0:00

The model that consciousness revolves around

0:02

our brain, it's not a proven

0:04

model. Your consciousness is just riding

0:06

around in the body with very

0:09

limited connection to reality because the

0:11

body, its whole job is to

0:13

filter out almost all of reality

0:15

because why would you pay attention

0:18

to the spinning of the planet

0:20

and gurgling of things? It's too

0:22

much data. Consciousness survives bodily death

0:24

when a person's body dies. Their

0:27

consciousness simply transitions into a new...

0:29

world pool, i.e. reincarnation, wouldn't

0:31

be paranormal. What evidence do

0:33

you really have that consciousness

0:36

isn't in your brain? You're

0:38

listening to the human upgrade

0:41

with Dave Asprey. Today is

0:43

a show that I am so excited

0:45

to share with you because you might

0:47

have noticed that I'm into biohacking.

0:49

If you've been listening

0:51

for a long time, you know

0:53

where biohacking came from. What happens is

0:56

you might start out saying, look, I care

0:58

about human performance, or I want to lose

1:00

weight, or I want my brain to work, and

1:02

I've been in each of these situations, so I

1:04

want my body to stop hurting, or I don't

1:06

want to get sick anymore. So there's

1:09

a consciousness component, and I believe that...

1:11

If you start on the path of

1:13

biohacking, you will end up inevitably saying,

1:16

I'm going to join Dave in

1:18

living to at least 180 and dying

1:20

at a time and by a method

1:22

of my choice. You're also, if you

1:25

decide to do that, like, well,

1:27

my brainworks have tons of energy, I

1:29

don't want to be miserable and suffer

1:31

anymore. So I'm going to have to, well,

1:33

the technical term would be, well,

1:36

the technical term would be, you've heard

1:38

me say over and over and over.

1:40

If you work on your mitochondria, you

1:42

are wired in your bones to be

1:44

kind to other people. It is a

1:47

fundamental aspect of life in order to

1:49

do that. But it's just really hard

1:51

to shift your energy into that versus

1:53

staying in fear. So that means

1:55

we're ultimately studying consciousness. And

1:57

this is why you'll see guys like

2:00

Joe. to spend on stage at

2:02

my bioacking conference. Shameless plug, bioacking

2:04

conference.com, May 28th, Austin, 4,000 people,

2:06

it's gonna be amazing. But you

2:08

see, Joe, and one of my

2:10

shamanic teachers, Alberto Viodo, will be

2:12

there this year. And it's why

2:14

for 20 years, I've studied in

2:16

monasteries and gone to the Andes

2:18

and Himalayas and all this stuff

2:20

that you might not really hear

2:22

about front and center. And what

2:24

that comes down to is my

2:26

model of. reality and consciousness has

2:28

shifted quite a lot because I've

2:31

seen and eventually learned how to

2:33

do things that I was raised

2:35

to believe are entirely impossible. And

2:37

I've seen them reliably and repeatedly

2:39

and they just basically smacked me

2:41

in the face enough times that

2:43

I'm like, oh, my picture of

2:45

reality is not very accurate. So

2:47

I've been studying all these different

2:49

perspectives, some old lineages and some

2:51

of the more modern things. Our

2:53

guest today is a guy named

2:55

Mark Gober. Mark is an author

2:57

of, was this one, two, three,

2:59

four, five, seven books, the most

3:01

famous of which is called an

3:03

end to upside-down thinking. And he's

3:06

an award-winning author and will call

3:08

it consciousness researcher who, like me,

3:10

used to hang out in places

3:12

like Silicon Valley, but he was

3:14

even worse than being a nerd.

3:16

He was an investment banker. He

3:18

had to take three showers before

3:20

he came into the studio just

3:22

to get the banker stench off

3:24

of him Okay, not really. I

3:26

think he has good hygiene, but

3:28

he comes from that world which

3:30

I'm very familiar with as well

3:32

and Has learned to kind of

3:34

reject a lot of materialist science

3:36

So he's a mental force. He

3:38

does a lot of thinking a

3:41

lot of research and has gone

3:43

way down the path of saying

3:45

oh my god like there is

3:47

science behind consciousness behind things that

3:49

you wouldn't think are real so

3:51

I think we can all learn

3:53

a lot. And you find someone

3:55

who has... one belief set and

3:57

then just keeps seeing things and

3:59

starts questioning their belief set. This

4:01

is what you've done to become

4:03

a bio hacker. Things just happen

4:05

to me. I don't know why

4:07

I'm in control by choosing my

4:09

environment inside and outside my body.

4:11

He's doing the same thing about

4:13

choosing how to frame reality with

4:16

no other ado. Mark, welcome to

4:18

the studios here in Austin. Dave,

4:20

thanks for having me. You and

4:22

I got to have dinner last

4:24

night in a room of about

4:26

25 or so leading AI researchers,

4:28

consciousness researchers, top entrepreneurs, Jeffersonian-style dialogue,

4:30

really, really fun. We had great

4:32

minds in biology and computer science,

4:34

and there wasn't really a consensus

4:36

on almost anything, but more people

4:38

in the room than not thought

4:40

that... our consciousness paradigm maybe wasn't

4:42

very accurate that there's a lot

4:44

of spirituality a lot of belief

4:46

systems that were not rigorously Western

4:48

science. How did you go from

4:51

being kind of atheistic banker dude

4:53

into spiritual guru dude who doesn't

4:55

wear a beaded necklace under your

4:57

sport code but probably wants to?

4:59

Yeah. Unexpectedly, that's the short answer.

5:01

Never would have predicted it if

5:03

you talked to my friends and

5:05

family, like what happened to Mark,

5:07

because this was not on my

5:09

radar. I was on a mainstream

5:11

track. I was very interested in

5:13

the normal things you're supposed to

5:15

achieve in. So school, getting good

5:17

grades. I was a competitive athlete.

5:19

I went to Princeton. I was

5:21

one of the captains of the

5:23

tennis team there. Then like many

5:26

of my classmates went into investment

5:28

banking. I was there in 2008

5:30

during the financial crisis. and didn't

5:32

really have a sense of meaning

5:34

or purpose when I was doing

5:36

this, other than this is what

5:38

you're supposed to do, this is

5:40

what's going to bring happiness or

5:42

something, and then I ended up

5:44

working in Silicon Valley, advising tech

5:46

companies, and sort of had an

5:48

awakening in 2016 in Silicon Valley,

5:50

where I hit a wall in

5:52

my life in many ways because

5:54

I was on this treadmill of

5:56

trying to succeed, either succeeding or

5:58

not, like I was getting anywhere

6:01

in the process. I was sprinting

6:03

really fast, but not moving. And

6:05

they weren't moving. This is towards

6:07

happiness, towards financial success, towards relationships.

6:09

What were you not moving to?

6:11

I would say all the above

6:13

of what's really going to make

6:15

life awesome. And the things we're

6:17

told often don't bring the lasting

6:19

satisfaction that we expect. What were

6:21

the three things that you thought

6:23

were going to bring happiness, like

6:25

the most important three? I would

6:27

have said. Material success. And that's

6:29

two categories. One is respect in

6:31

an industry, so that means progressing,

6:33

but then also doing well financially.

6:36

So the numbers, I would have

6:38

said those are two really important

6:40

things. And beyond that, I'm actually

6:42

not sure. Probably relationship having the

6:44

right marriage and the right kids

6:46

and all that. There you go.

6:48

How old are you now? 39.

6:50

39. And you're... It's fantastic. I

6:52

was on a very similar thing.

6:54

I'm like, okay, top career in

6:56

Silicon Valley. And like, okay, if

6:58

I just have enough money, then

7:00

I'll be happy. And I make

7:02

six million pre-biden dollars when that

7:04

was real money. And I just

7:06

looked at a friend. I'm like,

7:08

I'll be happy when I have 10.

7:11

I literally said that. What a douche

7:13

bag. And then, like, oh, a religion,

7:15

I better get married. And that better

7:17

get married. And that was not a

7:19

way to be happy. And same thing,

7:21

same thing, oh, like, let's be an

7:23

entrepreneur magazine when I'm 23, and none

7:25

of those had anything to do with

7:28

happiness. Why didn't they? To me, it's

7:30

because there wasn't a deeper sense of

7:32

purpose underlying it, and that's what my

7:34

awakening in 2016 has led me toward,

7:36

which is, who are we fundamentally, and

7:38

why are we here? And then having

7:40

answers to those questions, moving forward from

7:43

that point. And what I would have

7:45

told you, Dave, if you asked me

7:47

pre-2016 2016, I would have said we

7:49

live in a fundamentally random and meaningless

7:51

universe. Yeah, I would have said that

7:53

too. And meaningless, I would have said

7:55

to you as, well, we can create

7:57

meaning in our mind, but we're rationalizing

8:00

the inevitability of, we're gonna die, and

8:02

when our brain shuts off, that. That's

8:04

the end of our consciousness. There was

8:06

a Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.

8:08

It was all random interactions of molecules

8:10

and atoms that led us here, and

8:12

we just have to deal with it.

8:14

Are you pissed off for yourself for

8:17

believing that for so long? Yes and

8:19

no. Yes in that what I now

8:21

know makes my old worldview look very

8:23

foolish, but at the same time, I

8:25

don't think I could have escaped it.

8:27

Given where I was and the orientation

8:29

I had, it would have been very

8:31

difficult. Up until that point in 2016

8:34

for me really to have a really

8:36

to have a shift. You say you

8:38

had an awakening in 2016? Was it

8:40

even mean? What happened? Yeah, because for

8:42

many people it can be different. Some

8:44

people have a near-death experience or a

8:46

psychedelic trip. For me, it was more

8:49

of a feeling of being a zombie

8:51

in life combined with learning about science.

8:53

that challenged my worldview. Starting with podcasts,

8:55

because in 2016, podcasts became more popular,

8:57

a friend of mine sent me a

8:59

Tim Ferris episode with Mark Andreessen. I

9:01

was like, this is cool, you can

9:03

listen to venture capitalist talk. And then

9:06

some of my friends were putting butter

9:08

and coffee, and they're like, listen to

9:10

Butter and Coffee, and they're like, listen

9:12

to Dave Aspery. And they're like, listen

9:14

to Dave Asperry. And lots of alternative

9:16

treatments. both mentally and physically, because I

9:18

was interested in the mental too of

9:20

how can I make, where can I

9:23

find joy? That's where it's at. I

9:25

mean, even if you have a tumor

9:27

or something, at least if your brain

9:29

works and you're happy, you'll probably heal

9:31

the tumor. Exactly. So these were all

9:33

foreign ideas and it was just an,

9:35

it was an outlet for me because

9:37

I was so focused on my job

9:40

and my client work in Silicon Valley

9:42

to hear these other ideas. So I

9:44

started doing sensory deprivation, float, float tanks.

9:46

So if your audience is not familiar,

9:48

they probably are, but if they're not,

9:50

it is water with so much salt

9:52

that you float on your back. You

9:55

stay afloat, there's that much salt in

9:57

it. It's not even that high. And

9:59

where I went in San Francisco, it

10:01

was a pod. So you could close

10:03

the pod, I would like to do

10:05

no lights, no sound. And it's like

10:07

meditation on steroids. That's how I see

10:09

it now. And I would come out

10:12

of there very relaxed. I would do

10:14

an hour. Actually, sometimes I would book

10:16

back to back to back where I'd

10:18

do like three hours just to see

10:20

what it was like. Because I didn't

10:22

feel at the time I wasn't ready

10:24

to do the time I wasn't ready

10:26

to do the psychedelic realm. I just

10:29

wasn't ready to do the psychedelic realm.

10:31

I just wasn't ready to do the

10:33

psychedelic realm. I just didn't really. had

10:35

been suppressed and it actually had a

10:37

big impact on my life. So I

10:39

would have a lot of emotions. And

10:41

in hindsight, probably those meditations in, or

10:43

if you want to call the meditations

10:46

in the tanks, they might have somehow

10:48

steered me toward where I ended up

10:50

in terms of learning about the science.

10:52

I was on this path without knowing

10:54

it. Flow tinks are, they're so interesting.

10:56

I tried one in 2014, kind of

10:58

before it became a trend, but on

11:01

my list forever, you know, I saw

11:03

the movie, altered states years ago you

11:05

probably saw that. I just couldn't find

11:07

one. So I'm in Las Vegas. And

11:09

I googled around. I was at a

11:11

conference of some sort. I found a

11:13

place. It was the craziest thing ever.

11:15

I call them and they're like, yeah,

11:18

yeah, come over. You know, you don't

11:20

have to take a taxi. We'll send

11:22

our son over. And I'm waiting. The

11:24

guy's like 45 minutes late to pick

11:26

me up. And he pulls up in

11:28

some beat-up old car. This pretty much

11:30

like Jesse like Jesse. And he gets

11:32

lost on the way to his own

11:35

house. I'm like, oh my God, this

11:37

guy is so loaded on meth. And

11:39

like this is probably not a good

11:41

idea. And I get to the place

11:43

where the float tank is. And it's

11:45

a homemade float tank with like plywood

11:47

and plexiglass and stuff on. And there's

11:49

these two kind of tweaker parents. And

11:52

you know, they're selling $25 bottles of

11:54

Epsom salt with a piece of lavender

11:56

and like, this is the sketchiest thing

11:58

I've ever done. Yeah, it felt the

12:00

same thing. You know, there's no sensory

12:02

input, so I'm just along with myself.

