You can find his recent book on the subject, Near-Death Experiences: Afterlife Journeys and Revelations, at Amazon: https://amzn.to/3X8UZtb
Thanks Jim!
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TRANSCRIPT
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Announcer (00:48):
This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.
Jim Harold (00:51):
Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold, and so glad to be with you once again. And today we’re going to talk about my favorite subject and all the different things that we cover. That is the topic of near death experiences. If you’re watching on the video, you see there the face of Jim Willis, and he’s been a guest on our programs many times and he has written a new book and it is fascinating. It is called Near Death Experiences, Afterlife, Journeys, and Revelations, and we’re so glad to have him with us. Jim, welcome to the show. I mean, you have such a great background. You’ve been an ordained minister for over 40 years. You have a great educational background, teaching classes and so forth, author of multiple books. Why this subject? Why Now?
Jim Willis (02:20):
This is a subject that goes back with me 50 years. I’ll be honest, a lot of times when I write books it’s because a publisher wants a book on a particular subject and he said, can you write a book on this subject? And here’s your advanced money, and that helps. But with this one, when I was in my twenties back in the 1970s, early 1970s, I was right out of a school. I was pastor of my first church and like all of us in our twenties, I knew all the answers and I was scientifically current and all this kind of thing. And even though I was preaching on Sunday mornings about the afterlife, and I guess I believed it, I think I was more of a hoper than a believer, but I think I believed it otherwise I couldn’t have spoken with conviction from the pulpit about heaven awaits and all that kind of thing.
(03:20):
But it was an intellectual kind of a thing. And so I was partly convinced that when someone died and had what now we call a near death experience, that it was just a, you know, the typical scientific idea of the medical idea of the brain shutting down. Blood isn’t flowing through the brain, the neurons aren’t firing correctly and all that kind of stuff. And yet something happened. And I’ll never forget it, there was a woman in my church named Hannah. I called her Hannah in the book, at least, a wonderful dear old lady. And she was in the hospital and I was told that she probably wasn’t going to come out. So I got in the habit of visiting her every day and we would talk, and Hannah loved the old hymns of the church. So I got to where I would take my guitar into her hospital room and I would sing the Old Rugged Cross or In The Garden or some of those songs and all that kind of thing.
(04:21):
And sometimes the nurses would even wheel people in on their beds. They are going to join in the chorus. And I hate to say it was fun because of what we were there for, but on the other hand, it was positive, it was uplifting. Hannah wouldn’t let you be anything different. She was not worried at all. She was not discouraged. And she knew that the end of her life was coming and that was it. But on this one day, it was the day I saw her, the last time I saw her alive, nobody was in the room at this point. I had finished, I was packing up my guitar and she said something very strange to me. She said, Jim, who did you bring with you at this time?
(05:03):
I said, I don’t know. I’m by myself. She, and then she looked at me like she knew something that I didn’t, and she said, oh, I know what it’s, I think they’re attracted by the music, but sometimes they wait until you leave. And at the time I never thought music is vibration and everything and this world, all the forces, we know that life itself is vibration. Well, I didn’t put that together back then, but I said, well, what do you mean they wait until I leave? And she said, well, sometimes after you go, that’s when they come in through the portal. She said, I thought portal. Now I know that sometimes in European countries they refer to a door as a portal, but Hannah never did. And this is United States, this is up in Massachusetts. And I thought, what could you be talking about? They come in through the portal after I leave, I looked out in the hallway, I could see out the door.
(06:06):
She couldn’t because the curtain was there, but I looked out the dinner, there’s nobody in the hallway. Well, I didn’t want to upset an old woman who was on her death bed and everything. So I just, oh, that’s great, Hannah. I am patronizing. I’m disgusted with myself sometimes. And I packed up my guitar and I said, well, I’ll see you next time. Not knowing there wasn’t going to be a next time. And I walked out. But on the way out, I stopped by the nurses station and I talked to the head nurse and I said, what’s Hannah talking about, people coming in through the portal? Now remember, this is the early 1970s.
