NDEs: A Path to Spiritual Awareness! With Dr. Janice Holden

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 0:00

Most people don't want to come back because it feels very good there. Hundreds, 1000s of people say that there was no judgment whatsoever. And usually the life review occurs in the presence of a being of light. Many near death experiencers saw previous lives so they know that they have lived before. Some see future lives. They know they will live again, and they develop spiritual gifts such as precognition, knowing things that are going to happen, telepathy and other kinds of psychic abilities. I don't know if you have sort of looked at all these premonitions and seen, oh, there's a pattern here. This is where humanity is going. Yeah, humanity, I have good news and bad news.

Jannecke Øinæs 0:58

Dr Janice Holden, a warm welcome to the show.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 1:02

Thank you, Jannecke, I'm so happy to be here with you.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:05

I'm happy to be here with you. I'm truly honored. Actually, you are one of the leading scientists within the field of near death studies. You are the president of ions, and you are a beautiful ambassador in bridging science and spirituality, and I think that is so important. And speaking of that, I'm curious about your view about how science and spirituality is perhaps coming closer to each other. Is that a development you're seeing?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 1:37

Yes, definitely yes. And I think you know, in over the course of history, spirituality, over the last couple of centuries, has been dismissed as being outside of the reach of science. And now I think that with phenomena such as near death experiences and research into phenomena like after death, communication, past life, memories and so forth that it the two really are coming closer together.

Jannecke Øinæs 2:13

Well, that's good news, and also due to people like you. You have studied this for, I think, around 30 years. And how many NDE stories have you come across?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 2:29

Oh, my goodness, I don't know how to count. I've talked with many near death experiencers, read their accounts, heard their accounts, watched them on, on online. I couldn't begin to estimate how many I've heard.

Jannecke Øinæs 2:48

I have interviewed. Many people have had near death experiences, and my experience is that there is a pattern there in what they're actually experiencing, yet it seems like each experience is also tailored for each person. Could you share your perspectives on that, if there's actually a pattern in what people are experiencing?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 3:13

Yes, I'm happy to. And you've you've identified a really important paradox, that there are some recurring features, but they always take an individual form for each person. So no two near death experiences are exactly alike. The way that I conceptualize near death experiences is in five aspects, and I call them aspects rather than stages, because even though they tend to occur in the order that I'm going to present them. They can sometimes, especially the middle three, can be in different orders or even overlapping. So, so it's, it's meant to be just a general idea that first of all these experiences occur, not only when people are close to death, which is where the term near death experience comes in, but under other extreme circumstances as well. So somebody can be in the extreme piece of meditation, they can be in the extreme rage of an argument. They can be in the extreme despair of grief, and in all these circumstances, experiences that are the same as if the experience occurred during a close brush with death, they're equivalent in terms of the contents and the after effects of the experience. So calling it a near death experience is a little bit of a misnomer, but, but maybe being close to death is the best facilitator, so maybe that name isn't too bad. So anyway, in one of these experiences, the person may 1 experience. Experience their consciousness leaving their body, and when they do, different people experience it different ways. Some say they lift out of their body. Some say they come out of the top of their head. Some say they exit through their chest so it can be again. It's the same general phenomenon of consciousness leaving the body, but occurring in a in an individual way for a given person. Then, and by the way, not everybody experiences all of these aspects, so sometimes the person just finds themselves in the second aspect, which is being outside of their body, their consciousness functioning outside their body, watching the material world. And I call this the material aspect, because they're observing the material world, usually from a position above, but sometimes it can be from the side or even below and and in this state, I call perception to be normal, plus, so everything like blue still looks blue, and you would be recognized as you Jannecke. And the person can also see through solid objects like see through a wall or a ceiling. They move at the speed of thought. So the person might, let's say the person is in surgery, and they have flatlined, and they're out of their body watching the resuscitation process. And they might be thinking, Oh, I know my mother's waiting for me in the waiting room. And Jim, they're at the waiting room looking at their mother sitting there doing whatever she's doing, and and so it's perception is normal, plus there are additional abilities, and then a lot more can happen in all these but I'm just trying to give you An overview. Then the next aspect is a transition aspect between the material and the trans material world. So the person will experience themselves, usually moving rapidly through space or through some kind of enclosure. And you maybe have heard of people talking about moving through a tunnel. And once again, that tunnel is never described exactly the way by two different same way by two different people. And then is the fourth aspect, the trans material aspect, and this is where the person is both perceiving and interacting with entities and environments that are not of the of this material world. So they might see beautiful a beautiful garden. They might interact with a deceased loved one or another spiritual entity that may or may not be identifiable by them and and in this phase, the person often experiences a life review, where they review and re experience everything from their lifetime and an experience being each person with whom they interacted and really experiencing being on the receiving end of their own actions. And again, other things can happen in this aspect, and then the fifth and final aspect is the experience of consciousness returning to the body. And again, it can happen the person may move quickly through space again and feel drawn back, may may or may not, experience re entering their body again. Some people skip the entry experience and just suddenly find themselves back in their body. So, so that's it, these five aspects, and and again, those middle ones, especially, can can be in a different order or even overlap.

