Life After Life | Chapter 1

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It's just a dollar to try it. EffortlessEnglishClub.com Welcome back! We're back! It's been a while. So we're back and we're doing our book club, Life After Life, starting a new book club, our new book, Life After Life by Raymond Moody.

Today we will do chapter one. I'll teach you some of the vocabulary from the book and we'll discuss... the general topic of Chapter 1. Good to see lots of you joining.

Looks like we got a lot of people watching now. Wilson, good to see you. Fernanda, good to see you. Very nice. Alright, let's just jump in, shall we? We'll jump in and then we can talk about the book and other questions and comments after.

But let's just jump right in, okay? Here we go. Let me share my screen with you. That's not what we want. We want that one. Okay. Here we go. Okay. Chapter 1.

The title of chapter one is The Phenomenon of Death. There's a good vocab word right there. Phenomenon. Phenomenon. A phenomenon is basically an experience.

Something that happens. Right? Something that happens. So it's the experience of death. Right? The happening of death. The Phenomenon of Death is the title of chapter one.

In the first sentence of chapter 1, what is it like to die? What is it like to die? So what is the experience of death like? What is the experience, right?

It's hard for us to imagine sometimes. He then, the author Raymond Moody, then talks about the fact that This topic, death, is taboo. The subject of death is taboo.

I'll talk about the word taboo in a minute. And it says, this topic excites the most powerful feelings from people. So it's a very emotional topic for a lot of people, which we all know, right? That some people are very afraid of this topic.

Some people get upset about the topic. It can create very strong emotions in people. And so he says, because of that, a lot of people avoid this topic. They don't want to talk about death.

They don't want to think about death. They don't want to imagine it. They don't want to be near it. And, yeah, for sure, I've seen that. I've seen that when people in my family or someone I know has died, that some people, like, they want to avoid the funeral.

They don't want to talk about it. They just want to try to pretend it didn't happen. And so the subject of death is taboo for many people. Taboo means forbidden.

Cannot do, right? Absolutely cannot do. Like it's something that's a very strongly forbidden topic or action. Obviously not for everybody, but for many people.

So this chapter, he's saying that this is kind of a hard, difficult topic to discuss with a lot of people. A lot of people don't want to think about it, or people have very strong fixed ideas, and they don't want to imagine anything else.

And then he talks about, this guy is a medical doctor, so he went to medical school. And this paragraph, he talks about how that in medical school, a lot of the students, they would get kind of nervous about

when they had to see a dead body, right? Because in medical school, right, they see dead bodies and they practice cutting them and they study them and how that this made them feel uneasy. Uneasy means uncomfortable, right? Not good.

A little bit upset. So, And he says, why? Why did they feel bad? The reason is, he says, because when they would see another person, another dead person, it reminded them that...

they also would die, right? That everybody will die. You will die, I will die. They would die, the students, the medical students, right? And he said they would have a thought in their mind, this will happen to me too.

This will happen to me too. We like to forget about that. But this will happen, right? So they remembered their own mortality. There's another good word, especially for this book, we need mortality.

Mortality means... will die. If something is mortal, so mortality is the noun, the adjective is mortal. So if someone, someone who's alive, is mortal, it means that they will die.

Eventually they will die. The opposite of that is immortal. Immortal, I-M-M-O-R-T, etc. Immortal. Immortal means will not die, never, cannot die. Immortal.

So like a god would be, a demigod would be immortal, cannot die. Or some, like, I don't know if you guys have ever seen the old movie Highlander. It was about these guys who are immortal. They couldn't die.

or vampires, sometimes in vampire movies, right? Vampires are immortal, they don't die, right? So, that's immortal, the opposite, but here it's mortal. Mortal means will die, definitely will die.

Okay, next paragraph. So he's saying that basically then, because of this, a lot of people, most people, try to avoid this topic of death, right? Maybe you see this in your own life, that friends and family don't usually like to talk about death.

There are perhaps exceptions, but yeah, this is the case. A lot of people don't like this topic. And then the second thing he talks about, he says there's a second reason that this is a difficult topic to talk about.

And it's quite obvious. It's because this experience of death is something that we have no experience with it directly. We have not died yet. at least not that we remember.

And so it's beyond our experience. So it's very hard to talk about. How do you talk about something that you have never done before? You've never experienced it before, right?

