What Really Happens When We Die - What One Man Saw on the Other Side

Now really, really, really well and welcome to really know really with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who respectfully ask you to please subscribe before we all pass on to the great beyond. And speaking of the great beyond, what happens when we die? What do we see or experience? Is it frightening or peaceful or joyful? Sebastian Younger is a noted combat reporter, a best selling author, and an

We've all heard about.

So called NDS, near death experiences where the clinically dead are miraculously resuscitated and return to life with eerily familiar stories of long dead relatives speaking to them, or a tunnel illuminated by a brilliant, welcoming light. Are these stories evidence of a great beyond or simply wild spasms of a dying brain. After his own experience, our guest launched an investigation and uncovered a possible third answer that expands

All Right, Peter, this is a this is a this is a unique episode of really no really, but this, By the way, what I love is you didn't have the balls to really hit the belle muffle. You're gonna see what what now? This is not to annoy you. This is thematic for what we're going to discuss today. And you tell me what the theme is. Ready, you get it?

You get it? Yeah, it's just worst code. What could I be getting? Who the bell tolls?

Because that bell one day will ring the final bell for you, for me, probably you first. You know, I'm just saying I'm looking at you. I'm looking at me.

I think you're going first. What is it that.

You're looking at me that you think I will go for first?

What?

First of all, you are a few years older than actively healthy. I don't smoke it. You know.

The keyword in that sentence was relatively and not comparatively comparatively to me.

I don't have There's nothing wrong with me. I have I have zero.

Plaque, zero cardiac plaque. My liters clean, my kidneys are clean, my lungs are clean.

Smash cut to George Costanzo was killed in a traffic accident today.

Wow, anything you know that is the act of God. I'm saying, if God stays out of it.

This episode is about that. This is about what happens when we die. Is there is there a God? Is there a greater source?

Where do we go? Right?

And you said to me, because I find guests for the show often, And you said.

No, you're playing guests for the show exclusive. Okay, well no, because our team.

I don't want anybody to think I'm lifting a finger for this, which is why I live longer.

That's right.

I don't aggravate over you said, I'd love to have somebody who died and came back. This is about as close as you can get. Sebastian Younger went, he's gonna tell his story.

Yeah, and this is a guy, this is a you know I I actually when you said his name, I went, the guy from Perfect Storm, the guy who wrote it. Yeah, he's a he's a investigative journalist. He's been embedded in a lot of war zone. This guy who like lives it out and hangs it out there.

A lot puts it out there. But he had an experience.

We'll let him tell about it that he wrote about in his latest book about what happened and what he saw that people talk about the white light, they talk about a tunnel. People have talked about I saw a family member reach out for me. Yeah, his story that would make me not go. If my mother is there going sweight on, I'm not going. So she could be stealing silverware right in the afterlife. All right, Yeah, So we wanted to hear Sebastian's story because every you's fascinated.

There we go. You ready? Do you ever thought of where you're going? Of where I'm going. We'll talk about this at the end. The funny thing is wherever you're going, it's going to be this. You still talk to Jerry. I will say this.

I am not a Christian person, and I once had a devout Christian telling me very lovingly, really, you're going to go to hell if you don't accept the truth and you don't accept them as sia, and you're going to go to Hell. You're going to go to Helen. I don't want you to go to Hell. And she went on for quite some time, and I said, let me ask a question.

Are you going to Hell? She said no, No, I'm not going to Helen. I said, well then I'll be fine. Wow, And with that let's discuss.

Yes, Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome journalist author uh.

And a man with a unique experience, new number one New York Times best selling author which, like the Storm I didn't mean to pooh pooh a death en Belmont War Tribe freedom in his latest in My Time of Dying, how I came face to face with the idea of an afterlife.

Ladies and gentlemen, Sebastian Younger.

Nice to be here, Thank you very much.

Nice that you're you're still with us in the flesh and spirit, because we know I mean, Peter has filled me in on this incredible story that you have. I know you, of course from your investigative journalism and literary work. But when Peter started to tell me your your story about this near death experience, my head started to spend. I got very excited and so I'm thrilled you're here to share it with us.

And by the way, you you, I think in Guinness Rolbrook records had the closest near death you were, so I don't think any but he beat you when it comes to near death.

