Dr. Marjorie Woollacott, a neuroscientist, recounts her shift from materialist skepticism to belief in consciousness beyond the five senses, covering meditation, telepathy, near-death experiences, and
Key Takeaways
- Consciousness may extend beyond the physical brain, according to the guest's personal and theoretical framework.
- Meditation and openness to spiritual experience can shift one's sense of meaning and reduce anxiety and fear.
- Anecdotal reports of telepathy, near-death experiences, and healing are presented as evidence for non-materialist views.
- Scientific skepticism and open-minded inquiry are presented as compatible with spiritual exploration, though many claims lack rigorous验证.
What the video covers
- Dr. Marjorie Woollacott describes her journey from a successful, materialist neuroscience career to a spiritual awakening that began with an unexplained energetic experience.
- The conversation centers on the idea that consciousness may extend beyond the five senses and the physical brain, which the guest frames as a receiver or filter rather than a producer of awareness.
- Her personal turning point involved a sister's invitation to a meditation retreat, after which she began meditating daily and her sense of fulfillment changed.
- Topics include telepathy, remote viewing, psi phenomena, synchronicity, and telekinesis, presented largely through anecdotes and references to researchers.
- Near-death experiences and terminal lucidity are discussed as possible evidence that consciousness can persist or perceive events while the body is compromised.
- The guest argues that emotionally charged events and altered brain states may enable psi experiences that are hard to reproduce in laboratory settings.
- Energy healing and the idea that beliefs shape reality are presented, along with a warning against aggressive energetic influence over others.
- The hosts promote their Substack community for practical applications of the discussed ideas.
- Many claims are anecdotal or speculative and are not supported by controlled, replicated scientific evidence within the excerpt.
- The overall message emphasizes openness, interconnection, and reduced suffering through expanded awareness.
Chapters
- 00:00Opening Experience and Introductions
- 07:00Guest's Mission and Background
- 13:00Journey from Materialism to Spiritual Awakening
- 26:00Meditation Retreat and Energetic Experiences
- 45:00Dissociation, Consciousness Fields, and Energy Healing
- 64:00Near-Death Experiences and Terminal Lucidity
- 88:20Telepathy, Remote Viewing, and Psi Research
- 110:00Ethics of Energetic Influence and Closing Reflections
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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It felt [music] like a mini lightning bolt. This energy that goes from his fingers to the point between my eyes down to the very center of [music] my chest and I feel this energy begin radiating outward from my heart filling
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my whole being. This is love and my heart is my home. You were not on any psychedelic drug.
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I've never taken any psychedelics. I was an atheist and I was a neuroscientist that was totally skeptical. But just beneath the surface of my awareness, there simmered this heartfelt ecstasy.
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Dr. [music] Marjgerie Wallakott, she's a professor and a member of the Institute of Neuroscience at the University [music] of Oregon. She's going to talk today about sip phenomenon, remote viewing, the ability of the mind to access the realm that allows us the ability to
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transcend anxiety, [music] depression, fear. When a person has a near-death experience, they often come back with these sigh abilities. It's amazing what people can do, including the interactions with their loved ones on the other side.
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Dr. Willott, I would say no. That would be my response. No. What my consciousness could do is actually [music] change the channels in the receptors of various neurons in my brain to open them up. That's when telepathy often occurs. Why can't we do it in the
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laboratory? Because we don't have emotionally charged events in the laboratory. I'm an open-minded [music] skeptic, but I want the mechanism. When I was the materialist neuroscientist that only believed in objectivity, I had [music] this experience that said, "Wait
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a minute, there is an element of consciousness in everything. Our beliefs create our reality. All of the human beings, all the points of conscious in this world are also contributing to our joint reality. This is a cocreated universe."
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[music] Hi, I'm Aalik. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. and welcome to our breakdown. Today feels like a special day.
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Why is that, M? Because we're we're about to have a very big conversation that kind of takes us from the concept of spirituality and it grounds it in a neuroysiological space, which I love. I love when we literally have an intersection of
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science and spirituality. One of the most powerful aspects of this conversation for me is how we are all boxing ourselves into a world that is keeping us constrained.
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The notion that understanding consciousness can have such a practical application to your life I don't think has ever been more clear than it is in our conversation today. We're speaking to a neuroscientist u an ascribed neuroscience hardwired skeptical atheist who had an experience
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that was inexplicable. The only way to describe it was that she was stepping outside of the five senses that her entire career was based on. Dr.
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Marjorie Walcott, she's a professor and a member of the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon. She trained at USC, got her doctorate there, but she also holds a degree in something that many of us don't know how to get at. And she's
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going to talk today about s phenomenon. She's going to talk about remote viewing. She's going to talk about telekinesis. what she's going to talk about the ability of the mind to step outside of the world that we think
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exists in order to access not only a spiritual realm but a realm that allows us the ability to transcend anxiety, depression, fear, even a sense of helplessness. It it's a wonderful conversation and one that intersects with so many specialists we've spoken to
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in the field of near-death experiences, sigh phenomenon, and other extrensory perception. The episode also talks on telepathy, synchronicity, remote viewing, and many of the unbelievable phenomenon that we have explored here recently. You are not going to want to miss this. I read uh
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infinite awareness the awakening of a scientific mind to prepare for our conversation today. But I also want to mention an incredible incredible book that Dr. Wikott has compiled spiritual awakenings. Scientists and academics describe their experiences um about people who are used to operating in a
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materialistic uh framework who then shift over to a larger spiritual understanding. also the playful universe, synchronicity and the nature of consciousness and we'll actually touch on synchronicity today. Is it a real thing that we can describe in the
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scientific world um or is it just something that you feel? Also on the banks of the river sticks, new perspectives on terminal lucidity and other near-death phenomenon also something we'll touch on today. What is terminal lucidity and what can it tell
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us about the nature of consciousness? We also have a lot of practical tips that Jonathan and I have used in our personal life, which we're going to speak about a little bit with Dr. Wikott, but you're going to want to head over to Substack
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for the conversation about the practical application of everything we're going to talk about today. So, make sure to go over to becbreakdown.substack.com.
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If you've never checked out Substack, now's the time. Download the app. You can choose whatever you want in terms of notifications, membership. We'd love to see you over there to continue this conversation and so many others. Uh, let's welcome Dr. Marjgerie Wikott to
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the breakdown. Break [singing] it down. Before we ask you anything about the incredible fields that you have touched, what is your mission? What do you see your purpose is as a neuroscientist, you know, as a healer, as a practitioner?
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What's your mission? I think my mission is to share with other people that I used to be only tied to my five senses and the belief in only objective reality. And then something happened where my senses seem to open up
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into a wider range and now I saw things totally differently. And I want others to know if they haven't already had that happen that it is possible and that we're a lot happier and we get along a lot better with other people after we
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begin to feel that interconnection with other people. So, it's like a heartfelt desire to let other people know how they will suffer less and how the world will suffer less if we can just begin to open ourselves up to that wider
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understanding. Can you talk a little bit about the journey that you went on uh from being someone very tied to a materialistic view of the world, someone who was engaged in also quite quite a successful career grounded in the five
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senses? What happened that changed your perception of reality and consciousness for lack of a better expression? Well, I think I'll even start like a little bit beforehand because yes, I was in a successful career. I was doing really
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well. I knew like perhaps you did too. Um, being a neuroscientist, I knew how to really do well in the world, how to focus my attention and really um be able to study for tests and do well. So, I
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had all that down. I had a wonderful um posttock at that particular time and then a new job. And yet, I was very unhappy. isn't exactly the world right word, but it was like I couldn't figure out why I wasn't feeling the fulfillment
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of all of those things. I had a beautiful, you know, a boyfriend that had a Porsche. I mean, all of those things that we think we're going to like. And then what happened is that I was noticing that I would be sometimes
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like paranoid when I was be in a tall hotel going to a conference and I was on the 13th floor and they're worried about fires and I'm thinking, come on, what's going on? So that was sort of like
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there's this subtle disease that was going on amidst the very successful life, whatever that means. And so then when my sister, who my boyfriend used to call a bubblehead because she was more of a hippie and loved to, she was living
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in Hawaii doing all of that wonderful exploration of spirituality. When she invited me to go to a meditation retreat for my birthday when I was starting a new position at a university in Virginia, I was intrigued and I was I
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was curious. I was open enough to say yes. She did remind me that my boyfriend then said, "No, no, no. Your sister doesn't know what she's talking about." I backed out and finally I said yes again and she had to get me one of the
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last seats for this meditation retreat. So then what happens is that in the first morning of that retreat I am sitting in the meditation session and we're told that the meditation master the swami that is going to be coming
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around is going to initiate each one of us and it's going to happen through the swami's touch. Now clearly I'm a materialistic scientist and I'm thinking what but I also realized I was there for the weekend and why not put my
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skepticism aside for those two days and just be curious about what might happen. So you were told that this man is gonna come around and physically touch everyone there and something magical is supposed to happen. It didn't say
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anything about the magical thing but simply an initiation. So then I was supposed to decide what that would be.
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So here I hear him coming around the room and he has peacock feathers and he's touching people on the head and I can hear the whoosh whoosh of the wheat feathers and he's getting closer and my I my eyes are closed now at this point
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but I'm totally engaged like well what's going to happen? And when he comes to me what I feel is his hand first of all on my head and then between my eyes and I feel this energy that goes from his
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fingers to the point between my eyes on the bridge of the nose down to the very center of my chest. And at that point, it feels like my heart, but not the physical heart. Much more like a heart,
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full of energy. And I feel this energy stop and then begin radiating outward from my heart, filling my whole being with a whole new feeling I've never filled before. And I remember the sense I had was this is love and I'm home.
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It's like my heart is my home. It's like I didn't know that. And there was this feeling of incredible contentment. And I'm thinking, what on earth happened to me? So that was like the start of it.
