeffrey Long, who has been doing near-death
40:05
experience research for 30 years, told me in an interview for a recent documentary, Final Hours.
40:14
In a landmark study published in The Lancet, Dr. Pim Van Laman and his team
40:20
conducted interviews with cardiac arrest survivors two and eight years after
40:25
their near-death experiences.
40:28
The researchers noticed a consistent change in them.
40:31
Compared with people who did not have near-death experiences,
40:35
those who did were much less afraid of death, were more likely to believe in
40:40
an afterlife, were more interested in the meaning of life, and felt more love and compassion.
40:47
These positive effects persisted and even intensified in the eight-year follow-up
40:53
assessment, suggesting a fundamental and permanent change in their consciousness
40:58
rather than a temporary psychological reaction.
41:02
The longest-running database on the question, run by the psychiatrist Bruce
41:08
Grayson at the University of Virginia,
41:12
compared experiencers' attitudes at intake to their attitudes two decades later.
41:19
The change is held for the entire time. Twenty years on, the experiencers were
41:24
still more drawn to service and less interested in the markers most people spend their lives chasing.
41:32
Grayson concluded that near-death experiences are unusual in the long-term persistence of attitude changes.
41:40
Most peak experiences in life fade over time, but these changes seem to last.
41:47
Why? It comes down to three things that these people gain through the experience.
41:53
In the largest after-effect study to date, published in 2024 in the journal Resuscitation,
42:00
Long compared 834 near-death experiences with 42 controls who had no brushes
42:08
with death without a near-death experience.
42:12
Three elements repeatedly appeared in his analysis and the experiencers write-ups
42:18
as the engines of change.
42:20
The first element is the one that most near-death experience and analysis stop at.
42:26
The other two are the ones that actually rebuild the life.
42:30
The first one, one, consciousness after death.
42:34
The first thing nearly every experiencer reports is the discovery in the moment,
42:40
that the end of the body is not the end of awareness.
42:44
Doherty felt like he floated out of his body and watched paramedics working
42:49
on his own corpse outside his nightclub.
42:53
Others describe leaving their bodies in operating rooms, cars,
42:58
or hospital beds and seeing everything with incredible clarity.
43:03
Many say it felt more real than reality.
43:08
In Long's analysis of more than 200 out-of-body observations from his database,
43:15
he found that more than 98% of what experiencers reported seeing and hearing
43:20
while clinically unconscious proved accurate in fine detail.
43:25
In other words, when it was checked what these people saw from their deathbed
43:32
or from an automobile or whatever,
43:35
something that they couldn't possibly have seen, you know, with their eyes, was accurate.
43:41
They described things that they couldn't possibly have seen while lying where
43:45
they were lying, yet they were very accurate in what they described.
43:50
The second element is what catalyzes the experience into a different kind of life.
43:56
Doherty left behind his old life to help others. He described that during his
44:01
near-death experience, a being of light told him to do charity and missionary
44:06
work and to make prayer a regular part of his life.
44:10
Afterward, he gave up drugs and alcohol and spent 30 years speaking and writing
44:15
about his experience, hoping to inspire others.
44:19
He later wrote in his book Fast Lane to Heaven, My mission was not clearly defined
44:24
for me at first, but I now find that each and every day it is being defined for me more clearly.
44:31
Another well-known case is Danion Brinkley, who was struck by lightning on September
44:36
17, 1975, while talking on the phone in Aiken, South Carolina.
44:44
He was clinically dead for 28 minutes.
44:48
He remembered Beings of Light telling him to use what he learned to help people who are dying. In 1997.
44:59
He co-founded a non-profit, the Twilight Brigade, dedicated to ensuring that no veteran dies alone.
45:07
He has logged more than 34,000 hours of hospice volunteer service and has been
45:13
at the bedside of more than 2,000 people during their final days.
45:18
The new mission of each person with a near-death experience was built from scratch,
45:23
often at high personal costs, that is, lost careers, abandoned businesses,
45:30
decades of unpaid work, and so on.
45:33
The pattern is consistent across enough cases that researchers such as Long
45:38
have come to treat it as a defining feature of the phenomenon rather than an
45:45
unexpected side effect.
45:47
Some people who have near-death experiences come back not just with the mission,
45:53
but also with a higher standard for goodness and a clearer idea of how to live well.
46:00
Sometimes the message is delivered by a deceased friend, as in Doherty's case.
46:06
Sometimes it is delivered by what they call beings of light.
46:10
The content of the guidance varies, but the structure is consistent.
46:14
The experiences are shown their life, often in a panoramic life review,
46:21
from the perspective of the people they affected.
46:24
They feel what they did to others and are measured against a universal moral
46:29
standard, arriving at an intuitive understanding of right and wrong.
46:34
This life review is what makes the after-effects so durable.
46:39
The transformation is not built on belief in an afterlife.
46:43
Plenty of people believe in it and live unchanged. The transformation is built
46:48
on the experience of having been seen from the inside of every life one has
46:54
touched and measured against a standard of goodness
46:58
one can't attribute to one's own intentions or one's own inventions.
47:04
The combination of the three elements delivered in a single experience is what changes a life.
47:11
The pattern shows up everywhere a researcher looks, regardless of the experiencer's
47:16
culture, age, or previous beliefs.
