Love, Death, Faith and Terrorism on The Kovacs Perspective

Okay, I have to say this is going to be an awesome show tonight on The Kovacs Perspective. It's airing live here at 9 PM eastern. If you have any problems watching it at that link, you'll also find it here, which is where the show is broadcast on YouTube at the same time.

We've got two amazing topics for you. Our first guest is Dr. Mary C. Neal. She's been on Dr. Oz, Katie, NBC, you name it. And now she's going to be on The Kovacs Perspective, talking to our host, +Steve Kovacs, about her near-death experience, or NDE as it's often referred to. Dr. Neal was kayaking in Chile in 1999 when she had an accident. To put it bluntly, she died. Her book, "To Heaven and Back," talks about what happened after she died. Yes, that's right. Dr. Neal, who is a pragmatic orthopaedic spine surgeon, went through an amazing sequence of events, that culminated in being told it wasn't her time, and that she was going back.

Dr. Neal is going to talk about the conversations she had while she was dead. One other thing I'm really looking forward to hearing about, however, is her explanation as to how this wasn't just the response of a dying brain. Now, this is a medical doctor that we're talking about, not some new-age hippie who believes that crystals will heal everything. We're going to get the low-down on near-death experience from someone who knows it from both sides of the equation.

Next up we have +Faheem Younus who is a guest that you might recognize as well. He's been on the show a couple of times to talk to us about many things Muslim. This time we've got something very special for you, however. Steve is going to be asking him about the Boston Marathon bombing. Not only is Dr. Younus going to tell us about the Muslim-American take on this incident, but he's going to get into the nitty gritty of how this kind of thing can be avoided in the future.

Just to clarify here, we're not talking about idealistic ideas that we hope one day our politicians will decide to do for us. No, I'm talking about things the average citizen can do, right now, to promote acceptance and understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims. This doesn't mean meeting the demands of terrorists, or turning the United States into a Muslim nation. Not at all.

After the Boston Marathon bombing, I was thoroughly saddened by the hate and rage people were directing at Muslims. Anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis knows that I'm not affiliated with any religion. I have certain beliefs, but they don't fall in line with any specific religion. Maybe this makes me more tolerant of the variety of religions, because there isn't one that I adhere to. Mostly I run my life by ethics and a certain moral code, and that moral code does not allow me to hate people simply because they might not believe the same things I do. An innocent woman was attacked on the street while she was with her child, who I believe was actually in a stroller! This is not what is meant when they call America the "Land of the Free" by any means.

My religious beliefs fall more along the lines of scientific reasoning. I believe there has to be a great cosmic force of some sort, because the complexity of what we are is something miraculous to behold. I won't delve deeply into the science here, but it has a lot to do with the research I've done on stem cells, and the work that's being done in the field. The very fact that every cell in our body started out exactly the same as all the other cells, but somehow knew exactly what to do, where to go, and what to turn into, makes me think there's a greater force at work than we can even comprehend.

I also believe in out of body experiences, because I've had one. I can't say with any certainty whether or not it was an issue of the effects of lack of oxygen on my brain. That's entirely possible in my case, since I was dying of carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of two. However, I remember it very, very well. It's something that made a lasting impact on me, and has forced me to keep an open mind throughout my whole life. I know there's more to this life than what we see, and tonight on the show we're going to hear about it.