And people who have died and are gone, they can't tell us. So this is a second reason that this topic can be difficult to talk about. Okay, so that's kind of the first

section, right? The first section. Please comment in English, by the way, if you're going to comment, since we're all learning English here. Okay, so that's the first topic is basically why this is a difficult topic, right?

Death is a difficult topic for most people, and why. Next, the next section of this chapter is Dr. Moody talks about the, basically the two main beliefs about death.

And basically these are analogies or stories or ideas or beliefs about death. The first one, the most common one probably now, certainly in the West, is the analogy, the idea of death is a kind of sleep. So it's comparing death and sleep.

And you'll hear a lot of people, you'll see this in movies, TV, a lot of people talk about this, where they'll compare dying to going to sleep. Like it's a forever sleep.

Right? So, dying, we tell ourselves, is like going to sleep. And this is an old idea, this is not a new idea, because in the Iliad, the ancient Greek story, this is, I think, about 3,000 years old, Homer, the poet who wrote it, or we say wrote it, he calls death,

he calls sleep death sister. So he's saying that sleep and death are like brothers and sisters. In other words, they're very similar. And then Plato also, of course, ancient Greece, discusses also the same idea that death is just dreamless sleep forever.

And then in this section, he quotes Plato, and Plato in this section says that, well, that's kind of nice, right? If sleep is just, I mean, if death, if death is just sleeping forever with no dreams, that's not so bad, right? Because we all like sleep.

We all enjoy sleep. So he's saying that's actually not so bad, if that's what it is. Now, that's not what Plato actually believed, but he's just discussing the idea.

And then he talks about an idiom in English, to put to sleep. To put to sleep. This is a good idiom. You'll hear this with, especially with animals, right?

Like, oh, my dog got really sick. So the vet, the animal doctor, put him to sleep. What it means is he killed them. They give them an injection that kills them but without pain.

So we say to put to sleep. To put to sleep, we use with animals mostly, it means to kill an animal without pain. But it shows again that in English we have this idea of death being like sleep.

But then, the next chapter, Moody discusses the problem with this idea, or why it's actually not so nice, why a lot of people don't feel very good when you think about it. And he's saying that what this means is that death is the annihilation of conscious experience forever.

that saying sleep makes it more palatable. I'll tell you the meaning of that word in a minute. But what this belief really says is that our consciousness, our awareness, is destroyed, is annihilated forever. Annihilation means total destruction.

To annihilate is the verb. To annihilate means to totally destroy. So, this sleep idea, this sleep belief means that people who believe this believe that our consciousness, our awareness, our existence is totally annihilated, totally destroyed at death.

And he mentions that, you know, sleep is, we all like good sleep, even a nice deep dreamless sleep. We all like that. But why do we like it? Because we wake up afterwards.

If we thought we would never wake up again, then maybe sleep is not such a nice idea, right? Because... Maybe we forget all our bad experiences, all the painful things, but we also forget all the good things, all the people we loved, all our experiences, our whole life. Eliminated and gone, no meaning.

So it means our life has zero meaning because it's gone forever and we are gone forever. It's kind of actually a fairly depressing thought for most people or a lot of people.

So, that's kind of belief or philosophy number one about death, in terms of being popular. And then, of course, there's another one, which is also very, very popular and very, very old. And this is basically the opposite idea, that something...

continues after death, right? Some kind of consciousness that we have continues after we die, after our body dies. And some people call this the soul, or the spirit, or mind, or the self, the self, or the psyche, different names you'll find in English and other languages.

And obviously this is also a very, very, very old idea, which you can find this idea in the ancient Egyptians. It goes back even to Neanderthals, right? Those kind of the cavemen. We can kind of guess they believe this too.

Because when they buried somebody, they would include clothes and items. So there's this idea that something continues after death is kind of view number two, belief number two, philosophy number two.

And these are very, very old. So then the next paragraph, he says, now we have these contrasting answers to the question of death. What is the phenomenon of death? What happens after death?

And we have these two very different ideas. One, total annihilation. Everything about us is destroyed. Nothing continues. Everything is forgotten. Answer number two, something does continue.

Our soul, our spirit, consciousness, mind, something continues and continues on into some other dimension beyond physical. So, that's the end of section two of this chapter.

Next, we go to section three. Topic number three in this chapter. Topic number three is about the writer. And he just talks about his own experiences.

