Original subtitles

SOLDIER: Fire!

WILLIAM SHATNER: Eerie recollections...

of someone else's memories.

Two people who share one mind.

And people who have been able to see their own bodies

while at the point of death.

What happens to us after we die?

Do our memories or our personalities--

everything that makes us who we are--

does it all just... disappear?

Or do we have a consciousness, a-a soul...

that lives on?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪

[wind whistling]

SHATNER: Lynchburg, Virginia.

November 10, 2008.

Accomplished neurosurgeon, Dr. Eben Alexander,

is rushed to the hospital after suffering

from severe back spasms and headaches.

After performing a spinal tap, doctors discover that

his spine and brain are swollen

with a thick, pus-filled liquid--

the sign of a deadly meningitis infection.

Shortly afterward, Dr. Alexander slips into a coma.

His brain begins shutting down.

My brain was being overrun by an extremely primitive,

aggressive bacterial infection.

One that is almost uniformly fatal.

Some of the fundamental brain stem reflexes were absent.

My pupils weren't responding.

My neocortex was horribly damaged.

People just don't come back from this kind of meningitis.

My doctors called my family together,

and they felt that there was no chance for recovery.

SHATNER: As a surgeon, Dr. Alexander helped save the lives

of countless others.

Now he lies helpless, at the mercy

of the killer bacteria that is whittling

his brain function down to nothing.

But then, something remarkable happens.

I was in very deep coma.

My brain was fully inflamed from this.

All eight lobes were involved.

Uh, there was really no place in my brain

for any kind of conscious experience to happen.

SHATNER: After clinging to life by the barest of threads,

Dr. Alexander eventually makes an extraordinary recovery--

one that baffles his physicians.

But perhaps even more baffling is the inexplicable array

of sensations that Dr. Alexander believes he experienced

while in a coma.

I was rescued by this slowly spinning white light

that came packaged with a perfect musical melody.

I felt a sensation of going through a tunnel,

being lifted up out of space and time,

and that opened up into this rich ultra-real valley

that I call the Gateway Valley.

It was an incredible, beautiful scene,

and yet, the most profound mystery.

SHATNER: Did Dr. Alexander experience

a hallucination?

Or was he really given a glimpse

into a life beyond the one we know?

A life beyond death?

If true,

the idea is almost too incredible to comprehend.

But consider this: Dr. Alexander

is just one of millions who, at the point of death,

claim to have taken the same, virtually identical journey--

a journey which is collectively referred to

as a near-death experience.

GREGORY SHUSHAN: A near-death experience is when

somebody dies clinically,

and they come back to life and describe having had

strange experiences,

such as traveling through darkness,

emerging into another realm,

meeting deceased relatives or a being of light,

traveling back to the body,

often being told to go back to the body by this being of light.

Raymond Moody was really the pioneering figure

in the scientific study of near-death experiences,

who wrote a book called Life After Life.

Before Moody came along,

you had descriptions of these accounts,

but nobody called it a near-death experience.

In the United States, about 800 people a day

report that they're having near-death experiences.

And if you think about that over the course of years

and across the whole world,

that's probably millions of people,

which makes me think that this is a real phenomenon.

People are really experiencing this.

They're not making it up.

Before my coma, I fully bought into the, uh, teachings,

uh, that the physical world is all that exists.

That's kind of the conventional scientific model.

But when I first opened my eyes in that ICU bed,

my brain was absolutely wrecked,

and all I remembered was where I'd been,

that extraordinary spiritual journey deep in coma.

That's why near-death experiencers

come back to this world and realize

that we are eternal spiritual beings

and that our physical body is only a vessel

that serves our soul in transition

through this phase of our journey.

SHATNER: The soul?

The intangible essence of who we are that lives on after we die?

If the near-death experiences reported by millions

have, in fact, really happened as described,

then could this be proof

that the soul actually exists,

and that there really is some form of life

beyond death?

The concept of the soul is one of the deepest,

most far-reaching questions in all of science,

and for that matter, in all of human history.

Throughout history, poets, philosophers have tried

to single out what is the soul,

what is the essence of what makes us human?

It speaks to our yearning for more time.

To go beyond the short amount of time

that's been given us as human beings.

If you look to questions about the soul,

you see that these really speak to our fears, our desires,

what we want most and what matters most.

SHATNER: Not surprisingly, not everyone's convinced

that the soul really exists.

As far as many in the scientific community are concerned,

it is little more than a concept brought about

by wishful thinking.