So oh, I don't know.

I'm sure they had people have, but I came as close as I'd never liked to.

Yeah, so I thank you. Really nice to be on, gentlemen.

And yeah, my book is called In My Time of Dying, and it's about how I almost died and what I saw when I was dying. And I just start out by saying, I'm an atheist. I'm a rationalist. My father was a physicist and was an atheist until he died some years ago. And that's the proper context from what I'm about to tell you, which is that I you know, I was a war reporter for a long time. I had a number of close calls with bullets and bombs and things like.

That, very close calls.

I was blown up by an I E. E and Nefistan. I had a guy tell me that he was going to execute me and the Niger Delta. I wass By rebels and accused of being as pie. I had all kinds of stuff. But I got out of that amazing and terrifying life after my buddy Tim Heatherington was killed in Libya, covering the civil war in Libya. Of course, him and I made the documentary Werestrepo together about a remote combat outpost in eastern Afghanistan.

He was killed a few years later, and I got out of the business.

I got married, I had children, wonderful family, two little girls, and during COVID we left New York City, where we live in the tiny apartment. We left for a very house at a very secluded place in the woods in Massachusetts. It's so remote that there's no cell phone service. It's the end of a dead end dirt road. The landline doesn't work when it rains because the line shorted out. In other words, it's paradigm right. One day, I was talking to my wife and I felt this pain shoot

And that was when I had my vision.

Were you in pain at that point? And when you get stuck with a needle like that, does that hurt? Are you or are you lucid?

That's your question, because did the needle hurt?

Well, I just want to know what that moment, what he thought. Was he aware that he was there close?

Yeh wow, Okay, yeah, sorry, Zebastian, tell him if the needle hurt.

No, it's a good question, because the needle was.

It was a big, intimidating needle and it was going into my neck and I didn't like the idea of it and I and I actually asked the doctor. I said, you mean, in case there's an emergency, and he said, this is the emergency right now. So I said, okay, you know, do what you gotta do whatever, Like, I don't know why I'm in you know, I'm in for belly pain. But if you feel like you need to stick a needle in my.

Neck, go ahead. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so they you know, they put some Lito cane on your neck, and so that actually didn't feel like anything. I was in tremendous pain because the blood in your abdomen against your organs UH is incredibly provocative to your organs. And I was really sort of an agony from that, and I was convulsing. I was deep in hypothermia from blood loss and sort of not of right mind. But I was conscious in conversing with the doctors, and I had no idea that I was dying, no idea what

Suddenly I realized that my father, who'd been.

Dead many years, my father was above me in this sort of energy form, right above me, and he was communicating with me. And he was communicating basically, it's okay, you don't have to fight it. You can come with me. I'll take care of you. And I was horrified. I mean, I didn't again, I didn't know I was dying. So the invitation to go with him was I was almost insulted. I was like, look, you're dead. I'm just like, what, the party's over here. I'm not going with you, Like, Dad,

Like? And I said to the doctrine, you're gonna hurry. You're losing me right now. I'm going. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going.

And and then that was when he got started. The blood started pushing blood into my jugular and they brought me back from the brink and kept me alive long enough for the next six hours, kept me alive long enough to save my life in the interventional radiology suite, where they managed to embolize the leak plug the leak by catheter.

You're in this dialogue with your father.

Now, In many of the near death stories that I've heard, that moment for the person going through it becomes quite blissful and accepting, and in fact, it's the opposite of what you're describing, where the dead entity is saying, it's not your time. Don't come with me yet, go back, go back. In your case, it sounded like you went, hey, daddy, leave me alone. I don't want to go with you right now. So A, to the extent that you've researched, it was your experience unusual.

And B why do you think it?

How did Why do you think you knew that you did not want to go at that point? Was it just the natural fear of death or was there something else in play?

You know, I imagine death is a great consolation when you're very old, if you're in pain, if you're dying of cancer, in great pain, if you're in great psychic pain. You know, I imagine that death is a welcome finish line. That wasn't me right. I had a three year old daughter and a six month old daughter and my wife, and

But where I was, I was like, what do you? I mean really, I was.