Why did he write a book about this? How did he get interested in this topic? Okay, so he says, it first happened when he met somebody in medical school, I believe it was.

He met another No, I'm sorry, it was undergrad school. He was studying philosophy. And he met a professor in med school, of the medical school, who had a near-death experience.

And that's what these are usually called, near-death experience. Sometimes you'll see they're called NDE, near-death experience, NDE. Near-death experience, we'll talk more details about

what that means, but it basically means somebody who almost dies or someone who dies and then comes back. Those are called near-death experiences. So this professor told him about his own near-death experience. The professor died.

He doesn't say the details exactly, but I don't know, maybe an accident or something. And then the doctors brought him back. And then the professor told Mr. Moody, the writer of this book, the professor told him about what happened to him.

So he found this very interesting, but he just kind of thought about it. Okay, well, that's interesting. Next, he was teaching philosophy. So he became a philosophy teacher, the writer, Dr. Moody.

And he was teaching about Plato in one of Plato's books called Ph. Phaedo, I believe it's pronounced. Phaedo or Phaedo. And in this book, Plato discusses immortality.

Immortality. Right? Meaning that something, our soul, our spirit, never dies. And Plato discussed this. And after the class, a student came to Mr. Moody, our writer, and said, I want to discuss this topic of immortality more.

And Mr. Moody said, well, why? Why are you so interested in this topic? And the student said, well, because my grandmother died, and then she came back, right? It was in an operation, surgery.

And so she died during the surgery, and the doctors brought her back, and she had this amazing experience, this person's grandmother. And he told the story.

Now, what was interesting to Dr. Moody is that the story was very similar to the professor's story that he had heard a few years before. So he's like, well, that's really interesting and maybe kind of strange almost. This professor died and was brought back and had an experience during his death, his short time of death,

Maybe it was just him. But then this person's grandmother died and came back and had a very similar story, a very similar experience while she was dead. And so he said, well, that's very strange. These people don't know each other.

They're totally different. So then he became very curious. He said, well, I wonder if more people I wonder if it's just these two people. Have more people had this experience?

So he started to ask all his students in his classes. He would do a survey, like a questionnaire. It was anonymous. He'd give it out to everybody. And he'd say, have you ever had an experience like this?

Have you ever died and come back? Or almost died and come back? And he found that in every class he taught, one out of 30 students... one out of 30 students, had a near-death experience.

One out of 30. So like 3%. Which is pretty high, actually, when you think about it. And then what amazed him, and why he wrote this book, and why he actually began to focus on this topic in his life, this became the focus of his life, studying near-death experiences.

And... What amazed him is that his students were from different religions, different countries, different educations, all these different beliefs. But the people who had these experiences, again and again and again, the stories were very, very similar. So he began to collect these, and he began to interview these people, and take notes and write them down, and these people didn't know each other, and...

He was finding again and again and again very, very, very similar stories, very, very, very similar experiences. One second, I need to run. I'll be right back. I've got to just grab a water.

Sorry, guys. One second. Hi, buddy. Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on! Okay, sorry about that. I had babies breaking into my room.

We had to stop the babies from coming in. Okay. All right, sorry. Okay, back to where we were. So then he studied this, and he found three categories, three types of experiences where people would tell him his stories.

So... Number one, people who were resuscitated after dying. Resuscitate, this is a good word in English, to resuscitate. We'll talk about the verb to resuscitate.

It means to bring back, to bring back from death or unconsciousness, right? So if someone like kind of, uh, they're unconscious and you splash them with cold water, you smack them in the face a little bit, you resuscitate them, right? You kind of bring them back. They're conscious again.

They're awake again. But it's probably most commonly used medically. This is where someone dies, right? And then the doctors, you know, maybe they got the electric paddles, you know, you see in the movies all the time, right?

And they use the electric little machine to boom and bring people back. Or they have other ways to do it too. So to resuscitate, yeah, that's correct. Someone just put it in the comments.

To resuscitate, bring back, often to bring back from death. And so these are people, category one, the type of people. we will study in this book, category one, they died. It means the doctor said they were dead.

No brain activity, brain activity gone, heart gone, and then boom, they bring them back somehow. So that's category one. Category two, people who were near death.

Maybe they had an accident or a very bad injury. They were hurt very badly. So they didn't die. Their heart didn't stop. Their brain did not stop. But they were very close to death.