12:04

And it was very similar to some

12:07

of the psychedelic experiences I had, so

12:09

there is value in that, for sure.

12:11

And I was seeing things too, colors,

12:13

almost like kaleidoscopes in a way? Yeah.

12:15

What do you think that is? Like,

12:17

what are the things? I don't know.

12:19

So this is getting into where my

12:21

work has headed actually about what the

12:24

brain is and how its relationship to

12:26

consciousness actually is in the world. And

12:28

I think that when we meditate perhaps,

12:30

we're getting things from our brain out

12:32

of the way. that normally filter out

12:34

a broader reality. So the flow tank

12:36

and meditation could be like miniature ways

12:38

of doing that, whereas a psychedelic trip

12:41

or a near-death experience, those might be

12:43

more dramatic. So it's like maybe little

12:45

bits getting into my awareness while my

12:47

mind was calm. And I was not

12:49

a person who could sit still or

12:51

meditate. So that was a big deal

12:53

for me to sit in those tanks.

12:55

And really the first time I had

12:58

to be with myself like that. I

13:00

ended up getting one of the pause

13:02

is probably similar when you had for

13:04

my... The first upgrade labs is in

13:06

my barn in Canada. I'm like, I

13:08

know the magazines are going to come

13:10

here. So I made a special room

13:13

for it and I had a big,

13:15

like, stencil made for it that said,

13:17

human cloning tank. Nice. It's so sci

13:19

if I open it up and there's,

13:21

you know, a guy dripping with water

13:23

and coming out and it freaked a

13:25

few people out. So we're like, Minority

13:27

Report, that movie would really come out

13:30

of, that's what it looks like. It

13:32

really is. But it's, you're just sitting

13:34

in salt water. The place I went

13:36

to in SF was really nice. It

13:38

was like a spa in the marina.

13:40

That's how it should be. My experience

13:42

was pre-like commercialization of this. So I'm

13:44

glad it's a little bit more normal.

13:47

It's a little bit more normal. It's

13:49

a little bit more normal. It's a

13:51

little bit more normal. Like the salt

13:53

water just like messed up. I didn't

13:55

do mine nearly as much as I

13:57

thought I would when I was at

13:59

my house. Yeah, well the shampoos and

14:01

soaps that they gave were apparently designed

14:04

to counteract that. Okay. So it was

14:06

really, it was a great place. Sweet.

14:08

And I'm not suggesting if you're listening

14:10

to the show that you shouldn't go

14:12

do it. Try a float if you

14:14

never have. I went to a place

14:16

in Victoria with my son when he

14:19

was five. And he was just floating

14:21

and... maybe for five. and I said,

14:23

congratulations. You did your first float ever,

14:25

and he looks at me and goes,

14:27

that wasn't my first float. What do

14:29

you mean? And just real peacefully, you

14:31

guys, when I was inside mommy, I

14:33

was floating. It was like he remembered

14:36

being in the room, and this was

14:38

the same. Mommy, I was floating. It

14:40

was like he remembered being in the

14:42

room, and this was the same feeling

14:44

that they were doing. And it felt

14:46

that way. The pods I use at

14:48

40 years are also designed to mimic

14:50

the womb, even though they're for neurofeedback.

14:53

Because it's not something that we're going

14:55

to think about. It's just that when

14:57

we're in a womb-like environment, we naturally

14:59

in our bones feel safer with no

15:01

cognitive involvement whatsoever. It's this feeling of

15:03

connectedness. And connectedness is one of the

15:05

things that is a hallmark of your

15:07

work. We're all connected to that, right?

15:10

So your awakening was a floating. Maybe

15:12

we could say that was the first

15:14

domino or we could say some of

15:16

these earlier podcasts But if I had

15:18

to point to one moment It was

15:20

listening to a woman on extreme health

15:22

radio named Laura Powers who I actually

15:25

ended up having on my podcast Where's

15:27

my mind, but she talked about? This

15:29

is a health podcast. Okay, and I

15:31

had heard many episodes on carry cancer

15:33

and things like that and this woman

15:35

is speaking about using psychic abilities and

15:37

energies to work with clients and interdimensional

15:39

beings and interdimensional beings And the hosts

15:42

were taking her seriously, so I'm like

15:44

what's going on here because I'm not

15:46

familiar with this. This sounds like sci-fi.

15:48

She doesn't sound like she's lying. Is

15:50

she delusional? How could this be? And

15:52

it didn't, my life didn't change in

15:54

that moment, but at the end of

15:56

the episode, Laura said, well, I have

15:59

my own podcast. It's called Healing Powers,

16:01

and I've interviewed a lot of other

16:03

people. So I said, let me check

16:05

out this new podcast. And it was

16:07

person after person, after person, different backgrounds,

16:09

coming to this view of these things.

16:11

And then I heard a man on

16:13

her show named Paul Davis, who I

16:16

interviewed on my podcast also eventually. He

16:18

went to Princeton also. He was a

16:20

psychology. major like me. And he was

16:22

a Hollywood producer, so the Transformers, so

16:24

a credible guy. And this came after

16:26

I had heard a lot of other

16:28

anecdotes. And he's like, I'm working on

16:31

the Life After Death project, because my

16:33

colleague passed away and he was an

16:35

atheist and he said, I don't believe

16:37

in an afterlife, but if I die

16:39

before you and there is one, I'm

16:41

going to drop you a line. Paul

16:43

proceeds to describe example after example of

16:45

things that rocked his world and the

16:48

one that really stood out to me

16:50

when his colleague died. He said he

16:52

was home alone in New Mexico, working

16:54

on papers, and left the room, came

16:56

back, and there was a wet ink

16:58

blot covering words that were related to

17:00

the death of his former colleague. He

17:02

didn't put the ink blot there. No

17:05

one else was there. And he spent

17:07

three years sending that ink blot to

17:09

chemistry labs to analyze the composition, and

17:11

there were strange properties. This was one

17:13

out of several hundred examples of weird

17:15

things. So I remember I couldn't even

17:17

move in my chair, because I had

17:19

heard enough before to say, hmm, maybe

17:22

there's some reality. This is a really

17:24

smart guy. Whoa. And I started looking

17:26

around the room. Are there things that

17:28

I can't see? How could people not

17:30

know about this? And my curiosity has

17:32

just grown since then. The idea that

17:34

there are things you can't see, it

17:37

actually pisses some people off. And for

17:39

me, I grew up in New Mexico.

17:41

I did total the car within three

17:43

months, so maybe you shouldn't get a

17:45

license at that. But I bought a

17:47

radar detector. Not a lot of people

17:49

had them back then. And soon I

17:51

realized, as I'm driving around, I'm driving

17:54

through all these invisible fields. Like they're

17:56

there, provably. I can't feel, I can't

17:58

prove it. I can't prove it. I

18:00

can't prove it. I can't prove it.

18:02

I can't prove it. I can't feel

18:04

or prove it. I can't prove it.

18:06

I can't prove it or prove it.

18:08

I can't prove it or prove it.

18:11

I can't prove it. I can't prove

18:13

it. I can't prove it. I can't

18:15

prove it. I can't prove it. I

18:17

can't prove it. I can't. I can't

18:19

prove it. I can't. I can't. I

18:21

can't. I have. I have. I have.

18:23

I have. I have. I have. I

18:25

have. I have. I have. I have.

18:28

I have. I around me because I'm

18:30

driving through them and I can sense

18:32

them and I'm going, oh, that's that

18:34

flavor of energy and that flavor of

18:36

energy becoming really comfortable. Well, the fact

18:38

that you can't see cell phone, you

18:40

know, emanations, radio frequencies and all, but

18:43

that they're there, why couldn't there be

18:45

other things that maybe we don't have

18:47

technology to say? Exactly. So even by

18:49

mainstream standards, scientists will tell you that

18:51

we can only see a tiny fraction

18:53

of the full electromagnetic spectrum. So those

18:55

sorts of concepts I started to integrate,

18:57

and I knew a little bit about

19:00

quantum mechanics with these spooky action at

19:02

a distance where things are connected, that

19:04

are connected, that are far away, and

19:06

they're moving. Whoa, that violates the notion

19:08

that the speed of light is the

19:10

fastest you can travel if there's this

19:12

instantaneous connection. So I started, you know,

19:14

kind of doing the math in my

19:17

mind of, hmm, maybe the reason we

19:19

have this 96% of the universe, that's

19:21

dark matter and dark energy that scientists

19:23

don't understand, but they have to plug

19:25

it in to rationalize the whole universe,

19:27

maybe that's because they're missing something fundamental.

19:29

It started to make sense intellectually, but

19:31

I still couldn't grasp that so many

19:34

smart people I knew had no idea

19:36

about this and even would reject it.

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$15 when you subscribe. I want to

21:46

go in two directions. I have a

21:48

story about death and a story about

21:50

science. You want the death story? Sure,

21:52

because it's kind of, all right. My

21:54

grandfather. PhD, physical chemist. spent his entire

21:56

life in the nuclear industry, won awards

21:58

for his work in it, right before

22:01

he died. He knew he was coming

22:03

to the end. He called my dad

22:05

and said, you know, I... I've been

22:07

an atheist my whole life and now

22:09

that I get it really close to

22:11

the end, I've really been thinking about

22:13

it. And my dad's going, he's going

22:15

to convert. Oh my God. And he

22:18

goes, the more I think about it,

22:20

the more I'm convinced it's all bullshit.

22:22

All right, so he's like, I'm still

22:24

an atheist. And he was trolling my

22:26

dad. But then he said, I'm also

22:28

a scientist. He said, I've never died

22:30

before. He said, I've never died before.

22:32

So after I cross over, if I

22:35

can leave you a sign, I will.

22:37

I mean, very much like your story.

22:39

That's what made me think about this,

22:41

right? You totally reminded me. And so

22:43

about a week after he died, this

22:45

huge billboard goes up in town and

22:47

said, where's Larry, which was his name.

22:49

There was no phone number, no QRC,

22:52

no, no, no one knows what it

22:54

was for. And the whole thing is

22:56

like, was that it. And we don't

22:58

know. We'll never know, we'll never know,

23:00

right. Right. Right. Yeah. It was. It

23:02

was super weird. It was super weird.

23:04

It was super weird. And since it

23:07

was super weird. And since it was

23:09

super weird. And since then like. And

23:11

since then like. I don't know, I've

23:13

done shamanic training and all, I've invited

23:15

the spirit of my ancestors to come

23:17

and hang with me, I can tell

23:19

when you're there, right? I'm not that

23:21

good at talking with things like that,

23:24

that's not my superpower, but when you

23:26

work with people who are really adept

23:28

at these sorts of things, I'm very

23:30

skeptical about death really being that real,

23:32

it's just a change of state. Are

23:34

you there too? That's where I am.

23:36

Yeah, so it comes from the idea.

23:38

that our consciousness, which is the part

23:41

of us that's experiencing right now, our

23:43

subjective inner awareness. Difficult thing to talk

23:45

about, because we can't point to it,

23:47

so language is always gonna have to

23:49

approximate, but we all have consciousness right

23:51

now. The idea here that flipped my

23:53

world, which is why my first book's

23:55

called An End to Upside Out Thinking.

23:58

I used to think consciousness comes out

24:00

of our brain through chemical and electrical

24:02

activity, because there's so much neuroscience showing

24:04

affect this part of the brain, it

24:06

affects your consciousness. Change this part of

24:08

the brain that is responsible for vision,

24:10

now your eyesight changes. Close correlations between

24:13

brain activity, conscious experience. Problem is that

24:15

correlation is not necessarily causation. If you

24:17

see firefighters at the scene of the

24:19

fire, I could say to you, Dave,

24:21

hey look. firefighters they caused the fire.

24:23

Oh yeah, you could even see beans

24:25

in a place where people live unusually

24:27

long periods of time and think it's

24:30

caused by the beans. Just saying. We

24:32

could say that because they're co-occurring. Yeah,

24:34

but it's not the beans. We have

24:36

to really think, well what's the cause

24:38

of relationship? So I started looking in

24:40

this other possibility because I heard so

24:42

many anecdotes and then started to see

24:44

peer-reviewed science from... the University of Virginia's

24:47

Division of Perception Studies, the Institute of

24:49

Noetic Sciences, which I'm now on the

24:51

board of, but this is 50 plus

24:53

years of peer-reviewed research founded by Dr.

24:55

Edgar Mitchell and a Apollo 14 astronaut.

24:57

Princeton University had a lab, the pair

24:59

lab for almost 30 years, run by

25:01

the former Dean of Engineering studying these

25:04

phenomena, the US government, doing psychic spying

25:06

programs with declassified documents saying it's real.

