Brilliant viewers, welcome to Science and Spirituality for the second part in a two-part series examining near death experiences or NDEs, which occur when a person comes close to physical death and has an experience such as a sense of detachment from the body accompanied by the vision of a bright light or tunnel.

Subjects may also undergo what’s known as a “panoramic life review” or flashback of past life events. Even though the subjects’ hearts and brains may completely cease to function during the incident, they can still recall everything that occurred.

On last week’s program we met Dr. Anthony D. Cicoria, chief of the medical staff and chief of Orthopedics at Chenango Memorial Hospital, Norwich, New York, USA and Clinical Assistant Professor of Orthopedics at State University of New York Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York, USA. In addition to being trained in medicine, he has a Ph.D. in physiology and cellular biophysics.

Dr. Cicoria had a near death experience in 1994 when he was struck by lightning. This event completely changed his outlook on life, making him realize that death is not the end of life but merely a gateway to experiencing the Divine. He also discovered an extraordinary talent for composing music and playing the piano.

In 2008 he released a CD of his musical works entitled “Notes from An Accidental Pianist & Composer.” Let’s now hear from Dr. Cicoria about how these musical skills developed following his near death experience.

A week later, it was about a week and a half, I went back to work and didn’t seem to have any effect from it at all until a couple of weeks after that. And that’s when I started to have this insatiable desire to hear piano music. Now, that’s out of context for me because I was a child of the 1960’s; I liked rock and roll. I could have cared less for classical piano. It was so strong of a desire, that I drove to Albany (USA) to find a place that had classical piano music and certainly no place around here would have it.

And the first CD that I bought was Vladimir Ashkenazy’s Favorite Chopin. And I was so taken with the music that I listened to it all day long; on the way to work, and on the way home from work. I made my family, I made my friends, everybody had to listen to it.

And there came a point where I realized, this is still within weeks of that event, I wanted to be able to play this music and it seemed like within days of that realization one of my babysitters came to me and said, “I have an old piano that I need to store for a year. Would you consider letting me keep it at your house?”

And I thought, “Okay, this is fortuitous! Suddenly I want to play a piano and a piano appears.” But I didn’t have any idea how to play, so I went to the store and bought some books on how to teach yourself how to play. I ordered all of the music from the CD, which was a joke because I couldn’t read it, but I was determined to do that.

And so, I became really obsessed with the music and with learning how to play and because I had really thought that the only reason I was brought back here had something to do with this music. And so, I started to try to teach myself and I got up at four am and I would practice and try to teach myself until six thirty am and then I went to work. I would come home and I would do what I normally did with the kids.

And unfortunately after they went to bed I went back to the piano and I was there until 12, one o’clock in the morning trying to learn how to play. But about three months into that whole episode I woke up one night after a very vivid dream and in this dream it was like an out of body experience.

I was standing outside of my body and I’m watching me play in a concert hall and I’m playing piano music and the concert hall was so vivid to me that I actually drew a picture of it afterwards. And of course if I ever see that concert hall I’m going to really be scared, but so far I haven’t. But in this dream I realized that the music that I’m playing is not someone else’s music, it’s mine.

Dr. Cicoria continued to hear music during his waking hours, sometimes a piano and sometimes an entire orchestra. The music seemed to be downloaded into his mind just like one would download a file from the Internet, and whenever the chance arose he would note down the music and try to play it.

Every day Dr. Cicoria struggled to learn to play the piano, and one day the mother of his daughter’s best friend overheard Dr. Cicoria attempting to play Chopin’s “Fantasy Impromptu,” noticed his difficulty and suggested he learn from a professional. Then after some time, Dr. Cicoria became an accomplished pianist.

I think that the music, my experience with it, is that it takes you through a huge range of emotions from love to anger to everything in between. If you are listening to the music I think you feel those emotions come through the music. So the music and its effect on the brain I think are not very well understood, and I think there’s a lot more to it than we realize.

When we return, Dr. Anthony Cicoria will share his thoughts on consciousness, quantum mechanics and meditation. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

I think the greatest realization that I’ve had from all of this is one, the consciousness survives death. Two, that there is something else that the reality that we see is only a small part of what actually exists and that there is a force outside of ourselves that we are part of and that we can communicate with and that life in general is energy, and we are all part of it.