(06:48):
People in hospitals had different ideas about near death experiences. Raymond Moody wrote his book, Life After Life, in which he coined the expression near-death experience. He didn’t write that until 1975. So we didn’t even have the term near-death experience in our vocabulary, yet it wasn’t a part of popular vocabulary. And the nurse just said, oh, Hannah’s been talking this way. I guess it means she’s probably near the end. And I said, okay, through the portal. And they come into, well, I just shook my head and walked out and a couple hours later I got the word that Hannah had passed away. So I was asked to by her family to lead her memorial service. And I took the guitar and I told stories about Hannah and I sang in the garden and told ’em how many times I had sung this song for Hannah and how much she liked it.
(07:41):
And that was about it 50 years ago; until 50 years later, I had now been retired for 10 years or more. I’ve been living out here in the woods, out in South Carolina having my own spiritual retreat, trying to get in touch with the essential reality of spirit and God. And I had some people visit me who were parishioners of mine in my last church. And the husband told me, Jimmy said, my mother passed away. And I said, yeah, I had heard. And I loved his mother. She reminded me of Hannah in a lot of ways. She was an older lady who loved the old hymns and everything else and used to sing the same hymns for her that I had sung 50 years earlier with Hannah. Well, but he said something strange happened when she died though, he said, I was in her room when she passed away. And she asked me a funny question. I said, what was that? She said, who did you bring with you? And my mind immediately passed back 50 years. That was the same question Hannah asked me. And then he looked at me and he looked very concerned. Then she said something else to me. She said, sometimes after you go, they come in through the portal. And she said portal, again.
50 years later. Now, in between time I had changed immensely in 50 years. I was no longer that young naive pastor that started out back in the seventies. And I had had many experiences to talk with people, and I had many experiences revealed to me about what people saw when they died. And I’d heard stories. And most important, I think by then I’d started having my own out-of-body experiences. And I think I was surveying the same landscape, so to speak, that people with near-death experiences have seen. And so I began to have a different kind of vocabulary, a different kind of understanding. But I was absolutely convinced that those two incidents, who did you bring with you? And they come through the portal after you leave. I was absolutely convinced that those two were connected. And by now I had grown to really be convinced in my own mind that out-of-body experiences are real.
(10:15):
I had no doubt whatsoever. Now after all the people that I’ve talked to. So when a good friend of mine in the last couple of years of my ministry had a near-death experience of himself, he worked in a hospital, he worked in the or he had a very technical job. I asked him once, I said, Joe, what does your job consist of? And he says, well, Jim, you know how they’re putting in artificial shoulders and knees and hips and all that kind of stuff nowadays. And I said, yeah. He said, well, my job is just to look around making sure they don’t have any parts left over.
Jim Harold (10:50):
That’s reassuring.
Jim Willis (10:53):
Well, Joe was in the hospital. He was working, as a matter of fact, he was on his way to pull his stent at the OR when he had a heart attack. And if you’re going to have a heart attack, I think it’s best to do it in a fully equipped hospital surrounded by people who have done these kinds of things a hundred times. And they got him up on a gurney. They took the test, they wheeled him right into the operating room. They did a triple bypass operation and it went fine. But he was, when he was supposed to come back, he died, he flatlined and nobody knew why. And finally it was a good friend of his who worked with him a lot, began to get the idea that his breathing tube was somehow plugged. And so this friend, without any direction reached in and actually pulled out the breathing tube and Joe gasped his first breath and he was immediately back.
(11:47):
And a couple of weeks later, I had visited, of course in the hospital while he was recovering. He was as usual his jovial self about it. But a couple of weeks later, he asked me, he told me one time when I went to visit him, and he and his mother-in-law were sitting at his kitchen table. I could tell he wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what it was. But I could tell he was hesitant, but he really wanted to do it. You know how you get that feeling. So I said, okay, Joe, level with me. What’s up? And that’s when he told me his out body experience. And it was so powerful because it embodied literally every single one of the events that people who have out of body experiences talk about it embodied floating from his body and seeing them work on his body and feeling unattached somehow, but interested, but unattached floating up to the ceiling of the room.