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And I should mention that at the end of the intensive, in fact, my sister reminds me I left a little early because my boyfriend wanted me back home. But I'm now getting on the plane going home um back to Virginia and I have bought
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the book that the Swami has written. It was called Play of Consciousness. And I'm looking at his photo and saying, "Who are you and what have you given me?" I was just like not knowing what had happened to me. And I should say
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that night I also had an interesting experience I usually don't share but I'll share today. And that is that at about 2 am in the morning I woke up and I could see in the corner of the room a
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photo of his own teacher. And I because I'd seen that photo in the meditation ashram and he was simply looking down on me with this beneficent smile. That was all total silence. And those things don't happen to me. It's never happened
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to me since. And there was just this feeling of, oh, you know, something has awakened inside of me that's allowing me to feel and experience things I haven't felt before.
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I'm going to pretend like I just landed from another planet, which as Jonathan will attest to, it often seems like I have. So, when you say that you felt energy, what does that mean practically?
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What does it mean sematically? Because a lot of people might say, "Oh, you believe that when this swami touches you, something's going to happen." And whatever you think is what you sort of like pretend, right? This is the the the
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cynical view. You pretend like, oh, something amazing's going to happen. But when you describe someone placing their hand on your face and that you feel it resonate all the way down your spinal cord and then all of a sudden you feel
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love. What What is happening? So, first of all, literally it felt like a mini lightning bolt, like electricity, a tiny electric current. And it didn't even in fact go down my spinal cord. It went from here just like in effect through my
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internal space to my heart. That was just the feeding of just this electricity, this mini lightning bolt just going like that. And it wasn't like a giant bolt of lightning. It was just this very sweet electric current. And it
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landed in the heart. And then the heart felt, oh my god. I mean, the heart felt very good. And that's why the words came, I'm home. I'm home. It's my heart that I'd never experienced before.
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You were not on any psychedelic drug. [laughter] I've never taken any psychedelics. Not even yet.
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A and I was an atheist and I was a neuroscientist that was totally skeptical. So this happened. It's like, well, what on earth was that? I mean, that's why when I got on the plane, it's like, who are you? It's like, this thing
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doesn't happen. And so there was that incredible question mark in my head about that because I didn't understand what happened.
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call the consultants 247 today. That's rbbit tir.com. [music] I am curious what you believe happened both spiritually and physically. And then the second part is that when people have these experiences often in retreats or some form of long extended
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meditation, the question is does it stick? Do we just go back to our old lives and forget that we have had this transformation or how does that realization integrate into your new life?
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Right? And I think that is the key issue that in this case it stuck so well that the next morning I got up to meditate spontaneously and I never have stopped.
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So literally it was like that with this this and what it was is like I'd had that experience that weekend and now I wanted it back and I knew that like just beneath the surface of my awareness there simmered this heartfelt ecstasy.
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I'd done it once so why not try meditating. So I got up. I sat on my bed and I meditated and again I did it the next morning and the next morning and I gradually as we all know begin to like
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get a little bit more of a feel of it and then begin to read about it and it really transformed my life. But I should say it transformed my life in a way which means that I was meditating at
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home and on weekends and at the university. Nobody knew a thing about it because I had to be credible as a neuroscientist. And so I had this very difficult um experience of leading two lives. I began exploring the meditation,
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going to meditation retreats when I could and my colleagues didn't know anything about it because if I were to dare mention the word meditation or something like that, I'd see this veil go over their eyes and you can see I'm
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not interested and it's like okay fine. You were a secret seeker. Yes. as a neuroscientist. I mean, I have many, you know, kind of theories of the way that I might explain that physiological reaction. What did you understand at the time was happening
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both on a neurohysiological level and then on a spiritual level? I would say that I had no idea what was happening on a neurohysiological level because it was unexplainable to me. Somebody cannot touch you. I mean, so yes, you'd have
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the sensation of touch, but you cannot then inside of your body feel an electric current go from here to the heart and and then have that sensation of not your heart organ, but something else open up with this exquisite love
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that you've never felt before. My neuroscience just inside of me was totally confused and confounded. And in a certain sense, it didn't care. And I will say something else that happened from that point on in my life. Most of
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the time my heart whatever we mean by my heart it's like this incredible desire to know more was leading me and the mind was behi behind it sort of running behind to try to catch up to understand intellectually what was going on and I
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would laugh about that sort of thing that there was this incredible desire to know more to begin to practice because it felt good and the intellect was going oh my god this makes no sense. In fact, I remember one time I was then going off
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a few years later to a um conference in Sweden and I was giving a talk on my rehabilitation neuroscience on posture control and development in children and all of my colleagues were atheists and skeptics and I could feel my own belief
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in what had happened beginning to contract in that atmosphere. And I was like, "Oh my goodness, it's fascinating how the mind can quickly go back to its old resonance of belief systems and really cover up its own experience." And
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that's always an interesting thing to ask because I know the skeptics would say, "Well, maybe that was just an illusion that you had, wishful thinking." And of course, you're going back to your old way because that's reality, objective reality. But it's not
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that way because these inner senses have been opened up and you begin to see that and feel it and you say this doesn't go with my old way of the five senses being my only senses thinking.
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Now let's tap into the yogi side or the mystical side of of you to try to explain that experience. I'll posit what I think may have happened and you sort of adjust correct add to this explanation. Could it be that this man
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who has cultivated a very deep and you know long in practice of internal uh connection is my doesn't like when I use the next phrase vibrating at a different frequency and the neuroscientists can explain and try to translate that that he is just
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vibrating in a way that when your heart and gets into connection with that some sort of magical Star Warsesque energy is passed into your body and ignite something that has been with you all along and is now given you enough that
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your body says oh wait a second there is something more beyond the veil that I have been living in and that's enough to spark it and that's what happens when people have these small moments of awakening and that people go to retreats
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and other things the difference here that I want to get to after you help us adjust if how you see It is that for you it's stuck really well. And a lot of people have these small moments of
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awakening, have these little reminders here and there, more so than ever before, but sometimes then struggle to maintain the connection to it. Whether it be they aren't able to practice, they're not motivated or whether it's that they go back and face a materialist
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world and the mind begins to contract around it. I would say yes, you gave an good approximation of what one might say is happening from the yogic point of view. And I, you know, I think my frustration is that okay, from the
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materialist point of view, um, we don't know how that could happen. But here's the issue that I keep coming up to again and again. Do we have to have a mechanism in order to accept something or can we accept the veracity of the
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experience and the transformation that occurs in for example people's physiological senses their intuitions um their shift in their understanding of reality and accept that we don't know what the mechanism is but something happened that is transformational. So there is where I go and because I have
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looked at a number of philosophical traditions throughout history you find that this sort of awakening is expressed in many many traditions and I'll just take a step back. So um of course this energy is called the condundalini in
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India and they talk about the awakening of this energy and how it can move through the whole spinal column and it may go take your awareness out through the top of the head and I've had friends that talk about that happening
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spontaneously. They were meditating or doing taichi on their own but doing it re religiously every day and this sort of thing began to happen. So it doesn't need transmission from a meditator who really seems to have that awake. It can
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happen in a number of ways. But again, in China, it's called theqi. In Japan, it's called the key. In Christianity, the Holy Spirit, I think African tribesmen have a name for it as well.
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So, I think it's called maybe the Kia in some African tribes. So, all these cultures have experienced this and given it a different name and they all say this is an energetic phenomenon. And I'm going as a neuroscientist when that
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happened I don't understand because we only know about the nervous system and my spinal cord and and we don't have energy going up my spinal cord to the top of my head in so the way they describe it in these systems is they say
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it is a subtle energy in the subtle system and interestingly transmission is described in many of these systems and it can be personto person. It can be a transmission that happens during your sleep um through what they might call
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grace, whatever grace means. Um that somehow something happens to you and you're ready to shift into a different mode of expression. Some people seem to walk into this world with it and we know with their senses wide open. As you
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know, I mean, I I have been working with Julia Mossbridge and we're working on children with non-speaking autism who seem when they start being able to actually communicate to have their senses wide open and they have intuitive abilities, telepathic abilities. I've
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been studying and doing research with Diane Hennessy Powell, Marina Wiler, looking at those things. So what happened at that moment getting back to that moment of awakening is that something opened up in terms of a curiosity due to my experience which has
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continued to expand that now makes me curious about seeing what I can find in other people and how I can connect the neuroscience with the experience.
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One of the things that you know as scientists we want to know is is it verifiable? Is it repeatable? Uh what is the formula for which we can try and understand it? So I want to make clear the man who touched you on the
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bridge of your nose and caused your insides to have a fireworks party. I it's not to say that every single person he touches will have that experience.
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And I want to be clear about that. that just as you indicated that some people seem to be born with something right that that's important for people to understand because a lot of people would say well he touched me and it didn't
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happen so that person Marjorie is crazy and you know she's experiencing something that is uh a distortion it's a a perception problem it's a delusion right but the idea is not that the idea is that we are talking about a subtle
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energy system that does not necessarily obey the same laws that Newtonian physics does. Right? This is a different set. It has to have a different category which means that and we've talked about this even with, you know, with Kai
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Dickens when we talk about the telepathy tapes. It's not going to obey the same rules. So if you start applying the same paradigm of scientific veracity to this, it will lead to a split. it will lead to a divisiveness in this field which is
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exactly what we see and it's people like you it's people like Dr. Long and Dr.
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Grayson and Dr. Tucker, right, who are trying to use experiences to show this is a thing that does not obey the same rules by which you would use the scientific method, right? That's right.
