Latest / WIXN AM 1460 - Shaw Local Radio / Talk Line: Bob Ginsberg on the Scientific Research Behind Life After Death

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Talk Line: Bob Ginsberg on the Scientific Research Behind Life After Death · WIXN AM 1460 - Shaw Local Radio

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  Speaker 1: Good morning, Sock Valley. You've joined the Waking crew here
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  Speaker 1: on FM ninety five one and AM fourteen sixty WIXN.
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  Speaker 1: It's eight thirty five and it's time for talk line,
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  Speaker 1: and today I guarantee you is going to be one
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  Speaker 1: of the most interesting conversations we've had on this segment.
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  Speaker 1: Joining us this morning is Bob Ginsburg, co founder and
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  Speaker 1: vice president of the Forever Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization
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  Speaker 1: dedicated to exploring the question of consciousness beyond physical death.
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  Speaker 1: The Foundation focuses on research, education, and support for those
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  Speaker 1: seeking a deeper understanding of life, loss, and what may
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  Speaker 1: come next. Bob is also the longtime host of These
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  Speaker 1: Signs of Life Radio and oversees the foundation's medium evaluation
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  Speaker 1: and certification program. You may also recognize him from the
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  Speaker 1: Netflix docu series Surviving Death, where his work examining evidence
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  Speaker 1: of life after death was featured. Bob, We're welcome and
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  Speaker 1: very happy to have you on the show, sir. How
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  Speaker 1: are you this morning?
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  Speaker 2: Good? It's my pleasure to be with you now.
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  Speaker 1: This is just interesting line of work, Bob, and I
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  Speaker 1: got to ask you what first led you to to
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  Speaker 1: put this kind of effort and dedication towards pursuing the
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  Speaker 1: answers to these questions that we all all have.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, if we had this conversation prior
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  Speaker 2: to two thousand and two, I would have thought it
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  Speaker 2: was absurd because I was a hardened left brain logical thinker,
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  Speaker 2: and the notion that we could survive after physical death,
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  Speaker 2: to me was just a fairy tale, you know. To me,
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  Speaker 2: we were brains. Brains produced consciousness. When we die, the
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  Speaker 2: brain is no more, so how could we be anymore?
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  Speaker 2: But I had, as so often the case, sometimes tragedy
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  Speaker 2: is a is a an impetus to get one to
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  Speaker 2: search for meaning. And I can quickly tell you that,
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  Speaker 2: you know, in the morning of September first, two thousand
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  Speaker 2: and two, my wife got up at three o'clock in
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  Speaker 2: the morning and trembling and shaking, and I finally got
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  Speaker 2: her to speak, and I said, it's the manage that
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  Speaker 2: something horrible is going to happen today. And I said,
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  Speaker 2: what does that mean? And she said, well, I can't
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  Speaker 2: tell you, but our lives are going to be changed forever.
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  Speaker 2: And to make a long story short, and sort of
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  Speaker 2: letting my guard down after checking on my three kids
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  Speaker 2: all day and in the evening we were at a restaurant.
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  Speaker 2: We'd had two cars, and my son and my daughter
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  Speaker 2: were in an hour book cart fresh and my daughter
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  Speaker 2: didn't survive and my son had very serious brain injuries.
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  Speaker 2: And after it became clear that my son was going
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  Speaker 2: to survive, I suddenly remembered that morning, you know, and
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  Speaker 2: I was obsessed with trying to find out how she knew,
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  Speaker 2: because she knew, and that wasn't the first time that
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  Speaker 2: she had, you know, precognitive experiences or visions that you'd
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  Speaker 2: like to call it. So that started me on a search,
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  Speaker 2: crisscrossing the United States, meeting with medical doctors and scientists
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  Speaker 2: and researchers that studied the mind, you know, and consciousness.
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  Speaker 2: And one thing led to another, and that's pretty much
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  Speaker 2: all I've been doing to the past. We formed a
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  Speaker 2: Foundation for Every Family Foundation in two thousand and three,
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  Speaker 2: and that's become my life since.
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  Speaker 1: Well. I am so sorry for your loss and the
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  Speaker 1: tragedy that befell your family. I can certainly understand how
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  Speaker 1: that would, you know, really put that question at the forefront.