(12:43):
He described the tunnel, he described the light, he described the life review that often happens. He described the being of light. He described seeing his father. And when I put his out body experience together, which was in a way so typical, but how could something like that be considered typical? But at least in terms of other people’s out body experiences, it just encompassed everything. So when I put these two incidents together between Hannah and Eva who died 50 years apart and both used the word portal, and I put that together with Joe’s thing, and I said, somehow this has to go into a book. Because I began to think that if we could somehow accept with our whole heart, all of us, that this life is not the end, if we could look beyond and see that there is a greater purpose, a greater reality outside of this material perception realm that we live in, if we could gather that incident insight, I think it would change the world. Because what’s more important than that? Every single one of us, no one gets out alive. And so if we could really accomplish that somehow, I literally think we could change the world. And that was kind of the purpose of writing near death experiences. I want to change the world.
Jim Harold (14:09):
Well, there you go.
Jim Willis (14:10):
Does that sound grandiose?
Jim Harold (14:12):
It does, but the world, I think certainly needs changing in this day and age. Now, let me ask you this. In the book, you talk about the historical perspective on these experiences, and we think of Dr. Moody as being the kind of creator of this idea. And certainly he’s a huge figure and deserves all the credit in the world for bringing this to the fore and inventing the NDE term. And I’ve had the privilege to interview him multiple times, and I always find him to be fantastic. But that goes way back before Dr. Moody. I mean, you’re talking to ancient religious texts. What do those texts have to say about near death experiences?
Jim Willis (14:58):
It’s fascinating. The oldest written account that I could come across that was reliable was the work of Plato, who as he often did, put the incident in the words of his student Socrates, but Plato told the story of Er, the Warrior who had a classic out of body experience and actually came back at his own funeral, get a kick out of that before they could destroy his body. He came back, thank goodness, and he tells of all of the things that Joe talked about, he talked about a new landscape, he talked about the tunnel, he talked about the light. He talked about getting advice and getting wisdom and how that wisdom was conveyed to him and everything else. So this was what, 500 years bc. And I thought, well, man, that’s pretty early. It goes back a long way. But then I began to think, wow, the Hindu rishis were talking about this 6,000 years ago.
(15:59):
And if you read the Bhagavad-Gita, you’ll find stories of after death and experiences. And if you go to the times of the Sumerians or the Babylonians and look at the Enuma Elish, you find the same thing. But then I began to go back even farther, and I began to wonder 40,000 years ago in those great painted caves of Western Europe, we find the shaman of the tribe, shamanism, probably the world’s oldest religion, but the shamans would have these out-of-body experiences through their own meditations. Perhaps they were using mushrooms, perhaps they were using different combinations of plants. Perhaps they were using drumming. But however it happened, they had what certainly seemed like out of body experiences and near death experiences, but they came back and they had the same problem that all of us face. How do you describe something that is beyond language? Our language was invented to describe our perceptions here in this material realm, and it just doesn’t work.
(17:10):
When you look over the fence and see Reality with a capital R, a bigger R, you can’t find words. You can’t say, this is what it is. The most you can do is say, this is what it is like. And I began to think, so wow, this out-of-body experience goes back at least 40, 50,000 years. But then I began to go back even farther before there was a human Homo sapien species. When the Neanderthal or the Denisovans were here, they buried their dead with implements, stone implements that they might need in the next life. They buried them with tools, with weapons, projectile points. And the idea was they somehow knew that there was a life beyond this one, and they wanted to supply their loved one with the equipment, the implements that they just kind of thought he’s going to need in the next life. So now we’re going back, what, 200,000 years? 300,000 years ago?
Jim Harold (18:13):
That’s amazing. It’s amazing.