Jannecke Øinæs 9:08

So do you have any thoughts about where they actually go, like where the consciousness is going to? What kind of realm is it? Different realms? Would you call it heaven? Would you call it the astral plane? Because I've been out of my body and have had some lucid dreams, and then I felt I was in the astral plane, which I wouldn't define as heaven, but a higher state than Earth, but still, some qualities of it felt like Kevin and others did not for sure. I met some negative entities and stuff like that. It was very rich with a lot of things. And I've come to learn that that is astral plane, and that the astral plane is sort of the next plane, after the earth plane, and there are so many higher planes. So I'm curious where NDE experiencers go.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 10:04

Well, you might notice that I avoided using terms like astral plane and heaven, because I just talk about the trans material domain, that there is a domain beyond the material world where these people seem to go and and I, I suspect from things that I've read that there may be, like, seven levels, and near death experiences can go to any of these levels. So again, that's one of the unique aspects of each person's nd is that they may be in one level or another. For example,a few NDE's have had the experience that I consider to be a pretty high level of the trans material domain of encountering, not only encountering a being of light, but merging into that being of light and temporarily losing a sense of their identity as an individual entity. And so that's very different from, as you said, meeting negative entities on what seems to be a kind of a lower realm of the trans material domain. So I, I haven't gone so far as try to map it out, but, but I've just gathered from listening to different people that there, there are definitely different levels.

Jannecke Øinæs 11:41

And it seems like that they are experiencing this more real than on the earth plane, right?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 11:48

That's right, yeah, near death experiencers tend to be quite adamant that the experience was real. And in fact, in many cases, they say that it was realer than this reality. So I remember when I was doing my doctoral dissertation many mid in the mid 1980s Excuse me. And at that time, it was a written survey, and people returned it to me via mail. That was the old days, you know. And and I remember sitting at my kitchen table reading one of these and and I was asking a question about whether you know how real the experience felt. And this one man wrote that experience was realer than sitting here writing this response to you. And wow, I still get chills when I when I remember that, that statement, it was quite striking.

Jannecke Øinæs 12:48

What are life reviews about? You mentioned it shortly that many have life reviews where they are experiencing their life and then every other person they interacted with. I mean, how is that possible? Obviously, there are other laws over there. But could you share a little bit about what a life review is?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 13:12

Yeah, that's right. You know Jannecke, I think people get stuck when they try to apply the principles of how the material world works to the trans material domain, because things Things seem to work there differently. And for example, time either speeds up, slows down or is non existent. And that sort of makes sense, if you think about it. We won't go into that, but, but in life reviews, people often say that, paradoxically, the whole thing happened at once, and they also experienced each moment and and they'll say, you know, I'll I'll say sequentially, because that's a concept that you have, but it kind of wasn't exactly like that. But anyway, in the encounter with each other person, they experience being that person and receiving their own actions so they feel the joy or the pain that they engendered in the other person. And I would say that probably this aspect of near death experiences this the single most impactful, because people experience that we are not disconnected, you know, we we think that we're, you know, individuals, and that that what we do to others doesn't affect us, and what they what and the ears experience is that we are each other.And that whatever, in truly, whatever we do to others, we do to ourselves and and we experience the the the gratitude or the regret, you know, for having affected other people the way we have.