KAKU: There is a theory

that says that people who are prone

to have these near-death experiences are also prone

to have lots of dream activity during REM sleep.

Maybe they were hallucinating, or some people think that, aha,

maybe that could explain near-death experience.

I would maintain, along with virtually everybody

who is engaged in the study of near-death experiences,

that these are not aberrations, these are not hallucinations.

How is it possible that people are having

such rich conscious experiences

when the brain itself is not functioning?

There's a case report in September 2018

in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseaseon my case,

and it makes it clear to anyone in the medical profession

that I was deathly ill and that my brain was terribly devastated

by this infection

and should not have been able to produce

any kind of consciousness.

From my point of view, death of the physical body

is not the end of the conscious awareness.

Near-death experiences are showing us,

in no uncertain fashion, that we are souls

living in a spiritual universe and that all the major factors

involved in the events of our lives

have to do with that soul journey

and with that spiritual nature.

SHATNER: Consciousness in the absence of brain activity?

According to mainstream scientists,

such a thing is not possible.

But what if they're missing the target?

Perhaps the answer can be found

by investigating further evidence that,

not only does a soul exist,

but it might actually be transplanted

from one body to another.

SHATNER: Atlanta, Grgia. December 1992.

17-year-old Amy Tippins is having difficulty breathing.

Suspecting that she has some form of pneumonia,

she makes an appointment with her family doctor.

But the actual diagnosis she receives is,

in a word, shocking.

TIPPINS: My senior year of high school,

I started developing what I thought was pneumonia,

and then when they went in to do some further testing,

they realized I didn't have pneumonia,

it was actually a tumor pushing on my diaphragm

and making it much harder for me to breathe,

and I was in full liver failure.

They said, "She'll," you know, "she needs to have a transplant

or she'll hemorrhage to death."

SHATNER: With time running out,

Amy received her new liver and survived.

But in the months following her transplant,

she found herself exhibiting interests and abilities

that were, not only new to her,

but also surprising.

TIPPINS: Not long after surgery,

some things about myself and some of my traits had changed.

Within a couple of years of my transplant,

I really started to love projects,

like replacing flooring on my own.

I never saw flooring being put in.

I never saw anything like that being done.

What I discovered is it was actually fun

to work with my hands.

Just kind of go, "Huh, that's interesting."

SHATNER: Of course, it isn't surprising that people

who have had lifesaving transplant operations

often report experiencing

-a new outlook on life. -[heart beating]

But new interests?

New personality traits?

Is it possible that Amy Tippins was getting these

from somewhere else?

I knew my donor was a male, I knew he was 47

and that he had been killed in a car wreck in Columbus, Georgia.

So I went to the library and I started

looking up obituaries from that time.

And I kind of backed into his obituary,

and backed into figuring out who he was.

What I discovered is he was a police officer.

He was 47 and his name was Mike.

His sister told me that he did a lot of his own home renovation.

He also liked to work with his hands.

He liked to do projects.

When I found out who my donor was, it made a lot more sense

on why some things about myself and some of my traits

had changed after transplant.

SHATNER: Personality traits and even recreational interests

coming from a transplanted organ?

Is such a bizarre notion even scientifically possible?

I've had clients come to the office

who've had organ transplants

who are baffled by what they experience,

and some did have memories that were foreign to them.

And then somehow or other found out what the person was like

whose organ that they now have, and it matches.

It's unusual, and I don't have an explanation for it.

MISHLOVE: They very often report not only the memories of the donor

but sometimes the behavioral patterns of the donor.

It certainly suggests that memory

and-and even behavior patterns can be embedded

in these organs in ways that science has no clue.

GARY SCHWARTZ: After looking at all the cases

that we had access to, I developed a theory about how

if the brain can learn, then other organs

like the heart or the lungs or the liver could learn.

We analyzed ten of the best cases

where the-- it was clear that the individual

had these kinds of personality changes,

and it was only later that they then met family members.

[indistinct radio chatter]

One case in particular was of a young boy

who had been killed in a drive-by shooting,

and his heart was donated

to a foundry worker who was 47 years old.

What happened was he developed a passion for classical music.

And then he subsequently ended up meeting the mother

of this young boy, and he learned that this young man

was taking classical violin lessons

and literally was shot as he was leaving his music lessons.

From my point of view, it simply goes to show

that as much as we want to pretend that things

like mind and consciousness and personality

are all stuck in the brain, um, they're really not.

SHATNER: Could our memories, our identities,

even our consciousness, be stored in not just our brains,

but within each and every part of our bodies?