Jim Willis (18:14):
That’s how old it is. No, no. That’s how old the whole experience is. It’s as old as the human race.
Jim Harold (18:20):
We’ll be back with more with Jim Willis right after this. The Paranormal Podcast is brought to you by Grammarly, and I’m so glad that it is. I’m a big fan of Grammarly, been using it for years, even before they sponsored the podcast, many years before. And I’ve been a paying user and will continue to do so and highly recommend it, because writing is key. High quality communication is key. No matter where you’re writing, whether it’s in Word, Google Docs, your email, Slack, Canva, wherever, so important. And that’s where Grammarly comes in. It’s my AI writing partner that helps me get work done faster with high quality writing for better projects, proposals, presentations, and more. And it can do the same for you. I use Grammarly for my newsletter column that I send out. I run that column through it every time, and it always makes great suggestions to punch it up a little bit and make it better.
(19:16):
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Announcer (20:35):
If you love the Paranormal Podcast, be sure to check out Jim Harold’s Campfire where ordinary people share their extraordinary stories of ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and terrifying encounters. Find it for free wherever you listen to this podcast. Tune into Jim Harold’s Campfire today. Now we return to the Paranormal Podcast.
Jim Harold (20:56):
The thing that I really key into on this, when it comes to the skeptics, there’s skeptics out there that say, ah, there’s nothing to this. This is a bunch of BS, so forth and so on. It’s just, as you said, it’s a chemical reaction in the brain, kind of an evolutionary response to ease us into dying. But where I think that totally falls apart is exactly what you said about the out of body experience, because to me, how do you explain the multiple cases where experiencers have been in a situation where they flatlined and been unconscious, they’re in an operating room or at the scene of a car wreck or whatever it might be, and they’re explaining in extreme detail what medical professionals are doing with them and what treatments they’re administering and so forth. How do you put that down to the chemical reaction of the brain? And I think they just kind of, it’s kind of like the old thing, la la, la, la, la. I don’t want to hear that. Well, we don’t quite get that, but let’s not talk about that. But to me just from a very kind of, not even faith-based, just common sense, how do you explain that away unless these people are really experiencing something that we might call supernatural, and that’s where the skeptics to mean lose credibility in regard to all of this.
Jim Willis (22:22):
Yeah. I’ve discovered in my own satisfaction that much of the skeptic thing first, the opinion is formed first. These people are materialists and they believe the consciousness emerges from the brain rather than the brain being a receiver for consciousness. And they don’t believe there’s anything that you can’t touch, taste, smell, all this kind of thing. They have five senses. And having come to that conclusion, they just have to reinforce that conclusion. Because if they admit that something is outside of the material realm and it’s real, then that kind of destroys their whole worldview, doesn’t it? So what they do is come up with reasons to try to disclaim this, and then you get some very uncomfortable people that come along that make this kind of worldview uncomfortable, people who used to share that worldview and then now leave it and now become believers in afterlife.
(23:17):
Dr. Eben Alexander is a classic example, I think. Here he is a doctor here, his brain is flatlined, it’s not working, and he’s got the science right there, the dials and the whistles and the bells to prove it right there in the operating room. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, his brain isn’t working, but he’s thinking and he’s seeing and he’s experiencing. And how do you explain something like this, especially when a man with his stature and with his background, with his scientific education, with his doctorate, how do you explain it when he comes back and says, no, it is real. And then you put that together with all of these other ideas. People say, well, why can’t they come back with some kind of proof? Well, what are they supposed to do? Grab something on the other side of the perception fence and bring it back with ’em.
(24:15):
Here’s a feather, whatever that is. They can’t do that. But they do bring back other kinds of proof. The stories, for instance, of someone floating out to the top of the room and looking down and seeing little incidents that they couldn’t possibly have seen and possibly understood, like a doctor dropping a pencil or a pen or something on the floor and it rolling under a table. And nobody in the heat of the moment, nobody notices it until after it’s all over. And he said, yeah, it’s there. And they would go back to the operating room, look, and there under the table is the pencil, that kind of thing. Or the person who looks out the window and sees a work boot on the roof of the hospital, he’d never been on the roof of the hospital. How would he know there’s a boot up there?
