Dr. Mary Neal
speaker
58 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Dr. Mary Neal’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I've seen so many examples of people whose brains were obviously not functioning well, if at all, and yet they described their consciousness as more vivid than ever before.
Near-death experiences, or NDEs, are profound things that happen to many people when they come close to dying or sometimes are pronounced dead, but then recover.
And they include what they often perceive as mystical or spiritual experiences, like leaving your body, seeing other entities that may be deceased loved ones or deities, reviewing your life, and coming to some point of no return beyond which you can't keep going and still come back. And then you do come back.
No, no. The common elements are the same around the world with different cultures. We can see the same features in ancient Greece and Rome accounts of near-death experiences. They include a sense of leaving the physical body being in a place of peace and love and sense of well-being, often encountering other entities that they may interpret as being deities or divine beings or deceased loved ones.
They're sometimes guided through a life review, and at some point they come to a decision to return to life or they're sent back against their will to life.
Well, I understand it because I started from that perspective. I was raised in a materialistic household and went through traditional training in science and medical school where we were taught that the mind is what the brain does. And when you die, that's just it. But I've been a psychiatrist for half a century now. I know what mental illness is like. I know what hallucinations are like.
And they're not at all like near-death experiences.
Yes, yeah. As I said, I went through medical school with this materialistic mindset. And one of my first weeks as a doctor, as a psychiatrist, I was asked to see a patient who overdosed in the emergency room. When I went to see her, she was unconscious. I could not arouse her. But her roommate had brought her in and was waiting down the hall to speak to me in another room.
So I went down to speak to the roommate and got information about the patient. Went back to see the patient. She was still unconscious. So she was admitted to the intensive care unit overnight. When I went to see her the next morning, as soon as she woke up, I went to see her and introduced myself. And she stopped me and said, I know who you are. I remember you from last night.
That's kind of stunned me. So I said, you know, I thought you were out cold when I saw you. She said, well, I was, but I saw you talking to my roommate, Susan, down the hall. And I just got startled about it. I didn't know what she was talking about. I assume someone's playing a trick on me here.
But then she went on to tell me about the conversation I had with the roommate, what I said, what the roommate answered, what we were wearing, to find details. And I didn't know how she could have known all this. Yeah, so that threw you. It threw me. Because nothing in medical school had prepared you for that. Not at all. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this.
Right, right. And when I went to the emergency room, it was covered up by my white lab coat. I had opened it to talk to the roommate, and it was a very hot night in late Virginia. And then I closed it up again before I left. So no one but the roommate had seen that spot. And somehow, the patient who was unconscious the whole time knew about it.
Well, I didn't. I still do to some extent, but I understand that. You know, part of me is still looking for that materialistic explanation for it. But I've seen so many examples of people whose brains were obviously not functioning well, if at all, and yet they describe their consciousness as more vivid than ever before.
And they have memories that were sharper than memories of other events at the same time in their life, decades after the event. So that tells you what? That it is not a hallucination. It is not even a, quote, normal memory because they're remembered so much more vividly.
That's the implication, yes.
That when the mind is functioning very well, the brain is not. And there's no medical explanation for how that can be.
What do you make of all those similarities? Well, I think they must be talking about something that's real because everyone has it. How they describe it is based on What they're familiar with, what analogies they're familiar with. Because they all say, there isn't any word to describe what happened to me. I can't describe it. Love is not a strong enough word. God is not a strong enough word.
But I experienced this thing that was just overwhelming for me. And I've heard this from people who were not religious at all. That's right. So have I. And yet they say, I can't deny this. This is more real to me than talking to you right now. And this is definitely what's going on.
Tom Sonnen.
Yes. Yes. Yes, you really feel things from other people's perspective. And Tom talks about beating someone up when he was a teenager and feeling it from that person's point of view or doing something nasty to his grandmother and felt it from her perspective. But I've also heard from people that...
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