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Tell me what your life was like before you died.
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So that was actually in medical school in my in
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my kind of mid to late twenties, I think later
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twenties is when it happened. When I was in medical school.
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Before that, you know, I was growing up, I was
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immersed in spirituality in vedanta a veta vedanta, or the
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philosophy of non duality, which is getting very popular these days.
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My parents were very much into that. Our family was,
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so as a kid, that felt like my first education actually,
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you know, because we would go there on the weekends.
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We would be there during the week and sitting in
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on the adult classes talking about mind and the nature
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of reality and the purpose of life. And I loved it.
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I mean, it just made sense to me, you know,
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not that I understood everything intellectually, but it seemed relevant,
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let's just put it that way. And then I'd go
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to school and sit there and I'd be like, I
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don't know, it just did not seem so relevant, you know,
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to put it mildly. And of course now I know
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it's because school they look at every on the objective
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side of it, but they forget about the person who's
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looking at it, which is like insane, you know, whereas
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this was no you have to look at everything together
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and specifically look at the lens that you're coming from.
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So that's how I was going about my life. And
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I found school very dissatisfying, including medical school, to be
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frank to the way we looked at the human being,
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the way we looked at the human body. And so
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there was this restlessness in me. You know, there was
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this kind of searching, even though it wasn't formalized as
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to like, you know, what is this? What is this about?
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You know, kind of like where was I before? What
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is after? Like what is this stuff? So I was
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always experimenting with my mind and doing little exercises like
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standing right next to the wall and seeing what it
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felt like to like be through the wall, and just
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always playing around with stuff to try to figure out
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or experiment with and come to rest, come to that
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state of rest and peace, you know. So that's what
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it was like before, even though it was a formal process.
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I'm not even sure I was aware that I was
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doing that, but it was just that restlessness was there
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until things kind of opened up. So that day I
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had come back from med school and I was at
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my parents' house and I was in my bedroom and
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I was reading and reading some philosophy, actually it wasn't
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medical related, and I read something I don't remember what
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it was. In that moment, it felt like a huge
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explosion went off, you know. It just felt like everything
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blew to smithery and so to speak. And it felt
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like I was sitting in the sun. And you know,
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it's funny, Alex, I've said this so many times, and
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every time I say it, it's so strange how I
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can't say it any other way, Like it just seems
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so true, like I was sitting in the sun. No
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matter how bizarre that seems, or how whatever it is,
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that's what it was. There was no body, there was
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no world. It was just soun and me and I
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was part of the sun in a sense, and it
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was blissful. It was perfect, it was timeless. It was
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all the things that we always hear, you know, those
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kinds of things. And I'm not sure how long that
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went on exactly, but I remember then feeling like I'm
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going through the sun, or beyond the sun. It got
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to this place where I had one foot beyond and
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one foot still there in this brilliant orange blaze, this
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mother of all blazes, right, and just when that was
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going to happen, just when that was going to complete,
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let's say, then this flame arose within this brilliant blaze
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that's the sun. This secondary flame arose and instilled this
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thought in my mind, which is that this
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wouldn't be
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fair and it's not yet time. And you know, like
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when you hear something that's so true and so deep,
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you know it doesn't require any force. It just makes
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you stop, you know what I mean, It freezes you.
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And this this frozey, it made me pause even as
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I was about to take that step beyond, and I
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knew if I took that step, that was it. I
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was not coming back. It was not you know, that
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was it, which wasn't a bad thing, but it is
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what it is. But when this being put this idea
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in my mind, it was just so true. I knew
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it was so true. And I think everything that remained
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to be done, the strength of that that gotma. You know,
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those rubber bands that keep us wherever we're supposed to be,
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They snapped back and everything re imploded. And there I
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was sitting with that body in that same room and
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just I remember kind of looking around and being like
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almost like, what is this? I thought I knew this place,
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but I could see in that moment that I never
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really knew what this actually was. And it was so
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crystal clear that our world, I'm just going to use
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a word light, that our world is made of light,
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is constructed out of light. You know that space that
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we consider like space between our hands, That there is
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light here. It is light that is a peering a space.
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It's not an emptiness, you know, and that what we
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call hands or objects are modifications of that light. Densities
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different kinds of dense And I sat there for some
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period of time. I'm not really sure how long I
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sat there, and then I got up and started exploring.
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And I remember going to the bathroom and looking in
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the mirror, and what struck me about that was I
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didn't recognize a guy in the mirror because that guy
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looked too peaceful. And I had this restlessness in my
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body before, which I can't say that I was ever
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too conscious of it.
I mean, I kind of knew
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that I was on some kind of search maybe, but
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I could only realize how much tightness there was in
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the body when it was gone, and when I saw
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that guy's face and I was almost like, you know,
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I would like to know this guy. This guy looks
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you know, much more relaxed, much more content, And that
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was the beginning of everything, a long process of integrating
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that continues today. Well, you know, I could not have
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communicated all they have communicated in the last fifteen plus
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years if it were not for the clarity that has
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come from that. So much clarity just came into my
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life and continues to come into my life, and so
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much assimilation and integration and healing, you know, of my
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traumas from this lifetime, from other lifetimes, you know, my
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relationships got you know, there's so much. You know, it's
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not just like somebody has an experience and that's great,
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but you know, like, how do you live that in
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your life? And how do you spend the rest of
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this lifetime? And what is the meaning and significance of
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that in the space of all lifetimes that we experience,
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you know, So all that will be right back after
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a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
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There has to be some clarity to communicate about this.