Jannecke Øinæs 15:23

I'm just thinking about Hitler right now. I mean, think about that life review, absolutely, that's right.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 15:31

Yeah, imagine someone who has engendered so much suffering in other people and what they're in store for, indeed.

Jannecke Øinæs 15:45

Wow, wow. Is there any judgment? Have you experienced that there is any judgment at all on the other side? Like you should not behave like that now you have to go back and do it all over again.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 16:01

Yeah, that's such a great question, because one of the things nd ears, almost to a person, there may be one or two cases where people felt judged, but, uh, but hundreds, 1000s of people say that there was no judgment whatsoever. And usually the life review occurs in the presence of a being of light who is all knowing, all loving and and so the person feels absolutely known and absolutely loved. And so any misdeeds that the person did, the being of light tends to respond with compassion, maybe even a little humor, and conveying the idea that, well, you were learning, and now you have An opportunity to go back and do better. It isn't like you know you better go back and do better. It's it's that now you know, and you have an opportunity to put that knowledge into action.

Jannecke Øinæs 17:15

I'm wondering, and probably you can't answer this or or perhaps, do we all get the choice when our time is due? When our time is up? We wouldn't know that, because those who are past have passed, so we can't ask them. But I'm just curious. You know, when my day comes? Is that set in stone, you think, or do we all have a choice, like maybe I want to continue and go back.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 17:44

Well, what we know from many near death experiencers there the return process, some people are just back there. They might even be moving along in their NDE and it's almost like someone turned off the TV right in the middle of things, and suddenly they're back in their body with no choice, no forewarning or anything like that. Others have a choice and and you, and in every case that I've found when the person did have a choice, and obviously they came back, it was because there was a moment where they identified empathically with someone on earth that they loved, who needed them. And and it isn't as if they thought, Oh, well, this person's really going to have a hard time without me, so I'll go back. It's that, the moment they have that empathy, they are back. And so I have a friend who had this experience when she was five. She almost drowned, and her brother was supposed to be watching her, and he wasn't. And so she almost drowned, but somebody found her, they pulled her out, they resuscitated her, but while she was out of her body watching all this, and she was with a being, and given a choice to return, she did not want to. Most people don't want to come back, because it feels very good there. It's a it's a place of peace and love and and equanimity, and it's, it's, and people say that it's home, you know, capital H, O, M, E, they feel like their home, so they don't necessarily want to come back. But she thought about her brother and how what his life would be like if she died, and he would have the guilt that he hadn't watched her and she died, and the moment she she empathized with him in that way, she was back in her body. And she said, If I'd known that empathizing with him would bring me back like that, maybe I would have thought twice. You know. And she's joking, but yeah, so so that that return. Now, there also are cases where the person is told they have to come back, and they might even argue. There's a really funny gal, Kim sharp, and in her near death experience, she was with God, and he told her it was time for her to go back. And she said, No, I'm not going back. And he said, Yeah, you are. And she said, No, I'm not. And he said, Yeah, you are. And she said, No, I'm not. And she said, You see who won, because she's back. So there can even be argument and and now, whether I have heard some near death experiencers say that they changed the course of their life that they were sort of meant to stay, but somehow, for some reason, again, that empathy with a loved one, they came back and they were given the message that that they had changed the course of their life. I spoke recently with a near death experiencer who was told that she was actually meant to stay, but because she was going back now her husband would die before she did. So she was given that foreknowledge that at some point her husband was going to die and and she would still be alive to experience the loss. So, so it isn't it, it's there's, I think of it as a probability, that that our our lives unfold as probabilities, and that we always have the, I don't know about always, but to different degrees, we have the ability to to change the way things seem to be going.