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  Speaker 1: And you know, when people hear phrases like evidence of
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  Speaker 1: life after death, that can obviously mean very different things
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  Speaker 1: to us when you use that word, what kind of
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  Speaker 1: evidence are you talking about?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well to me, and you're absolutely right. I mean
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  Speaker 2: evidence means a lot of different things to a lot
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  Speaker 2: of different people. I was interested in the scientific evidence,
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  Speaker 2: in other words, laboratory research and you know and studies.
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  Speaker 2: Uh uh. And the evidence comes and it's not faith.
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  Speaker 2: You know, faith wasn't enough for me. You know, I
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  Speaker 2: needed you know, the people with credentialed, people with mds
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  Speaker 2: and PhDs after the name, that had evidence. So evidence
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  Speaker 2: that we study is near death experiences, you know, mediumship, reincarnation,
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  Speaker 2: after death communications. And we started off examining you know,
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  Speaker 2: telepathy and esp and things that show that our minds
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  Speaker 2: are not the same as our brains, that our minds
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  Speaker 2: can act independently of our brains. And you know that
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  Speaker 2: evidence comes in, you know, all these different things you
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  Speaker 2: know that I'm that I'm talking about. And when I
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  Speaker 2: say mind, you could interchangeably use the words consciousness or
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  Speaker 2: even soul, whatever you prefer, but something that shows that
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  Speaker 2: we're more than our physical bodies.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know I couldn't. I couldn't agree with you
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  Speaker 1: more on the fact that you know, there's there's something behind,
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  Speaker 1: you know, the thought of being more than our physical bodies,
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  Speaker 1: right Like oftentimes we I mean we're experiencing life and
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  Speaker 1: almost what feels like we're kind of piloting a a
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  Speaker 1: a bone and flesh mech so to speak.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, you know, absolutely, you know, I remember as
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  Speaker 2: a kid, you know, being very troubled with the fact,
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  Speaker 2: you know, I had tremendous fear of dying. You know,
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  Speaker 2: the finality of it was just you know, frightening, and
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  Speaker 2: you know, the thought that we could be gone forever
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  Speaker 2: just didn't make much sense to me watically in the
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  Speaker 2: big scheme of things, you know. So I think that
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  Speaker 2: going back in history, like the ancients new things and
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  Speaker 2: communicated with their loved ones and spirit on a regular basis.
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  Speaker 2: And there have been indigenous tribes that communicated every morning.
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  Speaker 2: They would get together and they would discuss their dreams,
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  Speaker 2: and they would base their actions based on, you know,
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  Speaker 2: on their dreams. And you know, over the years that's
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  Speaker 2: sort of gotten leaned out of us. But we kind
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  Speaker 2: of are now discovering what the ancients once knew, you know.
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  Speaker 2: And there are so many credible studies and research that
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  Speaker 2: have have been done over the years that you know,
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  Speaker 2: when you look at everything as a whole, you know,
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  Speaker 2: the survival of consciousness seems to be the most plausible explanation.
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  Speaker 1: Now in your years of research, has there been a
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  Speaker 1: maybe a specific case or experience that made you stop
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  Speaker 1: and say, like, I really think something is going on here.
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  Speaker 1: There is something to this thought that our consciousness persists
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  Speaker 1: after our physical death.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I mean personal accounts. You know, I
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  Speaker 2: was a very hard judge, and people have signs and communications,
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  Speaker 2: you know, all the time. I didn't really believe in
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  Speaker 2: an afterlife, so I wouldn't recognize anything that was happening.
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  Speaker 2: But you know, try to make a personal experience that
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  Speaker 2: affected me was that my daughter was alive. We had
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  Speaker 2: moved from one house to another, and she was very,
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  Speaker 2: very upset, and every month she would ask my wife
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  Speaker 2: if she could go back to our old house and
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  Speaker 2: just ask if we could visit her old room. She
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  Speaker 2: just loved her room. She had a loft room really
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  Speaker 2: attached to it. And of course, every you know, my
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  Speaker 2: wife would say no, no, no, we can't do that.
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  Speaker 2: It was not appropriate knock on somebody's door, ands a
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  Speaker 2: coal look at the bedroom. But she persisted in over
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  Speaker 2: three years or she would constantly ask for that. And then,
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  Speaker 2: you know, one day, my wife's cousin was at an
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  Speaker 2: affair since the wedding or something, and it turns out
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  Speaker 2: that one of the guests was were the people that
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  Speaker 2: bought our old house. And then my wife's cousin knew them,
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  Speaker 2: and she said, I have to tell you a story.