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I feel like, and especially as an er doc, I
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feel like I have a responsibility. I diagnose emergencies right,
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and I treat emergencies. So I think the biggest emergency
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is that we have forgotten who we are and we
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don't really know what this world is. That's the emergency,
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and the heart attacks and the and everything come downstream
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from that. As a result of that, there's so many
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steps in between that leads then to these kinds of diseases.
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And for me to speak about that coherently and clearly
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and with compassion and love has been a process. So
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I feel a responsibility there and I don't think I
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could be doing that without the clarity that has come
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with that and beyond. So here's the funny thing about
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that is that I don't know that I told anybody
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about this for like ten years or something like that.
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And here's the reason why. It wasn't because I hesitated.
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It wasn't because I was worried about what people think.
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It is because I had heard from my whole life
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that from people who had dedicated their lives to this, experience,
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these things and so on. You have these experiences, you
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have these blow out experiences, you have these mystical experiences.
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Don't take them too seriously, they're a part. It's what happens,
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it's part of the journey. Integrate it and keep moving.
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And so that was my approach to this, you know,
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as as much as it did, especially soon after that,
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I started my residency training emergency medicine, which was nuts.
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That was incredibly difficult. But even then I hardly talked
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about it. I had a teacher in the area near
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Philadelphia who I would go to once in a while
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and be like, you know, I used to think like this,
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and I used to be considered a really smart guy,
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and I used to think, in this way, that's not
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happening anymore, you know. He would just have these very short,
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redirecting answers. And because I trusted this person that helped me,
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and even to him, I never talked about this about
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what actually happened. So for me, like I guess in
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my mind, I had always had that perspective that it's
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not don't give it too much importance. And once I
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started talking about it, like ten years later or so,
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what I realized is that this is actually a way
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to get people interested and start learning about what is possible,
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you know. So that's when I started talking about it
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and I started to realize, oh okay. I talked to
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the Ian's International Association for Near Death Studies, and I
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think the president said, okay,
what you had is called
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a near death like experience because your body actually was.
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So I started learning all this terminology, and that's when
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I said, okay, I'm going to start talking about this
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rather than just talking about consciousness, because sometimes it can
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be too abstract. So I started telling my personal story
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as well. If you look at yourself in the mirror
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once a year, every year, you'll see a different person
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each year. It never ends, you know, So like you know,
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it's funny. In culture, there are certain words, right, especially
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in spirancial culture. There's enlightenment, there's dark night, there's nd
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you know, you can probably name like five, six seven
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terms that come up a lot. But then what happens
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when all that stuff is kind of done, Like you're
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not done. You're just at a place where we don't
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really language that well, you know, where we don't really
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talk about But if you look in the mirror there
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it's still something new and different. And five years later
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it's still something new and different. And you're getting to
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a place now where English isn't enough you know, there
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are no real words to capture some of those things.
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So I agree with you. Like looking in the mirror
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is it's like looking into the depths of the galaxy
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and the cosmos, you know, where you have supernovas and
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pulsars and you don't know what's going to come up.
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So these things are all happening at some level different densities,
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you know. That's why I even hallucinations. You know, I
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don't feel I have the authority to tell anybody, Hey,
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what you're perceiving is not real. I don't know. I'm
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not the expert on reality to say that what you're
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experiencing is not real. What I can say is I
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don't experience what you're experiencing. Now, let's talk about the
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meaning of what you experience, because we're already at the
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point where neuroscience is telling us that this is a
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co constructed, collective hallucination, right, So I mean so at
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some point, I think it's just a matter of honesty.
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Let's just be honest. Like a simple principle in this
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universe is that everything affects everything, and that at a
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fundamental level, there are no impermeable boundaries. Right, they may
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appear to be. You know, of course, there's a boundary
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between let's say my body and yours, boundary between this
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finger in my hand. There are these, But once you
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start zooming in and really looking, all boundaries start to
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really become permeable and eventually disappear. So what we call
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boundaries are let's say, ways of perceiving all, right, or
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shared notions. So everything affects everything. So if you put
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hot water and cold water together, what do you get?
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You get warm water because the two kinds of water
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affect each other. Right. If you get two people together,
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one is really anxious, one is really calm, you might
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get something in between. Right. So a yogi is no
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different than anybody else in that sense. Right. They affect
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the things around them just like all of us do,
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just like everything does. You turn on a light, the
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room gets illumined. The light affects the room. The difference
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is with the yogi is that they're aware that their
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boundaries are all permeable, and they can function beyond the
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boundaries of a person who has not realized this. Right,
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So their activation, their capacity to influence goes far beyond
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that of another person that has not yet moved through
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their boundaries, and that's simply the difference. And so what
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seems like a great distance for one person is nothing
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for a certain kind of yogi, because they've realized the nature,
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the reality of consciousness and how space and time are
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structured in consciousness. And so it's simply a matter of
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switching attention, you know, A thousand miles is a matter
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of switching attention, rather than getting on a plane and
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traveling a thousand miles