47:20
I have seen this pattern for myself. For the past six months,
47:25
I have been working on the documentary Final Hours.
47:28
And this is when I'm using this I here. by the author Mark Ellis Callis, who's writing this.
47:35
I met a former Harvard neurosurgeon who fell into a coma caused by meningitis,
47:43
a college pitcher whose heart stopped during surgery, a young woman in a head-on
47:48
car crash, and a cancer patient whose organs failed in the intensive care unit.
47:54
All of these subjects died and came back and were forever changed.
48:00
Their experiences were nothing alike, but what they did with them was—.
48:05
The documentary, which premieres on June 10th,
48:09
expands the series, and that's over, I guess, where does consciousness come
48:13
from, and conveys something difficult to put into words,
48:17
what these people sound like, what their faces show, the particular stillness
48:23
of a person who is no longer afraid of death, who has a new purpose in life.
48:28
And so, you know, that's the end of the article, but it is very,
48:32
very interesting what these people experience.
48:37
And one of the things I think that is most fascinating to me is.
48:42
The fact that they are able to describe the things that were happening to them
48:50
that they couldn't possibly have seen.
48:52
Some of them describe not only the doctors working on them,
48:57
but they can describe when the doctors left and went into another room and were
49:03
consulting with each other and talking to each other, they couldn't possibly
49:07
have heard or seen from where they were.
49:10
And the doctors themselves have verified that their description and their relation
49:18
of what the doctors were talking about and said and so forth were very, very accurate.
49:24
So, you know, how is this possible?
49:27
And that they seem to be looking at everything from like above,
49:32
although that's just the term that they use,
49:36
because it's the kind of world that we live in if we're able to understand or
49:41
see something happening.
49:43
Over in another room or another place from us that we wouldn't normally be able to see.
49:49
It would seem to us, once we're back in consciousness again,
49:54
that somehow we must have been above it and looking down on it,
49:58
you know, without a roof or anything in the way.
50:01
So it's, I like to say, a very, very interesting thing.
50:08
And again, I would recommend that for people if they want to understand more,
50:14
about how the mind works.
50:16
One of the best books that they can read is The Last Superstition by Edward
50:22
Fazer, and it's a very readable book, and it explains.
50:28
From a philosophical point of view the working of the mind, and I think you'll
50:32
be convinced that it's impossible to understand the mind from a materialistic point of view.
50:41
The man is just a very very good philosopher and a very very good thinker and
50:47
you can see that it's simply,
50:51
not going to happen that you can explain the mind in the same way that you could
50:55
explain the brain the two things are different and
50:59
certainly it's not a computer and it's not just a bunch of electrons or an electrical
51:04
system you know operating somehow or another on a higher plane,
51:09
than other electronic devices.
51:11
It just can't possibly work that way.
51:14
And if you try and understand it on that particular basis, at a certain point,
51:20
as the book shows, you will end up, in effect, just babbling.
51:26
So is there anything you want to add, Lynn?
51:29
Oh, I think it's very fascinating to, you know, the speculation about it all. We don't know.
51:36
But some of it, it seems too real not to be existing or whatever.
51:45
I don't know how to explain it.
51:50
You know, there's got to be something in the mind or that stimulates the mind
51:56
or however the mind works. If we ever really understand, why wouldn't it be?
52:05
Why wouldn't you know if there's an alternative.
52:11
Existence? Well, the one thing about Phaser, when you read, you know,
52:16
understand, looking at things from the point of view of how the human mind works,
52:20
you begin to understand why the.
52:25
Human mind is so much different from an animal mind.
52:33
And why we can say humans are unique and different, you know, in that respect.
52:39
They're not just animals alone because the mind is something that has to be
52:45
in contact with God, really.
52:47
And the scientists are saying in contact with the universe, but then,
52:52
you know, how do they explain the universe?
52:55
And why is it here? How did it get into existence? And why does it stay in existence?
53:00
And all of these questions are addressed and they're answered by Phaeser.
53:06
Of course, he brings in, you know, many, many other people and philosophers
53:12
and so forth who have spent time on this.
53:14
But he does it in such a way that it's very interesting and very readable.
53:17
So I would recommend for anybody who wants to know more about this to get that
53:22
book, the Edward Phaeser's book, The Last Superstition.
53:26
And I think you'll understand much, much more about how the human mind works.
53:31
But the fact also that there is much, much more to the universe than we can understand.
53:37
And it points more and more to the fact that,
53:41
The church, and when I say the church and the people in it for.
53:47
Christianity for such a long time, I pointed out many things that are beginning
53:52
to be more and more acceptable and accepted by the secular world.
53:58
Well, Fasier is, or I think he still is, a professor at Boston University,
54:05
is he not? Yes, Boston University. He's taught for many years.
54:10
He is very readable very down to earth it's not like some of the philosophy
54:16
you know philosophers book that,
54:20
you have to have a little background to even understand he's very readable anyway
54:25
we're going to have to stop here and end our program so I hope this.
54:30
Excites some people and causes them to look further into this.
54:35
It's a very, very interesting subject.
54:37
So, St. Michael, the archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against
54:43
the wickedness and snares of the devil.
54:45
May God be puked and humbly pray.
54:48
And do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God,
54:52
thrust into hell, Satan, and all
54:54
evil spirits who wander through the world through the ruin of souls. Amen.
55:00
You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
55:04
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