(10:00 to 12:33)

I have several publications on the Journal for Near-Death-Studies. I get emails from people all the time from my web site about Near-Death-Experiences. I personally published an account of Near-Death-Experiences in Thailand, (another cultural group that hadn’t been tapped). And no one knows the answer to this question and that is:

*How is it that we can die in a certain way, having a certain set of experiences, when all opportunities for mating are gone at the moment of death?*

We can’t say, “Those who died this way survived and those who died that way didn’t survived. This is the normal filter of Darwinian Evolution but how do you get people who survived death so there’s an advantage of dying this way instead of that way?

And this remains the fundamental anomaly the fundamental unexplained phenomena in Near-Death-research. How in the world if we are biological creatures the result of Darwinian Evolution, natural selection, how is it that we could die in one way instead of another when there are no survivors from death?

Nowadays there are people who have heart attacks and they get defibrillated back into consciousness. There are people who get really badly hurt and the doctors can but them back together. But until about 30 years ago almost everybody who died, stayed dead.

So

This is a point that I want to be sure I’m clear on, and does everyone get why that’s a problem for science, the existence of Near-Death-Experiences?

Not quite

Okay

The classical method of evolution is that some members of the species have a trait. The ones that have that trait are more able to survive than others. The survivors go on, reproduce, and eventually the trait of the survivor fills the entire population. How do we select those who die one way from those who die another way because after you die there are no more opportunities remaining, there’s no more opportunities to pass your genes on? So if there’s a genetic component to dying the way human beings do, how on earth could that be separated from the people who died differently?

Is that a little clearer for everybody?

Good because it’s an important point and it’s slightly cumbersome to explain. (12:33)