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And I just want to add the nuances to that and that is that what we have looked at and we can talk about the neuro filters in the brain um that keep us from having wider awareness that those people that have been deep in
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meditation or deep inside on psilocybin have their brain filters turned way down and they have wider awareness. The person with the NDE has basically things turned pretty much off and they have a wider awareness. So that's where the
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neuroscientist in me says it's not so simple um as that and we have to think about those nuances and whether when the person with an NDE has now left their body or the person with meditation because often the person with meditation
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experience leaves their body they're no longer connected in that same way to their beautiful nervous system um so mataensory um entic etc and yet there they are in fact with their awareness moving to different rooms in a hospital
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for example and knowing everything around them. So there is as you say that frustration that paradoxical nature of this phenomenon that it doesn't happen to everyone but it happens more than just here and there then materialists want to say it's anecdotal but when you
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have so much quote unquote single person evidence that is across cultures I tend to think you have to begin to believe in the phenomenon if not understanding the mechanism. Yeah, I mean it reminds me of Jill Balty Taylor also when she had the
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experience of her rational brain going offline and she was able to be mobile and conscious to some extent. She was having this kind of experience like it's one of the best collaborative elements of near-death experiences and psychedelic transcendental experiences.
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I think what people want to understand is how do I wake up? And sometimes people are waking up through hearing the fact that it's possible. So maybe we can start with some of the amazing stories that you share and that you you've
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written about and researched about people who have experiences that we cannot explain through the materialist world that make us begin to explore something else. you know, I'm not sure where to begin, but the person person that came to mind was again Federico
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Vajeen, who you both know well and maybe some of your listeners know well, who I got to know, I think when a first documentary came out about him, and now I've met him a number of times personally, where again, he was in a
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situation a little bit like me, though he didn't have a meditation teacher touching him in a retreat, he was simply feeling frustrated because he had all the money he could want, the best family in the world, invented the
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microprocessor, all of these things he should be satisfied and he was not satisfied and then in the middle of the night um at Christmas time at Lake Tahoe he wakes up in the middle of the night he's thirsty gets a drink of water and
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he's come sitting back down suddenly this explosion in his heart again it's the heart interestingly for him and me comes and he feels as you know like this feeling of amazing light and love and he doesn't know whether he's everything
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like the waveform of the universe or whether he's a particle and a separate individual being with this happening.
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But it's like the point is yes, it's possible. And for many of us, it seems to happen when we decide we're dissatisfied with our objective five senses reality that they aren't fulfilling us enough. Career, family, everything else. And something inside
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said, I want more. And this is the way I look at it a bit. It's almost like that feeling like your egoic like center is beginning to collapse a little. It's like you thought you had everything in line and you didn't. And it opens up a
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little bit of a crack in that collapse to allow some other phenomenon to happen. Whether we call it another energy to come in to help wake you up, but it allows you, I would say maybe the way I would describe it is it
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allows you to begin to feel an energetic connection with the rest of the world instead of feeling so separate and that little egoic shell that we have around us to protect us and make sure that we look good to everybody else. and we feel
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good, etc. It's like that cracks and then we find something maybe much better. I think one of the things that, you know, many people might be wondering, especially if they're struggling, especially if they're in a place where they're feeling discontented, like they
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don't feel like things are coming together in their life. They're scared about world events. They're scared about what's happening in the country. Can I achieve some sense of peace, security, comfort, safety in my nervous system if I don't have this electrical lightning
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bolt experience in my body? Because for many of us when we hear these experiences, it's like, oh, that's great for you. I'm really happy for you. What would you say to the rest of us who are meditating and sitting and we're not
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feeling a lightning bolt? We're not feeling fireworks going off. We're doing the condalini yoga and they're like, "Oh, it's like a serpent coiling." And I'm like, "It just feels like my ass on a yoga mat." What do you say to those
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people? Do we keep trying? Are we genetically not programmed to have that? What can we get close to short of taking a lot of mushrooms and going into nature?
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That's a really good question and I would say that when I did these studies now that are published on people that have had meditative awakenings and again there are two of them. One was on average people I think it was like maybe
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300 and some odd people that were in one study. The other one was on scientists and academics and we looked at what triggered their opening that we might call a heart opening and there were a number of things which are what you're
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talking about people normally doing but for whatever the reasons for them that happened to like move beyond some sort of a threshold that allowed something more to go. And so of course they are doing those practices like meditation,
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yoga, etc. but also hanging out with other people that have had this awakening because there is a certain feeling of transmission when you're around people like that.
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I need to get new friends. That's what you're telling me, right? Make new friends. [laughter] I mean, and so it's an interesting phenomenon, but I have certainly noticed in fact they often say that when you're in a group that meditates, it's easier
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to induce yourself into that quiet state of mind. And here, give an example. I think that we think about the fact that, well, I'm having trouble meditating. And then you find out, well, I've been watching TV until late at night. I love
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going shopping on the web and buying all these clothes and I love going out to all the malls and I and I do this and I do that and I like going out with my friends and drinking and partying all
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night and then I get up next morning and I can't meditate. What's wrong with me?
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I fall asleep. So, change my life and get new friends. Got it. There. Yeah. So, so often in a meditation retreat, people will ask that why can't I get there? And then it's like, well, look at your life. So, just
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talk to yourself about what you're doing. And are you spending the amount of time on quieting your mind compared to how you're seeking for distractions throughout the day? Or giving yourself totally to your work because you think if I put 110% effort into my work, I'm
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going to be a better person. Well, maybe you could cut it back to 80% for your work and have a little more time for quieting your mind and maybe that would do it. So I think sometimes it's a
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little bit of honest introspection if you really want it. If I drink four cups of coffee in a day, it's much harder to feel still and connected to everything else because my whole system is like what do I do next?
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What do I do next? And that's great if I have to sit down and write a lot or research a lot, but it is not very good at feeling connected to the entire universe.
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I think that's the point. It's like each one of these traditions has many tools that we can use to quiet our mind and everybody will find a different tool that works for them. And that's the key issue. When a person asks, for example,
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in a meditation retreat, well, what do I need to do to get into that state and it's like look, you need to listen inside and try different things and say, oh, for example, a lot of traditions say repeat a mantra. Um you know the
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Catholic tradition has their own rosary that they repeat. Um in Indian traditions there will be a particular set of um mantras including one for um the breath. It's like so ham or hamsaw.
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This this is quieting mantra and if you keep focusing your mind on that the thoughts go away and you can drop into that thoughtfree state and of course again bringing in the research when I look at the research on deep meditators
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you find that their default mode network which is as part of the cerebral cortex that loves to create a beautiful egoic narrative about who I am and what's going on in my life. It quiets down. You can see that in the medit in the um
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scans from the fMRI. It's like, oh yeah. And that's when I begin to feel expansion in my chest. So I think we almost have sort of quote unquote BOF feedback ways of knowing if we're getting there. And then oh that's why it
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feels so good because now all these different filters in my brain are beginning to quiet down and I'm now beginning to feel more interconnected.
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Um, Bernardo Castrip talks about this whole idea of dissociation and the fact that we're this almost like a what his example is a person that has multiple personality disorder and they have multiple personalities and when they're healed they become one again. It's like
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we are dissociated from everybody else and when our barriers become more porous we then begin to feel more interconnected with people and it's like oh that's who I am. I'm connected with everybody else and then we feel better
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in spite of the world events that are going on around us. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about some of the populations that you believe have access to this in a way that is more fluid. What is it about
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certain people um and in particular you know certain people who may also exhibit SI phenomenon uh extrensory abilities.
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What is the ven diagram here? Is it that having special abilities makes you more open? Is it that being gifted at being more open allows you to access extrensory things? What what is the overlap here? What comes first? Well,
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yeah, it's the chicken egg thing. And I'll just give you a few examples because I think there's a lot of variation as we know from Bruce Grayson, Jeffrey Long, etc. that when a person has a near-death experience, they often
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come back whether they want it or not with these sigh abilities. And I know Jeff Kriel talks about that with the woman Elizabeth Cone. And she did not want those precognitions about plane crashes and and knowing what other
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people thought. But that's what happened. So something energetically had shifted inside of her. So these portals, whatever we mean by portals that go beyond time and space are open for her.
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And I know she she probably prayed to let go of them because they caused a lot of problems. So there's one example that you can see something about the near-death experience, the heart stopping shifted something inside of her
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and now everything's wide open. Um for other people it is going into deep meditation and then in fact they have this moment in deep meditation. For example, maybe when this energetic awakening happens, they leave their body and they come back again with this
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intuitive awareness that they didn't have before. Then there are the kids that are non-speaking autistic and they don't have normal communication abilities. Their nervous system is clearly divergent from the average person. But in the process of development or as they came in,
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something about their genetics and their nervous system allows them to now communicate with other people, hear their thoughts and receive thoughts um from other people and give thoughts in ways that the rest of us can't do. So when we say um what do we think is going
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on? I think that it it clearly can be accessed um in different ways. Near-death experiences, deep meditation, um spontaneous awakenings and also there are certain people that come into the world this way. Um and those are the ones also that may we may call mediums.
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I mean I think at some point I'd love to talk about mediumship because as a neuroscientist I said you know this to mediumship. I said look this was my reason for saying that. It's like because if there are other entities in
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the world, there might be bad entities as well as good entities and I don't want any bad entities. So, I'm just going to say mediumship can't happen.