Just puzzled, like what are you doing here? Like I mean, I'm just in for belly paint, Like I'm not I'm not dying. I get get out of here, like there's been a huge misunderstanding. And of course I was the one didn't understand right, But I didn't know. I didn't know that.

But so interesting about that to me is given your background, I would have thought, I mean, I know you had many things to live for your family, certainly, but given your background and how you threw yourself into such dangerous situations out of sure, I'm sure a curiosity and a job to do and needing to cover this and needing that, you would have found this a really interesting curious moment to go, Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna go check it out of an unknown maybe I can report back on this,

I just find it interesting. I remember my sister.

I'm just going to relate a quick story my sister died about seven years ago, just before her sixty fifth birth.

That she had been chronically ill for a while.

But she was having a fairly good period and literally she her system became septic, her gut ruptured internally, she was becoming septic, and she died within twenty four hours, but that she was an ICU intubated with everything going on.

She actually wrote to her doctor on a pet.

Am I dying, And he wrote, well, yeah, and she and I wasn't there. But my understanding was that she had to wrestle for about thirty minutes with the idea that because she was cognizant of the fact that there was nothing they could do, and that this was the direction she.

Was going, and she had to take it all in.

And I can't imagine that part of the transition, that part of the journey is just you know. That's why I note that moment for you of going Nope, I'm not interested in I'm not going here right now.

I'm not going And you know, children are a game changer, you know, And I don't know how I would have reacted did had I not had children, I would have been a very sad person, and sad I think sad. People probably die more easily, except death more easily. And you know, so had I not.

Met my wife and had a family, et cetera, et cetera, had I been sort of single in the world, or at least not a father, I might have welcomed. You know, I was like, Okay, that didn't work. I'm out of here.

I mean, I don't know were you.

Were you conscious during this whole procedures as they were twisting this thing through consciously, see, I would have checked out.

On we're going to punch a hole in you.

And that's when I would have said, Hey, propofol is a great thing.

Why not?

Well, you know, I have memories of the whole thing.

They had me on a little bit of versid and a little bit of fentanyl, but I have memories from the whole thing, and I remember being in extraordinary pain.

All right, So let's go, let's go to the air the pit. Yes, so, yeah, So were you in dialogue with your father? And if so, was it actual verbal? Could the could the physicians hear you speaking?

Well, there's you know, there's a lot of.

Were you in dialogue with your father? And if so, was it actual verbal? Could the could the physicians hear you speaking?

Well, there's you know, there's a lot of There are many, many, many accounts of dying people seeing the dad in the room, right, people in hospice, or people in hospice, people dying of cancer, things like that, and often they'll even speak with them.

Right.

Of course, no one sees the dead and no one hears anything said back. But it's an extremely common thing, and no one else really sees the dead except the dying.

And I was dying, and of course no one else saw what I saw.

I saw my father hovering above me in this sort of like energy form, and the communication, I wouldn't say it was verbal. Again, I sort of sensed him in a non visual way that was extremely real, right, it was as real as vision, except it wasn't vision quite it was a I don't need I don't think there's there's words in English for it. And likewise, the communication it was almost like we were telepathic with each other.

Yeah.

Yeah, as an atheist, did you change your belief system as far as what may be on the other side or what have you gone with dad?

What would have happened?

Well, okay, so yeah, it's it's it's we're to sort of break down the vocabulary here a little bit. So atheism means that I don't believe in God. I don't claim to know there is none. Claiming to know there's no God is as absurd as claiming to know that there is a God. Right, I mean both are both are indefensible positions.

Uh.

And and uh, I mean indefensible with data or evidence.

And and so.

But I do not myself believe in God because I've never felt his presence or have seen any evidence that there is one.

Right.

So, but that's different than a quote afterlife. So the idea that there's a post death continuation of the individual on some level, maybe even a sub atomic, sort of quantum level, that's entirely possible in a universe that has no God, no creator, in it.

You could also have a creator God.

I don't think there is one, but just logically speaking, you could have a creator. God created this universe and decided to create biological beings like salamanders and turtles and sharks and humans and mosquitos and everything else. And when they when these things die, they they they're biologically dead. They decompose, they're dead. There's no soul.

That's it.