25:08

So all of these things made me

25:10

say, hmm. First of all, I'd never

25:12

heard of these things before. So if

25:14

your audience is new to this, it's

25:16

mind-blowing when you get into it. But

25:19

secondly, hmm, maybe we have the relationship

25:21

between the brain and consciousness wrong, and

25:23

consciousness somehow beyond the body, and we're

25:25

tapping into it. And if that's true

25:27

to your question, maybe when our body

25:29

dies and our brain shuts off, it's

25:31

actually kind of a liberation of consciousness,

25:33

and it goes into some other form,

25:36

but it doesn't actually die. There's this

25:38

guy named Galileo, and he stood up

25:40

and said, what if our model of

25:42

reality isn't very accurate, and the sun

25:44

doesn't revolve around the earth, and it's

25:46

the other way around. And of course,

25:48

how dare you? And now is commonly

25:50

accepted. The model that consciousness revolves around

25:53

our brain. It's not a proven model,

25:55

it's just a useful model, like Newtonian

25:57

physics. It's useful, it's just wrong. Right.

25:59

Yeah, it's a good approximation, and there

26:01

are these correlations, so neuroscience is great,

26:03

but I find that many scientists, like

26:05

I used to be, that mindset, they

26:07

want to get rid of anything that

26:10

could sound spiritual. So let's just stick

26:12

in the materialist paradigm. It's all stuff.

26:14

in the brain versus this other possibility

26:16

of what if the brain's like a

26:18

filter? So like the near-death experience, one

26:20

of my favorite quotes from my podcast

26:22

series, I interviewed Dr. Bruce Grayson from

26:25

the University of Virginia, medical doctor, very

26:27

credible smart guy who's been studying near-death

26:29

experiences. So these are people, let's say

26:31

they're in cardiac arrest, clinically dead. They

26:33

have an elaborate experience. He said, Mark,

26:35

we're left with this paradox, that at

26:37

a time when the brain isn't functioning,

26:39

the mind is functioning better than ever.

26:42

Well, if our brain is maybe like

26:44

a blindfold or getting in the way

26:46

of our consciousness, it's filtering it in

26:48

a particular way like an antenna, then

26:50

maybe when you get the brain fully

26:52

out of the way, we can experience

26:54

this broader reality. Maybe that's what psychedelics

26:56

are doing. Maybe that's what certain meditation

26:59

experiences are revealing. And so that changes

27:01

for me. I was so disoriented because

27:03

I'm like, wait, maybe I'm not just

27:05

a body. Maybe my identities beyond my

27:07

body and I'm tapping into something. Whoa.

27:09

I've evolved, or whatever, that sounds super

27:11

eutistical, will say, I am at the

27:13

current place and I view it as

27:16

having evolved from where I was less

27:18

conscious. I wear this fucking meat suit

27:20

around all the time, despite all of

27:22

its limitations and deficiencies, because it lets

27:24

me eat steak, chocolate, have sex, dance,

27:26

listen to music, experience, connection, and evolved

27:28

my consciousness pretty much through suffering somewhere.

27:31

And I have no belief that I

27:33

am my body whatsoever, whatsoever. Right. The

27:35

convenient thing about that is you're not

27:37

afraid of dying. Right. Right. If I'm

27:39

not a fan of the, you know,

27:41

we're all living in a simulation video

27:43

game thing, but if you choose to

27:45

believe in reincarnation, whether you think it's

27:48

likely or not, it's the only rational

27:50

choice. And because if you're wrong, you

27:52

won't know it. You'll be dead. And

27:54

if you're right, you'll have less fear

27:56

of death. And fear of death makes

27:58

you not ask the girl out. It

28:00

makes you not start the company. It

28:02

makes you afraid to take risks that

28:05

are worthy risks. And so I would

28:07

rationally as a computer science atheist guy.

28:09

Say I'm going to choose to believe

28:11

in reincarnation because it improves my quality

28:13

of life And as a guy who's

28:15

done all the spiritual work I believe

28:17

in it because I know how this

28:19

stuff works and so either way That

28:22

means that your consciousness is just writing

28:24

around in the body with very limited

28:26

Connection to reality because the body its

28:28

whole job is to filter out almost

28:30

all of reality because you know why

28:32

would you pay attention to the spinning

28:34

and gurgling of things like it's too

28:37

much data, and then we wouldn't be

28:39

able to have this conversation Well, there

28:41

was this part of me that thought

28:43

like you did, but I would say,

28:45

Mark, get real. What is science telling

28:47

us? It's all random. Don't believe in

28:49

it just to believe in it. I

28:51

was like being really hard on myself.

28:54

Isn't that what is CNN telling us?

28:56

I mean, do you know the history

28:58

of medical journals? Going back to the

29:00

Flexner report? No, you're going back to

29:02

Robert Maxwell. Gisling Maxwell's father, you know

29:04

about that? I didn't know this connection.

29:06

So he started the publishing industry for

29:08

medical journals. And his idea was basically

29:11

wine and dine, the most important innovators

29:13

and professors and things like that, convinced

29:15

him that they needed to be giving

29:17

him their most precious stuff to be

29:19

put in journals so it could be

29:21

judged as worthy for free, and then

29:23

he would sell it back to the

29:25

universities. This is what created so many

29:28

of the problems in science that there's

29:30

now an economic incentive, it dropped. All

29:32

the things that to this day, there's

29:34

four big publications and they all evolved

29:36

from that one model and his is

29:38

the largest one. I forget the name

29:40

of the company. But what? Like there's

29:43

a direct link to what's his name,

29:45

Epstein? Wow. You can't make this up.

29:47

But that broke science, right? And so

29:49

one of the reasons that you believe

29:51

that and I believe that is because

29:53

there was an organized system that suppresses

29:55

science to make money. That's gross. Yeah,

29:57

and I've seen that up close and

30:00

personal because I've gotten to know some

30:02

of these scientists and they'll tell me

30:04

we will submit a well-done study control

30:06

double blind everything in in normal science,

30:08

and a journal will say, we're not

30:10

publishing this because the implications violate effectively

30:12

what our belief system is, meaning their

30:14

studies, which show, statistically speaking, that psychic

30:17

phenomena are real, and many journals will

30:19

not go there. Although, I'm a bit

30:21

more optimistic because there have been a

30:23

few big papers, one that I often

30:25

referenced, 2018, Dr. Etsl Cardenya, from Lund

30:27

University. This was published in American Psychologist,

30:29

the official, peer-reviewed academic journal of the

30:31

American Psychological Association. aggregating decades of research

30:34

on psychic phenomena, suggesting statistically that it's

30:36

real. And actually just early this year

30:38

in 2025, there was another one published

30:40

in a prominent psychiatric journal saying there's

30:42

continued evidence for this. So something's starting

30:44

to slip through the cracks. It's so

30:46

beautiful and the idea of slipping through

30:49

the cracks, it just takes a little

30:51

bit of water in that crack to

30:53

get it open. And I feel like

30:55

there's some organized opposition to it. probably

30:57

from people who know all this stuff

30:59

and don't want everyone else to know

31:01

it, or not, I can't really say

31:03

that I know, but do you think

31:06

that's the case? If you had asked

31:08

me this when I first started writing,

31:10

I was more of the belief that

31:12

this was just kind of ignorance and

31:14

hubris of academics who said, my PhD

31:16

has a materialist bias, these people are

31:18

coming in, they challenge my career of

31:20

research, and I think that's there too.

31:23

There are forces that want to suppress

31:25

this. And one of my favorite quotes,

31:27

it comes from Mario Beauregart, a neuroscientist

31:29

who studies these phenomena, and he said

31:31

on a podcast called Skeptico a few

31:33

years ago, that he was told by

31:35

a top neurological institute in Canada, the

31:37

person who runs it, he didn't name

31:40

who it was, but he said, the

31:42

person who runs this, told me, you

31:44

will never do research on spiritual phenomena

31:46

as long as I'm alive. And his

31:48

conclusion was, this is social engineering, it's

31:50

dark versus light. Very controversial perspective, but

31:52

quite often things that look like they're

31:55

organized evil, they're emergent behavior of complex

31:57

systems, which is what I studied, what

31:59

I built on in my early career

32:01

on. So if you want to make

32:03

a flower. or you can take three

32:05

basic rules and repeat them an infinite

32:07

number of times in beautiful behaviors that

32:09

look complex emerge, but they're not complex,

32:12

they're just infinite. So some of what

32:14

we perceive as evil conspiracies is that.

32:16

But let's imagine that you were the

32:18

first person on the planet to come

32:20

up with AGI. You know, this all

32:22

knowing, all seeing AI thing. Would you

32:24

tell anyone? Be risky to do so.

32:26

Not only would it be risky, you

32:29

lose all the advantage. So let everyone

32:31

else work on their little fake AGI

32:33

as well, yours is in control. So

32:35

there is no chance that the first

32:37

team or government or whatever that has

32:39

AGI will ever tell anyone because they

32:41

would only lose advantage. It's the same

32:43

thing with consciousness. So if you and

32:46

your family or your lineage, if you've

32:48

realized, oh my gosh, consciousness is non-local

32:50

and we can do things with it,

32:52

let's not tell anyone. And the whole

32:54

system of all these shamanic lineages and

32:56

Tibetan Buddhism versus Chinese Buddhism versus different

32:58

shamanic practices, they all have their secrets.

33:01

And this is like filing patents for

33:03

inventions, but since they didn't have patents

33:05

on this, like, well, this has been

33:07

our family for 20 generations, you can

33:09

only get access to the inner sanctum

33:11

after you've gone through level after level.

33:13

This is actually how they set up

33:15

lineages. And there's a bookshelf at the

33:18

back of the monastery that's locked. And

33:20

until you're at a level, you can't

33:22

do that because you'll go crazy if

33:24

you read that stuff. So why would

33:26

you tell anyone else about what you

33:28

can do? You would use it to

33:30

your advantage and you would only keep

33:32

it in the clan. Problem is we

33:35

need all the operating system manuals for

33:37

the human body right now, like for

33:39

all the things we're capable of. And

33:41

so we're actually with AI, even just

33:43

with search engines. So much of the

33:45

hidden riches of the world's ancient knowledge,

33:47

they're becoming available, despite the efforts of

33:49

things like the Catholic Church to burn

33:52

them all and put them in an

33:54

archive that I'm not allowed to read.

33:56

You know, and Pope, if you're listening

33:58

with all due respect, could you please

34:00

open that up? The world needs it

34:02

right now, and we'll still like you.

34:04

But like that's what happens. Am I,

34:07

is there disagreement here? Like poke holes

34:09

in that. Yeah, I should preface this

34:11

by saying, first of all, I feel

34:13

like I'm in a position everywhere where

34:15

I just don't know. I'm asking questions.

34:17

Come on, man. Like, take a risk,

34:19

or choose danger. Take a position. I

34:21

dare you. My position is, I think

34:24

it's probably a combination of all the

34:26

above. There are people that want to

34:28

hide things. There are people that have

34:30

ego and probably other things in between.

34:32

The information we're talking about today is

34:34

incredibly empowering to the individual. It suggests

34:36

that we all have these abilities innately

34:38

and can do things, whereas I think

34:41

the system inherently makes us feel disempowered.

34:43

So there would be an incentive for

34:45

us to feel disempowered by those who

34:47

want power. There you go. And the

34:49

combination of all those is good. Yeah.

34:51

All right. What evidence do you really

34:53

have that consciousness isn't in your brain?

34:55

Just break it down. I like to

34:58

break it down into two categories. One

35:00

is basically psychic phenomena, non-local consciousness, meaning

35:02

consciousness not stuck in your brain. It's

35:04

somewhere beyond space and time. Category one.

35:06

Category two is potentially that consciousness survives

35:08

bodily death. And the approach I took

35:10

because I was still working in my

35:13

job when I wrote this first book

35:15

and end up-side-down thinking. If I'm going

35:17

to talk about this publicly, I was

35:19

worried. I was kind of scared. I

35:21

need to make it as scientific as

35:23

possible. So my approach was, if there's

35:25

one phenomenon that is real in these

35:27

categories, not necessarily all, just one. That's

35:30

all it takes, right? All he needs

35:32

one. Then our current paradigm, that consciousness

35:34

is just stuck in our skull, cannot

35:36

accommodate that. Whereas a new paradigm where

35:38

consciousness is maybe the basis of all

35:40

reality, like Dr. Bernardo Castro says, were

35:42

whirlpools in a stream of consciousness. God,

35:44

I love that. One of the first

35:47

meditations I ever learned was like you're

35:49

in a river, wow, you just blew

35:51

my mind, okay. So there's the individual

35:53

day, the individual mark. We feel like

35:55

individuals, but we're actually part of the

35:57

same stream. That really resonated with me,

35:59

but it also made. possible things like

36:01

psychic abilities. Some of the water from

36:04

my world pool getting into yours, that's

36:06

like a telepathic ability by analogy. Some

36:08

of my consciousness getting into yours, hmm,

36:10

that's not an anomaly anymore. That's actually

36:12

not paranormal. Paranormal is

36:15

paranormal if we assume normal is materialism.

36:17

The consciousness is stuck in our skull.

36:19

Also, if some of, let's say, one

36:21

whirlpool delocalizes, the water flows back into

36:23

the other, into the rest of the

36:25

stream, by analogy. That's like when

36:27

a person's body dies, their consciousness

36:29

simply transitions into a new form,

36:31

doesn't die, still accessible in the

36:33

stream, and it could reconfigure into

36:36

a new whirlpool, i.e. reincarnation wouldn't

36:38

be paranormal. And if there

36:40

are politicians, it reincarnates into

36:42

the whirlpool in a toilet? I haven't put

36:44

that part into it yet, but I'm pretty

36:47

sure. By the seventh grade sense of humor

36:49

is very in light. Yeah. Keep go. Yeah, because

36:51

I'm laughing at myself, so I can't.