Maybe they're bleeding. They go unconscious. And they're very, very, very close to death. And sometimes these people, Category 2, these people also have...

Category 3. which I find interesting. Unfortunately, Category 3, he does not talk about in this book, but I think it's quite interesting. Category 3 are people who, as they're dying, and as they're dying, they tell someone else.

They tell maybe their family member, someone who's with them. They tell them what they see or what's happening, and then they die. And then that person, the person, their friend or the doctor or the nurse or the family member, then they tell the story.

So that's quite interesting. So these are people who, they actually die. As they're dying, they tell, as long as they can talk, they tell someone what's happening and what they're seeing, what they're experiencing, and then they die. And then so there's kind of like a witness or a person who survives tells the story later.

So those are the three categories of near-death experiences, or category three is really death experience. And then finally, in this next paragraph, the writer, Dr. Moody, says he decided to ignore number three for his book.

And the reason is he wanted to focus only on first-hand reports, direct reports. So he said he was worried that category three, because it's not the actual person, right? It's somebody else. He's worried that, oh, maybe, you know, maybe they would, maybe their memory was bad about it or maybe they got the details wrong.

So he decided I'm only going to focus on the first two categories, people who died and came back or people who almost died. So it's those two. And then finally, right at the end, the last chapter, he just decided that, you know, he finally decided to write a book, that he had like hundreds of these cases, or I guess when he wrote this book, he had like 150 cases that he interviewed and checked on, and he confirmed, he talks about this later, he confirms, like he goes and talks when he could, he couldn't always do it, but he often would go and talk and like confirm with the doctors, yes, this person really did die.

And what he found, again, to summarize, is that they were very similar, that all these people from different cultures and beliefs and everything, atheists, religious people, whatever, all these things, they had very similar experiences. Of course, some differences, because they're different individuals, but in general, very similar experiences, very general.

And we'll talk in the next chapters, we're going to talk about, more specifically, these stories and how they are very similar. Okay, and that is the end of chapter one.

All right, let's get into our live questions and comments now. You can ask about this book or other topics if you want, but let's focus on the book for a while first.

like Fernanda's putting in the comments, the name of this book, again, is Life After Life. Life After Life. The writer is Raymond Moody. Raymond Moody.

M-O-O-D-Y. M-O-O-D-Y. Raymond Moody. If you didn't read chapter one, it's okay. You can just watch my videos and you'll learn about this book and then go read it.

You can always read it after. Some people like to read before... I do the show and then listen to me explain it. Some people like to watch my video first and then read it after.

It's up to you. Either one's fine. It's a very interesting book. Yeah, Anis says interesting book. It's very interesting and it will become even more interesting as we go into the other chapters because we get into the actual stories, the details.

Okay, I'm just going to go back through the comments now. Oh, Samuel says, congratulations for your children. I was blessed in June with a baby girl. I'm listening to your advice about how to be a better parent.

Oh, nice. Congratulations, Samuel. That's awesome. Very, very good. Oh, here we have a... Barros says, Hi, I just want to say... Is that right? Oh, no.

MyWalletMyChoice is the name of the profile. Hi, sir. Just want to say you're responsible. I'm able to speak English. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you.

That's very nice. And thank you for the super chat donation. That's very nice. Jefferson says, Hi, I'm from Brazil. I'm 495 days studying English. Awesome!

Oh, cool. I'm sorry. I'm going to probably pronounce your name badly. Oh, let me change my camera back to big camera. Is it Yesini? Yesini? It says, I had a near-death experience.

I was dead for a few minutes. And then she says that I felt like I was going through a tunnel. which is very, super, super common. You will see that's one of the things that happens with most people.

They feel like they're going through a tunnel or something like that when they die or soon after dying. Yeah, and we can see in the comments a few people saying, like, the soul never dies. My wallet, my choice. Very nice.

And then someone else saying, dying is like sleeping. So, you can see. I mean, these are the two most common beliefs, for sure. Generally, in terms of the big, broad philosophy or beliefs about death, I think you will find that he's right about that.

It's pretty much one of those two. Something continues or something doesn't. uh, Meyer says, what do you think about the writer's opinion? Do you agree with him?

Do I agree with him about, um, about, well, we're going to get into more of his opinions later, but, um, in terms of this topic, but so far in chapter one, I'm just adjusting my camera. In chapter one, he has not given much opinion other than, um, that, you know, there are these two views of death. Yeah, I agree with him. I mean, what's, what's another view?