There's no quote afterlife. So God, in an afterlife, you don't need one or the other. You could have both. You could have neither, or you have one or the other. They don't require neither requires the other. And and so you know what, I would say that my book In My Time of Dying is divided into two sections. It is divided into what and if? What is what happened to me?

What if?

I mean?

The if section is basically.

What if there were some form of post death existence?

How would that work?

According to the science that we now understand? And I sort of run through the you know, NDEs near death experience are very very common. They're generally very very similar in form across societies.

Between individuals.

There are people dying, people who saw a dead person come to get them like my dad did. And it was a person who had just died, and the dying person didn't even know that they were dead, right, sort of, Joe, what are you doing here?

Right?

Like I thought you were in Florida with Merrit Like you know, you know what I mean. Like, so it actually is quite mysterious, and I'll just leave it at that. But they you know where I wound up was. There's a lot of reason to dismiss the ND experiences as basically hallucinations. That the the the sort of like spasms of a dying brain, right, except for one except for one thing, and that is that we know, say, if you give a room full of people LSD, they'll all halls.

So I got to tell you what resonated with me in your story in a big way. Jason knows this. We were working our show together and I didn't know how sick I was, and I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker, and kept persevering, persevering and kind of denying it. And it got to the point where it was rushed emergency to the hospital. They had to do emergency surgery, cut me open at a stomach that was

Of it happened.

But all of the things I said, I was going to do as you said, you do a podcast, have all the thing. I'm sorry, and I'm start delivered for you. But as we got away from the event, of course a lot of that changed. But the thing that blew me away that you that had you experienced too. It's months after when I hear my wife talking to somebody. You said, yeah, he was in really bad shape the entire time, and I said yeah. Later, I said, what do you mean the entire time when I was in

And I was. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

And I know the same with you that wait a minute, this it was that I was, I really, I could have died that whole time. I thought I was out of the woods. I never thought that that was a thing. And I know that you felt the same. And I remember you saying to your wife, am I really? Am I really here? That you were really tormented about where you were after you got it right and how you got it wrong and what's yeah, what's real or not?

Well, yeah, well I'm sorry you went through that. And that's terrifying. And a month and a half in the ICU just sounds like the living hell. I did a week and it was like that was It's brutal. So my heart really goes out to you. That's a rough deal and you're very lucky. But I well, one of the things that was quite complicated for me. And again I'm a rationalist and an atheist and blah blah blah

And shouting to them, and they couldn't hear me.

And I was made to understand that I had died and that I was a spirit, I was a ghost, and that there was no way to ever go back, and.

I was headed out and this is it. I was so endless by this that it woke me up.

It's like, oh my god, thank god, that was a dream, because I really thought I was dead and I was in a state of sort of disbelief.

No no, no, no, no, I don't want to go. I don't want to go, you know. Then I woke up. I was like, oh, thank God.

And thirty six hours later that's exactly what happened. And then I got home after five days in the ICU and two days in the general floor, and I got home and I started to get this terrible feeling that maybe I had died, that maybe I had died in my sleep. And then my dream was actually my experience of leaving life. Wow, and this was all a dying hallucination that wasn't real and that eventually I'm out of here and my family are grieving somewhere and I don't

Yeah. Yeah.

But it took a long time, a couple of years to work through the anxiety and the derealization, the panic attacks, and eventually the depression, which at the last phase of this. It took a couple of years to work through all of that and sort of come out the other died relatively sane. One of the.

Problems is I had a whole load of undealt with trauma for war reporting.

So you know, when you know, if you've been.

Dramatized and then you're traumatized again, you have to keep paying the whole debt all over again, and so you until you make good.

On your the checks that you wrote.

Yeah, So, Sebastian, did you have you come out of this?

I know you're you're probably no closer to having you know, anything definitive you'd stand on about.

Daughter and afterlife.

But do you feel your personal anxiety or believes or whatever you want to call it about dying and death. Are are forever changed because of this or are you still sort of where you were?

Well, I'm definitely still an atheist.

And again it all it means is that I don't I don't believe in God, and I don't believe in God because I've never seen any evidence there's a God, and so you know, like, and I sort of leave it at that. So, but what did bring me some peace actually was my my daughter and you know, at age four or five or something, I think I explained to her that the world, our world is a spear, and that there's a sun, and there's night and day, you know whatever.

I serve of.

