So what do you hope the viewer gained by seeing the movie. Well,
I think there's something going on we can't explain ordinary scientific methods. Social worker
challenged me. She said, well, have you ever asked any of your
patients? And I said no, So she said, well, go and
do it for me. So I did, and the third patient I talked
to had a near death experience. Welcome to another edition of the Chicks on
the Right podcast. Very excited because we have been talking about the film After
Death for a couple of weeks now. We're huge fans of the film and
actually huge fans of our special guests that we have with us today, Doctor
Michael Sabam. I hope I'm saying that right, because I know it looks
like Sam. And we're very excited to have you specifically as our guest,
because your appearance in the film was actually our favorite, so we were hoping
that we would get to talk with you, and I think one of the
reasons that you are our favorite is because you were initially a skeptic about this
whole topic, and so we'll talk to you about that, but first we
want to let people know exactly who you are and for those of you who
haven't seen the film. Doctor Sabam is a cardiologist in private practice and on
staff at Northside in Saint Joe's Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. You have a
book. Your first was Recollections of Death, a medical investigation, and a
second book, Light and Death, One doctor's fascinating account of near death experiences,
and that is all based on your work founding the Atlanta Study, which
is the first comprehensive investigation of its kind into NDEs. So you've been featured
on several television programs. You're obviously very accomplished, and yet you were a
skeptic going into this. What changed your mind? What made you a believer
in near death experiences? Well? I had never heard of these experiences before
until I was said by cardiology fellowship at the University of Florida. And this
was in nineteen seventy five, probably long before either one of you were born.
That's very kind. Yeah, not true, we were born in the
seventies. It's very kind. Yeah. Anyway, I was shown Raymond Moody's
book Life After Life by a psychiatric social worker I was working with, and
she was going to be giving a talk at a Methodist Church on near death
experiences at the time, and Moody's book had only been out for a few
months at that time. That was his first edition book. And when I
read the book, I thought it was hogwash. I'd never heard of these
experiences before. I actually went around the hospital asking some of the older physicians
whether they had and they said no, and so I was very skeptical of
it. I thought Moody was making these up to sell books. And so
Sarah, who was the social worker, challenged me. She said, well,
have you ever asked any of your patients And I said no, So
she said, well, go and do it for me. So I did,
and the third patient I talked to had a near death experience, and
so that sort of got me interested in it, but certainly not convinced of
it. The presentation she gave she used the case that I gave her,
and after that we got together and said, you know, maybe there is
something to this. Why don't we devise a scientific study to look into it.
And so we did that and we started interviewing patients and over a period
of five years, one hundred and sixteen patients with near death experiences were recorded.
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slash Chicks. Now, we didn't do it the way Moody did it.
Raymond will fully admit, he actually admits it in his book that he did
not do a scientific study. And I was really into science at that time,
and so we had a protocol, we followed, went through the necessary
preliminaries of talking to patients on studies, et cetera, and we completed the
study. She had moved to Louisiana at the time, she was pursuing a
PhD in social work, and I went to Emery in Atlanta at the time
also, so we split ways, but the study continued. The thing that
really hooked me on was that I was interested in what I called at the
time the autoscopic which is a word meaning self visualization or commonly out of the
experience, part of the experience where they people feel as if they flowed up
out of their body and they can actually see what's going on in the room.
Now, as a cardiologist, I said, okay, so you're seeing
what's going on in the room. I felt sure I could poke holes in
that story. So I would then go and interrogate them further about what they
had seen, and most of the descriptions were very general, like people standing
around the bed, etc. Etc. There wasn't anything unique or specific about
what they had said or seen. But six of them were very, very
detailed, and so I took those six cases and verified their accuracy by medical
records or talking to other people who had been there, including myself, and
what I found was that they were extremely accurate. I then went to the
literature and look to whether there could have been some mundane other explanation for it,
and could not find any. And this was all then written up in
a book. But the thing that hooked me was the accuracy of their experience
that I could not explain that they said they saw from out of their body
during the resuscitation. And it had been shown many times in several studies that
if somebody has a cardiac arrest, they're fully unconscious with a flat EEG.