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  Speaker 2: She said that her daughter, who was the same age
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  Speaker 2: as my daughter, had her same room, came down in
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  Speaker 2: one night and told her mother that she just saw
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  Speaker 2: a young girl walk across her room. And her mother
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  Speaker 2: added that her daughter had never had a bad dream,
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  Speaker 2: never had any type of nightmare or experience. So the
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  Speaker 2: mother just said, okay, we'll talk about this in the morning.
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  Speaker 2: And in the morning, they were all sitting at the
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  Speaker 2: breakfast table and they had the paper on the table,
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  Speaker 2: and on the front page of the paper was the
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  Speaker 2: story of the accident that my kids were in. And
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  Speaker 2: it turns out that she saw the vision of my
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  Speaker 2: daughter walking at or of something girl walking across the
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  Speaker 2: room ten minutes after my daughter was pronounced dead. You know,
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  Speaker 2: and even though I didn't believe in anything, you know,
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  Speaker 2: goes or apparitions and things like that, nature when I
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  Speaker 2: stepped back as a wait a second. My daughter this
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  Speaker 2: was her one goal in life because she was obsessed
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  Speaker 2: with seeing her old room again. What would be the
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  Speaker 2: first place that she would go when she was free
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  Speaker 2: of the body. And you know, it was just pure consciousness.
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  Speaker 2: So that to me, you know, and that may sound
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  Speaker 2: a little preposterous to people, but it came attached to
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  Speaker 2: a knowing that I had that this was our And
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  Speaker 2: you know.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of folks that you hear a lot of cases,
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  Speaker 1: you know, with with near death experiences, even of people
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  Speaker 1: you know, reporting kind of floating out of the body,
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  Speaker 1: seeing those around them, or you know, maybe it's the
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  Speaker 1: light at the end of the tunnel. Does there seem
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  Speaker 1: to be a commonality with some of these stories or
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  Speaker 1: is it more personal to people and maybe how that
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  Speaker 1: you know, the after death and arrative has been kind
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  Speaker 1: of given to them.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think that the near death experiences you
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  Speaker 2: mentioned is probably the most compelling evidence because we have
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  Speaker 2: people that meet every definition that medical science has for death.
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  Speaker 2: They have no brain ways, they have no heartbeat, they
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  Speaker 2: have no reflexes, they have no respiration, you know, medical sciences,
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  Speaker 2: they're dead. And yet those that gets resuscitated talk of
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  Speaker 2: all these experiences you mentioned, leaving their body and watching
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  Speaker 2: everything that goes on. There have been studies by doctor
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  Speaker 2: Kenneth Ring among people who are blind. They've been sightless
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  Speaker 2: since they were born, and yet when they get resuscitated,
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  Speaker 2: they can describe in great detail the equipment, the colors
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  Speaker 2: everybody was wearing, who was going in and out, and
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  Speaker 2: so forth, which should not be possible. You know. It
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  Speaker 2: shows that, you know, our consciousness goes out of the
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  Speaker 2: body at least for that period of time, and then
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  Speaker 2: goes back in and there. You know, after decades of
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  Speaker 2: we serve there are a lot of commonalities. Not everybody sees,
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  Speaker 2: you know, goes through the tunnel and so forth, but
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  Speaker 2: there are certain things that are common experiences that people report.
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  Speaker 2: So to me, you know, the near death experiences is
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  Speaker 2: very uh compelling when we talk about evidence that are
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  Speaker 2: our minds are not contained in our skulls. You know.
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  Speaker 2: Remote viewing is an example of that, right you know,
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  Speaker 2: in the c I, the c I A and during
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  Speaker 2: the Cold War with the Russian Russians recruited these remote
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  Speaker 2: viewers who were able to send their consciousness to lack
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  Speaker 2: of a better term, they were only getting given latitude
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  Speaker 2: and longitude coordinates, and they were usually important military you
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  Speaker 2: know sites, and then and they would draw depictions of
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  Speaker 2: what they saw, you know, in quotes, and they were
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  Speaker 2: incredibly you know, accurate, you know, and you say, well,
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  Speaker 2: how is that possible? The remote viewer is in one
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  Speaker 2: end of the country and the and the target is
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  Speaker 2: in another country. How could they see what's going on
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  Speaker 2: somewhere else? So, you know, that's another example of our
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  Speaker 2: of our minds expending beyond the brain.