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And so, when I was writing that book and I went to the University of Virginia to talk to Ed Kelly who um does a lot of this research and I showed him my book before it was published, he said, "Well,
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it's a great book, but you left out one chapter." And I said, "Well, what's that?" And he said, "Mediumship." And I said, 'Oh, well, that's because I'm afraid for these reasons of contacting entities that not are not in front of
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me. And he laughed. And of course, it allowed me to open up to looking at the research and finding out it's amazing what people can do, including, as you know, the interactions with their loved ones on the other side. And having now
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written a paper with Chris Row and others on about almost a thousand people that had had mediumship experiences with their loved ones who had died, I see how it seems very compelling to me that those people have this portal open and
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they somehow can receive that information from someone who has died. Um, again, uh, skeptic like I was before would say, "Excuse me." But the fact that in these studies they find that that person on the other side gives the
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person on this side key information that nobody knows. And I think one example was a in fact the person on the other side contacted the friend of the family because the family couldn't connect couldn't really feel this. And they said
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um your father wants you to know the key. And when they heard the key they thought it was going to be the key to love. But so the key to the gun cabinet is in this particular place and I know
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you want to get rid of the guns that I had before I died. So it's like here we have examples of again that opening. I want you to kind of take us into this opening especially from you know and and
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I am I am an I'm an open-minded skeptic but I do I want the mechanism. I want a potential mechanism. My science brain can wrap itself around a lack of reproducibility. My science brain can can get around a lot of things, but this
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is where I'm curious and I don't have an answer to this. That's why we're having you here. You know, what is your kind of larger theory of consciousness? Um, you know, we can say that consciousness is fundamental. A lot of people don't
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understand what that is, but explain what what you're proposing because the notion that I'm accessing information and communication with people who are dead is a little bit hard to wrap my head around, right? What is the theory of the experience of information in the
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universe? Is it based in the aosic records? Is it based in a you know in a in a kind of a theoretical quantum field? What is your theory of what's actually happening in the consciousness plane?
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I will actually tell people that one way to get a better understanding of this and for me it was from a academic scientific perspective but it was a book that was wonderful that you have probably read it's more than allegory by
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Bernardo Castro. So let me just say something that Bernardo said in that book that really helped me. So from this perspective that this theory that there is a consciousness that is infinite and unbound and it's like a probabilistic
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field that then is what actually creates what we might call points of consciousness all of us that then come into a time space realm. That's how I'm at least envisioning it. He said that anything that comes into this time space
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realm has to take on a belief of gravity of time of space around them. And that means that every mountain, every insect, every bird, every human, every plant has taken on that belief system or they wouldn't be here. So the plants don't go
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flying off into the air. The mountains don't go flying away. They have taken on those beliefs at some level of their consciousness or their protoconsciousness in the case of a mountain.
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Beautiful. And so then we then as you become an insect, you take on another set of beliefs that allows you to function in an insect body. And we humans take on another set of belief that says we have
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five senses and that's all that we can use. And we can go on and on. Cultural beliefs etc. beliefs in um the way we act in our family. I mean just a brief aside, I mean when I would go to couples
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counseling with my husband in the past, what the counselor would say, you have taken on beliefs from your parents that this sponge can only be used for a countertop sponge and this sponge only for dishes and you're making that other
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person go to your beliefs. It's like no, this is not a reality. This is not a truth. And so I love Bernardo Castro's way of looking at this. And so you have and so but here's the key point. He
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said, "How do you get rid of a belief? You can't just say, "I'm going to get rid of it intellectually." I can't just say, "Oh, I'm getting rid of that one." You have to go under the belief and
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literally dig it out like a thorn that's inside of you and pull it out from underneath. And then you have the chance of actually letting go of that belief. I think that's profound because then I can say, "Okay, so I didn't have a belief in
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mediumship. I absolutely didn't." Well, now I have to think about what that belief is and is there a way for me to go underneath it? And in my case, it's by doing research and really being very very curious and then having my own
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experiences because in fact once your inner senses I will call them become open to this interconnection then you begin to have them. And so again, think about it. If time and space are a belief system, certain people can go beyond time and
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space. And I think that's what those with precognition are able to do. And those that have had a near-death experience like Elizabeth Cone are able to do. Somehow that dissociation that we have has become porous for them. and
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they're able to move into this realm that is actually beyond time and space and have those understandings.
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It's pretty good. You're pretty good at this. Sponges can be used for anything you want.
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I mean, that's blowing my mind because I hate what sponges he chooses and the way he uses them. It's funny you mentioned sponges. This is something though that I think Jonathan and I talk about a lot and something that on Jonathan Substack
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page practical spirituality he talks about really as it weaves its way through our whole lives and what you're talking about it's kind of a neurological understanding of the stories that we construct about ourselves. So we come into this world
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whether it's by the nature of the way the universe was constructed right for whatever consciousness I have and whatever incarnation I'm in right in this lifetime right for me as I am now I come in with a set of you know kind of
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hardware but then the software is something that is given to me by my parents my ancestry like whatever that load is that emotional load that genetic load that epigenetic load that is then what gets put into this system and if we
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think about it as you know kind of a simulation of sorts right that's what the that's the program that is running for me right now and then I'm interacting with everyone else's program and what's running for them so when we
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try and be in relation with other people we're coming with all the stories that we come with they're coming with all the stories that they're coming with where is that intersection and what a beautiful place to also open up to What
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if your relationship had a spiritual consciousness? What if your relationship was able to progress? Not just romantic relationships, but the interactions you have with other people is your molecules and their molecules all mixing together.
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And there is this other plane that we're not having access to on a five senses level that's existing all the time. You know, when people say to me like, I don't know if I believe in God, it's like, well, God is right there. It's
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just like, do you want to turn towards it or don't you? That's kind of my perspective. I feel the same way about this level of of access. It's there. Do we know how to turn towards it?
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And I want to add that thing because we talk about well what did the neuroscientists do neuroscientists here say about these things? Well, when I have looked at that research on for example um placebo effects or energetic healing or whatever, here's the
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interesting thing. What you find is that when you believe and again here we get back to belief. When you believe the placebo will work, that you think you could be getting the medication, you then change different physiological parameters of your body. So if you think
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you're getting a pain medication, what happens is that the pain areas in your brain actually begin to turn down because your mind, your belief has allowed your physiology to shift. And we think about genetics and then we find
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that oh yes that I can shift my genetics through meditation. If I and I think in my book we talk about the Mr. um Wright um who um had lymphoma and um he believed that this particular um drug
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kiosin was going to heal him. He was healed within a day or two and then got out of the hospital in 10 days but then he heard that it didn't work from the news and then he got sick again. and
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you're thinking that mind that belief system is really powerful and if we could take advantage of that in the right way I mean things could really change in our lives and I want to add one more thing too because it relates to
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energy healing sometimes somebody will have an energy healer heal them and they will be totally fine and then they move into a skeptical group of people and they lose their faith in what happened and their problems come back and so I
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just say Hey, the mind is a lot more powerful than we think. Okay, so the message is change your life, get new friends, and anytime you're around people who remind you of your old friends, punch them in the face
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and run away. Well, this is the notion of when people, you know, get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, you'll often hear this.
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They're told, "Don't go to the places you went. Don't talk to the people you talk to." Because in what we know, there are accessory environments specifically around addiction. If you're around people who are lighting up and you're trying not to smoke, right, the desire,
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of course, everyone knows this, the desire to smoke is more. You're saying that you can apply that to your energetic and emotional and psychological state. This is why people like to be around people who have high vibrations, good vibrations. Jonathan's
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like, "This is why when you're depressed, the whole house is depressed." I get it, Jonathan.
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Yes. I mean, that is so true. And I I think I want to also mention though because I have a good friend an that when we talk about these things and beliefs, she gets contracted. And that's because she says so often somebody has
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cancer and somebody says, "Well, you caused it because of your beliefs." And what I try to say in that case is that um when we say our beliefs create our reality, that is a nuanced phrase. And what it means is that yes, I do have a
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contribution to creating my reality. We've just talked about that. But all of the human beings, all the points of conscious in this world are also contributing to our joint reality.
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And we have to understand that I can't change our political situation, just me with my beliefs, but if the whole world were able to actually shift our belief system toward interconnection and support, maybe we could begin to move
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things. That's asking a lot. But it's interesting that we just have to accept that this is a co-created universe.
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Where the rationalists get hung up is on what is the slippery slope? How far can I take this? And I come from a long line of rationalists and skeptics and I experience my my spiritual exploration as a voracious explorer with
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a very healthy dose of skepticism along the entire way. I can talk about profound experiences and intuition and precognitive dreams and then I'll fall back and question everything and did any of that happen and then I'll believe again and I I fluctuate between these
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states more belief and inodied belief now than ever before. But I think what where people you know start to to question and want to have an understanding is like we see people who have gone off the deep end who are
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living in their car believing that you know everything is going to work out and they're not taking any action in the real world. So where can you help us paint a picture of like how do I do this
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and and stretch my beliefs and look at questioning the limits that I've created re-evaluating what the sponges are for in all areas of my life.
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What's possible, right? Like help us paint a picture of what's possible without going off the deep end to say I I don't have to take any responsibility and money is just going to show up in the mail.
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Yeah. There might be people who are like, I'm gonna leave it up to the universe and they end up not able to support themselves or they end up, you know, and there's nothing wrong like if people live in their car and they want
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to, right? But what Jonathan is saying is a lot of people feel like I don't like my job. It doesn't fulfill me, so I'm going to quit it because I need the universe to provide for me or I need to
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pursue a life of spiritual connection. I can't do that in a corporate job, so I'm going to leave my life. And then they find that there's not something God doesn't always provide the way right we want God to.
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Yeah. And I think of course there are a number of beautiful nuances about that.
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The first for me is that when I was the materialist neuroscientist that only believed in objectivity and the material realm. I left out my experience and then I had this experience that said wait a minute there's more than the
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objectivity. It's more than the five senses. And so what I in fact when I occasionally talk with Bernardo Castro I feel that his analytic idealism because he's talking to materialists is very analytical and he calls it analytic philosophy that has to be rational. But
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I say why can't we add in what he now calls continental philosophy which is phenomenology which is experience. Why can't we have both? And then you can you can watch your experience. You can say my experience will never betray me in
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the sense that it will tell me what I'm feeling now. But then I bring in the intellect and say ah is this a healthy thing for me to think about and do. Is this going to fulfill my objectives in
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the universe? Um and so I I have a nice healthy combination of what I call the yin and the yang of the universe. And I'm always trying to find that balance between the heart and the mind and the
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ways to actually fulfill me. In fact, one person that I talk to a lot, friend named Jeb Jeb Barton, said that he believes that what we really need to do is always look at what will fulfill us.