I thought, I think you're going to find that those two are really, I mean, it's really to be or not to be, right? After death, something continues or something doesn't.

And then, of course, then people, what continues? There can be a lot of debate about exactly what and how. Our soul or spirit or karma or whatever continues. But in terms of just the very large beliefs, you know, the most general, I think those are the two for sure.

Wilson says, all of us are energy. Because we are matter. Oh, right. Saying that... Right. Quoting Einstein's E equals MC squared. So energy equals matter.

Right. Which is true. According to physics. Sharif says, good to see you live now at this moment. What time is it? Well, here it's almost noon in Japan right now.

I know for some of you, it's late or very early, depending where you are. AJ, will we discuss the personal stories from this book, what people see? Absolutely, yes. That's the main part of the book.

So I think that probably starts next chapter. Let me just look. Yeah, I'm not sure, but a big part of this book are the stories, the personal stories of people who died. So we certainly will discuss those.

Yes, of course. Because those are the most powerful parts of the book, I think, are the experiences that people, the interviews he does, or he did, where people describe exactly what the experience was for them. And you can find a lot of these on YouTube, by the way, if you're interested...

you can read the ones in the book but there's some very nice channels you just put near death experience interview if you put that in YouTube or bit shoot or some video you're going to find a lot of them will come up and you can hear the people telling their own stories you can see them it's quite interesting very very very interesting so yes Jefferson asking how's your jiu-jitsu training going very good I got my blue belt finally woohoo

So, finally a bluebell. Two years of training to get the bluebell. So, I'm quite happy about it. It's very nice. Oh, this is interesting. Vu says, Vu Min Nhat, and I'm sorry about the bad pronunciation, Vietnamese name, says, I usually dream about dead people.

They appear in my dream and want to send a message. Will this book discuss that? That's not the topic of the book, Vu. But what's interesting is that some people who have near-death experiences, some of them, when they come back, right?

They die, then they come back. And when they come back, some of them have, they gain this kind of, I don't know, you call it an ability, or this happens to some of them, where after they come back, they feel they...

We can have a connection to spirits or these kind of dreams or visions. It's not all of them, but a few people have talked about this. It's not the main topic of this book, but let's say it's connected.

It's very interesting, though. You could probably find some books about that topic more directly. Oh, so this is Yesenia continuing with her near-death experience. She said, I went back and I asked God for an opportunity to be with my daughter.

Today is my birthday. From that experience, that was 21 years ago. So this is another thing you'll hear. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this, by the way.

So the people who come back, sometimes they just come back. They have no choice. They just come back. But sometimes they do have an experience where they ask to come back.

And it's usually something like this. They have to come back because of someone they love. They don't want to leave them yet. Someone they need to take care of, especially a child.

And then they will come back. So that's interesting. So your experience matches very well with the experience of many other near-death experiences. Anvar says, after death, what happens?

Well, that is the whole book we're discussing. That's what the whole book's about. I know, we didn't get into it very much. This chapter one, it's more talking about the general philosophies, the general ideas.

Chapter one's kind of the introduction to the book, the topic. And we'll get more detail into that, Anvar. So, patience. Read chapter two, read chapter three, or read the whole book if you want, and you'll get a clear answer to that.

Of course, we'll be discussing these in the show as we do each chapter. Okay. Andre F. says, what about the use of DMT to find out what's after death?

Also a very interesting topic. You can find some also on YouTube, and there's some books about this. DMT is the kind of drug that actually is produced in your own mind in tiny amounts, but it can also come from plants.

And people who do DMT trips, whatever you want to call it, can have some pretty amazing experiences, intense and amazing. And so it's actually quite interesting to listen to people discuss their experiences. So again, get on YouTube.

We will not be talking about that in this book because this book is about people who died and came back. Now, so the topic of DMT is related. Again, it's connected because people who have DMT... sometimes have experiences very close to a near-death experience.

There's some similarities, and there's some things that are not similar. So if you find that interesting, though, you can certainly look it up and read about it or listen to people talk about it.

When people say, I saw a tunnel after they declared dead, I believe it's because their matter is traveling at the speed of light. The matter is becoming energy, says Wilson. Perhaps, but what you'll find in this book, what's interesting is, it's not really matter and energy that are the question, but consciousness.