36:53

And I also think actually the stream

36:55

is multi-dimensional. So it's probably way beyond

36:57

comprehension. This is just an analogy, so

36:59

maybe we do have toilet whirlpools too

37:01

in there. But basically this gave me

37:03

a framework to say, maybe there's an

37:05

alternative paradigm. It might not be exactly

37:07

like whirlpools in a stream, but like,

37:09

that at least makes these things possible that

37:12

would have been impossible. So again, all you

37:14

need is one. And this first book, and

37:16

end up side-down thinking, and then the podcast

37:18

series that followed it, whereas my mind goes

37:21

through all this evidence. The first place

37:23

I would start is, to me, very difficult

37:25

to refute. It is remote viewing. This is

37:27

the ability to perceive something with the mind

37:30

that's far away in space and time, like

37:32

psychic spying. U.S. government, declassified program. Oh yeah.

37:34

I interviewed Russell Targ who was one of

37:36

the leaders of the program in the 70s,

37:38

laser physicist, the people involved in this program,

37:40

by the way. They're not dumb. They're not

37:42

dumb. And to them, there's no question about

37:45

whether it's real. It's more of how can

37:47

we use this and how could it be

37:49

possible. Can you do it? I have actually not

37:51

tried to harness it. Why with all the research

37:53

and all these books have you not tried something

37:55

as simple as remote viewing? Come on, I do

37:57

meditate. So I do meditate. I may be in my maybe in

37:59

my own. do it but I haven't felt

38:01

the calling really to try to answer

38:03

that much. Interesting, not interesting. What have

38:05

you tried? What psychie powers have you

38:08

studied and tried to do? I would

38:10

just say I try to get into

38:12

a calm state and tap into feelings

38:14

and sometimes that will manifest as like

38:16

knowing something with a degree of but

38:18

I haven't been trained in it like

38:20

you go to the Monroe Institute I

38:22

haven't done that. I mean there's tons

38:24

of different places and techniques you know

38:27

there's I a lot of people who

38:29

do the neuros stuff that I work

38:31

with will have experiences like that. and

38:33

some of the ancient teachings, like the

38:35

yogic things, have instructions in them. Yeah.

38:37

You just said, I meditate, I relax,

38:39

and I tune into my feelings. Yeah.

38:41

Is it like a yoga nidra, like

38:43

doing a body scan? Like, are you

38:46

just laying there? What's that like? Well,

38:48

I've tried different modalities. Okay. So I've

38:50

worked with, like, kri yoga, for example,

38:52

different painting techniques and ways of controlling

38:54

the mind. Also, I've done silent meditation

38:56

retreats. Vipasana kind of thing. Not Vipasana,

38:58

I did one with Adyashante and also

39:00

his wife Mukdi, two of them. So

39:02

they're like non-denominational, but with like a

39:05

Zen Buddhist bent to it. Okay. But

39:07

being in that silence, I feel like

39:09

things just happen. Even if you don't

39:11

know the specific techniques, you just start

39:13

tuning in and flowing. And the other

39:15

part of it for me is the

39:17

more I've learned. the more that I

39:19

feel like the universe is ultimately benevolent

39:21

at the highest level and we see

39:24

this in near-death experiences people talk about

39:26

this love they feel I think there's

39:28

a reality to that that they can't

39:30

even describe with words yeah but the

39:32

oneness kind of thing the oneness they're

39:34

like yeah it's there it's benevolent but

39:36

I do know our world and it's

39:38

not all benevolent and there are dark

39:40

forces so If and when I dive

39:43

into that stuff, I'd want to do

39:45

it very carefully, because we're sending the

39:47

mind to different places. And in the

39:49

psychedelic realm and in other shamanic realms,

39:51

people encounter beings. You can get absolutely

39:53

taken over and trashed if you don't

39:55

know what you're doing in the shamanic

39:57

stuff. Yeah. So my fourth book, an

39:59

end to upside-down contact, it's about contact

40:02

with non-human intelligence. Not just UFOs, but

40:04

what happens in a trip. But you

40:06

haven't done it. No. So I did

40:08

an interview. In 1986, he writes the

40:10

first paper showing that pharmaceutical nicotine reverses

40:12

Alzheimer's. And it's just done publishing on

40:14

nicotine as a beneficial compound without smoking

40:16

ever since. At the end of the

40:18

show, I'm like, so what do you

40:21

do? Like a patch? A lot of

40:23

it. He's like, oh, a lot of

40:25

it. He's like, oh, I've never tried

40:27

it. And I'm like, what? My mind

40:29

is like, how can you be a

40:31

scientist and not do the thing you're

40:33

studying? So, like, like, like, like, like,

40:35

psychedelics, psychedelics, like, like, like, like, like,

40:37

like, holotropic, holotropic, holotropic breath, holotropic breath,

40:40

holotropic breath, like, holotropic breath, like, like,

40:42

holotropic breath, like, like, holotropic breath, like,

40:44

like, holotropic breath, like, like, like, holotropic

40:46

breath, like, like, like, like, holotropic breath,

40:48

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

40:50

Like, I mean, I felt, I've felt,

40:52

and leave your body and all that

40:54

kind of stuff. I felt tapped in,

40:56

I felt, I felt like I was

40:59

seeing things, for sure. I've been, I've

41:01

done things like past life regression, I've

41:03

worked with psychics, I've done astrologists, I've

41:05

done all that sort of thing. I

41:07

feel like, how much of this is

41:09

experiental versus book learning? How much of

41:11

this is experient versus book learning? I've

41:13

done all that sort of thing. I've

41:15

just, like, like, like, like, like, like,

41:18

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

41:20

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

41:22

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

41:24

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

41:26

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

41:28

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

41:30

like, like, like, like, like, I'm sorry.

41:32

Yeah, they're right over your head. Yeah,

41:34

Hershey's is not kick-out guy. No, no.

41:37

We're talking like, like, what do you

41:39

call, like, ceremonial grade cow, which just

41:41

taps you into other things. How about

41:43

something like a hapeh? No. So hapeh

41:45

normally in the rainforest, they blow tobacco

41:47

smoke up your nose. It's pretty freaking

41:49

horrible to be honest. I have a

41:51

beautiful journey for 10 minutes. and feel

41:54

freaking amazing. And then one out of

41:56

a hundred who's got unusual constitution may

41:58

feel nauseous. Interesting, yeah. Yeah, I just

42:00

haven't. It's oftentimes paired with something like,

42:02

I, or even mushrooms. Okay. You're doing

42:04

a lot of book learning and you've

42:06

kind of scraped the surface of the

42:08

experiential stuff. My path has been different.

42:10

Where I... did do the book learning

42:13

stuff. I read DMT, the spirit molecule.

42:15

Turns out I'm really good friends with

42:17

one of the subjects of that experiment

42:19

at UNM. He's 70 now. He's 20

42:21

years old, they gave him IV DMT,

42:23

and he's a very unusual and fantastic

42:25

human being, Glenn talking about you. So

42:27

I went, I read the book and

42:29

I went down to Peru and found

42:32

a shaman before they really did this

42:34

for white people. I'm like, I'm just

42:36

gonna give it a try. And I've

42:38

gone to Mount Kailash and done all

42:40

this crazy stuff, some of which I

42:42

talk about. I wrote the book on

42:44

fasting in a cave for four days.

42:46

And so I'm like, the calls around,

42:48

the apologies, like, I'll just go live

42:51

with the tribe and students like to

42:53

eat grubs. And, right? Awesome. Well, I

42:55

mean, it could be awesome. It could

42:57

also be dangerous, because there's been times

42:59

when I've gotten in places that probably

43:01

shouldn't be. And I've been blessed by

43:03

having some very powerful teachers and gurus

43:05

who will find me and like, yeah,

43:07

you done, fuck that one up Dave.

43:10

Like, let's get you out of that.

43:12

Why I'm encouraging you to go deeper

43:14

on this stuff. If I was using

43:16

interdimensional beings right now to control what

43:18

you're doing, would you know it? I

43:20

wouldn't know for sure. I might feel

43:22

something, but I wouldn't identify it. Don't

43:24

you believe that it might be, but

43:26

I wouldn't identify it. Don't you believe

43:29

that it might be who you'd have

43:31

a spiritual firewall in place at all

43:33

times, whether there are people with the

43:35

powers that you believe in, or entities

43:37

that you believe in, or entities that,

43:39

this is part of having... a clean

43:41

spiritual practice, because the more awakened you

43:43

become, well, the less the powers that

43:45

be like it, yes, the way Terrence

43:48

McKenna describes it in his final book

43:50

with Don Juan, as he's getting his

43:52

final step in his initiation into being

43:54

a shaman, it says, I'm going to

43:56

show you reality, this is a shaman

43:58

that may or may not exist. And

44:00

they're walking down a road at night,

44:02

and he says, I'm going to show

44:04

you. And he looks, and there's these

44:07

dark beings. that are feeding off of

44:09

negative energy and people like big parasites

44:11

all over and he describes like the

44:13

most horrible like, disturbing, disgusting things. Like,

44:15

this is a reality, like, they're causing

44:17

suffering because they feed on it. I'm

44:19

not saying this is true or not.

44:21

I'm just saying this is, you know,

44:23

in a major book in the field,

44:26

I interviewed his brother after he passed.

44:28

At the end of that story, he

44:30

flings himself off a cliff in the

44:32

middle of the night and wakes up

44:34

like 600 miles away in his bed

44:36

the next morning. Like, I, by locate

44:38

it. I don't know what's going on,

44:40

but, but, so if there are those

44:42

things out there. and you're starting to

44:45

delve into these realms, I'm a computer

44:47

security guy, I'm a computer hacker. The

44:49

reason is called biohacking. Hackers protect themselves.

44:51

Hackers are not to take over other

44:53

systems. And since you've proven with the

44:55

work that you have, at least I

44:57

would call it proof, that others can

44:59

affect your consciousness. That means you must

45:01

have awareness of when others are doing

45:04

that. Otherwise, you're a puppet. Yeah, no,

45:06

it's a great point. And it's something

45:08

I've worked on, perhaps not in the

45:10

ways you've described, working with people who

45:12

have been in those realms. And they

45:14

talk about energy practices and protecting your

45:16

field. So I've done energy practices and

45:18

protecting your field. So I've done it

45:20

in that sense. And do you know

45:23

how to protect your field? There are

45:25

energy exercises that I do. Okay. I

45:27

think that's real on this notion of

45:29

parasitic entities. To me, that's totally real.

45:31

I personally just haven't felt comfortable yet

45:33

going into those realms. I need to

45:35

have the right person there who could

45:37

guide properly. Amen. And that's super important.

45:40

Terrible important. But I don't feel qualified

45:42

right now to go there. There's some

45:44

wisdom in that for sure. There are

45:46

some things that I know how to

45:48

do. A particular technology that I am

45:50

not willing to do to myself because

45:52

I still have enough rare egoic. instances

45:54

where if I turn that stuff on

45:56

I would probably manifest chaos that I

45:59

want to in my life or the

46:01

lives of others right and that's just

46:03

like maybe some point and it's it's

46:05

a tough thing because people are listening

46:07

I mean some of them are gonna

46:09

say I'm just gonna go to Aya

46:11

I'm giving a talk itself by, actually,

46:13

tomorrow about altered states. And Iowaska is

46:15

the very last psychedelic, I think people

46:18

should try after they've done all the

46:20

other ones in a certain order, because

46:22

there's great spiritual risk. And who you

46:24

do it with really matters. So I

46:26

worry about people doing Iowaska with untrained

46:28

people, or even just an asset at

46:30

a party. If you don't have the

46:32

right set and setting. I think it

46:34

can have some spiritual risks. What are

46:37

the spiritual risks you've come across in

46:39

your research from opening your mind with

46:41

inappropriate meditation or with psychedelics that people

46:43

might not think about? Well, these practices

46:45

can open one up to unseen realms.

46:47

And those, whether we call them parasitic

46:49

entities or trickster beings, like shape shifting,

46:51

which sounds like science fiction and is

46:53

in mythology as a real. John Mack,

46:56

who was the head of psychiatry at

46:58

Harvard. Pulitzer Prize winner. I wrote about

47:00

him in my book on contact. He

47:02

studied the phenomenon known as alien abduction,

47:04

which I know sounds insane, but as

47:06

a psychiatrist, he was studying people that

47:08

claim this happened. Did my mom's from

47:10

Oswald? I got her. I know it

47:12

sounds crazy though. I didn't really believe

47:15

it. I know it sounds crazy though.

47:17

He wrote a book on abduction. And

47:19

it's like a meticulously-done book. In any

47:21

event, one of the things he says,

47:23

the alien beings are consummate shape-shfters. But

47:25

they can change form. And people who

47:27

can see, can see you do it.