Welcome back to Science and Spirituality on Supreme Master Television, featuring Dr. Anthony Cicoria and the story of his life following a near death experience. Spiritual practitioners from time immemorial have reported to have left the body to visit other planes of existence through deep contemplation or meditation. Some have even achieved enlightenment and ultimate liberation through their practice. We asked Dr. Cicoria for his views on meditation.

I think that meditation is one of the avenues to awakening. I do. Meditation is basically controlling the brainwaves, is reaching the state where you can feel and experience another reality that’s separate from what you were stuck in. A lot of the Far East cultures say that they can have out of body experiences just through meditation and can control.

And we’ve learned about yogis and people who are really well-trained in that they can control all of their body functions unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. And that’s all done with meditation. So I think that that’s a big, big thing and it’s interesting because (Johannes) Brahms would go into this trance-like state, a meditative state, and he would become open to the music that would come to him.

Some quantum physicists describe the brain as a receiver of information and not a creator. Dr. Cicoria explains how his experiences relate to quantum mechanics.

I think quantum mechanics can just begin to scratch the surface and from my standpoint the one thing that quantum mechanics has done is to say, the world as we know it, does not exist. Newtonian physics says everything has matter and atoms, and quantum mechanics says, “Show me an atom, one, pick any one and show it to me,” and nobody can.

So they have taken atoms and say, “Okay we are going to break it up into parts,” and so they have found that atoms are just made of energy, there are not real solid parts to it. And so if atoms are made of energy, everything is energy and that energy is as you perceive it to be.

And one of the things that has been interesting about the study of these particles is if you perceive the particle to be a solid, it shows up as a solid, if you perceive it to be a wave, it shows up as a wave. And so one of the big thrusts of a lot of this thought is “whatever your perception is creates your reality.” And if that’s true that changes everything.

Everything in quantum physics is hard to wrap your head around as intuitively it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like particles exist, but they don't exist. You can't really see them, you can't measure them but yet we know that in some way that those things are real. If so, if everything exists as frequencies of vibration or energy, how do we explain consciousness as being something separate?

And I think that that's where it really gets difficult. My take on it is that we are all related on an energy basis. We influence each other by our interactive waves and we influence everything else around us in the same way. Is our spirit a separate set of energy waves than everything that surrounds us?

In some way, it must be because we have an identity. We are who we are, so are we part of the whole and I think that in some way we must be part of the whole. But yet we have to have something that separates us as an individual energy entity.

I'm who I am, I've always been this person, I may have lived a thousand lives and yet I'm part of the consciousness of the Universe. I'm part of the consciousness of everything and yet I'm separate. That really gets crazy in trying to explain that. I think that's up there with “What is God?”

The idea that we can change physical reality with our thoughts or intentions has huge implications for humanity. It means we have the ability to create Heaven on Earth by thinking and acting in a constructive way.

I think that a very individual thing that can be done to change the way that we see life is to change the way that we think. So much of our thoughts are negative thoughts, not only about ourselves but about people that we are around. So if we are all energy and whatever we think sends out a particular brain wave activity, if that activity is good, it has one outcome; if it’s bad it has another. And by just controlling the things that are thoughts, we can affect not only ourselves but other people and we can do it in a good way.

We extend our appreciation to Dr. Anthony Cicoria for sharing his precious time with us and for his perspectives on near death experiences as well as how science and spirituality connect. We wish him the very best and look forward to hearing more magnificent, inspiring music from him in the years to come.

Dr. Cicoria’s CD “Notes from An Accidental Pianist & Composer” is available at Kind viewers, thank you for your presence on today’s program. Coming up next is Words of Wisdom, after Noteworthy News. May Heavenly melodies accompany you wherever you go.

According to some spiritual traditions, The soul may incarnate in one of myriad forms, including that of an animal.

The day I met you first Was the day of my birth Pink and round, me oh so plump With Mom I gaily frolicked.

Yet humans may not realize that animals also have deep feelings and noble characteristics.

My love for you is so sacred and deep. When I heard people planning to harm you, I felt pained as if my skin were split and my flesh cut.

Please tune in to Supreme Master Television for the world premiere of the Aulacese modern folk opera “A Tale of Karma,” specially adapted from “Words of A Piglet,” a profoundly touching and extraordinary poem written by Supreme Master Ching Hai in her late 20s, here on Enlightening Entertainment, Thursday, June 24.