Fifteen to twenty seconds after the arrest starts. So in a hospital situation,
you're not going to get to the patient and resuscitate them within the fifteen or
twenty seconds. So they were unconscious and near death at the time, and
I did not know. I could not find any way they could have known
about these visual observations. They were having during their unconscious period. So you
know, at that point I've said, well, I really at the end
of the book, I left it kind of opened. I said, this
is truly happening. I think they're having these experiences, but the explanation really
was not known in science at that Oh so fascinating. Okay, So when
it comes to viewers coming in, the people that are skeptics or whoever,
people that believe in these what do you want the impact to be on the
viewer? So what do you hope the viewer gains by seeing the movie.
Well, I think there's something going on we can't explain about ordinary scientific methods.
I think that this is a spiritual experience. If it's not a material
experience, I think it's a spiritual experience. And I think what they're seeing
is actually occurring. Now, whether or not you consider these to be after
death experiences or not is another question. The definition of death medically is very
vague. We don't have a really good moment at which we know that the
patient is actually finally physically, irreversibly dead, So that point is still under
contention, and that's certainly something something that comes into play when when when you're
considering a patient for transplant transplanting their organs, you want to make sure that
they're physically dead at the time before you start taking their organs out. So
that's still up in the air, really, Like, I had no idea
that that was a thing. Yes, that is a thing, And there's
controversy now in the medical field and has been forever exactly how soon you can
take what's called an unpaired organ out of a person before, before they're or
at the point after they're they've died. You want to get the organ out
as soon as possible, that's the key, but you don't want to get
it out while they're still alive. Otherwise you're killing them when they're when you're
taking the organ out. So there's a real tension there and sometimes that's creates
problems. But anyway, that's a that's a medical problem. That's not a
problem with what's going on with a near death experience, except for the fact
that if you're trying to say that this is a before death or after death
experience, if you can't define the moment of death very clearly, then you
have a problem with determining whether it's before or after death. I personally believe,
as a Christian and biblically that these are before death experiences and not after
death experiences. And I know there have been a lot of books written about
I went to Heaven and I saw this, I saw that I met God,
I saw the golden a pathway up to God, etc. And deceased
relatives and friends. I do not buy into the fact that they're actually in
heaven doing that at that time. I think there's clear evidence in scripture that
shows that people are appointed to die once and then the judgment. That's Hebrews
nine twenty seven, and they're multiple verses in the Bible that back that up
also, So I think that it's a spiritual experience. I think it's a
very powerful experience which has powerful impact on their religious beliefs and belief in life
after death and other things in the patient who has the experience. But I
don't think it's a glimpse or what we call a tourist view of heaven.
The whole genre of books that I won't be mentioning names but basically claim that
it's trips to heaven, and they're called heaven tourism books, and that's come
under fire because from both the religious community and the medical community, because it's
not back down. So do you think that when these people, if they've
experienced these they've had these NDEs, do you think that when they die that
it could be totally different when they actually do die. I think I think
to know what heaven is like, you can read the scriptures scriptures and get
a picture of it from the word of God. You can't rely upon what
you saw or think you saw when you were only near death and not after
death. You haven't been there. Done now come back and tell you what
it's like. I have people coming into my house NonStop until literally New Year's
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we have ordained ministers who've had these experiences who say exactly that is the
one I have in mindsets that he has now changed the way he does funerals
based upon the fact that he can tell the people standing at the grape side
where this person is, what it's like, what they saw, and what
they can expect themselves. So it gets to be that that I speak out
against because I think that's wrong, overreaching. And also so before we get
off the subject, I think it's very important to state that and this is
where this is very important that if you have non Christians who are having pleasant
near death experiences and you have Christians who are having almost identical pleasant near death
experiences. You would say, well, okay, the Christian is a Christian
and are my Christian belief is that they will go to heaven. The non
Christian is having the same experience, and the Christian with authority says I went
to heaven. Well, then the non Christian will say I went to heaven
too, So I don't need your religion. I'll do it my own way.