47:29

They can see you do it, but

47:31

not everyone can see. So the question

47:34

is, maybe you enter a realm and

47:36

you encounter a being that appears to

47:38

you as benevolent. Can you discern whether

47:40

the being is trustworthy or not? So

47:42

these are the things, those sorts of

47:44

things are worth considering. You just put

47:46

everyone listening into They Live, the John

47:48

Carpenter movie, right? Have you seen that

47:50

one? Okay. Oh, is that with the

47:53

sunglasses? You put the glasses on and

47:55

everything says obey and all that. It's

47:57

super dark, but it's one of my

47:59

favorite movies. I think there's a lot

48:01

of wisdom in that. Your lens on

48:03

reality might matter. Right. Yeah. Right. And

48:05

so another reason I haven't gone down

48:07

this more psychotic path, I'll say. is

48:09

that when I talk to people who

48:12

have been in these realms, and when

48:14

I talk to a lot of them

48:16

and there's like an overlap in the

48:18

Venn diagram that I get really interested,

48:20

they talk so much about how much

48:22

your interstate matters, and when you get

48:24

into a very harmonious state where you're

48:26

emanating from the heart space, and you've

48:28

talked about this like the toroidal field

48:31

that comes out, and the energy we

48:33

emanate, that can actually be protective that

48:35

there are forces. that could come after

48:37

you, that can be very powerful. I

48:39

did so much neurofeedback before I did

48:41

any meaningful psychedelics that I have never

48:43

had what people call a bad trip.

48:45

I can feel, and oh, that could

48:47

go dark, but there's just an inner

48:50

control system of self-regulation that has served

48:52

me really well. And yet, even if

48:54

there is a bad trip, I've gotten

48:56

to some places where I probably shouldn't

48:58

shouldn't be. And I think it's absolutely

49:00

necessary that when people are experimenting with

49:02

those things that you have the people

49:04

you can call who are true masters.

49:07

Yeah. And they exist and most of

49:09

them are not that easy to find.

49:11

Right. And there are some that are

49:13

well known, but they can pull entities

49:15

off of you. They can reset blown

49:17

out circuits and things like that. And

49:19

I didn't even blown out circuits. I

49:21

had a really profound experience had a

49:23

Joe to spend a event. Joe's speaking

49:26

about his science for the second year

49:28

at the Bioacking Conference here in Austin

49:30

in May and has become a friend

49:32

and this is one of the more

49:34

profound spiritual experiences I've had. Granted, I

49:36

might have done the second Iowa Scus

49:38

ceremony of my life the day before

49:40

I spent seven days doing Joe Despenza's

49:42

work. So afterwards I called up one

49:45

of the people who helped me on

49:47

things and she's like... You blew out.

49:49

Like literally you blew the fuse on

49:51

one of your chocros. Wow. We need

49:53

to. And I was feeling it. I

49:55

was like, some's not right. I don't

49:57

know what that is. I don't have

49:59

that level of discernment. I have a

50:01

lot of internal systems, but without the

50:04

appropriate spiritual engineer or mechanic, if you

50:06

go to these places and you don't

50:08

know who to call, you can spend

50:10

months or years stuck in a dark

50:12

place, disconnected, disassociated, and all the old

50:14

spiritual literature, they write about this, like

50:16

the fast path of enlightenment is fraught

50:18

with going crazy. If you don't go

50:20

crazy, you might be enlightened in one

50:23

lifetime. So, how many people go crazy

50:25

when they start learning what you're teaching?

50:27

Because it's so disorienting or they encounter

50:29

something that I mean I can't even

50:31

describe because it hasn't been my experience

50:33

and you need to call on people

50:35

that are very aware. So another thing

50:37

I've done is worked with many energy

50:39

healers who I trust and they will

50:42

pull off energy entities or balance the

50:44

energies whether it's Reiki or other practices

50:46

that I found to be super important.

50:48

But I don't want to discount the

50:50

entire field of psychedelics. I hope I

50:52

don't come across that way because I

50:54

think for many people it's been incredibly

50:56

impact. and there's definitely a place for

50:58

it in the right set and setting

51:01

with the right mindset and sometimes it's

51:03

the only way to break through. So

51:05

I'm not saying I'm against it. Oh,

51:07

no, there am I if I'm sounding

51:09

that way. It's just there a tool

51:11

and like the breath work, the breath

51:13

work, effects heavily meditated. My next book

51:15

is pretty much all of the ways

51:17

to enter altered states without or with

51:20

psychedelics. It doesn't really matter why, what

51:22

state do you want and why do

51:24

you want it and why do you

51:26

want it? And how do you get

51:28

there? And the reason why it's altered

51:30

states matter is they let you see

51:32

reality much more like, oh, it's not

51:34

a hard cold universe, it's a manifestation

51:36

of consciousness, which I love it that

51:39

you've written seven books and you're going

51:41

deep on that. Yeah. I mean, even

51:43

the mild experience I've had with Kekow

51:45

on the hard opening substance, there were,

51:47

you know, I wasn't going in the

51:49

other realms, but those things can help

51:51

kick start. You know, sometimes you need

51:53

a first domino. How do you know

51:55

the difference between fear and disarmament? Which

51:58

is a broader question to me. How

52:00

do we discern intuition from something if

52:02

not intuition? This feels like my biggest

52:04

challenge and maybe the human... Condition is

52:06

it? Do you want to talk about

52:08

it? Like I've got the recipe. I

52:10

don't hear it. I've worked on this

52:12

for so freaking long. Can I tell

52:14

you how I've done it? And then

52:17

you can please do. Yeah, okay. For

52:19

me, it's first of all been trial.

52:21

You already know, good. I'll tell you

52:23

what I've experienced, but I'd love to

52:25

hear from you how to enhance this.

52:27

Trial and error where I will feel

52:29

something and then I go down the

52:31

path that I thought I felt and

52:33

realize. That was some part of my

52:36

ego entering. Versus now I've failed so

52:38

many times or gone on the wrong

52:40

path. I would never say it's a

52:42

wrong path because I learned Yeah, there

52:44

you go But on a path that

52:46

caused more suffering. Let's say that I

52:48

needed and now I feel something that

52:50

I can't describe to you of just

52:53

an inner knowing of like hmm. I

52:55

felt that before and I know what

52:57

happens. That's a definite. Yes. I need

52:59

to go there So that's what it

53:01

is for me. I think you already

53:03

got it dude. Okay So, like, I've

53:05

had a couple guests on who talk

53:07

about teaching intuition, and it's one of

53:09

the things that I teach when people

53:12

are doing neurofeedback, and you've done enough

53:14

meditation and all. When people meditate enough,

53:16

your ability to sense reality increases. And

53:18

I don't mean just like, I can

53:20

see aliens or whatever. I mean that

53:22

if you have an untrained mind, if

53:24

there's a brief flickering of the lights,

53:26

you won't see it. And if you

53:28

have a trained mind, I'm like, oh

53:31

yeah, if it's some light swan, they

53:33

went off for a tiny fraction of

53:35

a second and came back on, I

53:37

notice it. All right, so it's the

53:39

noticing there. Yes. So a trained mind

53:41

can sense narrower slices of time. And

53:43

when something happens in the world around

53:45

you, or at least that you perceive

53:47

in the world around you, given that

53:50

it all maybe inside you, so confusing.

53:52

The very first and very brief message

53:54

you get that's intuition. And it will

53:56

be very soon after, followed by a

53:58

very large emotional reaction to that, followed

54:00

by a thought. So it's like intuition,

54:02

suppressed by emotion. suppressed by thought and

54:04

then you smile and you know Dave

54:06

is a good boy. Yeah. So it's

54:09

the timing of the intuition and the

54:11

ability to catch that first thing and

54:13

you said it perfectly like it's so

54:15

cool you're like I don't really know

54:17

I'm like dude you totally know. When

54:19

you learn how to focus on that

54:21

narrow first signal you already know all

54:23

kinds of stuff that you don't know

54:25

you know as long as you get

54:28

the emotion and that you go out

54:30

of the way right? So what is

54:32

your... biggest example of just knowing something

54:34

that was impactful without having to think

54:36

about it? I think my books are

54:38

the clearest examples where something comes in

54:40

and every time for me it's been

54:42

a real test in my authenticity because

54:44

increasingly I'm writing about topics that could

54:47

alienate members of my audience who say

54:49

I used to like Mark but no

54:51

he's kind of gone off the reservation

54:53

and a part of me has to

54:55

consider that and then the fear comes

54:57

in but I feel that initial spark

54:59

that you're describing that I can't draw

55:01

it out for you. but I feel

55:03

it subjectively that says this is a

55:06

yes. And you can't not do this.

55:08

And if you don't do it, actually

55:10

it's going to be super painful. And

55:12

that's one of the biggest things I've

55:14

noticed on my journey where I used

55:16

to push through in authenticity. Oh yeah,

55:18

so many people do, because you're supposed

55:20

to, right? I supposed to. And now

55:22

I have to be my authentic self,

55:25

and if I don't, I'm going to

55:27

get sick. It will manifest physically in

55:29

illness. You might enjoy it. I was

55:31

so honored to get to know him

55:33

and have him on the show a

55:35

couple times to go to Shangri-La Studios

55:37

and like, is this even happening? He's

55:39

one of the more enlightened people I've

55:41

met, actually. I would say he's a

55:44

living incarnation of a muse. You know,

55:46

one of the Greek muses who just

55:48

calls out art. But he talks about

55:50

for artists and writing a book as

55:52

a work of art. You write it.

55:54

to your own truth and for yourself

55:56

not for your audience and that if

55:58

you write it for your audience It

56:00

doesn't work. Yeah, and that the artists

56:03

who consistently produce great things they produce

56:05

it for them and it's so authentic

56:07

and congruent throughout, that then it resonates.

56:09

But that if you try to do

56:11

what you're supposed to do, it doesn't

56:13

have the vibe. And I've watched them

56:15

one time we were driving somewhere. It

56:17

was really magical. We were in a

56:19

canyon somewhere in California. And I mentioned

56:22

this blend of North African and EDM

56:24

music that I liked. And it was

56:26

like, it's a peaceful guy. And then

56:28

all of a sudden it was like

56:30

watching a. It was like a lion

56:32

or some kind of big cat, like

56:34

from his piece of sky, also like,

56:36

and like all radar dishes, ears pointed,

56:39

like, do I need to pounce? And

56:41

then his energy feels like scanned and

56:43

said, like, oh, that's something I like

56:45

for. And then just back to peace.

56:47

And I was like, oh my God,

56:49

like he has this innate sense to

56:51

spot new and different kinds of art.

56:53

And when I read that book, I'm

56:55

like, oh my God. Like this explains

56:58

so much about why if you don't

57:00

follow your path as you have discovered,

57:02

right? It doesn't work. And I love

57:04

it. You said your books might seem

57:06

too. Like people say, well, I channel

57:08

that and I used to make fun

57:10

of people who channel and I've dated

57:12

people who channel now. And like, what

57:14

they're doing is they're just setting aside

57:17

the emotions and the thoughts and they're

57:19

just going with the inner knowing. Yeah.

57:21

And you become like a channel for

57:23

something. And I know that I don't

57:25

directly channel. But I do know that

57:27

a lot of what I write in

57:29

my books is in or knowing. It's

57:31

not, like I've done all the research

57:33

and just like you have you've read

57:36

all these books in for those people,

57:38

but sometimes you just know and you

57:40

write down and you like, oh yeah,

57:42

it's supported by all this stuff, right?

57:44

Okay, cool, that's not all writers do

57:46

that. That's not all writers do that.

57:48

That's cool. Not all writers do that.

57:50

That's cool. That's not all writers do

57:52

that. That's cool. That's cool. Well, that.

57:55

Well, that. I think. That's not all

57:57

writers do. I don't know if I'm

57:59

going to write anymore, but I want

58:01

to do what feels most passionate to

58:03

me. And that's part of the intuition

58:05

that you're describing to, that I see

58:07

a combination there. And I also feel

58:09

it with people. Like I get a

58:11

real sense of a person within a

58:14

fraction of a second. know so much.

58:16

And then I realize later on I

58:18

can reverse engineer what I knew in

58:20

that fraction of a second. Wow. I'm

58:22

still working on that one. I oftentimes

58:24

will rely on other people I trust

58:26

to have better intuition about that than

58:28

I do. One of my teachers taught

58:30

me that there's a class of people

58:33

who see other people's energy or see

58:35

beings and all of that. And there's

58:37

other people who don't see but do.

58:39

So... I was frustrated for many years,

58:41

so I'm like, I work so freaking

58:43

hard and like seeing this stuff is

58:45

very difficult and I can sense it,

58:47

but I don't see it. And so

58:49

there's no like judgment about that. And

58:52

I even know, I'm not going to

58:54

share it publicly, but I know the

58:56

brainway patterns of people who see things

58:58

versus people who don't. Right. Yeah. You

59:00

can actually predict it based on an

59:02

EEG scan. You can if you know

59:04

what to look for like, oh my

59:06

God, isn't that cool? Right. And there

59:08

have been studies on, for example, psychics

59:11

versus medium slash channelers, which are different

59:13

skills. One is being telepathic versus tapping

59:15

into some other entity, some other whirlpool.