Jannecke Øinæs 22:06

It seems like they are receiving a lot of knowledge. On the other side, a lot of wisdom, sometimes premonitions of what to come. I don't know if you have sort of looked at all these premonitions and seeing, Oh, there's a pattern here. This is where humanity is going.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 22:26

Yeah, humanity, well, you know, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that early on, in the early 1980s when nd ease were first being researched, a researcher, one of the pioneering researchers, Ken ring, found that several near death experiencers foresaw that something disastrous was going to happen in the year 1988 and obviously, 1988 came and went and nothing disastrous happened. So so again, he he hypothesized that there was a probability, but something, something changed now, more recently, near death experiencers have foreseen that right now, we are entering a very difficult time for humanity that is going to involve a lot of suffering, a lot of death and and is going to take a while after which humanity is going to emerge into a New Age that is ruled by what near death experiencers tell us are the important things in life, love, compassion and goodwill toward our fellow humans and the planet that we're going to we're going to take better care of each other and the planet eventually, But before that we're going to go through a really, really, really difficult time now, again, we saw what happened with 1988 and maybe it's not too late for humanity to change course, but it does seem like there's more turmoil and conflict in the world, and that we're going in the direction of what these NDE's foresaw.

Jannecke Øinæs 24:30

Is there a timeframe there? I know some have been speaking about 2030 32 that something beautiful will start to emerge.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 24:41

Yeah, I haven't heard a timeline from from these near death experiences, and that's one of the sort of unsettling aspects, is not knowing how long this bad period is going to last makes sense

Jannecke Øinæs 24:58

When they receive all this knowledge, what puzzles me is that many of them say, or some say, I've heard them say that, Oh, I knew the answers to everything, and then they come back and they only remember a few things. That's right, that's right. And it's like, why do they receive all this knowledge when they can't bring it back?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 25:21

That's a great question, and that'll be one of my questions when my time comes, I'm going to ask the light, the being of light that but I do have this sense that knowing that there's something that I don't know is in itself enlightening, that this isn't all there is and, and, and sometimes they come back, not with specifics, but with general ideas that, like ultimately All is well and and without remembering the specifics of why or how that could be the case, that's a very powerful knowledge to bring back so but. But the reality is that while we're encased in these limited bodies and limited brains, we we can't access all that information and and conceptualize it and hold it. It's just too big for us.

Jannecke Øinæs 26:37

I mean, we only use like, a percentage of our brains, so that's a lot. Yeah, you used 100%

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 26:46

Yeah, why don't they allocate more of that to that? Yeah, right, I don't know. There's, you know, I do trust that there's a higher wisdom at work and and so I just rest in that, in that trust and and again, it's on my list of my long list of questions. When my time comes,

Jannecke Øinæs 27:10

I have a long list as well. And I think a lot of people are wondering, Will I see my loved ones again? Many are meeting their loved ones. Many are meeting light beings. What is your impression of that, whether we meet the ones we're really close to again,

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 27:32

I have the definite sense that NDE's would say that we will meet our loved ones when our time comes to leave our our physical bodies and and also that even the question of whether our consciousness continues after we leave our physical bodies near death, experiencers absolutely lose their fear of death because they have they know that when they're in many cases, their body was completely out of commission. They might have even been in cardiac arrest for several minutes, and their consciousness continued functioning. And so they know that their consciousness is closely tied to their physical body while they're alive, but not the product of the physical body that it it exists independently. Many near death experiencers saw previous lives, so they know that they have lived before. Some see future lives. They know they will live again and and that there are these ongoing relationships with our with our loved ones that we see, not only when we leave this physical body, but sometimes in future, in past and future lives we've been with some of the same people. Is their experience. So so there definitely is the sense that and and I should maybe hasten to say that we don't have to wait until we die to reconnect with deceased loved ones, that is for many people, possible through cultivating after death communication and counseling technique called induced after death communication so so people can have the ongoing sense of connectedness to their deceased, physically deceased loved ones as they move through life.

Jannecke Øinæs 29:46

Would that look like doing a session with a medium or thinking more, learning yourself to sort of be a medium?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 29:54

Yeah, such a great question. So after death, communication is a direct experience of communication with a deceased loved one, with no nobody in the middle, and a medium is a person in the middle. They're literally a medium of communication between the deceased and the living so in and and going to a medium, having an experience where the medium reports things that there's no earthly way they could know that it really is convincing that they're communicating with my deceased loved one, that can be very helpful. Um, it also, and we don't know relatively how helpful one or the other is. But after death, communication, the the in the direct experience of communication with the deceased loved one, we know can be helpful and can, for example, if the person is grieving, it can reduce their painful grief symptoms. So after death communication occurs spontaneously for about half of people sometime in their life and during the first year after the death of a loved one, as many as 80% of people report after death communication. But there also is this counseling technique called induced after death communication, that's for people who are grieving, and during the session, the the counselor helps them get into a state of mind in which after death communication can more easily occur, and that state of mind has to do with being centered, being open, not grasping, not feeling desperate, but inviting, and being in a receptive, open state of mind, and in that counseling technique, about two thirds to three quarters of people have an experience of communication with their deceased loved ones, and it reduces their grief. There have been three studies of this phenomenon. They all have uniformly shown that people reduce their grief symptoms as a result of this counseling,