The key element here is consciousness. And by the way, if you really start digging a little into physics now, you'll find that consciousness is the big problem that physicists are struggling with.

and really cannot explain, but realize that it's central, that even a lot of very cutting-edge physicists are now starting to discuss consciousness as the center of everything, as the key to existence, which is, again, it's connected, but it's a little beyond, getting into the physics is a little beyond us right now.

But it's interesting. Olga says, In my country, when people are dying, very often on the third day, the owner's home can hear three knocks on the door. It's the souls who's dying three days ago. My mom heard this knock when she buried her grandmother.

Interesting. Hmm. Interesting. Russia, right? Russia or Ukraine? I can't remember. Olga, are you from Russia? Rustam says, is it true what's written in the book?

Yeah, this is non-fiction, guys. This is, yes. This is a doctor who interviewed and studied near-death experiences. There are actually some other very good books on this topic, often by medical doctors, and not always, though.

And... So yes, these are all true experiences. True accounts. So it's not a fiction. This is non-fiction. When will we do Chapter 2, Ask Meyer? I don't know.

Follow me on Gab. You can see on the screen, gab.com slash A.J. Hoag. Follow me there. I'll announce it. Saifura says, my teacher, where were you for such a long time?

I haven't seen you on the internet for ages. I began speaking by listening to your podcast. I respect you. Oh, I've just been busy with some things with our business, a lot of things in my family life, and doing lots of jujitsu lately too, so that's why.

Okay, we'll take... Olga is Russian. Says Nick. Russia. Olga, Russia. Gotcha. Russia. Fernando says hi from Utah in America. That's a state. Nying says, I have difficulty pronouncing vocabulary, especially ones I don't know.

That's normal. Will your pronunciation course help? Yes. Should I join VIP or pronunciation? Well, they're very different courses. So, VIP is focused on fluency, right?

You know, basically speaking faster, understanding faster. And then pronunciation is just focused on pronunciation, how you say things, saying things so that others understand them.

So, I mean, really, you could do both if you wanted to. You could combine them because they're quite different skills. Yes, it will help you. Islam says, what you're talking about is not scientifically proven.

There's no scientific evidence. You're wrong. This whole book is evidence. People don't understand the word evidence. If you think about a court, if you have witnesses in court, there's a crime, and 50 people say, yes, that man killed that woman.

They saw it. They're witnesses. That's evidence. In fact, that's strong evidence, and that person will probably go to jail, right? Direct experience is evidence.

So... Okay. I re-watched... Anis says, I re-watched the Animal Farm book club. You were more energetic than now. Huh? Sometimes I'm energetic and sometimes I'm not.

Sometimes I'm relaxed. Today I'm relaxed. Besides, this is... This topic is a little more of a, you know... I don't know, thoughtful topic, I would say.

Animal farm was probably something I was a little more angry about, which gave me a certain kind of energy. This is something I'm much more philosophical about.

Okay, let's see, a few more, and then we'll go... Oh, this is nice. Peter says, last time I heard you, you recommended the book Chicken Soup for the Soul. I've been reading that book right now.

It's a great book. Thanks. Yeah, that's a nice book. Well, it's actually a lot of books. I think they're probably, I don't know, there's so many of those books now, Chicken Soup for the Soul.

There's many versions of the book, like part one, part two, part three. It's just a lot of nice, positive stories. That's all it is. It's just very nice, positive stories.

So... That's a good... So, if you're just wanting to read for vocabulary, you want something in English that's positive, make you feel good. Chicken Soup for the Soul has a lot of different books, and they're all good in that way.

Okay, a few more. Let's see how we're doing on time. Yeah, I can do a few more. Then I'll go play with my babies. Okay. Nice. Jaconza Albea says, I just finished reading your book recently.

I wish I had discovered it before. This is my first time watching you live. Well, welcome. Keep joining. Keep joining us live. Mostafa says, how much should I read English daily?

It really depends on your goals, as much as possible, right? Listening and reading are the two main things to do, to build up your vocab and understanding, etc., etc.

I can't give you an exact time, just as much as you can. That's another interesting experience. Olga says, my mother, in a dream, when she was sleeping, saw my late dad, so her dad had died, in a new blue costume.

The next day, she went to the cemetery. Mom went to the cemetery. On his grave, his grave had been colored in a new blue color. Yeah, it's interesting, huh?