(25:02):
But they go up there and there it is. Or the famous incident of the woman who saw the shoe outside the window, on the window ledge and all this kind of thing. There’s just too many stories. And the trouble is that the people who don’t want to accept these stories, because it would really blast their worldview, the people who don’t want to accept these stories demand a kind of proof that is not possible. They want physical reality, materialistic proof brought back from a world, a landscape that is not materialistic, it’s in the best we can say is it’s spiritual. And so they’re demanding a kind of proof that simply cannot be provided. And then when that proof is not provided, they say, there, I’m right, you’re wrong. And that’s not science. I don’t care. That’s not science.
Jim Harold (26:00):
And as I often say, I’m a big admirer of science in general. I mean, for example, what we’re doing right now used to take satellite time and millions of dollars to do, and now we can do it from our little home studios. I think it’s awesome. I think science does a great service to us all in many ways. However, I think that sometimes where science, and by science, I mean the scientific community falls down, is in their certainty, their overconfidence and their feeling that, oh, we’ve got all this figured out. And if we don’t have it figured out, it doesn’t exist. I often use the example of D-N-A. D-N-A has been around as long as we’ve been around, but we didn’t know about it. That didn’t mean it didn’t exist. We just couldn’t quantify it. We just couldn’t figure it out. So to me, science is great until it hits that level of overconfidence thinking, we’ve got it all figured out. Whereas almost every week in the news, you’ll read something. Well, the latest discovery may turn physics on its head and so forth and so on. And it’s proven that humans are fallible. Obviously, science is a human pursuit, science is fallible and doesn’t know everything. And I think maybe it’s a lack of modesty is what’s kind of most annoying about it to some extent.
Jim Willis (27:26):
Yeah, yeah. Humility is probably the most important thing you can have, I think. Oh boy. And it’s not just in the field of medicine or the field of science. I think years ago, you and I talked about the same kind of attitude showing up in archeology. I remember a conversation that you and I had, oh, I dunno how many years ago it was now, about the fact that archeology during my whole lifetime was not willing to accept the fact that there may have been people in America before the Clovis people 16,000 years ago. And so they just wouldn’t accept it. And for all of this stuff, for all of my life, people lost their jobs. They lost their education, they lost their money for research, all because they were blackballed, because they simply would not accept it. So I think it’s not just in the medical field. I think it’s something that’s much more pervasive than that. There seems to be something in the human psyche and the human ego that says, when a person becomes an expert in a certain field, and when a person becomes rises to a certain level, they want to bring the wagons in a circle and say, now don’t change anything. I’m here. I’m established. I know. And I don’t want to say all my life I was wrong.
Jim Harold (28:49):
Right.
Jim Willis (28:50):
What are you going to do? Whatcha do.
Jim Harold (28:52):
It’s true, it’s true. Now, one thing that really interested me in this was the idea. I didn’t put this together, but the military actually did some interesting work with NDEs. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because it’s not usually a connection you would necessarily make.
Jim Willis (29:10):
Yeah. I find it interesting that a lot of high level people will say, we just don’t take this kind of stuff seriously. And now it turns out that, well, we did Skip Atwater has a wonderful book that he’s written about how he was the one that really headed up this whole idea of remote viewing in the military. It was made into a movie a couple of years ago with George Clooney. I think the men Who Stare at goats or something like that was the name. And Skip Atwater tells a story about how he was approached by the military to do a top secret thing. And that’s how he connected with the Monroe Institute, Robert Monroe up in Virginia, where I’ve gone to study out body experiences. And he tells a story of now that the information is not classified anymore of Joseph McMonagle, a guy who can just, I dunno whether you’ve ever talked to Joe or not, but man, he can just, we could have just sit there and tell stories and stories and stories.
