Forensic Pathologist's Profound NDE (Mind-Blowing Truth Revealed!) 2024

remember thinking you're drowning you're you're dying this is it this is the end and I'm underwater and at that point everything stopped and a voice was saying they're going to be okay um and then what I do remember next was being in the boat and uh um not being able to breathe and we're in the middle of the rainforest there's no way out of here um this 28 miles of river is our only exit [Music] I'm a forensic pathologist and a neuropathologist and you know I've conducted thousands of autopsies investigated thousands of deaths cut thousands

of brains as a neuropathologist and a neuroscientist um I was a professor of anatomy and neurobiology at a big medical school in Boston and you know had all the academic checks and one one teaching Awards and written books you know so it was H that was the focus of my life at the time and um was work work work work work um so that's kind of where I where I was philosophically I was an atheist hardcore you couldn't convince me otherwise and with my work just really reinforced that because I can cut a brain and

I can put it out for you and I'll ask you where is consciousness where is the soul this doesn't exist there's no proof for it in this brain and everything that we think about as that process of Consciousness um death is the dying brain and it can be very easily explained through hypoxia the chemical reactions that happen um as the brain begins to begins to die which do happen and and but you know we get into confusing awareness with Consciousness but that's maybe another day so that's where I was you know at the time um

was my wife's 50th birthday and we had gone to Costa Rica go on this white water rafting trip and um uh I'm terrified I should preface the story a little bit with the idea that I grew up in Maine or always around lakes in water terrified of water I hate water I hate being around it um I was always terrified I was going to drown I always found excuses to not be in the water because um and I just always felt like I was going to drown the other thing I used to do and I

never put these pieces together until after this and this might make sense after the story um I used to get really bored in school one of the things I would do is I would hold my breath watch the second hand on the clock see how long I could hold my breath and then try to beat that record and that's how I spent most of my elementary school um and I always thought someday I'm going to need this someday I'm going to need this so fast forward 30 years 40 years down the road and I'm on

this white waterer rafting trip and it was it was one of the most technically difficult riers in the world and um we had our 10-year-old son with us which I'm thinking as we're going down this River this is probably not great parenting but he had a great time and we we we flipped and I went under and um you know I didn't panic I did all the things you're were supposed to do put my feet up and coming through the rapid and I thought oh this is kind of fun you know I'm bouncing around these

big waves and um then I got pulled under a couple of times I got caught in a hydraulic and um I couldn't get out and I was stuck at the bottom of of the the river and um I came up came down several times and there was a point to the chase of the story there was a point where um I was drowning and I knew it and I thought to myself very clearly I remember thinking you're drowning you're you're dying this is it this is the end and I were thinking shouldn't I be more

upset about this this is actually very calming and I thought about the autopsies I had done on people who had drowned and I thought well this is a lot what you read about in books that this is supposed to be a very peaceful way to die and then I thinking well what the heck is taking so long and I'm underwater and at that point everything stopped and I was next to this huge Boulder and U which was under the water and all the bubbles had stopped everything stopped and I moved my hand through the bubbles

and they all just sort of moved around my hand in this very kind of weird way and then there was this bright light all this is happening simultaneously I used to think very cliche um like a sunset or Sunrise but those the only it wasn't like that but these are the only words I have in English language to explain something that's outside of normal human experience I don't have the words for these at that point um I was able to see everything around me 360 Degrees um and I I say it see it but more

of experiencing it more than seeing it I knew that my wife had been pulled out I knew it was a yellow kayak I I knew it was the guy down the river I knew my son was in the other boat um I knew the boat behind me was coming to get me um I knew that my um I had a family member that was going through a very difficult personal um crisis that I didn't know about that I knew about and I knew was going to be okay so that was very um sort of uh

happening while I'm in this light situation and there's this incredible overcoming feeling of love and voice saying they're going to be okay so I get really emotional still not because it's upsetting but because I I'm in that moment of that beauty it was just so beyond experience and um I knew my family was going to be okay and the voice said they don't need you you're going to be fine and um that was sort of uh a moment where I just was like this is amazing and uh just kept repeating they're going to be okay

they don't need you you're done good job um at that point voice in the back of my head was shouting you're just hypoxic you're just hypoxic hold your breath you have to beat your record you have to beat your record and at that point the light just sort of vanished there was a giant sucking sound and I slammed up against The Rock and popped out of the water when I came up the boat behind me was almost to me but I couldn't see anything um I say my vision was like a view Master One those

old view Masters I could see and it was gone see and it was gone I couldn't see motion and we were through that rapid and as uh the Water slowed and the boat came up to me the guide in the boat put the paddle out for me to grab and I remember reaching up and being you know in moments of blackout thinking if I don't grab this paddle I am done and that's the last thing I remember um and then what I do remember next was being in the boat and uh um not being able

to breathe and we're in the middle of the rainforest there's no way out of here um this 28 miles of river is our only exit and so I immediately slip into this uh emergency medicine mode ABCs a breathing circulation trying to see if I'm okay I'm the only doctor for hours right and I'm really worried about if I have water um in my lungs because that can cause problems later down the road in the next 24 48 hours you can have intense inflammatory reactions in your lungs that can kill you it's called near drowning um

but I felt okay I didn't feel like I had any water in my lungs um what I realized it happened is I had a lenial spasm and it's called the dry drowning so when water the um irritates your voice box it closes off and it's a reflex and there's nothing you can do about it and I remember being in the boat trying to breathe and thinking that's really great comings you survived it you got in the boat you die in the boat that you know typical you know so knowing that this is a reflex I'm