If that's true, could these traits also be inherited,

just like the color of our eyes or the size of our ears?

According to a groundbreaking study conducted

at the Icahn School of Medicine

at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City,

the answer might just be a resounding yes.

About 25 years ago, we began studying the adult children

of Holocaust survivors.

And what we learned was that Holocaust offspring

were more likely to have been diagnosed

with mood and anxiety disorders.

And we were able to observe epigenetic changes

on, actually, two small segments of two stress-related genes,

which really captured our attention.

Then you start to wonder why a child of a trauma survivor

would have such a change on their DNA.

Is there a way that information somehow stays with us,

maybe in our germ cells,

maybe in other places, and then somehow, they are passed?

SCHWARTZ: The findings about the cross-generational

parent transfer from Holocaust survivors to their children,

is evidence that the, uh, the body itself

is a much more exquisite system

for storing energy information about our lives.

And that that information could not only be transferred

in the case of an organ transplant,

but it also could be transferred

and continued across generations.

KINSELLA: Studies like this are suggesting

that we really don't know how mind, how memory,

how experience work, we don't know how that resonates

with us in body.

HAWKES: I think it's very clear that there's something

about us as beings that's beyond the brain,

and people have used the word soul or spirit.

It's one of those very curious and unexplained mysteries

of who are we

and what comes and goes with our bodies,

our cells, our organs.

His DNA is still in my bloodstream,

and they say that DNA carries memories.

To this day, I still continue to find out information about him.

I'd go, "Huh, that's interesting

in how it relates to me."

Can transplanted organs really contain

some part of the donor's identity?

Conventional medicine believes the notion is far-fetched.

So how do you explain what we just saw?

Is our life experience encoded not just in our brain

but throughout our entire body?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining

whether such a connection exists between two people

who are physically identical in every way.

Twins.

SHATNER: Los Angeles, California.

March 2004.

Linda Jamison is out for a romantic evening

when she becomes struck by a strange

and overpowering sensation.

Something in her tells her that her identical twin sister Terry

is in mortal danger.

LINDA: While I was on a date with a guy,

in the middle of the dinner, I said, "Oh, my gosh,

"I... I have this horrible feeling.

"I have to get home to see if Terry's okay,

'cause I don't feel she's okay."

And when I went home, I went up to our apartment,

and Terry was lying in bed, unable to speak or hear.

And, I mean, it was so terrifying.

It was kind of like a weird virus that had taken me over...

-It was a virus. -...like, very quickly.

[siren wailing]

And she got me to the ER just in time and they said, "Wow,

you could have died."

SHATNER: Faced with what could have been a fatal viral infection,

Terry was saved in the nick of time.

But was Linda's belief that her sister was in danger

merely a coincidence, or was it something more?

Twins share more than genes.

They've shared an intrauterine environment.

They've shared a set of early experiences together.

They have been there with each other through early attachments

and early developmental milestones.

So the idea that twins feel really connected to each other

is not very surprising.

LINDA: It's a weird thing to describe to singletons,

but we've always had that mysterious bond,

that special bond twins have

where they can feel each other's pain

or they can determine what's gonna happen next

-with the other twin. -We're just always intuiting

what the other wants or what the other twin needs

or, you know, helping each other constantly.

SHATNER: Twins,

each one constantly in sync

with what the other wants or needs?

It is often said that the bond between twins is so strong,

they can actually read each other's minds.

But is that just an expression,

or could it be true?

Studies that were done in Copenhagen and in London

took monozygotic pairs--

so really, really twins, absolute identical DNA--

isolated them, and then,

for one of them, uh, was subjected

to different kinds of shocks.

The distant twin was wired up with polygraph equipment.

So these were designed to see

what was happening in the distant twin.

But one shock would have been literally an electric shock,

another would be that, at a time that they didn't know,

somebody behind them would drop a whole bunch of plates,

make a big racket.

So they found roughly eight to ten percent

of the twins that were tested showed that there was

some kind of a correlation between one person

getting a shock and the other person responding.

30% of twins report a telepathic connection with their twin,

and it is because they're sharing a similar genetic code

on some level, but on another level,

they're also connected on a soul level

that allows them to stay in this telepathic communication

at all times.

But we also called it "twin tuition,"

because there was no word to describe that weird,

you know, mysterious feeling where your twin is suffering

somewhere, and you pick up on it somehow and even feel

the physical pain that that twin is feeling.

It's very eerie.

