Paul Levy is a pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence and a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner. In the first half, he discussed the Native American idea of the wetiko mind-virus said to infect much of the population. Wetiko is a "psychospiritual disease of the soul," he explained, and could be thought of as a kind of cannibalistic condition in which "our own creativity gets turned against us." It can also be viewed as a form of "psychic blindness" in the sense that we are under a spell, he added. Wetiko, which is known by different names throughout history and cultures (Jung referred to it as "totalitarian psychosis"), can constitute a part of our identity that is not really us. Levy considers it a kind of mistaken identity and has also referred to it as "Malignant Egophrenia."

Wetiko is more than just the ego though; it's a multidimensional or field phenomenon, he said. Though it's an inner disease of the soul, it can actually configure events in the outer world. But when you see how wetiko operates via the mind's unconscious reactions, then you take away its power over you, he continued. When you snap out of the spell of thinking of yourself as a completely separate being, and you recognize that we're interconnected, then that's the way you see through the spell of wetiko, Levy suggested, adding that the expression of that is caring about each other.

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In the latter half, former trial lawyer and spiritual author, Nanci Danison, recounted the eternal wisdom she gleaned from a lengthy near-death experience (NDE) she had during a radiological procedure. What she learned differed radically from what she'd been taught in her religious upbringing. In the afterlife, the soul continues on without the body, which can be a disconcerting realization for the body, when a person returns to it after their NDE, she explained. Danison, who has had a total of three near-death encounters, said that in the first one, she returned to "source," in the time before the universe existed. She then witnessed the creation of the universe and how it evolved, and "there was no devil, Satan, or evil creature at any stage," including the future.

She shared a number of realizations from her multiple NDEs, including:

• No one dies permanently before their time. Many NDErs are told when they enter the afterlife that it's not their time to die, and they return to human life.
• The process of leaving your body and resuming eternal spiritual life is automatic.
• Don't be afraid. Hell and purgatory are human concepts that do not exist in spiritual reality.
• Don't fear being judged. There is no judgment in the afterlife. The life review that the soul undergoes is intended to answer questions about why certain things happened and why you and others acted as they did.

News segment guests: Lauren Weinstein, Steve Kates