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And then in each moment as we're doing different things or we're going to different parts of our career, we just ask, is this fulfilling? So if you think that God's going to provide for you and you can just be out there in your car,
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we'll say, has this worked out for me? Is this fulfilling? Well, it hasn't. Maybe I should change. So I think it's having those constant like just talking to yourself and saying giving yourself feedback. Well, you know, maybe I need
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to get back into a job and and get a house again and I will be fulfilled. And what my friend Jeb even says is that a materialist is fine for them to go into looking at objective reality, but then
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they have to ask, is this fulfilling me? And I, as a materialist, found it wasn't fulfilling me. And I needed to begin to try to quiet my mind down and pay attention to my inner senses, my heart, my connection with other people. And
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then I found a lot more fulfillment. Is consciousness in the brain? People are curious.
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I've heard it described and I really like that we are like a cell phone receiving information across a larger consciousness system. Let's start there and then go into collective consciousness depending on your answer.
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Consciousness is in the brain. It's in every cell of our body. It's in the plants around us etc. In other words, there is an element of consciousness in everything because I have a nondual philosophy that says each one of us has
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that as our essence. And that means that my cells in my heart all are cooperating together to make the heart function.
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that there is a certain perception and action going on in every cell that's helping it make this body survive. So saying that yes consciousness is in my brain but not in the way we think. My brain is not producing my awareness.
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That's the difference. So yes, so I'm coming from that place of I as consciousness decided I wanted to play in this material time space realm and so I came down here and got myself a body but um every part of my body is also
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conscious and aware. So yes I I can feel separate from other people but there's a connection that is also there that usually I'm not aware of. You also talk about this kind of spectrum of consciousness um where we we kind of
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think about the consciousness that we operate in to do all the things that we do. Um I think that there are you know obviously many levels but there's kind of two levels that I'd like you to speak to and one is that of dreams. you know,
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the the consciousness level we have um you know, when we're in a state that is not a a typical a awake conscious state and then there's a level above that. Can you talk a little bit about sort of how
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consciousness can exist differently? I think Yung even talked about these various levels of consciousness that included like our unconscious realms or subconscious, our normal waking conscious and then maybe um in fact I think it might have been even James um
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talking about superconsciousness as well. And I guess what I would say is that when we are in the dream state obviously the intellect clearly is somewhat out of the way. um my ego is somewhat out of the way and it's almost
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as if now I can access my more superconscious realms. And I'll give you examples that we know again that are well documented of people actually having that moment when they're in the dream state. They've fallen asleep where their loved one contacts them who is
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dying and says, "I'm dying." Um that happened to my husband. He was falling asleep at night and his father who had had Alzheimer's and was across the country in Tennessee um in a a memory facility said, "My time on this earth is
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over." That's all he heard was this la strong male voice. And he said, "Well, I don't think my time on this earth is over." He didn't know what that voice was from. And then um he sort of went
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back to sleep. The next morning at 5:00 a.m. his sister calls him to say that his father had fallen, hit his head on a table, had hemorrhaged, and was dying when that happened. And so there is that dreamlike state where somehow we can
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communicate with people, especially when it's emotionally charged. And I think people find that that's when telepathy often occurs. Why can't we do it in the laboratory? Because we don't have emotionally charged events in the laboratory and we want to repeat it 20
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times. And so you don't get the same effect. But so yes, dreams are a different level. We have become more porous as Bernardo Castrip might say to our connections with other people and across the time space divide as well.
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What happens in that next level of consciousness? So we have this sort of dream state where as I reported when we had Julia Mossbridge on for the first time I I started trying to keep track of dreams, trying to be more aware of
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dreams. And what I noticed as I started learning to meditate and kind of drop into that space is throughout the day if I meditated, if I sat in quiet, I would start remembering dreams again that I had had that last night when I would sit
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in meditation. So, let's say I'd wake up in the morning and I'd remember a dream.
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I'd, you know, I'd think about it. Sometimes I'd write it down, but you know, then it kind of like leaves your brain. But then hours later, I would sit down to meditate and all of a sudden I was in a state where that dream kept
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coming back to me. I realized that's a place that I'm able to go. What is another state of consciousness that we would get to beyond that? Well, I'm even going to take a step back for you in terms of these various levels because
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what you may also know from whether it's Bruce Grayson or other people doing near-death experience research is that only like maybe 10 to 20% of people who have cardiac arrest remember their near-death experience. But Sam Parnia, another person doing this research said,
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"Wait a minute. I believe there's an iceberg of memories that are unavailable that for these people and if you get them into the right state again like your dreamlike state in meditation you can find those memories and people have
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now shown that's the case I have a beautiful paper by with a woman named Stephanie Arnold her case of having an NDE she um in fact had a precognition that she was going to die during childirth she warned the doctors about
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it um Most of the doctors ignored her. One doctor listened and got an extra crash cart. So, there were two crash carts. She did have anaphylactic shock, bled out. They had a terrible time reviving her. They did revive her and
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she didn't remember any of it. She went to a hypnotherapist afterwards and luckily did it on recording because it was I think in that time where the hypnotherapist was away so it was on Zoom. She recorded it all. She
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remembered everything that happened during that cardiac arrest and her NDE, during her um hypnotic regression, including going to the plane where her husband was rushing off the plane to get back to her at the hospital and seeing all of that only through regression
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therapy because she was then now back in that state like she was in her NDE, which is where you were when you went back into meditation. So, it's that intriguing thing. So, how do we get back to that quiet state and then maybe
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recapture these insights that may come in our dreams? I rarely remember my dreams and it's frustrating. I want to know them. You know, we know a bit from electronphilography, you know, research studies. We know a bit about what are the different brain
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states, right? We know about alpha waves and theta waves, right? We know about these things. We know some of the neurohysiological coralates that again we're just trying to understand it. This is not from a place of let me disprove
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it. There are legitimate scientists and researchers and professors who are saying what is it about electrical brain activity that might be leading to different states and different access of consciousness. I want you to talk a little bit about the neural coralatess
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you know from an imaging perspective uh what are some of the neural coralates of spiritual experiences? You mentioned a little bit about the default mode network which we've talked about here.
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That's something that's also shut way down in psychedelic experiences and other transcendental experiences. But can you talk a little bit more about what's actually going on in the brain when you are having an experience that is allowing you to access another plane
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of consciousness? So we will take the extreme case of the near-death experience where nothing is going on in the brain. Uh and again I will say the skeptics will say oh but they've done some experiments with the rats and they
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um cause cardiac arrest and there's a little bit of brain activity for a number of minutes afterwards and that proves that NDEs must have brain activity. Well again most of the people like Bruce Grayson say excuse me rats
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are very different from humans and even if there's a little bit of brain activity it doesn't say that was a near-death experience. So um there's certain amount of handwaving by the skeptics in that case. But so the question is so if we take the extreme
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it's saying that you do not need a brain to have the experience being active to have the experience you need the brain to come back and express it to other people. So something happened that allowed that experience to come back
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into a brain. Now, one of the things that I remember in a documentary with Sam Parnia is that an MD said in an NDE, your reticular activating system, which goes up to your brain, your memory area, basically is shut down as well. So, you
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shouldn't be able to get sensory input coming up to the brain to go into your hippocampus and your memory system. So, what I say here as a neuroscientist is that this is a question that I cannot answer. meaning that if I believe the
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brain is the source of all of my activities and we know there's a great correlation between what my brain's doing and what I'm talking with you right now if I were in an MRI machine but it doesn't seem to be necessary and
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the neuroscientist in in me feels a crunch in my stomach when I say that but may maybe can I take just one step sideways and that is to go with terminal lucidity for a moment because I've done a lot of with terminal acidity. Just for
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listeners that might not know it, that's when you have Alzheimer's disease. You have big holes in your brain. Um it's been shown in the scanner that that's the case. In the last minutes to hours of life, you come back from being
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totally disoriented, confused, not knowing your relatives, your family, and you come back to lucidity. Your eyes are bright again. You say, "Oh my goodness, you know, it's so wonderful what you've done for me during this time." And talk
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to your grandchildren. and then a few minutes later you close your eyes and you die within 24 hours. And I'm going as a neuroscientist, excuse me. I can understand that people have found that again and again and again, but we have
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documented evidence that their brain is really not functioning and it's the same with people with stroke. Um, so it there I don't know what to do. And when the neuroscientists around me say, "Excuse me, it must be an illusion by every
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medical doctor that saw that um because it cannot happen according to my understanding of the brain.
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I have to be still. I don't know what to say." And so it's the same thing with NDEs and it's the same thing with the deep states of meditation. Well, so here I am a neuroscientist. I've studied the brain
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and I say, "Hey, it's when the brain quiets down that we have the experiences." And we're going, "Well, okay, the filters are now not filtering anymore. That makes sense. But I still have to get away that the experience
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somehow comes into my current awareness." And um maybe I'll also just share you share with you some a particular presentation that was given at the um meeting um international association of near-death studies which I like theoretically. What they said is
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Julia Mossbridge and others have shown that one can have telekinesis where you can basically move something inside of a glass jar with your mind and you can make for example um something turn around in the glass jar. So uh my
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mentality can it's been proven very carefully in the laboratory move things. They said then could you not say that our consciousness because that then we would be saying we're all that are connected with other people. What my consciousness could do is actually
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change the um activity of the basically the channels in the receptors of various neurons in my brain to open them up. All that takes is just moving a little bit of my membrane aside one of the channels and making that happen. And so
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consciousness could have a way of actually through telekinesis since we know that's possible make things happen in the brain without the neurons being normally active. And so there's just one little idea. Dr. Wikott would say no.