59:17

And these have been demonstrated for example

59:19

at Ion's Institute of Noatic Sciences controlled

59:21

studies, but also looking at the brain

59:23

patterns. And you see distinctions between a

59:25

telepathic. ability and a channeling mediumship. So

59:27

the brain is interfacing here and there's

59:30

a distinction. It is so cool. I

59:32

have a little confession to make. Okay.

59:34

So in my mid to late 20s,

59:36

I started running a longevity nonprofit group

59:38

that met in Palo Alto. And we

59:40

were three blocks away from where ions

59:42

met and where ions met and where

59:44

ions was. And We actually met

59:47

the board of Ions way back then

59:49

to say maybe we should like share

59:51

some nonprofit stuff I met a longevity

59:53

group where everyone thinks we're crazy because

59:55

we're trying to live like you know

59:57

twice as long as you're supposed to

59:59

and bring all those people in and

1:00:01

I never went to an ion's meeting,

1:00:03

so I'm like, those people are crazy.

1:00:05

And I'm like, you guys weren't crazy.

1:00:07

I'm such a dumbass. If I would

1:00:09

have gone to the longevity stuff and

1:00:11

ions, I wonder where I would be

1:00:13

now, because these are people studying. consciousness

1:00:15

and I was just more like could

1:00:17

I not feel like shit and not

1:00:19

die that would be helpful right but

1:00:21

I think it's super cool that years

1:00:23

later I'm like that I missed out

1:00:25

and you're on their board so anyway

1:00:27

sorry I was dismissing that stuff when

1:00:29

I was younger it was not the

1:00:31

right move let's assume that's I don't

1:00:33

know telepathy remote viewing ESP that they're

1:00:35

real what are the implications for society

1:00:37

like like this seems like this could

1:00:39

mess a lot of stuff up it

1:00:41

really It could mess things up and

1:00:44

that it would disrupt, but I think

1:00:46

ultimately would clean things up. So let

1:00:48

me go to a few data points

1:00:50

that will help to make this not

1:00:52

sound crazy to your audience, because I'm

1:00:54

trying to remember where I was and

1:00:56

the things that I needed to hear,

1:00:58

so that's why I'm bringing in the

1:01:00

science again, because it will sound crazy,

1:01:02

otherwise. So I want to go back

1:01:04

to remote viewing quickly, the declassified documents

1:01:06

from the CIA, direct quote, remote viewing

1:01:08

is a real phenomenon. Implications are revolutionary.

1:01:10

You can see these in my book,

1:01:12

you can find them online, direct quotes,

1:01:14

declassify documents. It's real. You can train

1:01:16

it. Like, it's a fact, right? Wild.

1:01:18

So that means consciousness is somehow independent

1:01:20

of space and time. Telepathy, there's a

1:01:22

new podcast called the telepathy tapes, which

1:01:24

made it to number one on the

1:01:26

podcast charts ahead of Joe Rogan. So

1:01:28

there's a popularization of the science of

1:01:30

this stuff. So I think that's really

1:01:32

good. But near-death experiences. person has some

1:01:34

kind of physiological trauma to the body.

1:01:36

This isn't someone just saying, I think

1:01:38

I'm gonna die. No, this is like,

1:01:40

you almost die. Had it happened twice,

1:01:42

I get it? You know. But what's

1:01:44

interesting is that the people have had

1:01:46

it happen. It's difficult to describe it

1:01:49

to others, because they will say, and

1:01:51

you can tell me if I'm wrong,

1:01:53

it's ineffable. There are no words adequate

1:01:55

to describe what happened to me. It's

1:01:57

very much like being on a trip.

1:01:59

Like how do you explain your mushroom

1:02:01

trip, but you really can't, right? And

1:02:03

what I've found in the research, like

1:02:05

Dr. Bruce Grayson has worked on this

1:02:07

at UVA, there are people who have

1:02:09

looked at the descriptions under different psychedelic

1:02:11

substances and the descriptions under NDEs, near-death

1:02:13

experiences. And while there are some similarities,

1:02:15

and because we use language as an

1:02:17

approximation, they sound similar, but there actually

1:02:19

is no substance that's able to replicate

1:02:21

every part of the near-death experience phenomenon.

1:02:23

In other words, it's not DMT. In

1:02:25

other words, it's not DMT, because I

1:02:27

know your audience might be thinking, well,

1:02:29

maybe there's just chemicals in the brain

1:02:31

that are... The thing that's been disproven

1:02:33

at length if you dig into your

1:02:35

books or other research on this, right?

1:02:37

I mean, it's a good hypothesis, and

1:02:39

there could be chemicals that are involved

1:02:41

in some way, but there are cases,

1:02:43

these to me are the most compelling,

1:02:45

they're called veridical out-of-of-body experiences. Veridical means

1:02:47

of verified memory, My consciousness was hovering

1:02:49

over my body. It was actually in

1:02:51

the other room. I heard the conversations.

1:02:54

I saw these things. And the doctor

1:02:56

says, that's impossible. Because we can time

1:02:58

stamp when that memory occurred, and you're

1:03:00

right, and your body should not have

1:03:02

been able to perceive that, and your

1:03:04

body should not have been able to

1:03:06

perceive that, even if you were alive,

1:03:08

because it was outside your body, but

1:03:10

we know based on what your body

1:03:12

was doing, you were clinically dead or

1:03:14

close, at a time. when the brain

1:03:16

and body should not have been capable

1:03:18

of producing that based on the modern

1:03:20

paradigm. What do you think about this

1:03:22

idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?

1:03:24

Was it like Neil de Graz-Tysiness of

1:03:26

that? That is invoked very often. To

1:03:28

me there is extraordinary evidence because we

1:03:30

have decades of research in addition to,

1:03:32

as you pointed out, this is ancient

1:03:34

stuff that is now we're sort of

1:03:36

rediscovering. It's not really new. It's not

1:03:38

new, but it's kind of funny. The

1:03:40

second he said that, I'm like, oh,

1:03:42

Neil de Grouse Tyson is not a

1:03:44

scientist. The freaking scientific method we learn

1:03:46

in seventh grade. If you have... one

1:03:48

valid data point that disproves your hypothesis,

1:03:50

it is not true, but it may

1:03:52

be a useful model. So when a

1:03:54

guy who says, I'm a leading scientist

1:03:56

and probably a shill for big pharma

1:03:58

or something, but when he comes out

1:04:01

as extraordinary claims, you require any evidence,

1:04:03

it means he has lost the plot

1:04:05

and he is now a religious scientist

1:04:07

and he is not a scientist. Because

1:04:09

all I need is one provable thing

1:04:11

that shatters what I believed was really

1:04:13

helpful. But it's not real. And now,

1:04:15

it's the outliers. That's where all of

1:04:17

my attention has gone. Like, I don't

1:04:19

care if I'm the only person to

1:04:21

live at least 180. I think I'd

1:04:23

consider myself kind of a failure. I

1:04:25

wouldn't have shared very well. But I

1:04:27

want to be the outlier. And if

1:04:29

I'm not, I want to find that

1:04:31

liar and do what that person did.

1:04:33

Right. And so it feels like that's

1:04:35

part of our, our suppressive belief system

1:04:37

that you need extraordinary evidence. No. Like

1:04:39

you said. Give me one example in

1:04:41

my life. I have dozens of examples

1:04:43

that there's no possible way That this

1:04:45

is just random to the point that

1:04:47

I don't question it anymore But it

1:04:49

took me a lot of a lot

1:04:51

of kind of inner soul searching to

1:04:53

get there And it sounds like you've

1:04:55

done the same thing I've taken a

1:04:57

very similar approach the anomalies are the

1:04:59

things to focus on and it's only

1:05:01

anomaly anomaly means something that doesn't match

1:05:03

the pattern basically doesn't fit the model.

1:05:06

Well instead of calling an anomaly maybe

1:05:08

our model's wrong Like you said, if

1:05:10

there's a law that says all swans

1:05:12

are white and we find a single

1:05:14

black swan, after finding millions of white

1:05:16

swans, the law said all swans are

1:05:18

white. Yes. And it's not all. Science

1:05:20

tends to say, oh, we're going to

1:05:22

brush that aside. Not a big deal.

1:05:24

Yeah, therefore it's not a swan. It's

1:05:26

not a swan? Yeah. Like, what planet

1:05:28

are you guys on? But they'll say,

1:05:30

our model, so predictive, look at this

1:05:32

and that, and that. veridical out-of-body experiences,

1:05:34

in addition to many miraculous things, there's

1:05:36

a book called The Self Does Not

1:05:38

Die, which has documented over 100 of

1:05:40

these cases, which is really hard to

1:05:42

do because usually the person's about to

1:05:44

die, and you're not thinking about like

1:05:46

writing this up, but when you can

1:05:48

doc- men and time stamp the memory

1:05:50

and what the body was doing and

1:05:52

those sorts of things it reveals that

1:05:54

perhaps these near-death experiences back to your

1:05:56

initial question about meaning they might be

1:05:58

telling us something about the nature of

1:06:00

reality when your brain's out of the

1:06:02

way people come back with these incredible

1:06:04

stories and we could say oh that's

1:06:06

just your brain hallucinating no maybe there's

1:06:08

more to the story and what do

1:06:10

people come back saying and I should

1:06:13

caveat this if we're talking about black

1:06:15

swans there there there's a fraction of

1:06:17

near-death experiences that are described as hellish

1:06:19

And many people are not comfortable speaking

1:06:21

about them, but that does happen. The

1:06:23

vast majority of the ones that are

1:06:25

spoken about are positive. And people will

1:06:27

say, I was immersed in unconditional love.

1:06:29

I cannot describe to you what it

1:06:31

was like, but it was amazing. One

1:06:33

man I interviewed, Dr. Allen Huguenot, he

1:06:35

had a near-death experience decades ago. He's

1:06:37

a scientist himself. He said, I was

1:06:39

being held by this being, who I've

1:06:41

known for a long time. And I

1:06:43

felt like I was a baby being

1:06:45

held in arms. And he said, I

1:06:47

don't mean to sound suicidal, but I

1:06:49

can't wait to go back to that

1:06:51

place I was in. So we're hearing

1:06:53

story after story like this. And in

1:06:55

fact, roughly 20 to 30% of near-death

1:06:57

experiences involve a life review. Mm-hmm. It

1:06:59

was very common in the teachings. I've

1:07:01

followed ancient teachings talk about this, like

1:07:03

sort of judging yourself. Although when I

1:07:05

interviewed Daniel Brinkley, who's had four of

1:07:07

these near-death experiences with a life review,

1:07:09

he said, it's really not judgment-it's really

1:07:11

not judgment mark. It's you reviewing your

1:07:13

life, not some guy with a hammer,

1:07:15

right? You're feeling it. And what he

1:07:18

told me and others have reported too,

1:07:20

is that you become the person that

1:07:22

you affected in the life of the

1:07:24

youth. You see it through their eyes.

1:07:26

So what Daniel Brinkley told me, and

1:07:28

he had a difficult time talking about

1:07:30

it, still, decades later, he was in

1:07:32

combat in Vietnam, and he killed people

1:07:34

in combat. He became the people that

1:07:36

he killed in the near-death experience. He

1:07:38

felt that he felt that pain. And

1:07:40

he felt the pain of the pain

1:07:42

of the pain of the children that

1:07:44

would no longer have a father. felt

1:07:46

the indirect effects of his actions. So

1:07:48

it could be that big or you

1:07:50

could have someone say, I thought what

1:07:52

it was like to not be nice

1:07:54

to the cashier in line and how

1:07:56

it messed up the cashier's mood and

1:07:58

then every other person. in the line

1:08:00

was not treated as well. So the

1:08:02

little things sometimes are the big things.

1:08:04

So we're getting to your question about

1:08:06

implications. And for me, this notion of

1:08:08

a golden rule. It's a big deal.

1:08:10

It might not just be a fairy

1:08:12

tale. And religions all over the world

1:08:14

and spiritual traditions, they say it in

1:08:16

a different way. Dr. Bruce Grayson from

1:08:18

UVA, having studied many of these people

1:08:20

who have come back, he says that

1:08:23

it's actually beyond morality, it's natural law.

1:08:25

Because if we are interconnected. One whirlpool

1:08:27

can feel what it's like to be

1:08:29

another whirlpool, and then, whoa, what happens

1:08:31

to people after a near-death experience. They

1:08:33

feel that. They try to explain it

1:08:35

to people, but people don't get it.

1:08:37

And they say, I'm quitting my job.

1:08:39

I need to get a divorce. In

1:08:41

Daniel Brinkley's case, he became a hospice

1:08:43

volunteer. Hospice volunteers are some of the

1:08:45

most interesting and enlightened people you'll ever

1:08:47

meet, because they've become not just comfortable

1:08:49

with death, but they've learned how to

1:08:51

be loving in the presence of something

1:08:53

that's terrifying. And that's what Danion re-experienced

1:08:55

in his later life reviews, which he

1:08:57

didn't know he'd have. He got to

1:08:59

feel what it was like to being

1:09:01

the dying person, being comforted by him.