(30:19):
He was the number one remote viewer. Dean Radin out at the Noetic Institute was involved in that research, but he couldn’t say anything either because it was all top secret. And now that it’s not classified anymore, we discovered that the military believed in this enough to put a lot of money and a lot of effort into producing a program of remote viewing, basically training spies who could sit there in the comfort of their own home or laboratory or whatever, and actually spy on foreign nations. Where their ships were, where their buildings were, that they were looking for where their top secret information was. And eventually the military dropped it because military demands a very high percentage of expectations. And the program hadn’t been around long enough to provide that particular percentage, effective percentage, but still, they had had some wonderful breakthroughs that just couldn’t be explained.
(31:17):
And so now whenever anybody says, well, if it was interested, the government or somebody would check it out, well, the government has checked it out. They just didn’t want to say anything. And for years, at least 25 years, it remained quiet. I have a good friend who was on the periphery of that program back in Baltimore during while it was going strong, and he tells the story of getting so far into it that his wife finally made a decision. She was getting spooked. She was just too worried. And he finally, she said, okay, you either drop out of that program or I’m leaving because I can’t stand all this. This is too wild. So he did too much to his regret. Now he’s in his eighties, but he says, I wish I had stuck it out. I wish I had stayed with it in a lot of ways. So yeah, the government was there and it had success at it too.
Jim Harold (32:13):
Now, it’s interesting because Dr. Moody, for example, has, I’ve heard him speak on this idea of shared death experiences and the idea that sometimes at the time of death, loved ones will see the deceased loved one, and they may see them halfway across the country, and multiple people may see that person at the same time. And that gets into the thought of things like co-location and bringing back science. And again, I don’t pretend to be a scientist or an expert in physics or anything like that. You talk about the quantum world and the implications of that kind of research and the idea of quantum physics where it may lend some credence to the idea of NDEs and so forth. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Jim Willis (33:04):
It all goes back to that word entanglement. To put it probably too simply, the idea is that if two particles are entangled, if they’re together as one and separated, they can be sent all the way across the universe. And if you put a clockwise spin on one, the other one will automatically go counter-clockwise. They are entangled and they communicate instantly far faster than the speed of sound, speed of light. Albert Einstein had a hard time with this. He would not accept it at first. He finally came to, but this whole idea of how could these particles be entangled on that micro level, and if so, why can’t a number of particles be entangled on the macro level as well, in quantum physics, we have the idea of a particle existing in two places. We came up with the idea of quantum jump or quantum leap. Instantly a particle is in one place and instantly it appears in another place, and it seems to not cover the area in between.
(34:13):
How does that happen? And they finally have come to the ideas now of parallel dimensions that these dimensions are very real. And what we’re looking at is a particle in one dimension and that same particle in another dimension. And when we see it in one place and then see it in another place, it’s not jumping back and forth. It’s in both places at the same time. Now, this makes me wonder, especially when I began to do my own out of body experiences, I began to have this idea of spirit guides and how could we have spirit guide? Why would spirit guides be interested in sitting around watching my life? That kind of thing. But then through dowsing and through other techniques that I’ve learned over the years, I came to the conclusion that that spirit guide is actually me on the other side. It was the me that existed before I crossed through the Higgs field and took on mass.
(35:15):
And that spirit guide and I are entangled where the same being except one exists in this dimension, in this material dimension. And the other me, as it were, exists in the non-material dimension. But they’re there at the same time. So they are entangled, they’re connected. And I think that’s probably also true of our loved ones. When we are close to people, we establish a certain kind of a bond, perhaps even a physical bond. We share DNA and who knows what some of that undiscovered DNA stuff is doing. There’s huge parts of DNA we don’t know anything about. Perhaps we even share some kind of a spiritual DNA, I don’t know what they call it, but if we are entangled with these people, it’s only natural that when we cross over these, when he crossed back through the Higgs field and moved from the material world back into the, what I like to call the Akashic world, when we moved back into it, it only makes sense that we are welcome because the people who are welcoming us are all one.