Jannecke Øinæs 32:27

Are our prayers heard on the other side,

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 32:30

yeah, well, certainly near death experiencers report that they felt the prayers and saw them sometimes as wisps or energetic forms or whatever, during their near death experiences, so and so they certainly, and some say that they were really brought back by prayer, that the prayer acted as like a conduit that drew them back to their body. So not only are prayers perceived sometimes in that domain, but but actually affect prayers affect things in that domain.

Jannecke Øinæs 33:14

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What has shocked me a bit is when I've interviewed a few who actually were in a body bag and were clinically dead, and then they're not dead, someone notices that there are some movements going on and that it's just shocking me, because being dead is not really being dead. It seems like we Yeah, and I know you've had some not experiences, but also studied some of these yeah happenings.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 34:57

That's right, that's right. It's it's. People can be pronounced dead and then spontaneously revive for no known reason. One of the great cases is a surgeon was doing surgery on this patient who died, and the there was, there were a few minutes where the cardiac monitor showed no activity and and he was preoccupied, the surgeon, that is. And when he left the room, he and his associate and the patient was alone in the room. They forgot to turn off the cardiac monitor so it just kept spilling out tape, you know, showing no activity, no activity. They went, they changed their clothes, and they came back and were standing in the doorway talking about whether there was anything they could have done to save this patient. And suddenly, the cardiac monitor showed activity. This was like 10 or 12 minutes later, and, and this person came back to to life and, and in that particular case, it was interesting, because there's this phenomenon called veridical perception, where the person, the near death experiencer, perceives something that there's no earthly way they could have perceived it, and yet it turns out to be accurate. And in this case, this surgeon had this habit of his whenever he was in surgery and his office would get calls, they would make a note on a sticky note, and they'd come into the operating room and stick it, and there would be like a string of sticky notes. And so when he finished surgery, he could grab this and then go and start returning his calls. Now this activity of coming in and putting a sticky note on there is not, you know, if your eyes are closed, taped shut, and you're unconscious, there's an, you know, anesthetized. There isn't anything there that would cue you that somebody's doing that. But he observed this from from above in the material aspect of his near death experience and and after, you know, after his heart started going again, and they stabilized him, he was still unconscious, they took him out of the room, brought him to recovery, and that's where he reported that he'd seen these yellow sticky notes. He had not been conscious in that, in that surgery room at all. So how would he know this obscure little detail, you know, that that doesn't have any sensory cue that he could have picked up on when he was lying there unconscious with his eyes taped shut, you know? So, so, so, yeah, there's, there are cases like that.

Jannecke Øinæs 38:05

It seems like there they are receiving some psychic abilities afterwards, that they bring back to life, and that it's also pretty hard coming back, that the integration part is what a lot of them speaks about and sometimes they leave their spouse and things are really changing. Maybe they change beliefs. Is that your experience as well?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 38:30