Explained the basics of our solo system to my daughter. And a few days later she came up to me and she said, Daddy, I know why there's night.

Why She said, it's so that other people could have day.

And I thought about that and I realized, Oh, and that's why we die, right, so other people can live. We can't all live forever. It will not work. Like in tropic terms, it won't work. In biological terms, it won't work. And ecological terms, it won't work. It will not work right. And it's our it's not only our our our obligation, but in some ways it's our honor and our privilege. The step aside so that our children

I think that's beautiful and it has helped me to determine that I'm not doing that for my kids.

You know, absolutely doing for me. I didn't get a birthday gift this year.

So what is at the end of the day and at the end of your book, what is the for lack of a better word, conclusion that you'd like a reader or an audience to take away.

Well, I mean, the conclusion I come to is that it's a reasonable it's a reasonable idea to wonder if consciousness is not universal, and that we're part of that and when we die we rejoin that.

Sort of colossus of consciousness that is the entire universe.

Like, that's a reasonable that's a reasonable thought, right, And but in a more sort of human level, I recount a story. When my dad grew up in Europe, and he was very old school, and when I was a teenager, I was I was out in the woods a lot, I was backpacking a lot.

I was in the wilderness a lot. And and and he had never he had never slept outside in his life.

Right.

He was an upper middle class European and uh so I took him backpacking in New Hampshire in the late fall, and halfway up this mountain in bad weather, he got hypothermia.

And there was no way, there was no one out there. We're all alone. We couldn't get back to the road. I mean, it was a bad situation. And he was not making sense.

And I made a fire and I got him warmed up, and I just watched over him as he fell asleep, and I made sure he was okay. I warmed up some spoop and I saved him. And I just sat there the way parents look out for their children when they go asleep. Our roles were reversed. It was as if I was the parent and he was the child.

And so it goes to bashing your fascet. You're one of the most fascinating people. And the book, your books, the current one in my time of dying, how it came face to face with the idea of an afterlife. Sorry that you had to do the research for that, Yeah, sorry you had to go through that, but fascinating what you did to get the stuff you've done, the reporting you've done, the things that you've seen and, like you said,

Thank you. You guys are great. I really enjoyed it.

Thanks for coming on.

Man.

Well, I like to say, fascinating, fascinating, cool guy. Here's the thing I want to ask you, though, because as he said, he didn't you know, his heart didn't stop, he didn't go over. Now, my understanding is you were gone once or twice.

In the early part. I think I think so.

But you had a living experience. You didn't have a yeah. And again I was in denial. It wasn't denial. I had no idea. It never processed that I was in trouble the entire time I was in intensive care. It just didn't didn't compute. But now we know definitively what happens when you're dying. You see Sebastian Junger's.

Dad, you do. That's it.

Everybody company. My dad, I was holding it. He This was tough because my dad said he had stomach anser and he knew he was going, and he called me to come in because he said, I'm gonna I'm gonna stop everything and take morphines. I'm gonna be gone, but I want to say goodbye. So we're sitting in My brother and I were holding sands, and he was he was out. He was talking about going through old rooms

Yeah.

Yeah, my dad was completely rational up through his last breath, calling the shots the whole way. Two days before he passed, he very rationally said, I've been I've been chatting with my mom. I've been chatting his dead mom. And he as casual as could be. And I said, you mean like in your imagination, dad? He said, no, she's she's gold here.

And you know, uh.

And I remember talk about the return to the to the cosmic consciousness. I remember being with my dad as he was taking his last breaths, and three breaths from the end, I'm looking at him, two breaths from the end, I'm looking at him. On his last breath. He inhaled, he exhaled, and I literally my mom said she saw me do this. My head turned and followed something up to the ceiling, as if as if I was tracking

From myself, and I freaked the hell out and.

I went no, no, no, no, no, no no no no, and I and I forced myself back. You know, my my imagination, my dream state, whatever you want to be, my consciousness. I sort of scared myself into putting it back inside me, and then I made sure I was either talking out loud or moving something. The whole time I just did not want to lie still again. And it is the only place when I when I do get acupuncture, I continue to.

Go, Okay, just move it, get the occupunct. It's very It's good for many things. But that that feeling of floating away from myself was not like, oh interesting here.