It makes no difference. That's called universalism, as you will know,
and that is a I would think the biggest problem with claiming you went to
heaven if you're a Christian, because the non Christians are going there too,
because they have them. That's such a great point because I've had these discussions
with people where they're like, I don't who gets, like how that is
such a great point because I've heard that about non Christians and Christians and how
they do and these near death experiences go to the same place. So how
do you differentiate between Christians and non Christians? And I've had the discussion with
people and I'm so glad, I'm so glad you brought that up because it
is a little it's frustrating for Christians, right because you're like, wait,
I'm doing things right and I'm a Christian, so I don't get it,
Like that doesn't make any sense to me. That's so interesting that you brought
that up. Yeah, so right, many times in the New Testament said
I am the way the truth of life. No one comes Father except through
me. Well, you're coming to the Father and the near death experience and
you're seeing the Father and having a conversation with him and it's all great,
beautiful, and you're a non Christian. Boila makes no difference. So there
in the people that have had these experiences, did you find through the research
that there's something that is a common denominator with those people specifically, because my
dad, for example, suffered cardiac arrest and he was down for the count
for a few minutes before he got shocked back to life, and he did
not have any kind of experience like this at all. So I'm wondering if
there's any if there's something that the people who do have the experiences have in
common that you were able to uncover. No, nothing, We really don't
have the answer to that question, and it's a very very good question.
Only about ten to fifteen percent of people who have a bona fide cardiac arrest
will have a near death experience or at least recall having a near death experience
because all sorts of things are happening at the time. They're getting different drugs,
They could be forgetting it, or they could not actually have it have
the experience. We don't know. That's up for grabs. That's not a
good But the key here is though, if you don't have the experience and
you do have a cardiac arrest, that doesn't mean that you're not a Christian
or that you're not going to heaven if you're a group. Right, So
your dad needs to be reassured if he's a Christian that he's going to heaven,
not because he didn't have or not. And the fact that he did
not have the experience does not mean he is not going to heaven because these
other people were not going to heaven or hell either. So how is how
did all of your research into this change your own your own life, your
own perspective about life after death or near death experiences. Well, it changed
my life. It did not change my religion. I was a Christian to
begin with, albeit a much stronger Christian now than I was way back then.
What it did was reinforce my beliefs that there's more to this life than
the physical body. The spiritual part of life is real, and it has
ups and downs and the good and the bad to it. And I personally
feel, after dealing with these people and studying these experiences, that the spiritual
realm is a very real thing. It's just is there anything else, Miriam,
that you wanted to ask? Well, I guess the last thing would
just be what you're hoping that audiences will take away from this experience, because
I know, you know, for me personally, there was a moment where
I was so riveted the entire time, And then there was the one gentleman
whose name I can't remember now, who doesn't want to be here more because
of how overwhelmingly joyful the experience was. And that was hard to watch that
party, and yeah, to think, man, he's feeling like he's missing
out on something and he's still here to tell his story. Yeah. Yeah.
That was one of the fears when we first started investigating these things,
is that people would be seeing these experiences, claiming that they've been to heaven,
how wonderful it is, and whether we would encourage suicide at him because
of that, because people say, well, if that's the way it is,
and I believe him, then why don't I just go there? Now.
What's interesting, though, is that if someone who does attempt suicide and
has a near death experience, it causes them not to repeat the experience itself.
It does the exact opposite of what we had initially been afraid of when
we first started doing this work, and studies medical studies have been published in
good medical journals showing that a suicide attempter who has a near death experience will
be much less likely to attempt it again compared to one who did not have
the near death experience. And as you both probably know that suicide tends to
there's a high recidivism rate in suicide attempting, so it's actually a therapeutic deterrent
against repeating the suicide that is fascinating. Well, we really enjoyed the film,
enjoyed you in the film, and we have been encouraging everybody to visit
angel dot com slash Chicks to get tickets and make sure to see it.
Get tickets for your friends through the pay it Forward program at angel dot com.
Slash Chicks doctor Michael Sabam, we appreciate you being with us to talk
to you. Thank you so much. Okay, now we know the secret
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