[heart beating]

SHATNER: Despite the claims of Linda and Terry Jamison,

and thousands more like them,

skeptics often argue that what is interpreted

as a psychic connection between twins

is merely a misinterpretation

of the fondness they have for each other.

But if identical twins really do share

an inexplicable attachment,

then perhaps evidence of this link can be found

in cases of twins who have remarkable similarities,

even though they were raised separately.

So I've been working with twins raised apart for many years.

And we find that identical twins do show many traits in common,

even after years of separation.

So for example, the Jim twins, Jim Lewis and Jim Springer,

grew up in Ohio about 30 or 40 miles apart.

And they had a long list of similarities.

For one thing, they both had woodworking benches

in their houses; they both loved to do woodwork.

They both had dogs named Toy, and they both had older sons

that they named James Allen.

Both of them worked part-time as sheriffs,

both drove light blue Chevrolets, and they both

used to vacation on the same three-block strip

of beach in Florida.

We don't know the reason for that, but the point is

that when you see these similarities repeated

in identical twins raised apart, and not in fraternals,

it creates a whole new set of hypotheses

that you can begin to explore.

TERRY: Whether people want to look at the evidence,

that's up to them.

And we're not trying to convince anyone, but it's a weird thing.

It's like we're two wings of a bird.

We believe that we were bifurcated--

a bifurcated soul-- which means one soul with two bodies.

SHATNER: If one soul can be shared between two people,

as Linda and Terry Jamison believe, could it also explain

how twins appear to communicate with each other telepathically?

And if so, does this shared consciousness

simply go away after one of them dies?

Perhaps the answer can be found by hearing the story of a man

who believes his soul doesn't just serve onebody...

...but several.

SHATNER: Sharpsburg, Maryland.

May 1991.

Connecticut fire chief, Jeffrey Keene,

is on a road trip with his wife

when suddenly he feels a strange urge

to make a detour.

My wife and I, uh, like to go antique hunting,

and we had been through Pennsylvania

and headed down into Maryland.

We were very near where the Battle of Antietam

had been fought,

and I was always impressed

with the bravery of the men that fought in the Civil War.

It strikes a chord in you.

So I asked my wife if it was okay if we, uh,

take a little side trip to go see the battlefield.

SOLDIER: Fire!

SHATNER: On September 17, 1862,

Union forces cornered Confederate troops

near Antietam Creek as they attempted an incursion

into Maryland.

It was the first major battle of the Civil War

to take place on Union soil.

All told, almost 125,000 soldiers took part

in the fighting.

And by day's end,

the battlefield was soaked with the blood

of more than 22,000 souls.

Now, nearly 130 years later,

Jeffrey Keene and his wife arrived at the battlefield,

hoping to experience a bit of this history.

But while visiting the site,

Jeffrey had a very different experience,

one that would prove to be far more personal

than he could ever have imagined.

KEENE: Well, we went to the battlefield, and all of a sudden

I couldn't breathe.

I started crying, uh, I had burning tears

running down my cheek, I didn't know what was going on.

And, uh, I literally crawled up to the side of the road

and, uh, got myself together, went back to the car.

On the, uh, way home, we stopped at a gift store, and, uh,

there was a magazine there.

The whole magazine was done on Antietam.

And when we got home, I was reading through,

and came across a full-figure picture

of General John B. Gordon.

He was a colonel at the battle,

and he'd been wounded five times, but he-he survived.

And I looked at the face, and I told people

I know the face very well.

I shave it every morning.

SHATNER: Jeffrey Keene.

Confederate General John B. Gordon.

The resemblance is, in a word, uncanny.

So much so that Jeffrey began to wonder...

...could the strange reaction he experienced

while visiting Antietam

be some sort of emotional echo?

A connection that suggests that Jeffrey Keene

is actually John B. Gordon reincarnated?

Reincarnation is the process that allows your soul

to take on a new life, a new body.

In other words, you are born in a human body,

you finish that cycle, you are deceased, then you

continue to recycle that soul from one body to the next while

being within the same Earth plane.

KEENE: A lot of people say to me,

"Why don't I remember lifetimes?"

I say, "You do, you just don't realize that you do."

There'll be haunting songs,

a desire to go to certain places, countries and things.

The furniture that you use to decorate your house,

your hobbies, the clothes you wear, and so on.

SHATNER: Can departed souls really pass into new bodies?

And if so, what evidence might there be

to support such an incredible claim?

According to Jeffrey Keene, there are signs

that can be found once you know where to look for them.