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Like that would be my response. No. Just like that's two letters. No. I mean I'm I'm like I'm with you. I'm on the Dr.
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Willott train. Like I'm a passenger. Everything's cool. I got my head out the window. Like, I'm in it until I'm trying to move molecules [snorts] with my brain.
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Do you not believe Julia Mos M Ros Mossbridge's research? Can we talk a little bit more about that research?
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Yeah, there's a lot of research on telekinesis, moving objects. Moving objects. Okay, I'm gonna even so I'll even give you a more fascinating one and you can read about it because it's been documented. Stefan Ozo Vietkia, he was
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um living in Poland during World War II and he was able to do these things, many many sort of telekinetic things, but one of the things he did as a teenager in Russia, this was be this was like before
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um the Russian Revolution, he was part of the royalty in Russia. And in the parlor game one evening he was straight jacketed on the floor as people were around him watching and he moved pillars columns a room little by little kabum
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kabum kabum across the room and again you can um Stefan Schwarz has a book where he describes a lot of this and there's another book about Stefan Ovaki.
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So um that was just one example of what he began to do when he was a teen teenager. came into the world with this and then he of course trained with a particular master from India for a while
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in eastern Russia. That's just part of the story but um the amazing thing is that there is one example of somebody that did it um Julia Mosbridge and I imagine if I'd be happy to do this now you're making me
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intrigued by all the experiments that have been done on this type of research um where people can move objects. All I'm saying is that this is a relatively wellestablished fact and you know Julia's book with Iman Spirus talks
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about this and it's a American psychological association um book on consciousness. So saying that your neuroscience brain can say n o no and I can say it too because it doesn't feel like I I don't do that. I don't have
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that ability but since I know it can be done I'm just this is where that little crack of curiosity comes in. Well, if that is possible, what could that mean?
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And could there be an experiment where you could actually test this? I don't know.
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I'm wondering how far we can take, you know, our our belief system, right? How far can we take our belief that people can do and experience exceptional things? And I think you know the work that Julia Mossbridge is doing even our
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understanding of the fact that those who are non-verbal can communicate right and I'm I always have to you know put a disclaimer I'm setting aside facilitated communication there's still too much controversy around that method but there are many other methods that are not
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facilitated communication um where I mean I have a friend Perry Finkelestein who I actually recorded a a TEDex talk for her she is non-verbal and remembers listening to people talking about her and saying to herself, "I can hear you.
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I understand what you're saying." And it wasn't until she got older and learned to communicate the way that she can that she said, "I am in here. I'm a per she got a master's degree." Like that notion that there are people who are non-verbal
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who have a complicated intricate intellectual capability. Even that right was a leap for us. And we come from generations of people being institutionalized because we did not know what to do with them. We didn't have the ability to see into their mind.
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Right? So I think what you're bringing up is like this is the next level. What what Dr. Mossbridge is doing this is the next level. Is there something that we can say we don't understand why but what if? Right? And a lot of people would say
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like oh what kind of god would this ability and this guy like I don't know.
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That's actually not the question to ask or it's not the question to ask first.
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Tell us a little bit about non-local consciousness from these NDE experiences. And then I'm going to ask about remote viewing because it ties into the moving objects with your mind.
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With Betina Payton, she was lying there on the table um um and hemorrhaging because various blood vessels now were just leaking blood everywhere. And she leaves her body. She in fact goes to another realm. Um and um in that other
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realm I I should mention that she looks back and sees this tiny flame and she says, "Oh, that was my life." And she realizes it's going to be extinguished.
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That's what she assumes happens. But then in this realm of total union, ecstasy, light, contentment, she's hears the voice in effect a thunder. She says more than a voice. You must live.
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Something is decided at some level of reality. She funnels down into the operating room and now she sees everything that's happening and interestingly talking about telekinesis.
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It's not exactly telekinesis but it's like it. She starts telling the hospital doctors what to do to get her body going again. How is she communicating?
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Obviously with her consciousness, but she they're trying to get into her wrist and they can't get the needle into her collapsed um blood vessel because it has no blood pressure. And she keeps saying go to the elbow. go to the elbow and
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finally the person who's doing that a third time he hears and he rushes and he goes to the elbow and he gets it in. So she was also directing as she's outside the body and the body is flat. She says
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it looks white, it looks dead and then of course after it's over she tells everybody what's happened. So there is that example that and in fact I should mention in this case that she went on with the doctors to a TV show in Boston
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after this happened and they corroborated everything she said. So um it's not again like it's just anecdotal evidence in that sense. Um she was it was definitely corroborated. So there you have one example um of an NDER and
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of course there are these other cases where the ND the person with the ND goes into a different room or a different place as if they're teleransporting themselves and they hear interactions of their loved ones down the hall. So
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that's been corroborated too by Bruce Grayson and others. So one important thing about the Payton case, she was a physician.
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Yes, she was a physician and an atheist, a materialist. I and I'm mentioning that because there seems to be a real dismissal of a lot of these cases as you know this is not a verifiable person this is an unreliable person this is a
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mentally ill person they're having delusions they're having hallucinations that's not to say I mean I've met many physicians who I think are delusional but the notion that this was a woman whose career was predicated on veracity on truth you know she's a physician for
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her to experience this is astounding because she is also putting her career, her livelihood at risk. And I hate to say that we need more people who are physicians who are putting their lives at risk to share these things. But one
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of the things that so much NDE research has discovered is that people have been having these experiences probably for all of the human experience, right? When this could happen, people just didn't know what to do with the information.
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Like if you if you bring this up and Jonathan and I had this with um with the death dueler that we spoke to, Martha Joe Atkins, when you say to someone, "Oh, I I've always known that dead people come to you when you're dying
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because my grandmother was like everybody's got a story like this, right? It it happens all the time. No one knows how to be trusted once they reveal this information which you encountered as well as a neuroscientist having these kind of experiences."
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Absolutely. So I mean so getting back to the first point that really helped and also after that happened she said she knew that she was not this body that she was consciousness. She said that when she came to the recovery room so right
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then she knew instantly but then she went back of course after she got well and also realized I have to get back to that state and I don't know how to do it but maybe meditation will help me. And
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interestingly again, she then in fact said, "Wow, how do I find a meditation teacher that can do that?" She imagine a white-haired Buddhist priest somewhere.
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And um she tried that with this particular person in Boston, and that didn't work. She then said, "I felt like I was actually going crazy, but I had to go to this meditation retreat in the Catskill Mountains because something
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inside of me told me that was the way to find it." And her long story short that I think may be in the paper I wrote with her. She comes to this retreat. She sees this meditation teacher in the hall as
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she's beginning to meditate and the whole experience comes back to her. She floods into this sense of total union and she's crying because she's finally back in that state and of course goes home and she continues like me to
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meditate the rest of her life and is totally changed. And one more in interesting point, her husband who also has been an MD to this day does not believe what happened because he's remained a materialist and he cannot change. That's
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a mixed marriage of the worst variety. And you know what's interesting is they she says they love each other dearly and he has built a meditation room on the house for her. He supports her in every way. [laughter]
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But they have agreed. This is like me and Jonathan. and I give him his his raiki room for him to have experiences and then we come back and we talk about math understanding that people can have these unbelievable experiences with non-local
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consciousness having the ability to see outside of the room that they're in through their five senses where their consciousness I don't know we don't know how exactly but is able to travel that takes us to remote viewing or the ability to you know even if
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you're not an actual trained remote viewer to know things outside of time and space that you would otherwise know know them. Can you talk a little bit about the power of developing intuition or the ability to move around time and
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space without your physical body? Obviously, what's interesting is Stefon Schwarz, Dean Raiden and others have obviously looked into this a lot and of course some people come by it naturally and those are some of the people that they used with the remote viewing when
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they were looking at it with the um Stanford Research Institute CIA money and things like that. Um and other people now we are learning are being trained and they're doing it very well.
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And I'll just give you an interesting example for me. So I was in New Zealand at a workshop with Dean Raiden. we were both speakers at the workshop um two or three days on consciousness and he did like a mini workshop inside of it where
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he said well let's just see what you can do about you know remote viewing and so I'm sitting there and what he says he's going to have us try is imagine for ourselves what is the next slide he's
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going to show on the screen this stuff makes me nuts but I can't wait to hear what you say so so I I you know I'm just we one of 25 people in the audience and I say sure
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you know and So, I try to think about what it might be and I get totally wrong. And then after like three or four slides that I haven't been able to do it, I just say, "Hey, I'm just going to
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let my hand draw whatever it wants to draw." And of course, right then, the hand drew, I think it was windmills. And there the hand drove the windmills and and I'm going, "Well, that was interesting." When I let go of my
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intellect, when I let go of my rational thinking and my effort, my hand, how how did my hand do it? but it had the antenna out to go into the future or whatever you want to say inside of that
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projector and do it. And that happened two or three times. And so that showed me that it can be done, but my intellect is so in control that it won't let me out of my normal time space reality.
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I'm hung up on that your hand knew to go inside the projector. That's hard.
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[laughter] Well, I mean, I think my hand knew how to go beyond time and space or whether it's time because it was about to come up and it was also in it was hidden, right? If we're talking about an ability
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to remote view, you don't need to go into the projector. It's in the universe.
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Yeah. And so, of course, and the universe was talking to that part of my system that then could direct the information to the hand. But clearly, the conscious part of me was not necessary. I didn't have to be aware of
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it consciously. Right. So if you're able to do that, is time at all what we think it is?
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No, absolutely not. And and you know, I say that I don't know what that means. I mean, I I believe with most of again the Federico Vines, the Bernardo Castros, the Donald Hoffman's that in fact that that is like the the barrier in fact
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that we have to go through to get into a body that there's sort of a a kaboom. In fact, Betina Payton said after she left her body, she was like in this darkness for a while and then suddenly there was
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a big kaboom and she went then went to this other space and that I like that.