A lot of these kind of experiences. Very, very, very interesting. Interesting. Okay. I'm just reading through comments. There's a lot of comments. Fwatt says, Hi from Arkansas, another American state.

Shurat has an English question. I have a question. Is there a profit? Is it profitable to listen to English conversations if I don't understand? If you don't understand, not so much.

So it's, It's better if you can find conversations that you understand, at least some. You can start to guess things if you listen again and again, but if you understand nothing, then you're not really learning much. I think you could use your time better.

Okay, a couple more and then time to go. Yeah, this is interesting from Podcuts is the profile name. I know a case about a person who was born blind. They had a near-death experience, described everything.

They saw the doctor's faces, all the details that happened to them in the hospital. Yes, there are many of these have been recorded where someone born blind, so they don't even know what happened.

seeing is. They have no idea. They've never been able to see in their life. They have a near-death experience. During the near-death experience, they see.

They see things that are happening to them if it's in a hospital, whatever's around them. And they can actually describe them. They see colors for the first time. All these things happen.

These are some of the most powerful near-death experiences. Some people who are deaf And then they can hear during the time they're dead. We'll discuss what that could possibly mean.

But very, very powerful indeed. Very powerful. Are you going to do podcasts again regularly? I hope so. I'm trying. I'll do my best. Oh, Leonardo, good to see you.

He says, big hugs from Brazil. Thank you. Oh, Maddie is joining just a little bit late. He says, oops, I guess the show's almost over. I'm glad to see you live.

Good to see you. I'm glad you could catch the very end, Maddie. But it's good to see you again. You can watch the recording. And there's Abraham, too.

What a great surprise. I'm glad to see you. Abraham Ali, nice seeing you. I'm glad you're catching us at the end here, too. Mohammed says, I have a stuttering problem.

Makes me respond so slowly when it comes to many stories and shadowing. I'm frustrated. Okay, so Mohammed, I think you need to focus on the stuttering problem as separate from English, right? Because it's not about English.

That's a separate issue. And I'm not an expert on that. So I know Tony Robbins has done some things with stuttering to help kind of cure people of that. I'm sure other people have.

But you'll have to research that yourself. And work on that yourself. If it's frustrating you, shadowing is not necessary. You don't have to do it. So just stop shadowing.

Don't do something that's making you really frustrated. That's not going to help you. It's going to kill your motivation to learn English. So just relax.

Just listen more. Even the mini stories, just try to answer with one word. Just say yes, no. Not a whole sentence. You don't need to do whole sentences.

Just focus more on listening and reading for a while. Work on the stuttering separately if you can find some things that might help you. And then you can come back and try shadowing later. That's my advice.

Just relax. Relax and just read and listen, read and listen, read and listen. That's fine. Fernanda says, a friend of mine is a doctor. I tell her about near-death experiences.

She immediately says this is from drugs, cerebral activities. I don't agree. Yeah, well, because these people are... They're called educated but idiots.

She has no idea, but she's uncomfortable. She's afraid of the idea of life after death. Does she have any evidence that drugs cause this? No. If you really think about...

If you study drug experiences... you will find that they're nothing like the near-death experiences. Nothing at all. Drugs does not explain why everybody has very similar experiences.

So that's... I think in this book, some of these objections, these arguments, we will discuss them in later chapters, I think. But the drug one is a ridiculous one. Cerebral activity is also ridiculous.

That it's some kind of random firing of the brain. Again, does not explain... These are ridiculous answers. If you just use a little logic, you'll realize, well, this doesn't explain anything.

And also, these people making these arguments... sometimes their doctor... First of all, a medical doctor is not a scientist. You've got to understand that. They're more like witch doctors many times.

But anyway, they have no evidence to support what they're saying. None. They're so... They just... They don't like what the evidence is showing, so they try to come up with these explanations.

These people are materialists. There's no point arguing with them because they have... Their belief is just based on faith only with no evidence, so there's no way you're going to change their mind.

Friend says, yes, there are very similar experiences with people from different places, cultures, religions. Yeah, that's one of the things we'll find. And I might even do a few chapters from another book at the end of this, just that focuses on that point as well.

And not only that, but also very, very different medical conditions. So this kind of gets to this idea of brain activity causing this, which is ridiculous because, first of all, the brain is, like there's, I read one experience, a guy's brain was severely damaged.