(36:32):
There’s ourselves, there’s our loved ones who perhaps gave birth to us or who perhaps we’ve established this connection with, this entanglement with. And so it almost seems as though it’s in a very early stage, but I think that quantum physics is heading down a path that is going to lead to those other dimensions and those other worlds. And the neat thing about this, I think, is that they are exploring this world with a whole new language, the language of mathematics. But it’s the same world that the Hindu rishis explored through intuition 6,000 years ago. It’s the same world that the shamans came through 40, 50, and back 200,000 years ago. That’s the world from which we come in the world to which we returned. And this whole life that we’re living right now, very temporary existence, an important part of it. I mean, we came here to gather experience and that’s certainly what we’re doing. And we’re taking those experiences back with us so that individual experience can become a reality and that world as well as in this world. So we’re doing important work out here, but we’re just passing through.
Jim Harold (37:56):
It’s interesting you talked about maybe you are your own spirit guide, and it reminded me an interview I did last year, I think it was with a gentleman by the name of Anthony Peake, and he has a book out, and I believe he has multiple books, but this one book was called Cheating the Ferryman. And his concept reminded me a little of what you were saying, because he believes each individual has what he calls an eidolon. So I guess the way you could compare it is if you look at someone playing a video game, we here on the earth are kind of like the character playing on the screen, but the eidolon is like the person standing at the console with the joystick and the controls. So for example, an example he gave, he had a situation where he narrowly missed getting killed in a car accident, that there wasn’t a car accident, but a voice told him not to do something.
(38:57):
And if he had done that thing, he would’ve most certainly either been seriously injured or died. Now, his concept, and this ties into reincarnation, talk about a bit of a mindblower, is that we reincarnate not as different people. And I’m not saying he’s right, it’s just an interesting theory, not as different people, but as ourselves. And we basically replay the game when Anthony, the video game character, was being warned about the potential car accident, the eidolon knew to tell Anthony because they had lived through that and experienced that, but with a different scenario. So I mean, it’s kind of mind blowing. I don’t know if I subscribed to it, but that’s the interesting thing about having these discussions is that it can expand your mind and you think in directions that just never occurred to you. And I always find that a fascinating part of having these discussions. I’ve never heard it explained that way. Like you explained that we may be our own spirit guide sometimes.
Jim Willis (40:07):
I like that. Even to the point that you’re talking about characters in the video game, when you start to look deeper and deeper into the physical reality of our bodies, what do you get to? I mean, you go from the body to individual organs to cells to, and eventually you come down to particles and eventually you come down to little pixels and then eventually there’s nothing. And it makes perfect sense to me that in effect, that video game analogy is really, I think, intriguing, especially with what we’re doing with video nowadays. Because in event, you can explain life in a lot of ways, material life in a lot of ways. But one of the ways is that we act just like characters in a video game with somebody back at the joystick running it. And perhaps that’s us.
Jim Harold (40:58):
And then the other thought is, is that people talk about life as a simulation. Now, first of all, I believe in a divine power. I believe that is a real thing. I totally believe that. And for me, it’s not even a matter of faith. I’m ashamed to say that, but it’s more a feeling of common sense. I’m looking outside at the plant life, my yard and the different plants, and I think about the temperatures that have to exist for those plants to exist, for us to exist for all of the different, the combination of the atmosphere. I don’t think it’s just a cosmic accident. I think something created that. I totally believe that. But here’s my point. A lot of people talk about the simulation theory, that this is all a simulation, right? Well, if you have a computer simulation, who creates that? There is a programmer. So in essence, could God be the master programmer of our quote simulation, just the word we happen to use wart. I mean it’s real, but it’s created by a divine programmer. It’s just a thought that’s occurred to me is that maybe we’re talking about the same thing, but we’re just using highly different language
Jim Willis (42:13):
And perhaps that programmer God is us. Is that what Jesus meant in the New Testament or what the psalmist said in the Old Testament when he said, what? Know ye not that ye are gods? Perhaps we are that programmer. Perhaps we are that divine energy that came down here for the specific purpose out here to the rim, so to speak, where we live in this perception realm. And in effect, we are controlling all of this. And when we return, we are returning to our basic source, which we would probably in our language call divinity. And does that spark within us? And are we entangled with divinity in that way? Interesting thought.