Yeah, so the way that I like to organize the After Effects is that in English, when you write a letter and then think of something afterwards. It's a PS and so after a near death experience, there's PSPS, and the first P stands for psychological people change their Well, as I said, they lose their fear of death. They change their values. They become less concerned about material things, more concerned about other people, and caring for other people and caring for the planet and and they appreciate life in like a much deeper way. So paradoxically, they they look forward to dying, and yet they don't want to hasten death, because they appreciate life, and they believe that their life has purpose and and the purpose is to advance in our capacity to love and to acquire knowledge. Those seem to be the two most important things to accomplish here on Earth. And so those psychological changes. Then the first S is spiritual, and people become much more interested in spirituality, often leaving organized religion, not always, but often leaving organized religion because. It's just not big enough for what they now know to be the spiritual domain and and they want to read and talk about spiritual topics, and they develop what in some corners is called spiritual gifts, such as precognition, knowing things that are going to happen, telepathy, having direct experience of what someone else is experiencing, and and and other kinds of psychic abilities, and like seeing deceased loved ones, not only their own, but other people. So a lot of near death experiences become mediums, and then the next P is physical people actually report that their metabolism seems different, their appetites for food, their need for sleep, their sensitivity to environmental, things, to drugs, is usually increased, and then the final S is social. And you alluded to that, that all these other changes reverberate in people's social worlds. So they change affiliations with organizations, change relationships with friends and even spouses. One of my doctoral students did hers, her dissertation on the effect on a marriage when a person, one of the spouses, has a near death experience. And what she found, in essence, is that, as I mentioned before, people's values change. So usually, when people first get together, their values are kind of similar, and but then one of them has a near death experience, and their values diverge, and those people are likely to divorce. She found a few cases, just a few where the other spouse was already kind of more near death experience, like in their values. So when this person had their n, d, e, their values actually converged more, and those people continued together happier than ever. So a lot depends on the effect on people's values and and how that affects the the primary relationship, it doesn't have to be marriage, it's any intimate relationship. So yeah, so there are, and then people also in the social domain, as you mentioned, sometimes they change careers because they find that they not only can't do the work that they used to do, but need to do work that is that puts their values more into action. So, yeah, so psychological, spiritual, physical and social changes,

Jannecke Øinæs 43:07

I feel I need to address the negative experiences that some have. I interviewed one lady who experienced the hellish kind of realm, and she said it was because of my religion. It was from my belief system. I was a Catholic, and I was so afraid of doing everything wrong all the time, and just kissing a boy at 16 was wrong. And she had this guilt with her, and then she had this nd, E and it was horrible for a long time, until the scenery totally changed and it became a heavenly realm again. So what is your experience with that whether our beliefs influence the NDA experience?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 43:52

Okay, so let me drop back and and don't let me lose the thread of your question about the influence of beliefs and the content of the near death experience of all the people who survive a close brush with death, about 80 to 90% won't remember anything unusual, but 10 to 20% will remember a near death experience. Of those 10 to 20% again, as far as we can tell, about 90% the experience is dominated by pleasurable feelings. So we in the research world, we don't talk about positive or negative experiences. We talk about pleasurable and distressing experiences, because eventually, even distressing experiences bring about the same positive after effects. So So to check in positive and negative terms just doesn't really capture it anyway. So of these, about 10% of people whose experiences dominated by distressing the. Feelings, the most common is that the they actually have all the same contents as a pleasurable experience, but somehow they're experiencing it negatively, like they they could be moving rapidly through a tunnel, but they don't want to be moving rapidly through a tunnel, so they're digging in their heels and and there are many cases where this seems to be a resistance to just going with the experience. And once the person surrenders, then it it turns pleasurable, um, and then the next most often is that the person finds themselves out in an absolute, empty, eternal void, totally alone, hyper aware of their aloneness and the the eternal isolation of being, Forever Alone in nothingness. And it's a particular kind of hell and and once again, the experience, without going into a lot of detail, the experience often leads to positive changes for the person in their in their earthly life, changes that they may that they might say they never would have had if it hadn't been for this nd that really helped them correct their course in life. Then least common are experiences of hellish kinds of environments. I've only encountered one case that involved fire. Otherwise, it's stuff like being continually encountering people who I've hurt, and just feeling over and over again all the pain that I've caused in my life. That's a particular kind of hell. It could be encountering evil harmful entities and who are trying to hurt me and and in many of these cases, both the void and the and the torment case, what I call torment cases, the near death experiencer at some point decides to surrender their own attempt to change the situation and call on some higher power to help them, and in most cases, there may be are a few where that didn't seem to happen, but in most cases, when they did their the experience, they were essentially rescued, and the experience turned pleasurable. So and again, they often will say that as bad as that experience was, that's what they needed to correct their course of in life, in in earthly life. So it seems to have a benevolent purpose, even though the experience is very painful

Jannecke Øinæs 48:22

and circling back to belief systems, whether that influence the NDE.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 48:30