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It's like there there's this almost impermeable barrier of my belief in time and space that keeps me from actually interacting beyond time and space normally. Some people, for some people, it's permeable and they're able to do remote viewing spatially and also
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pre-cognitively. It also makes sense to me that if this is possible, which I believe it is, then it's kind of helpful to like go explore beyond time and space every now and again just to see what the options might
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be. Like if I have to make a decision, shouldn't I go navigate? Like it's just another set of data. I asked Chad GPT if I should, you know, the pros and cons of this decision. Shouldn't I quiet my
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filters? It's like we we learn all about what how to try to take care of ourselves, to eat healthy, to exercise, to move our bodies. No one really tells us, oh, by the way, you have these filters that are guiding your reality.
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And there could be an enormous amount of information available to you if you just learn how to tamp those down and go exploring every now and again. That is what the accashic records which many religious traditions have talked about
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over the past thousands of years. This is what people refer to when they refer to the aosic records that there is a place a place I'm putting it in quotes.
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there's a place where this information was is and will be and it exists and you do a little dance and you spin around three times and you you know say boop and you are in that space and you're
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able to access it and Elizabeth Cone talked about when she was in her near-death experience essentially she dropped into that place she said you can cut through time you just like you're just cutting through it like you see it
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all and you know I said was is and will be because In in the Jewish tradition, one of God's names is an acronym for was, is, and will be. It's this notion that there is something that holds all
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of space and time at the same time. We don't think of our consciousness as having been placed anywhere.
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But if we realize that non our consciousness can be non-local, not attached to us, then at any given moment we're actually shining it in a direction that is going to guide what we perceive as real. So if all the information is
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available in the universe and of course some things have not happened, I'm not saying that everything is laid out and that there is no free will but if there are a series of decisions available uh with cause and effect and we are then
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able to take our attention and place it in a way to get more information. All of a sudden that may open up people's possibility of of what they may learn, the insight they may get. as well. If we
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follow that same logic, we can ask where is our attention being placed at any given moment. If you tie it back to am I only focused on murder documentaries and cases, what am I filling my body with?
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It may be fascinating and it may be great, but it may also be limiting.
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That feels hostile, bro. That feels hostile. But what else, right? What else? Where are we placing it? in M and I have actually been doing this exercise of looking at another side of any interaction.
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And that's just a small assumption. That's just like saying, wait, wait a second, the sponge may be used for something else. But I'm trying to sort of build a a ladder from a high level understanding of consciousness to our
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our sort of very mundane interactions of assuming the worst of someone, of getting annoyed at people. How do we train ourselves to be more fluid in terms of where our attentions and assumptions lie?
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I would ask your listeners, if they're intrigued by all that we've talked about, to really ask themselves, what do they want out of their life? And what is their true way that they think they could be fulfilled? Because I think it's
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because we're not looking there that we get distracted by the things that are in front of us and the people that are around us. And we don't take that step back and say, "Oh, if I want that, then
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maybe I have to step back and say, do I need to dedicate more time to quieting my mind?" For example, a friend when he was like 10 or 11 years of age in elementary school, they barely like passed him from grade to grade for a
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while. But then what happened is his family gave him a Rolex, no, a Timex watch for Christmas. and he would put it in front of himself on the desk and he would time how long he could hold his
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breath because that was intriguing more than the teacher and he found he could hold it longer if he stopped thinking which is where we're going now. So now he's able to hold his breath for maybe a minute or more without thinking. And
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suddenly as he does that, he realizes, I can hear the thoughts of that boy that's two rows over and in front of me. And well, that's not my thought. That's interesting. And then he could begin to realize he could hear somebody else's
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thought. And he could hear a lot of thoughts around him. And he said, "But they're pretty boring." And then he thought, I wonder if I can put a thought into that boy's mind. And so he actually tries it. He says, "You're going to want
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to scratch your ear. Scratch your ear." And the guy didn't do anything. And he did it for two or three minutes. And suddenly, the guy reached up and scratched his ear. And at that moment, my friend heard a voice. And the voice
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said, "Do not do that. That is not good." And he said, "No, no, no. This is fun. This is great." And the voice said, "No, do not do that." And he said even at the age of 10 or 11,
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he understood that it's not good to try to control other people. And the reason I bring this up is because when people talk about remote viewing and all these other things, precognition, they often ask that question. Could people use it
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for nefarious means? And I'm hoping that once one gets this sense of expanded reality and interconnection, you wouldn't want to use it for nefarious means. that you would only do it for the right things because you understand your
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interconnection with everyone in the world. I don't know. I think I'd I'd want lottery numbers. And we talked about this when we talked about Julia Mossbridge because she talks about it with fi finances that a lot of people
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use these kinds of skills in in different ways to make predictions and decisions about horse races, about games, about financial decisions. And the notion is and if you ask you know a strict materialist if this is a thing
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everyone would be doing it and everyone would be winning the lottery but the idea is not that everyone can learn to do this and I mean you know I I think that's also it's a little bit like you
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know what what you decide is nefarious might for me seem like the smartest thing to do right if my family's suffering and we need the money it doesn't feel nefarious to me so I think that sort of is you know some of the
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questions we have around this is there a force in the universe that's also deciding you know kind of right from wrong on on levels that usually we leave to religious conversations and not spiritual ones um along the lines of
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sort of like you know precognition what is synchronicity you know when people start seeing a number a lot uh is it selective attention or is there some other language that we can operate in and how how do Do you view
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synchronicity? What's happening in the universe when there are synchronous events? Yes. And so again, for people that might not know the word completely, again, it's just that when there are two events that happen synchronistically in time at the same time, but have no causal reason
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for them happening. That's what they call something that's synchronistic. So they call it a causal without cause. And therefore, it implies that something from the universe is bringing these things together in a um interconnected way. maybe due to the sincere desire of
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one person or another or something else. And so um just to let people know that um as the head of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences, we published a book on essays related to synchronicity from different scientists
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and academics with their own synchronicities and how they believe this gives them an understanding of how the universe operates. And so basically I do believe that in fact they happen more often when you are actually perhaps I would say like letting go a little bit
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and allowing yourself to move um sort of spontaneously in the world um rather than having you're open you're open and you're not trying to control every moment of your life to make this happen or that happen. So it takes that opening
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and I would also say often it seems like there's a sincere wish from the person in some way or another when I look at some of the examples. So obviously it was Jung that um coined the term because
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he believed it was very real that there was this interconnection at the universe that allows people or events to come together to help something move forward in your life or a new understanding happen in your life. And I think that an example of one of my own
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synchronicities was when my meditation teacher again um when I was spending my sobatical year with her and we were sitting in an office together and I was about ready to go home to University of Oregon where I was teaching. She said so
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Marjorie are you getting married? And I said well no I I have no desire to get married because I couldn't do the things I'm doing right now with you going off for a year on sbatical doing research.
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And she didn't say anything more. And then I get home um to Eugene, Oregon, a week or so later and this man calls me on the phone that says, "Well, I'm interested in meditation and I hear that you have a meditation center in your
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house and I got your number and I'm thinking that I would like to, you know, try this." And I said, "Well," and he said, "But I'm a little bit skeptical.
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You know, I'm not sure." And I said, "Look, I'm an ordinary neurohysiology professor at the university. There's nothing unusual about me. Come on and try it." He walks in the front door a few days later at night for the program
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and I sense that I am going to marry him. Now I didn't say a thing because I am a appropriate [laughter] meditation um center leader. So I didn't say anything but then seven weeks later he stays after everyone has left and he
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says Marjgerie I have something to confess to you. And I said well what? He said I'm incredibly attracted to you.
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Oh my gosh. And we were married you know a year later. So there's an example of these events that came together that I couldn't explain and I just thought it was very funny that I knew I was going
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to marry him. It's like, huh, okay. So, um, I think that if you look at the numbers of essays in that book, it's wonderful because they really do give you a sense of all the different ways that people have found them happen. Um,
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again, a beautiful one by Joan Walton, who is a professor in the UK, is that she was going camping with her family.
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um in in their camper and they had an extra tent because there were two families, one that would be in the trailer and one in the camper. When they were at one particular place where they stopped to have lunch, they had laid out
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the tent on the ground because they had to get into their camper. And while they were having lunch in the camper, some guys stole their tent. They didn't realize it till they looked and it was gone. And the girls saw some guys out
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the back window and they thought, "What are we going to do? We have these two families. we have no way now to actually continue camping. But they went on anyway to the next campsite and they got there in the evening and she just
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happens to ask almost foolishly by any chance do you have another tent around that maybe we could buy or we could borrow or something like that and the owner of the campsite says you won't believe this but somebody left us a tent
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today earlier on and they said you know if you have somebody that you'd like to um give it to go ahead whatever we don't need it anymore. And when they saw the tent, it looked almost identical. Not completely identical, but it was the
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same mate. It was old. It had different tears in it, but there it was from the universe. Um, there's the synchronicity.
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Aosal. How can we explain it? And they make my hair stand on end when I hear those things. I think again, it's just part of this connection beyond time and space that is available to us and somehow we fall into those. I think that
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they do happen more often after those awakenings. And of course, I think we're probably also more attentive. I think it's probably a both. And I want to circle back to um what you said about placing a thought in
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someone's mind and make it really practical in in a positive way. I had a teacher once who also described this capability and we used to sit on the um in the quad of of a school that my office was next to and she said if you
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place your attention on anyone walking if you quiet yourself you'll hear what's in their what's in their head and I used to think well that's really hard because I have a very active imagination how do you know what's real and how do you know
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what you're you're making up um but it's your example of placing a thought and having them scratch is is interesting.