Yeah. it doesn't make sense some people have brain damage some people have heart problems it's too much it's too varied to explain the consistency of the experience but a lot of times these people are people who bring up arguments like this they're either not so intelligent because they don't really think about their argument very much they just say oh it's just brain activity what does that mean

Or they don't have any experience. What they're really doing is they're trying to avoid the topic because it makes them very uncomfortable. Which is what Moody is kind of saying in this chapter. What's interesting is that some people are very uncomfortable with the sleep idea that we're annihilated.

I don't like that idea very much. It seems to make life pointless and worthless. also doesn't fit the evidence that we have. But some other people, people are very materialistic.

This materialism and this kind of atheistic, materialist mindset is a religion. It's a weird religion. false religion, but it is a kind of religion and people, some people are very, very scared and uncomfortable with the idea that there might be a soul or a spirit. Not that there is, but that there might be, just the idea there might be, just that idea scares the shit out of them, scares them.

And, you know, you can maybe think about why, why would it scare them? Well, maybe they're scared because Maybe their life, maybe they're not such great people, or maybe they're terrified what might come next for them.

And so they don't want to think about that. They don't even want to think about it. They'll just think of any explanation and say, oh, it's drugs, and that's it. But of course, drugs are not always involved in these cases, so that's a nonsense reply.

Most of the replies I've seen arguing against what these near-death experiences... are really nonsense when you think about them for just a minute. So, I don't find them very compelling. What you find is that people making these arguments, what it's really showing is how scared they are and uncomfortable they are because they don't want to talk about it.

They just want to explain it away. No, no, no, I don't want to think about it because it terrifies them, which is interesting to me because I think that...

Probably, for example, religious people are not terrified of it, find it such a very hopeful and wonderful thing. So it can be hard sometimes to understand, like, why would someone be so scared of life after death?

Why does that idea scare people? Because it does indeed scare a lot of people. So I think that the key thing here is that, you know, I don't know for sure, but it is obvious that it does scare a lot of people.

And that's what's motivating those explanations usually. And he says, they're blue-pilled, that's it. That's a good way to sum it up. They're very blue-pilled, indeed.

Indeed. What's my opinion about Jordan Peterson, asked Mohammed. Eh, I don't like him. I think he's what's called controlled opposition. You can look up that word, that phrase.

Okay. Oh, Ibrahim, thank you so much for the Super Chat donation. Thank you. And your very nice comments about my jujitsu. I appreciate that on Gab. Thank you for your nice comments.

Yeah. So blue belt, you know, I'm very happy about getting a blue belt in jiu-jitsu. Some of you know that's, you know, my main, one of my, probably not one of, it's my main hobby.

But, you know, for me it's a big deal. Quite happy, two years of hard work. But on the other hand, blue belt in jiu-jitsu is still very much a beginner's belt.

And, yeah, so... But not bad for being 53 years old, I guess. Oh, we're... Nyt Mien says, have you heard the name of the famous author? Thich Nhat Hanh is what we say in English.

Yes, of course I've heard him. I've talked about him many times. Amir says, life after death, do you mean the hereafter? Life after death means that after the body dies, something continues.

Soul, spirit, consciousness, there are different names we can use. What continues and how it continues, that's one of the topics of this book, which we will get some ideas about that from this book in later chapters.

Okay, I think we're about done then. I'll take one more. All right. Last comment. Theravim says I'm from India. Hi. Hello. Hello. Okay, so I'll do this last one.

Again, it's from Podcut. It says, my wife said sometimes she has the feeling that she goes out from her body while sleeping. Yeah, I think it's called astral projection.

Some people have had this experience. It's crazy, guys. I really believe life is beyond this world we can see and touch. As do I. Okay, then. Rock and roll.

So that's chapter one of Life After Life by Raymond Moody. We will do chapter two next, so go ahead. Get the book. I recommend get the e-book if you can find it somewhere.

Cheaper and easier for you to read, probably, because you can, you know... click and check vocabulary with an e-dictionary, something like that. So anyway, get the book Life After Life by Raymond Moody.

And I recommend, go ahead, read chapter two. And the next show, I'll try to do another show soon, maybe in the next few days. Just follow me on Gab and I'll announce when the next one is. But thank you so much.

Life after life. And for one of my courses, some of you asked about my courses, so go to EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Join my courses there. See you later.

Bye for now.