1:09:03

Powerful, right? So that has made me

1:09:05

recontextualize every interaction. It's made me recontextualize

1:09:07

fear. So when I'm thinking about a

1:09:09

book topic that's coming in strong and

1:09:11

I'm getting that intuitive hit that I

1:09:13

felt before and then I'm like, can

1:09:15

I talk about the broader implications? on

1:09:17

a metaphysical level and I say, no,

1:09:19

this is about more than just my

1:09:21

limited perspective and I have to do

1:09:23

it. Because if people don't think you're

1:09:25

nuts, you're probably not very interesting. Yeah.

1:09:27

I mean. But the fear goes away.

1:09:30

The fear is lessened by that higher

1:09:32

context is what I mean. It does

1:09:34

lessen the fear. And I've just gotten

1:09:36

to the point that every time you

1:09:38

think hateful thoughts towards another, well. It

1:09:40

harms me to do that, but it

1:09:42

also harms the other person. And these

1:09:44

things don't stop. They propagate, like electromagnetic

1:09:46

waves propagate to the edges of the

1:09:48

universe every time your heartbeats. They just

1:09:50

get weak. and weaker. Fortunately, we're wired

1:09:52

to be kind to each other if

1:09:54

you're not sitting in all the egoic

1:09:56

things and all that. So a lot

1:09:58

of my practice, like, if I have

1:10:00

anything triggers me, like, ooh, I should

1:10:02

really work on that because I'm triggered.

1:10:04

That means now I'm hating on something

1:10:06

or being reacted to something in a

1:10:08

negative way that directly affects reality in

1:10:10

a way I didn't understand when I

1:10:12

was younger. Like getting mad at politics,

1:10:14

I just like curiosity, I'm like, like,

1:10:16

like, like, what both sides are doing,

1:10:18

like, like, both sides are doing, like,

1:10:20

like, like, like, like, like, But what

1:10:22

I found in that process is there's

1:10:24

a tendency for me to like want

1:10:26

to judge myself, oh, why do I

1:10:28

still have this negative emotion? And then

1:10:30

I pull back and say, no, actually,

1:10:32

that was an emotion that needs to

1:10:35

be expressed, let it be expressed, and

1:10:37

then just sit back and don't act

1:10:39

on it and be crazy. And so

1:10:41

I think that's a really, that's easy

1:10:43

to say, but in the moment to

1:10:45

actually be a third person and say,

1:10:47

Mark, what's going on there, just let

1:10:49

it, just let it, just let it,

1:10:51

just let it, and our conscious controls

1:10:53

things, feeling the negative emotion towards another

1:10:55

is harmful even if you don't express

1:10:57

it. Right. So how do you turn

1:10:59

off the feeling of negative emotions? I

1:11:01

love the advice of Dr. David Hawkins,

1:11:03

who is a psychiatrist. Love him, okay.

1:11:05

And then turn spiritual teachers. He's got

1:11:07

both sides. And then turn spiritual teachers.

1:11:09

He's got both sides. He's probably, he's

1:11:11

got spiritual teachers. He's got both sides.

1:11:13

He's probably my biggest spiritual teacher. you're

1:11:15

actually not feeling enough of it. So

1:11:17

if you feel anger, that means there's

1:11:19

a little bit of suppression and you

1:11:21

need to let it all out and

1:11:23

then the emotion runs out. Yep, you

1:11:25

let it out one time completely. That's

1:11:27

so cool. I think you for bringing

1:11:29

that up. That's a big one. Big

1:11:31

one. Is it possible that if you're

1:11:33

if this negative emotion is anguish or

1:11:35

fine? But if it's like, I hate

1:11:37

that guy. Those are the things you

1:11:39

don't want to let him out because

1:11:42

you want him want him to happen.

1:11:44

You gotta work through and figure out

1:11:46

what is the root of that. And

1:11:48

it's not what you think it is.

1:11:50

That's what I'm attempting to write about

1:11:52

in my next book, is like, what

1:11:54

is the process so that you don't

1:11:56

hate on other people automatically? And God,

1:11:58

I think I had maybe... extra work

1:12:00

to do on that from giving how

1:12:02

I came into the world and all.

1:12:04

Yeah, maybe not directing it towards someone.

1:12:06

So what Hawkins would say is there's

1:12:08

something about the feeling itself, which is

1:12:10

not actually descriptive, that's underlying maybe the

1:12:12

hatred toward that person, you go to

1:12:14

that's underlying maybe the hatred toward that

1:12:16

person, you go to that feeling, so

1:12:18

you go to focus on the external

1:12:20

circumstances, and that's where you sit, and

1:12:22

you feel it fully. And you feel

1:12:24

it fully. That is a beautiful practice.

1:12:26

that you know trying to not bring

1:12:28

in those negative energies because I'm holding

1:12:30

them so it is part of the

1:12:32

practice another thing I want to mention

1:12:34

that's been kind of paradoxical with regard

1:12:36

to this golden rule because we want

1:12:38

to treat people well but sometimes let's

1:12:40

just say firing someone in a job

1:12:42

getting divorce whatever it is sometimes you

1:12:44

might have to do something that could

1:12:47

upset the person but it's expressing your

1:12:49

truth and you're being in integrity so

1:12:51

ultimately it is the best path so

1:12:53

you get in some tricky scenarios where

1:12:55

you're like I have to be in

1:12:57

integrity. And that's really, the authenticity, that's

1:12:59

where it all comes back to me.

1:13:01

I'm glad you talked about firing people.

1:13:03

As an entrepreneur, that's one of the

1:13:05

hardest things. And what are my mentors?

1:13:07

Finally taught me this. And it's that

1:13:09

when you, the first time actually, your

1:13:11

intuition tells you you should fire someone,

1:13:13

it's always right. If it's intuition, not

1:13:15

an emotion. And that when you decide

1:13:17

to fire someone, they know they're not

1:13:19

succeeding. And because of that, they're holding

1:13:21

back the people who are succeeding. Yeah.

1:13:23

So I've recontextualized letting someone go with

1:13:25

as much kindness as I can, even

1:13:27

if they have a reaction or whatever,

1:13:29

where I'm being kind to that person

1:13:31

so they can find somewhere where they're

1:13:33

a fit, and I'm being kind to

1:13:35

everyone else. I'm responsible for feeding with

1:13:37

their salary and people who support me.

1:13:39

So I'm being kind to my team.

1:13:41

I'm being kind of the person who's

1:13:43

not a good fit. That's ultimate integrity.

1:13:45

Right, but I could also be like

1:13:47

oh my gosh like I'm being mean

1:13:49

to this, but it's not like making

1:13:52

them stay when they're struggling and miserable

1:13:54

and there's nothing that I can do

1:13:56

to fix it That's actually mean exactly

1:13:58

right from a higher perspective, you can

1:14:00

see that that would actually not be

1:14:02

abiding by the golden rule. So the

1:14:04

temporary suffering, which is by the way,

1:14:06

not even in your control, you're being

1:14:08

in integrity and maybe they have something

1:14:10

to learn in the process, you are

1:14:12

enabling them to learn by being in

1:14:14

integrity and expressing it. It's a hard,

1:14:16

it's easy to say again, but I

1:14:18

think an important practice. It is. What

1:14:20

say, ESP is real. Okay, and you've

1:14:22

said pretty much it is, I would

1:14:24

agree with you. I would agree with

1:14:26

you. I would say that we all

1:14:28

have it, but maybe we haven't all

1:14:30

harnessed it. And what we see in

1:14:32

many of the studies, for example, of

1:14:34

just everyday people, college students, of the

1:14:36

classic study on telepathy, it's worth maybe

1:14:38

going through design, the design of it,

1:14:40

to express this point. It's called the

1:14:42

Gonsfeld experiment. Skeptics have reviewed the methodology

1:14:44

and the scientists have redone the methodology

1:14:46

to try to meet their standards. So

1:14:48

decades of decades of research on this.

1:14:50

You have two people. One person's Bob.

1:14:52

Bob and Bob and Bob has put

1:14:54

into a relaxed Bob has put into

1:14:56

a relaxed Bob. Jane is shown an

1:14:59

image by the experimenters, and they say

1:15:01

Jane, now this sounds crazy, but try

1:15:03

to send with your mind what you

1:15:05

see to Bob in the other room.

1:15:07

She does that for a while, and

1:15:09

then Bob is shown for images. And

1:15:11

the experimenters say, Bob, which of the

1:15:13

four was Jane mentally sending to you?

1:15:15

We would guess if there's no effect

1:15:17

at all that the person in Bob's

1:15:19

room over many trials would guess correctly

1:15:21

about one out of four times, roughly

1:15:23

25. which statistically speaking is massive. It's

1:15:25

in the realm of six sigma results,

1:15:27

more than a billion to one, odds

1:15:29

against chance. This is why they're peer-reviewed

1:15:31

papers that are saying, we aggregate the

1:15:33

analysis in American psychologists. There's something going

1:15:35

on. But my point is that it's

1:15:37

very subtle in people who haven't necessarily

1:15:39

trained it. And it might be the

1:15:41

occasional, I thought of someone, and then

1:15:43

they texted me, but I wrote it

1:15:45

off as chance. Because it's only a

1:15:47

five to seven percent differential from 25

1:15:49

to 30 to 30 to 32. So

1:15:51

it. who are maybe in the US

1:15:53

government's program who are naturally inclined or

1:15:55

the autistic telepathic savants, or, you know,

1:15:57

people have varying degrees of abilities and

1:15:59

lots of domains, artists, LeBron James and

1:16:01

Michael Jordan versus anyone who can dribble.

1:16:04

So there's a spectrum. And then there

1:16:06

are things that can be trained. I

1:16:08

think that's where you're heading, where maybe

1:16:10

we're all in that 30 to 32%

1:16:12

range, naturally, aside from some outliers, but

1:16:14

we can do things to get our

1:16:16

percentages up. If you were negotiating with

1:16:18

someone and they had worked on their

1:16:20

abilities and you hadn't, Are you screwed?

1:16:22

I don't know. It's a good question.

1:16:24

I think from my perspective, intuition kicks

1:16:26

in pretty quickly. And I might not

1:16:28

know the mechanism by which someone's trying

1:16:30

to mess with me, but I might

1:16:32

sense it. You might sense it. Years

1:16:34

ago, when I was in business school,

1:16:36

we had a negotiating class. And these

1:16:38

are really fun because... I get a

1:16:40

piece of paper that says what I

1:16:42

have and what I know and the

1:16:44

other person gets a piece of paper

1:16:46

with what they have what they know

1:16:48

and our job is to come to

1:16:50

a deal. This is how you practice

1:16:52

it the way Chris Voss would or

1:16:54

something. How do you negotiate? I didn't

1:16:56

know it at the time, but this

1:16:58

was a case where there was no

1:17:00

common ground. You're not supposed to be

1:17:02

able to come up with an answer.

1:17:04

And I'm sitting down with someone who

1:17:06

has a high up job with a

1:17:08

government regulatory regulatory body. And I asked

1:17:11

the teacher, I said, well, couldn't it

1:17:13

also be used against an opponent who's,

1:17:15

you know, trying to harm you? And

1:17:17

he goes, oh, yeah. He said, I

1:17:19

have all kinds of attorneys who know

1:17:21

this. And like, they'll do it on

1:17:23

the judge or do it on opposing

1:17:25

counsel. I'm like, are you know, like,

1:17:27

are you opposing counsel? Like, are you

1:17:29

kidding me? Like, are you doing it

1:17:31

on opposing counsel? I'm like, are you

1:17:33

doing it on opposing counsel. I'm like,

1:17:35

I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll

1:17:37

do it on opposing, I'll do it,

1:17:39

I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll

1:17:41

do it, I'll do it, I'll do

1:17:43

it, I'll do it, I'll, I'll, I'll,

1:17:45

I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll,

1:17:47

I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll,

1:17:49

I'll, I So I did something to

1:17:51

interfere with the flow of energy in

1:17:53

my negotiating party. And this person agreed

1:17:55

to cheat on their taxes so that

1:17:57

we could come up. A government regulatory

1:17:59

person agreed. to cheat on their taxes.

1:18:01

This was not in real life. This

1:18:03

was just an exercise and it was

1:18:05

not great. Otherwise, I wouldn't have even

1:18:07

done this because I don't want to

1:18:09

cross any ethical things. And when we

1:18:11

get back into the class and I

1:18:13

find out there was no comp, the

1:18:16

only person to get a, and the

1:18:18

professor's like, that's not possible. And I

1:18:20

was like, I'm not messing around with

1:18:22

that, like that's, I don't want to

1:18:24

walk around with that kind of, you

1:18:26

know, that kind of, that kind of,

1:18:28

that kind of, you know, that kind

1:18:30

of, that kind of, that kind of,

1:18:32

you know, that kind of, that kind

1:18:34

of, that kind of, To experiment with

1:18:36

that like this is like a dark

1:18:38

power. I'm not interested in but I

1:18:40

saw it happen and that should not

1:18:42

have been Two thoughts there Dr. Dean

1:18:44

Radin the chief scientist at ions he

1:18:46

wrote a book called real magic He's

1:18:48

one of the OGs. Oh, yeah, knows

1:18:50

the ins and outs of all these

1:18:52

studies I'm giving the high-level and he's

1:18:54

on the board with you. He's the

1:18:56

chief scientist at ions so cool man.

1:18:58

You're living the living the life. Okay.