It was like the only other time I had in your death experience was when they got a bill from the Biltmore for four days stay.

I almost died right right right.

A good thing you didn't because they charged for removal. Yes, David, Hello, I'll still left nger. You haven't left us yet.

I am not hovering.

I have no pins in me, hopefully the aneurysm isn't.

What did we learn? What did did we miss anything? Did we learn anything? Where are you.

Didn't answer the primary question what happens to you after death?

Well, I don't know how could I answer?

I'm going then that's a pretty good question.

Let you there you go.

Well that actually got me thinking about what are some of the other things in life that you just can't know?

Okay, okay, all right, So what.

Our hair looks like from the pack.

I know, I know exactly what my.

Hair looks like the big questions, and you have to pay a price for that answer.

But I live together the Big Book of Questions.

Okay, I'm going to get deep with you already started.

Yeah, what your mother in law really thinks of you?

Oh? Sure?

Why do you have to limit to the mother in law? I'm not sure what my wife thinks of you.

I'm sure what anybody chasing thinks. From God.

And Jason, you might remember this one. What is on that chart that the doctors are writing and scribbling while you're there in the hospital.

Then yeah, yeah, we haven't come.

To the journey. They always add a note. The nurse comes in, does all the it's too quick.

Even if you look at the paper, you can't tell when they did it.

Still not good? How did you sandwich? Maybe?

Well that actually leads into the next one. What we smell like to other people?

Oh, that is true.

We never know what we smell like to other people, regardless of the money I'm plunking down on my shin on number five or whatever.

Yeah, David, thank you, and thank you everybody. What I'm glad is that we went from the depth of Sebastian younger. He really went deep and.

So cosmic consciousness to my hair from the back. Yeah, that's fantastic. What do I smell? Yeah, don't say we don't cover all the bases. I'm really nice, like a little bit like a lamb chop and some head.

Right.

No, actually, you have a very pleasant thing. Most of the time.

You're very pleasant, and you have no there's no negative or positive. You're kind of a neutral. I'm saying, no, no, there's no.

You don't put it. In our thirty years, I've never gone. Boy, I can tell Jason, I gotta tell you.

I walk around I have breath freshening around my mouth in my pocket all the time because I just I feel like I don't have a savory breath.

That's what I think.

I have a stick up one of those Christmas trees in my pants, so just in case that same.

Oh, then Merry Christmas, Thank you, Merry Christmas to all of you.

Two Christmas episode we mentioned every will make it pay death Christ died.

He went somewhere. Maybe we do too. Every episode take care of.

As enough episode of really no really, he comes to a close. I know you're wondering, what's the longest time someone has been declared clinically dead but come back to life. Well, I know you're dying to hear, but first let's thank our guest, Sebastian Younger. You can follow Sebastian on his website Sebastianyonger dot com. On x and Facebook, he is at Sebastian Younger. On Instagram, he is at Sebastian Younger Official, and be sure to read his fascinating account of his near death experience in.

His book In My Time of Dying.

Find all pertinent links in our show notes, our little show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and threads at Really No Really podcast, And of course you can share your thoughts and feedback with us online at reallynoreally dot com. If you have a really some amazing fact or story that boggles your mind, share it with us, and if we use it, we will send you a little gift.

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And now the answer to the question.

What's the longest time someone was clinically dead but came back to life? The phenomenon is called the Lazarus syndrome, in which there is a spontaneous return of cardiac activity after a patient has been pronounced to dead, and.

There are plenty of examples of it.

A sixty six year old man with an abdominal aneurysm endured seventeen minutes of chest compressions and defibrillation shocks, only to be declared dead ten minutes after the resuscitation effort ceased his pulse started back up. He was treated for the aneurism and fully recovered with no lasting physical or

The next day, he was well enough to be talking with family, but.

Died fifteen days later.

The list goes on and on, but the winner is undoubtedly Velma Thomas, fifty nine years old from Nitro, West Virginia. After going into cardiac arrest in her home, doctors found that she was clinically brain dead, no brainwave activity whatsoever for hours. Doctors attempted to save her life by inducing hypothermia in order to lower her body temperature and stimulate the brain. Her son stated that her skin had already started hardening and her hands and toes were curling up

On