David Sunfellow, Can the Scientific Study of NDEs Reveal the Purpose of Life? |413|

David Sunfellow’s decades of study on near death experiences has led him to some clear-cut conclusions about the purpose of life.

photo by: Skeptiko

Satan: Fallen one, I am Satan, I am your god now. There is no escape.

That of course is Kenny from South Park on his trip through hell.

Satan: Feel the delightful pain.

Saddam Hussein: Hey Satan, did you hear the news? A war just broke out up on earth.

Satan: Meet Saddam Hussein, my new partner in evil.

Kenny: Huh?

Saddam: Move over Satan, you’re hogging all the fun. Yeah. Yeah. Man, this is getting me so hot.

The playfulness that South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone show in dealing with hell is truly masterful and it has a direct link to today’s show. Because as you know, beyond the love and light aspect of the near-death experience, which is overwhelmingly the most significantly reported experience, like 80%, 90% of people report that, there are are reports of hellish NDE experiences. And they are significantly under-reported. They’re under-reported by experiencers who are undoubtedly afraid of facing the ridicule and judgement that comes with saying, “Yeah, I was in hell.” People will think, “Yeah, why were you in hell, what have you done wrong that I don’t know about?”

But they’re also under-reported by NDE researchers… if you’re an NDE researcher, do you really want to report the hell thing? What do you do with that? What do you do with the, often very Christian, biblical baggage that comes along with that? Do you, as some do, immediately distance yourself from it, “Oh, that can’t be real in the way that you’re thinking about it… it’s a cultural overlay.” Can we really make those kinds of assumptions? And what is the end game for making those kinds of assumptions for a consciousness that extends into and interferes with the data in the extended consciousness realm.

Well these are some of the issues that we get into on today’s show with the very excellent David Sunfellow.

Alex Tsakiris: …if we’re going to play the game, if we’re going to follow the data, this isn’t the data.

David Sunfellow: Jeffrey Long, his research very much supports the idea that there are these hellish realms. In fact, here’s a quote from him that says, “The most frightening things that I’ve encountered in my life are not from fictional books or scary movies, but from near-death experiences with hellish content.” So he’s not saying there’s no hell, he’s just saying that God is not sending people to hell, which is a common theme among near-death experiencers as a whole.

Alex Tsakiris: I think they’re saying something else. The way I read this data is, “there are a lot of scary movies out there and you may have to watch a scary movie,” that may on your path to help your overall learning and guiding of your soul to where it needs to be, but don’t take the fucking scary movie too seriously. That’s what data comes through, over and over again and says. And that’s what I guess I’m saying about Jeff Long, is yeah, what you said is technical true, but his overall conclusion is that it’s not anything to be feared, it’s part of your soul’s experience. It’s a small movie that you will walk into an walk out of.

This is a deep dive into NDE research and how we might use...