trying to calm myself down um and I start being able to get little little breaths in and uh eventually I was able to breathe we continued down the river like nothing had really happened and I didn't really think much of it the rest of the day CU you know my I got my son I got my family I'm trying not to be freaked out by this and that night when we got back to where we were staying I um I remember uh looking at my Apple watch because I'm a I'm a kind of a health

freak and I'm I'm obsessed with my heart rate um sleeping heart rate resting heart rate and just so I I have a constant awareness of my heart rate and I looked at my Apple watch and I had eight minutes of unrecorded heart rate in that time period now it takes the caveat it's an electronic device sure um it also takes the heart rate at intervals so at least in those eight minutes I had a period of time where I had no registered heart rate it never happened before in that watch it never happened after that

in that watch it didn't happened the rest of the time we were um uh on the river and at that point I started to think something something happened um and we continue with the vacation the next day we're going down the river and I'm a little freaked out by being in the river at this point and my we're paddling down my son says look at that butterfly on the boat and I look over and it's this huge blue butterfly and I was like I said Finn that's not a butterfly that's a that's a bird he

said no it's a butterfly it was so big and it was a blue morpho and I didn't know anything about this butterfly until where later about many couple years later um and it followed us the entire 28 miles down the river everybody saw it the whole way the next day we were repelling down some waterfalls and I don't mean beside them in them right this is my wife this is a Survivor vacation so we're reping down 150 foot waterfalls and there's the blue morpho by my son the whole way and so we call the angel

Grand because my mom died a number of years ago but so that was really profound I didn't know about that until um coming back um which is kind of where I would jump to the after effects um I was on vacation didn't really have much on my mind when we came back um and I started to notice um I was having a lot of problems with time uh judging time estimating time and uh you know how you're doing something you get you get lost in it and you forget how much time you spent that was

every moment of my day and it wasn't so much a problem on vacation but when I went back to work when I had a really heavy lecture schedule I had labs and places I had to be trains I had to catch it became a really big problem I was late for things um I would forget you I would be on my way to to to teach a class and run into somebody in the hall and start talking and 30 minutes would go by so as I started to notice these time things happening um I I

realized that something something was different um I became very uncomfortable with my career Pursuit um those things weren't important to me anymore um I I said I've written a couple of very bad novels horror novels but I say that I was the best character I ever created because I was this piece of paper and I couldn't identify with that anymore those things weren't important to me and uh here I was in this intense Boston malignant academic environment and it made me pH physically ill I just couldn't be there anymore um jumping off of that we

ended up moving to Maine where we were from living in the woods and and having a great life but the after effects were very difficult and and I didn't have a way to deal with it I think I had a hypoxic brain injury and it's called dyschronometria and I have difficulty many ways to cope with it now it's not it doesn't affect my life but um that was really the Catalyst for me to figure out what happened that pushed me to do what I say you know I'm doing my own death investigation of of my

own consequences of that action had led me to an incredible world of research that I had no idea existed um Jeffrey Long's book was so incredible um the thing that was the most important for me in terms of turning the corner because it was a it was a very intrusive negative experience that I did not want in my life it completely derailed everything I changed my courses my career my life my relationships it's difficult that talk to people about it it's alienating um you know when I did try to tell people about it it was

like oh that sounds really really horrible it's good thing you're still here let's get a beer you know it was no one it wasn't like I needed you to understand it I just needed you to hear it because I needed to process it but the thing that really turned the corner for me was um Yola Stout's paper six challenges faced by near-death experiencers that was probably the most profound thing I've ever read in my life and every single one of those yes yes 75% of people who experience have a very hard time integrating this into

their lives and I knew nothing about these experiences um other than what I'd seen in movies I thought everybody came back and it was beautiful and you loved God and you quoted scriptures and and everybody was happy and it was it was the opposite for me I I and so I had a really hard time reconciling that and so the Stout paper really made me feel feel very good good about where I was and trying to you know I'm I'm a newb it's only what three years three and a half years or so post my

experience so I'm still trying to figure this all out and you know I'm no great expert or ponti on it I'm I'm still struggling but what it really taught me and I think really having this issue with being able to separate from time um allows me to understand that that what we do is we put great importance on the past and on the future and we we focus so much on those two things are those that's where our importance is but the value is here right now and getting out of those boundaries of time allowed

me to put the importance where the value is in in where I am right now the people I'm with right now the gift of death is is teaching the ability to let go and to be alive when what's the point of Music point of music is to listen what's the point of life the point of life is to live and that that really helped me um come to grips with who I am as a husband a father a human my place on the planet um so that's been incredible and I think as Physicians you know

we all try to practice this thing called evidence-based medicine which we need data and proof um to to treat patients so that they can get the best care possible um and and through that we really path pathologize death we we we sterilize it we we we we try to prevent it we we medicalize it and we Shield ourselves from it funerals happen very quickly after death it's very fast no one sees the body and you you go very quickly back into life we're not experiencing death we've made it so sterile and kept it behind this

curtain um that we we don't get a chance to really experience and celebrate the transformation that is happening and I think as Physicians if you know it's not our I think like I think back to all the times as a forensic pathologist I knocked on doors to tell people that loved ones were dead I brought people down into the morg to identify bodies um I've sat with families in very horrible circumstances and the number one question I've always been asked is did they suffer and as a physician you always say no of course not this

was sudden and we try to make them try to comfort them but I always felt like a liar because I don't know right now I know and I wish I could talk to those people again and say look this is a beautiful and even under these horrible circumstances the horrible circumstance is a second the process after that is incredible there's nothing to worry I say that uh no amount of worry will transform your future no amount of grief is going to transform you or fix your past and you just have to be where you are

right now and just and and love that and I think that that is kind of where I am with it now