Jim Harold (43:00):
So as we close out, how should we think about an afterlife? I think most people, if they were quizzed, most people are afraid of dying. I’ll raise my hand. I’m afraid of it because it is the unknown. As much as I believe there is something beyond, I don’t know it. I strongly believe it. It is strongly my belief. I would hate to think that this is all there is, but I still have that fear somehow. And I think many people, probably the majority of people, there’s people who don’t, but I think the majority of people do, even if it’s war, physical pain and those kinds of things. But in light of near death experiences and all of this research and all these reports, how should we think about death and an afterlife? What do you think
Jim Willis (43:52):
The apostle Paul said, the last enemy to be defeated is death. And it talked about how we are entrapped by the fear of death. And I think you put your finger right on it. The interesting thing is, of all the people that I’ve talked to and all the stories that I’ve read and heard about, people who have had out of body experiences, the vast majority, and I’m almost tempted to say every single one of them comes back with saying, there’s no more fear. I’ve seen what’s there. I don’t have to fear it anymore. It’s not new ground. And to me, that is the essence of the importance of what I wanted to get across in new near death experiences. If the people who are listening to this broadcast just take one thing away from this broadcast, one thing that we said, I hope it’s that giving a near-death experience or an out-of-body experience where you see the other side where it becomes real and we no longer have to fear what’s waiting for you.
(44:53):
That gives life purpose. It gives life meaning. And even when we are in our darkest moments, when we are in pain or sick or have relationship problems or problems at work or something like that, even in our darkest moments, we can embrace that very darkness by saying that’s one of the reasons I came. I am here to experience life, not just the good part of life, but all sides of life. I came here to experience it. So rather than try to push away from it, rather than fear it, I’m going to revel in it. I’m going to see how do I feel? What am I feeling? And to me, that gives a great purpose of life. It gives meaning and it gives hope even in the most darkest hours. That to me is the essence of what a near death experience can provide us. In a practical sense, day to day in this life,
Jim Harold (45:50):
Words of wisdom from Jim Willis. And I highly suggest that you check out this book, near Death Experiences: Afterlife Journeys and Revelations. Now I’m pretty sure, Jim, it’s everywhere fine books are found, correct?
Jim Willis (46:05):
Absolutely. Probably the easiest thing is just go to my website, jimwillis.net, and all the books are there, and you can just click on ’em and it’ll take you to where you can get one if you want. Also, on that webpage, there is my YouTube page, which we have a lot of videos that cover in a lot of depth things that we’ve covered today, and also my Facebook page, which tells you what’s coming up and all this. But more important, Jimwillis.net has a contact page. Jim, you and I can talk to each other. We can see each other, but we never know for sure who was out there listening, and it’s a greater community, and I love to experience that community. So on that contact page at jimwillis.net, you’ll find a way to send me an email. Let me know who you are. We’re in the same group. We’re in the same family, same community, and I love hearing from people.
Jim Harold (47:04):
Well, Jim, it’s always great to hear from you and get to talk with you and about your latest project, and I absolutely recommend people check this one out because it really is something that’s relevant to each and every person watching and listening to this. Jim, continued success with this book in everything you do and can’t wait to talk to you again about the next project.
Jim Willis (47:26):
Thank you, Jim. Keep up the great work you and people like you are bringing together this worldwide community and it’s important work that you’re doing. So keep it up.
Jim Harold (47:37):
Thank you. Thank you, and thank you for tuning into the program. I appreciate it. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Bye-Bye.
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