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And you will also notice that when you place your mind on someone else's consciousness, they and you're in the vicinity, they'll start to move a little bit that you can if you watch their physical um movement or reaction, they
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can they can feel heard or watched the same way as if you're staring at someone, eventually they'll pick up on the fact that you're staring at them across the restaurant and they'll like kind of look over at you. Um
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so first I think it's important can we communicate with people remotely to either offer condolences or connect with them you know some people call it remote uh healing where you can send energy but maybe talk a little bit
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about this idea of communicating either on a soul level or a non-concious level with people remotely to maybe offer uh ideas not in in a nefarious way or in in a like hey I know I may have done
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something to you before we deal with it in the physical realm let's deal with it in the energetic realm beautiful question and the answer is yes and I want to give you again a beautiful example of that that I heard at one of
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these near-death studies meetings and that was a woman that said that she had been in an auto accident and it had been a very severe auto accident and she actually had a near-death experience and she said as she was like out of her body
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and unconscious, unresponsive. Anyway, a woman drove by in another car and sent her a prayer asking for her whatever well-being and she heard that.
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And she said, "You don't understand how important those things are to those people that are in trouble when you hear that somebody really cared." So there is an example and I I would say that we know that happens of course when our
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loved ones are in danger or are sick that that does come to us that somehow we especially for people that are emotionally connected.
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Absolutely. Yes. And and I think people have that feeling that when others are praying for your well-being that it does seem to actually help. There's something about that interconnection and that positivity and that sense of they're wanting the best for you that does help.
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And maybe it's partly that it like helps nourish our own belief system of wanting to stay around and be here and and get better. This whole issue of does it living longer mean living better? And the people that so much want more
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longevity do all these funny things and they may not live longer. Part of me wants to say I believe it's about living better but also about contributing in some positive way to the world and contributing to our own goals of
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uplifting ourselves and others in the world. And to me that's probably what allows us to live longer and and decide to stay in the world. And if somebody's loved one dies like you know a husband that you've been with for 50 years maybe
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it's okay to let go and go to the other side. I don't make judgments about people when they when their loved ones gone and it's like I always want to be with them. It's like okay if that's what
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you want it's okay. We know that people who um receive prayer or are part of prayer groups heal faster from medical conditions. So is it that they just know that they're being cared for or is there actually some sort
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of non-physical energy exchange that is helping them expedite the healing process? Uh, I'll just button this part up with asking people to try. If you are in a conflict with someone, if you need to introduce an idea to someone, just
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sit quietly and think about them. Think about h putting the idea, not implanting it into their head, but putting it in in the space in between you in your mind and saying, are they receptive to this?
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I think it is important to not have uh aggressive energetic influence on people and maybe the way to do that is to put it in the space between you and recognize that you're not trying to control someone. The other thing to be
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aware of is that when you may feel someone very strongly and I think people may be able to uh relate to this. You may feel like oh my gosh like all of a sudden I'm thinking about this person
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and it's kind of like intrusive. It may be that they are sending some sort of emotion thoughts your way that may not be all that positive. So I wanted to I was curious your thoughts when you talked about mediumship and and the idea
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of negative energy. Do you feel like we can be influenced and part of a healthy spiritual practice is kind of sitting and and being aware of what may be in our space and and creating some sort of boundary around that.
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Definitely. And of course we know I mean I've taken Reiki um workshops and done practicums and they often talk about even with Reiki doing that that this way of symbolically creating a a safety barrier around you as you're doing this.
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And this raised another interesting point that I think is important to just be aware of that when we do heal other people there's that possibility that we could take on that energy that might not be good for us. And in fact, people that
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do Reiki often do some sort of purification process afterwards so that they keep their body uplifted and pure.
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And so, it's not that you shouldn't do energy healing, but it's just that you should be aware that um these energies in the universe don't necessarily um stay only with one person if you're interacting. I think sometimes we have
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that feeling when we're in the room with a very negative person. We just don't like that energy and we want to leave.
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So I get that and I think it's more to be aware of it. They often um people have said that people that are actually spiritual leaders can take off take on the energy of those people that they are
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trying to help and awaken. And again it's not that you don't do it but you try to be sure that you clear yourself whatever that means. Where can people find out more about the work that you do? Uh you've written so many books and
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papers. Um, you know, I I focus mainly on infinite awareness, the awakening of a scientific mind, but where can people find out more about you?
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So, if they go on Amazon, they can certainly find out more of these those books that we have published through um Galileo Commission and the AAPS as well.
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So, that's one place. And of course, I have a website that's marjgerybulicott.com. And I try to have my various podcasts up there if people want to know a little bit more about what I've been doing and a little bit more about my background
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because in fact it's probably clear that I still wear two hats. I wear the neuroscientist hat as the rehabilitation neuroscientist and I do work on stroke and Parkinson's disease and kids with cerebral policy. Um, and I have a
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textbook in its sixth edition. But my main emphasis right now is on what we're talking about today. It's like really understanding consciousness. And I'm hoping that if I understand it better as a neuroscientist, maybe I can help other
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people through that sharing see that um we can have both the objective part of our world and our reality along with that experiential part working together to really help us feel that interconnection between each other.
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Thank you so much Dr. Walcott. Really a pleasure to speak to you. Thank you. It's been wonderful to be with you today both of you.
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There's two things that came to mind that I wanted to share. The first thing is, and this is not me like patting myself on the back whenever I pass an accident.
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You send a good thought. I do. And I do this out loud because I wanted my children to hear it. And of course, they think I'm a hippie and they're like, "She's nuts." When asked, "Why do I do that?" or "Why have I done
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that?" It's not for any of these funky dunky re reasons, but I guess it is. And I think that's what struck me from talking to Dr. Willott. This perspective with which she views the world means that anything is possible. Anything and
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everything is possible. And so that notion of taking a minute when you drive past an accident, this is what I say. I hope everyone's okay.
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That's all I say. Do I believe that that has power and it's moving the the molecules and the I no? No. But according to Dr. Willott, maybe yes.
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Right. Anything is possible and everything is possible. So that allows you to be open. It allows you to be forgiving. It allows you to seek a solution. It allows you to even do something so crazy as to believe in
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peace when it looks like there can only be war. It does. It starts to change what we believe is possible. And what I love is the sponge example because it's so tangible. Um, you and I literally were recording this that it will be released
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in a couple weeks, but we recorded yesterday a conversation about how we are all building limits for ourselves that we live inside and then we wonder why we're cramped and what does it mean to start to expand those limits. I again like her
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explanation that we do so in a balance where we're not simply blown open and I'm now connected to everything that always is and that everything will work out. The people who I actually see go too far in that direction really
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struggle in everyday life. They often have very hard time with finances. They often aren't really able to navigate the physical world. And there's something about balancing our spiritual exploration with a very practical groundedness in having to navigate and
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make choices. Now, how do we use some of the love, compassion, insight, and even intuitive abilities that we can get from that spiritual expansion to help us navigate the real world without simply neglecting our responsibilities and stop um making the decisions and doing the
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hard work that is required. You can talk about people who have special abilities and oh they may have um you know different abilities in this way but it turns into a special ability or a sci phenomenon or a extrenensory perception.
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But is it also possible that there are people who have access to things that inherently make them not able to manage other aspects of their lives. This is very interesting to me because the idea would be these are people who are often
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institutionalized. They're often dismissed. They are often called crazy. You know, think about how many people I mean we talked about this with the premonitions bureau. Think of how many people are in in psychiatric facilities who are saying many things that don't
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happen but many things that actually do to a level, you know, of specificity. That's unbelievable. So I think that that's sort of also the the the pain point. Are there people and you'll hear this from healers who say I am not
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supposed to be functioning in this world. I was not designed to to be here and to manage the things I'm managing.
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I totally agree with what you're saying in terms of people believing that they're not meant for this time. Um but I also hear that as a bit of a copout because life is challenging. and it requires a lot of paperwork and there's
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digital overwhelm and you know sometimes just being here is difficult. I if if you say that you're not meant for this timeline, then you're also fighting the universe, right? Like you were you came here to experience something. And
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if you believe in a divine synchronized you know knowledgeable intelligent cosmology that you are a part of then you have to believe that you came here for a specific reason and that you have a role to play. Um so to say that you're
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there was a mistake then you're basically saying the universe has miscalculated and sent me for versus that saying is actually wait a second it's actually hard to be in this physical body. Um there are a couple things that I would say that are super
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practical that we can do to use our spirituality to help us navigate the world and you have described the science of we will cover them more in depth uh on the Substack page Alex breakdown on Substack. Come join us there. It's an amazing growing
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community where we dive into practical ways that you can do things as well as release content that is not available anywhere else. But one is that if you are in a difficult situation, how do you hold the possibility of something more
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and see it from other directions? You talk about how from a neuroscientist perspective, we're start we're actually not falling back and we're trying to avoid falling back into those neural grooves which can have um catastrophic thinking or very binary black and white
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thinking and we can leave ourselves open to more possibilities and of ways to solve problems.
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Number two is a bit more spiritual and hippie. Thinking about how to approach people in your life who you may have unresolved conflicts with or not not even an issue but something that needs to be discussed.
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Can you approach them in the non-physical world and start to rehearse open up the possibility of communicating? And we can talk about what that means practically and and how to do it. Um, and in conjunction with that, if someone keeps coming into your
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mind, what does that mean? What might that be calling you to do? And I think similarly, starting to look for synchronicities as a as a guidepost to help you see that you're on the right track when you're uh trying to navigate
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the world. Absolutely. Um, I have some practical things that I'd like to add to that as well. So, um, we will we'll see people over at Substack for that. Um, thanks for being here. Please join us on Substack for uh for more of this
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conversation and lots of other conversations from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my [music] break down. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience or two and now she's going to break
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down. So break down. She's going to break it down.
Topics:consciousnessneurosciencenear-death experiencetelepathyremote viewingmeditationspiritualitypsi phenomenasynchronicityterminal lucidity