KEENE: In Antietam, where Gordon was wounded,

he described that he had been shot through the right calf,

higher up on the same leg,

and the left arm.

So I had a pretty good picture of where he'd been wounded.

Now, on my right leg,

I have, uh, I guess you would call them varicose veins.

I only have them in two places: on my right calf,

higher up on the same leg.

My left arm, I had a blood clot removed

when I was in my 20s.

It seems to me that, uh,

could have been one of the places Gordon had been wounded.

But you use the word "coincidence,"

it can apply in some cases,

uh, but there are small coincidences

and then there's big coincidences.

What I have is evidence.

I have very strong evidence.

SHATNER: Are Jeffrey Keene's scars

evidence that our souls are recycled back into this world

after we die?

According to some researchers, the answer is yes.

And they argue that further proof can be found

not only in physical scars...

but also in mental ones.

There's been substantial research done

at the University of Virginia with children,

showing that a subset of these children

remember times before they were born

that are then confirmed by historical records.

And those data are very consistent with the idea

that reincarnation is a real phenomenon.

COREY: The reason why it is significant

to study children, it is because their memories

are still fresh-- they haven't been

on the Earth for a very long time, so...

they still have that remembrance of the past life

very vividly in their mind.

For example, one of the most famous reincarnation stories

is that of Shanti Devi.

Shanti, since the age of four, kept telling her parents

that she came from another town called Mathura.

After being interviewed by her teachers,

she gives them the name of her husband, who was still alive

and lived in Mathura at that time.

They end up locating a merchant in Mathura

whose wife had died ten days after giving birth to their son.

Shanti recognizes him and says,

"This is my husband, Kedar Nath."

She even says that he neglected to carry out the promises

that he made on her deathbed.

KINSELLA: Ultimately, Mahatma Gandhi set up a commission

to determine whether or not this story was accurate,

and the committee members decided that this was, in fact,

proof of reincarnation.

KEENE: I don't think anybody should be forced

to believe anything.

But I know it's true to me.

You have to make up your own mind.

All I ask is you keep an open mind.

If our souls can, in fact, be recycled,

I hope mine doesn't get put in the shredder.

But if, as many believe,

we're locked in a never-ending cycle of life and rebirth,

what happens when that cycle gets interrupted

and we're literally brought back from the dead?

Perhaps the answer can be found by meeting people

who not only returned,

but have come back

with extraordinary abilities.

SHATNER: Seattle, Washington.

December 1976.

Research biologist, Joyce Hawkes,

is spending a quiet Saturday at home.

But on this particular day,

something happens that will alter

the course of her entire life.

[whirring]

HAWKES: I was vacuuming

right in front of my fireplace, and up on the ledge

on the fireplace was a large, beautiful leaded glass window

that I'd purchased in an antique store.

All of a sudden, this leaded glass window is coming at me.

And I like, "Ah," boom and it hits me.

And all I remember then is just, all of a sudden,

in front of me was a long, dark tunnel,

and at the end was this bright light.

And I was drawn to it.

Then I passed through the entrance to the light

and I was in a place of rolling hills

and beautiful color.

And then, bang, I'm back,

all of a sudden, on the floor in my living room.

SHATNER: In the months after her near-death experience,

Joyce hoped to return to normalcy

and resume her scientific work in the lab.

But she soon realized that, after her brush

with the afterlife, nothing would be the same.

Because Joyce now had the ability

to see things that no one else could.

What I noticed is I could see inside people's bodies,

I could read their bodies.

And there are times when I actually can look

into people's bodies and see something going on

that hasn't been diagnosed.

I resigned my position at the lab

and I started seeing individuals in the basement of my house.

One time, a woman came to me and was on the treatment table

and, all of a sudden, her abdomen opened up

and I saw a small tumor in a very precise location.

And I said, "Please go to your doctor and have it checked out."

She had to have surgery, and it saved her

from having a very serious kind of uterine cancer.

KINSELLA: In the case of near-death experiences,

a number of people report developing heightened intuition,

gaining some kind of psychic ability.

They report manifestations of the paranormal that seem to be

much more common after these kinds of experiences.

MISHLOVE: A materialistic scientist would say, "How can that be?

These things don't exist at all,"

but, in fact, they're reported hundreds and hundreds of times.

HAWKES: There's something beyond the neurons,

the astrocytes, the glial cells, in our brain

going "jun, jun, jun, jun."

Something beyond that which we have awareness of.

SHATNER: The power to see through flesh

and diagnose ailments might seem preposterous.

But could it be true?