Yeah, so it's some NDE will say that that their belief system influenced it and and Another pattern I've seen is that if the person dies under distressing circumstances, I think there can be maybe a slightly greater chance that they'll have a distressing near death experience, because that's the mindset that they're in at the time of their NDE but there are many cases where the near death experiencer says this, this is was not part of my belief system. I'm thinking of one nd ear who had a he was tormented by evil entities, but prior to his near death experience, he was just an atheist. He did not believe in anything supernatural, and so so this his experience absolutely contradicted his his philosophy in life. So I think that our beliefs, I do believe that our beliefs influence the the nature of the near death experience, or the death experience that we have, and also that sometimes there again, is a higher wisdom at work that is beyond even our belief system.

Jannecke Øinæs 49:57

Yeah, because it seems like you know Christians might meet Jesus and Buddhism and Buddha, right?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 50:04

And yet, there are cases where people met spiritual entities from other religions and didn't even know who this entity was until after their NDE and they did research and found out, they might have even been given a name of the entity that meant absolutely nothing to them. But when they research it, after their n, d, e, they find out who this was, and it's like, oh my gosh, I met this, you know, different person or a different entity. And so, yeah, I'm just thinking that they might have had that religion, another religion, in another life, and that the sort of the oversoul has more knowledge about another religion. And yeah, it could be. And that, you know, speaking if there, if we do indeed have an oversoul, it has access to everything, whether we've experienced it in an incarnation or not. And so, so so we, we are open to so much more in that state of consciousness than we are in in this one. Yeah, are you in no doubt anymore that there is life after death? Yes, and, and that knowing comes not just from all the near death experiences I've I've heard and read about and talked with people about, but about two years ago, I underwent three ketamine assisted therapy sessions just to Experience what I would experience there, and I had, I had some experiences that, that, you know, I had always read about near death experiences, losing their fear of death. And I I understood it, but I didn't know it until I had this an experience with ketamine. And now I know that my consciousness exists even very much, apart from this identity as Jan and and, yeah So, and I'd already had after death communication experiences. So if other people are still living, you know, in another state of being, then I would too. So, so I've gotten experiences from different domains that that I now say I don't believe I know.

Jannecke Øinæs 52:44

I think that's a big difference knowing and believing and actually having experienced it and really knowing. And I had the same experience where when I was out of my body after really practicing astral projection and lucid dreaming. That's when I got my answer, and I realized that everything I've been reading, it's not just woo, woo. It's actually true. I mean, there's so much more, and I don't know what's out there, but I just know that we're onto something, and that we will go on, and that I do exist outside my body. And that was such a relief to have experienced that, because I've been always open and been reading, reading and hearing, hearing, but actually experiencing it myself that made the whole difference, and it was such a relief.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 53:47

Yeah, so reassuring. Yes, absolutely, especially in times of trouble, to know that, you know, there is something there's something higher that is actually even going on here in the troubled time. So, yeah,

Jannecke Øinæs 54:05

yeah, I think there's a higher plan. This has been so interesting, and I'm so glad you came on the show today. And I have a few questions that I ask everybody, and my first one is, what is self love to you, Janice.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 54:22

I self love is and and for me, any love is the investment in the survival, well being and thriving of of the object of love. So when, if I love you, it's that I'm invested in your survival, your well being, you're thriving. If I love myself, I'm invested in my survival, my well being and my thriving and the planet and anything, yeah. Mm.

Jannecke Øinæs 55:00

And what is the deeper meaning of life from your perspective?

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 55:04

Well, with that, I draw from near death experiencers and and as I said, they say that our primary purpose in our earthly incarnations is to use the experience to advance in our capacity to love and and then secondarily, to acquire knowledge that somehow, when we acquire knowledge that benefits the entire all of all of the cosmos. So, so those two things,

Jannecke Øinæs 55:37

where can people find you if they want to learn more or connect with you.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 55:42

Well, my my email address is Jan dot Holden at UNT that stands for University of North Texas. U n t.edu and people are welcome to email me if they have questions.

Jannecke Øinæs 56:00

Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, and thank you for your magnificent work.

Dr. Janice Miner Holden 56:06

Thank you, Jannecke, it's just been a delight to talk with you. I really appreciate you inviting me you