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  Speaker 1: Now you've spent a lot of time, you know, studying
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  Speaker 1: mediumship under controlled conditions. Things like the skeptics like to argue,
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  Speaker 1: you know, that some of these experiences or cases are
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  Speaker 1: either subjective or coincidental. And I mean, of course there's
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  Speaker 1: clearly bad actors in this space. How do you separate
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  Speaker 1: sincere research from you know, maybe some of the outright
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  Speaker 1: fraud of somebody trying to come to portray themselves as
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  Speaker 1: something they're not.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, that was a main problem that
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  Speaker 2: I encountered early on. And like in my in my
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  Speaker 2: first book, The Medium Explosion, I said that eighty five
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  Speaker 2: to ninety percent of all the practicing mediums today can't
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  Speaker 2: do what they claim, which didn't make me very popular
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  Speaker 2: in the mediumship community, but it I you know, worked
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  Speaker 2: on a process that we could identify those that could
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  Speaker 2: versus those who can't. And I met with a lot
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  Speaker 2: of scientists that studied medingship in the university's settings, and
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  Speaker 2: we've devised our own process of evaluating evidence with you know,
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  Speaker 2: on the controlled conditions, and the data has held up.
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  Speaker 2: I mean there was only ten to fifteen percent of
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  Speaker 2: the people that went through our process actually you know,
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  Speaker 2: gain certification. So there is a lot of fraud, you know,
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  Speaker 2: in it. But you know, those who can, they're just
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  Speaker 2: incredible with information that they couldn't possibly have win, you know,
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  Speaker 2: or research. Today it's a problem because of the Internet
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  Speaker 2: and social media. You know, a medium if they have
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  Speaker 2: in your name, they could just pull it up on
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  Speaker 2: Facebook through other sources and then learn about half your life. So,
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  Speaker 2: you know, fraud is easy. But when I said that
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  Speaker 2: eighty five percent can't do what they claim, I didn't
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  Speaker 2: mean to suggest that they were all fraudulent. Im and
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  Speaker 2: some are, but most aren't. They're just you know, we
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  Speaker 2: all have intuitive ability to certain degrees, you know, but
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  Speaker 2: some although you know, they haven't experience. The friends say well,
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  Speaker 2: you should be a medium. There were no regulatory controls
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  Speaker 2: over that. There's no licensing, there are no ethical guidelines.
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  Speaker 2: You know, nobody legitimizes and evaluates the proficiency. There's no
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  Speaker 2: continuing education. So anybody could say I'm a medium, hang
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  Speaker 2: out a shingle, and start charging a lot of money.
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  Speaker 2: It's a problem because the meeting with people in profound grief,
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  Speaker 2: and if you're on the fence about whether or not
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  Speaker 2: your loved one can still survive, and you go to
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  Speaker 2: a medium and you have a terrible, non evidential reading,
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  Speaker 2: you may lead that reading and worship and when you
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  Speaker 2: got there, you know, on the other hand, something that's
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  Speaker 2: really profoundly evidential can have a huge positive effect on
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  Speaker 2: your grief because you go forward with the knowledge that
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  Speaker 2: your loved one still survives in some form, and that
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  Speaker 2: enables you to navigate your life in a meaningful and
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  Speaker 2: productive way.
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  Speaker 1: Well, Bob, we're about out of time. So I got
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  Speaker 1: one final question, and I think the one that everyone
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  Speaker 1: wants to know is that, after everything you've seen and studied,
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  Speaker 1: how certain are you personally that conscious continues after death?
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  Speaker 1: And why?
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  Speaker 2: Well, well, you know, I started off at one percent certain.
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  Speaker 2: It took me seven years, even after we started the foundation,
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  Speaker 2: to finally relent under the weight of evidence. And now
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  Speaker 2: you know, I would say I'm ninety nine percent certain.
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  Speaker 2: I've come full circles of one percent nine. I think
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  Speaker 2: it's always important for everybody to be an open minded skeptic,
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  Speaker 2: you know, and and just follow the evidence. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: can we ever be completely sure? No, but when you
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  Speaker 2: take everything, all the disciplines of research, I think that's
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  Speaker 2: a logical conclusion to come.
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  Speaker 1: So well, Bob, thank you so much for coming on
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  Speaker 1: the show and sharing all this information. Just it just
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  Speaker 1: leaves you wondering even more in wanting to search the question,
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  Speaker 1: so you keep you keep on searching and uh and
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  Speaker 1: and looking for those answers for us. Bob, I appreciate it.
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  Speaker 2: I will thank you very much.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks, Bob,