Is it possible that when Joyce Hawkes nearly died,

she came back with psychic abilities that defy explanation?

Perhaps the answers can be found by examining cases

in which people claim to not only see someone's ailment,

but also heal it.

Richmond, Virginia.

September 5, 2005.

David Schwartz goes to the hospital to be treated

for what he believes is a nagging ear infection.

But in fact, his illness is much, much worse.

DAVID SCHWARTZ: I checked myself into the emergency room.

That was Monday afternoon.

And by Tuesday afternoon, I was in a coma.

My kidneys were shut down,

all of my organs were failing and the blood flow was lost

in my brain stem as well, which would have meant brain death.

They told my mom and my dad that,

really, that I had a limited amount of time left.

SHATNER: With their son facing certain death due to kidney failure,

David's parents were willing to try anything

that might help him.

So they reached out to Scarlett Heinbuch, a woman who,

after having a near-death experience in childhood,

claimed to be gifted with incredible healing powers.

SCARLETT HEINBUCH: When I walked in David's hospital room

for the first time, I knew he was near death.

He was unconscious and I took his hand

and I'm standing right by his bedside when, all of a sudden,

I was out of my body, in another realm.

And he was hovering there and there was soul connection

and I felt him with every fiber of my being,

and he made a decision at that point to come back.

SCHWARTZ: When I first awoke and saw Scarlett,

I had the sense that I knew who she was,

and I knew everything about her.

HEINBUCH: David looked up at me and, all of a sudden,

the next thing I was aware of was that I was

seeing four beings.

They were tall and they were colored blue.

I saw them manifesting a set of kidneys, if you will.

I saw the kidneys being dropped into his body.

David's recovery after that was so stunning that the doctors

and nurses at this hospital called him "miracle boy."

SCHWARTZ: When I came out of the coma,

it was absolutely because we had an experience.

I don't know what happened there,

but I do know that it happened,

because the doctors told me that they didn't have an explanation

as to why I was making the recovery that I was making.

SHATNER: Today, David Schwartz has two fully functioning kidneys,

and both he and Scarlett Heinbuch have no doubt

in their minds that it was the powerful connection

between their souls that saved David's life.

Are stories like those of Joyce Hawkes and Scarlett Heinbuch

evidence that the soul is real,

and can actually become empowered

with strange and otherworldly abilities?

According to people who study near-death experiences,

the answer is a profound yes.

And they also insist that these tales of strange coincidences

and psychic connections are really meant to assure us

that we are all very much connected,

and not only in the ways we've been taught to imagine.

SHATNER: Everything that lives must also eventually die.

And yet, for people who believe they've touched or been touched

by what they refer to as the other side,

death is not an ending,

but a gateway toward a new beginning.

They live with a certainty that the rest of us will never have.

That is, until we die.

[siren wails]

KINSELLA: I think near-death experiences and related phenomena

are so fascinating, frustrating and mysterious

because the footprints they leave behind are very muddied.

And what I mean by that is there seems to be enough proof,

enough anecdotal evidence, to where if people really want

to believe these stories, they want to believe this phenomena,

they certainly can.

But for those that are absolutely certain

that these experiences are, by and large, byproducts

of naturalistic phenomena, like, maybe biological stress,

then there certainly is not enough compelling evidence

that would be able to-to shift them over.

HAWKES: I've heard that near-death experiences

are really some kind of vision or sleep experience.

For myself, I know it wasn't, because I know

what my dreams were like, and this was so different than that.

It's far beyond a dream state, or a state

where there's no oxygen to the brain

and you have some kind of weird thing that lasts.

Now, before my coma, I thought, well, it's just a hallucination.

It's a trick of the dying brain.

So, in many ways, it was very refreshing to me

as I came out of this experience,

and-and especially in those months after my coma.

I came to realize that there are a number of scientists,

literally hundreds of scientists around the world,

who have been studying these problems

very diligently for decades,

and they're actually making tremendous progress.

BERLIN: It's that there might be energies, forces,

things that we haven't yet discovered

that we may never discover.

And however you want to fill in that gap,

whether it's mysticism, spirituality, religion,

I think that's left to each individual person.

SHATNER: Near-death experiences,

the psychic connections between identical twins

and tales of reincarnation.

Are these all evidence that there really is a soul?

Or is it that we're all so desperate to believe

in our own immortality

that we look for evidence to reassure ourselves

that death is not really the end?

Well, when that day comes,

we will not only learn the truth, but also the answers

to all the other mysteries that are, until then,

The UnXplained.

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