1:19:00

It is amazing pinching myself myself but

1:19:02

His book Real Magic goes through the

1:19:04

statistical evidence for the psychic phenomena. He

1:19:06

also wrote a book called Super normal.

1:19:08

That's the book. It's so good. Okay.

1:19:10

Because these extraordinary abilities, he says, actually,

1:19:12

it's not supernatural, it's super normal. Yes.

1:19:14

We can harness them. So my two

1:19:16

thoughts are, number one, if the person...

1:19:18

that one is affecting with these black

1:19:21

magic techniques basically. I don't know, they're

1:19:23

black. I would just call them magic

1:19:25

because they could be used for good.

1:19:27

They could be used for good. No,

1:19:29

I agree with you. I've never practiced

1:19:31

black magic because there's black magic and

1:19:33

white magic. Yes. Super important. Yeah. But

1:19:35

these techniques, let's say. If a person

1:19:37

is in high integrity, that person should

1:19:39

be able to catch it. And if

1:19:41

they've done the inner work, and that

1:19:43

might be part of the defense mechanism.

1:19:45

Yes. What I've gleaned from having done

1:19:47

a lot of research is that there

1:19:49

could be very negative consequences if someone

1:19:51

intervenes through, let's say, black magic knowingly,

1:19:53

altering someone's life in a negative way,

1:19:55

that could have serious consequences for the

1:19:57

soul. It's kind of called karma. Karma.

1:19:59

Whereas, white magic, which I'm not as

1:20:01

familiar with how that works, but it's

1:20:03

trying to manipulate reality in a positive...

1:20:05

way and then the word manipulate would

1:20:07

have to define how is it actually

1:20:09

being done. I don't, I mean maybe

1:20:11

we're all doing that in our own

1:20:13

way, like writing a book is sort

1:20:15

of a form of magic because you

1:20:17

might activate someone or even having a

1:20:19

conversation and trying to help someone. Isn't

1:20:21

there a reason that we call it

1:20:23

spelling? Hmm. I would argue that every

1:20:25

book and even every spoken word to

1:20:28

a certain extent, they are casting a

1:20:30

spell on someone else's consciousness because we're

1:20:32

translating these feelings these thoughts into a

1:20:34

form that can take over someone else.

1:20:36

So I taught this to my kids.

1:20:38

I mean every time you read a

1:20:40

book you're installing a new app on

1:20:42

your phone and the phone's your mind.

1:20:44

Like each book teaches you a new

1:20:46

way to look at reality, right? And

1:20:48

which is why you want to pick

1:20:50

the right books so that you can

1:20:52

learn these different ways of accessing reality.

1:20:54

And your books are super cool because

1:20:56

they're very cutting edge. And if you

1:20:58

want to say, wow. The skill for

1:21:00

me has been feeling intense discomfort the

1:21:02

first time I came across this stuff.

1:21:04

I kind of drank from a giant

1:21:06

fire hose over a 10-day personal bomb

1:21:08

thing that just also, oh my God,

1:21:10

I have to pay attention to signals

1:21:12

from below my neck. Like hard, yeah.

1:21:14

And there's all this weird shit in

1:21:16

the world, like, ah. And it was

1:21:18

very strong cognitive dissonance and like, I

1:21:20

haven't have to learn so much. And

1:21:22

you can go from there to... where

1:21:24

I am now, maybe there's another point

1:21:26

where you can simultaneously just say, I'm

1:21:28

gonna look at it through my rationalist

1:21:30

science lens, I'm gonna flip the scuba,

1:21:33

look at it for like an energetic

1:21:35

lens and look at it through a

1:21:37

chama lens, and you just realize there's

1:21:39

things, but you have the ability to

1:21:41

have all these at your disposal and

1:21:43

to flip from one to the other

1:21:45

without feeling pain. You're just saying, oh,

1:21:47

that's a different way of looking at

1:21:49

it. I can look at it with

1:21:51

Newtonian physics or quantum physics or quantum

1:21:53

physics, right. or I can look at

1:21:55

a spreadsheet in my finance department with,

1:21:57

you know, discounting cash flow models or

1:21:59

with some other made-up. finance analytic thing

1:22:01

that you know from your banker time,

1:22:03

right? It's the same freaking numbers, but

1:22:05

one of them says the company's valuable,

1:22:07

the other one says it's worthless, right? Which

1:22:09

is it? What lens? I think your

1:22:11

books have new lenses, and you actually

1:22:14

do a very powerful job of spelling

1:22:16

so that people can put that new

1:22:18

framework into their consciousness and consider it

1:22:20

as a way to look. Thank you

1:22:22

for saying that. That's cool. I put

1:22:24

a lot of intention into the books

1:22:27

and even these conversations we've discussed, because...

1:22:29

I am hyper aware of potential karmic

1:22:31

consequences, or whatever you want to call

1:22:33

them, universal law consequences of misleading people.

1:22:35

And that's why I'm very cautious in

1:22:37

making claims with definitive statements, because I

1:22:40

don't want to mislead people. And I think

1:22:42

to me it's more about bringing an energy

1:22:44

that I feel super passionate about, and maybe

1:22:46

that comes through words, written words, spoken words.

1:22:48

There is a frequency in energy that we

1:22:50

maybe don't fully understand that is impacting people.

1:22:53

and I want that to be as pure

1:22:55

as possible. That's how I frame this. And

1:22:57

even before I write my books, I've done

1:22:59

this for every single one. I call in

1:23:01

benevolent forces. Before I type the first word,

1:23:03

I don't see them. I hope they're there.

1:23:05

I think there's evidence they're there. And I

1:23:08

say that I'm the vessel for this book.

1:23:10

May it be for the highest good and

1:23:12

help as many people as possible and

1:23:14

be in the highest truth effectively. because

1:23:16

I want to be super clear and

1:23:18

that the whatever dark falsehoods I don't

1:23:20

want them to be involved in this.

1:23:22

So I think there's a power if

1:23:24

consciousness is really fundamental in setting those

1:23:27

intentions, whether it works mechanically that way

1:23:29

or not, where we orient our compass,

1:23:31

which is my second book and end

1:23:33

up upside down living. I think it's

1:23:35

super important where we direct our

1:23:37

consciousness in terms of our intentions. It's

1:23:39

huge. Thank you for sharing that practice. There

1:23:41

are a lot of people who write books

1:23:43

to listen to listen to the show.

1:23:46

The worst it'll do is take a

1:23:48

little bit of time and it could

1:23:50

be really helpful. I do something similar

1:23:52

with mine and for several of my

1:23:54

books now to the point that it's

1:23:56

it's blows my mind on the last

1:23:58

night usually right in the

1:24:00

middle of the night. The last night

1:24:03

that I finished the book, an owl

1:24:05

will land like really close to me.

1:24:07

The first time it was like four

1:24:09

feet away right outside a window at

1:24:11

two in the morning. Like I've never

1:24:14

seen an owl there. I was like

1:24:16

what? And as I finished, I think

1:24:18

it was smarter and harder. Right where

1:24:20

I write, right above me on the

1:24:23

peak of thing. And all was sitting

1:24:25

where they never said. It was like,

1:24:27

whoa. So who knows, maybe it's just

1:24:29

me noticing noticing randomness, but I don't.

1:24:31

Well, I'll give an anecdote here. This

1:24:34

is going to get a little while

1:24:36

and crazy. But in my book and

1:24:38

end to upside down contact, owls come

1:24:40

up all the time in contact phenomena.

1:24:43

And there's a man named Mike Cleland

1:24:45

who studied this phenomenon specifically. I don't

1:24:47

know about this guy. Written books on

1:24:49

it. And what he finds is basically

1:24:51

this books on it. And what he

1:24:54

finds is basically this anecdote. Is a

1:24:56

person is a big phenomenon with contact.

1:24:58

And the hypnotherapist will put the person

1:25:00

in to relax state, and they'll say,

1:25:02

I want you to try to go

1:25:05

up to that owl, and describe it

1:25:07

to me. And they'll say, wait a

1:25:09

second, that's not an owl, that's actually

1:25:11

a gray alien. It's not just owls,

1:25:14

it can be raccoons. Actually, carry mullahs,

1:25:16

who invented the PCR test, Nobel Prize

1:25:18

winner, he talked about this, encountering a

1:25:20

glowing raccoon in the woods, and then

1:25:22

having missing time. So these animals, we

1:25:25

talk about shafes, we talk about shafes,

1:25:27

appreciate that consciousness is more than just

1:25:29

the brain and their other dimensions. We

1:25:31

have to open up to these possibilities

1:25:34

that what we perceive is not necessarily

1:25:36

what we think it is. That is

1:25:38

so profound. Wow. Yeah, the term is

1:25:40

a screen memory. So the memory is

1:25:42

of an owl, but that might be

1:25:45

shielding. What is actually there? So cool.

1:25:47

I'm gonna have to go hypnotize myself.

1:25:49

You studied consciousness for a very long

1:25:51

time and reality. Is AI conscious or

1:25:53

will it ever be? Such a deep

1:25:56

question. If consciousness is the basis of

1:25:58

all reality, we could say that everything

1:26:00

in the material world is a manifestation

1:26:02

of consciousness. But will new consciousness pop

1:26:05

out of matter? We'll have to see.

1:26:07

But if matter does not create new

1:26:09

consciousness, it might not happen in that

1:26:11

mechanism. But could there be a way

1:26:13

by which a machine AI integrates biological

1:26:16

material into itself and then creates a

1:26:18

hybrid? Or could we manifest something with

1:26:20

our mind and alter reality in a

1:26:22

certain way? So I think it's very

1:26:25

complex. From a materialistic perspective, I don't

1:26:27

think it's just going to magically pop

1:26:29

out of a machine, but through other

1:26:31

means, maybe it's more complex. like contracted

1:26:33

and you actually had about a two-second

1:26:36

fear response. What was that? The fear

1:26:38

response was there was a lot to

1:26:40

say and I wanted to say it

1:26:42

in a short amount of time. Very

1:26:44

cool. And also not mislead the audience.

1:26:47

Number one, congratulations on noticing that it

1:26:49

happened. Most people don't notice that. Number

1:26:51

two, knowing where it came from, that's

1:26:53

a high level power. All right, that's

1:26:56

awesome. And that you noticed that I

1:26:58

appreciate that I appreciate that. to increase

1:27:00

their level of consciousness maybe to move

1:27:02

closer to these powers? Ask what is

1:27:04

real. In other words, if something is

1:27:07

told to us as being true, it's

1:27:09

presented that way. Ask, how do we

1:27:11

know that's true? And start going down

1:27:13

the rabbit hole of examining assumptions and

1:27:15

not taking things at face value. How

1:27:18

do you stop yourself from being programmable?

1:27:20

I ask questions. So by asking whether

1:27:22

or not something that's presented to me

1:27:24

is the full truth, that allows me

1:27:27

not to necessarily believe it. Immediately. Maybe

1:27:29

eventually I will, but the process of

1:27:31

asking questions. David Hawkins, again, he talked

1:27:33

about radical humility. And he also said,

1:27:35

all knowledge is provisional, meaning we know

1:27:38

something at this moment, but new information

1:27:40

could come in. So I think that

1:27:42

intellectual humility is really critical to not

1:27:44

be programmed. That's beautiful. I also like

1:27:47

to ask, what assumptions did that person

1:27:49

make that they don't even know they

1:27:51

made? in order to say what they're

1:27:53

saying. And I realize, oh my gosh,

1:27:55

there's a lot of assumptions that they

1:27:58

didn't test, they just thought they were

1:28:00

real. where consciousness comes from, which is

1:28:02

the whole body of your word. Embedded

1:28:04

presuppositions. If you listen to someone's statements,

1:28:06

you can count almost how many times

1:28:09

they assume something to be true because

1:28:11

science just told them and they haven't

1:28:13

gone back and looked at the assumptions

1:28:15

underlying the science. So now when I

1:28:18

speak, I feel like I'm always having

1:28:20

to hedge because I'm not even sure

1:28:22

of certain things that I haven't fully

1:28:24

examined yet. Well, that is curiosity. That

1:28:26

will shake people to their core. the

1:28:29

notion that possibly consciousness does not emerge

1:28:31

from our brain, that perhaps consciousness is

1:28:33

beyond the body, and that our body

1:28:35

is somehow tapping into it, whether it's

1:28:38

like an antenna receiver, or a filtering

1:28:40

mechanism, or an interface, that our true

1:28:42

identity is beyond this physical form. It

1:28:44

is a life-changing concept just to consider,

1:28:46

but then when seeing scientific evidence suggesting

1:28:49

that this might be true, I can't

1:28:51

express to you enough how much it's

1:28:53

changed my life. Mind you? I actually

1:28:55

believe that my consciousness made my brain

1:28:57

and my body and did a pretty

1:29:00

shitty job, to be honest, but whatever,

1:29:02

right? Is shifting that, it just, it

1:29:04

brings peace, if nothing else. It broadens

1:29:06

one's context for life, and it starts

1:29:09

to bring questions in about meaning and

1:29:11

purpose, because if I'm not just my

1:29:13

body and I'm not just a random

1:29:15

product of 13.8 billion years of stuff

1:29:17

that had no intelligence behind it, then

1:29:20

maybe there's purpose and meaning to my

1:29:22