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John (anonymous) had a very unusual OBE/NDE while he was in the Navy, stationed at Pearl Harbor. Finally, after more than 30 years, he is ready to share it publicly for the first time.
During John's NDE he found himself in a dark void, then went to a bright light with facets like a diamond. He felt love and belonging. He met a male being that he felt like he had known forever.
John grew up in a rough family situation with an abusive father. During his experience he was told, "Your father is going to die." He told his mother, then his father and tried to convince him to see a doctor. Two months later, his father suffered a widow maker heart attack and died.
How do you process an experience like this? Who do you talk to? In this episode, we discuss these issues and many, many more.
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From the time that they pronounced me deaf was a good 45 minutes.
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They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped.
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And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realize that was actually my
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physical body because I was somewhere else.
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The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't
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anything else to be felt.
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I was greeted by people I'd known in the past.
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I'm back home again.
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Incredibly safe and felt at home.
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Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death, everybody, and our very special guest, John Pazuro.
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I'm happy to have you today, John.
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It's good to be here.
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Thanks for having me.
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And I'm especially happy to have you because you're sharing your experience for the very
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first time and I feel honored.
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That's right.
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Yeah.
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Well, the first time publicly, yeah, for sure.
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Yeah, first time publicly.
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And also because you're a listener of the podcast and so, hey, we love having our listeners
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on and love communicating back and forth.
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You sent me an email outlining your experience.
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This is going to be interesting, everybody.
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Hold onto your hats.
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It's going to be fun.
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Pretty crazy story.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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As you know from listening to the podcast, our listeners want to get to know you just
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briefly for a minute.
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And I know you've done some secret stuff.
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Don't talk about anything that you shouldn't.
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Tell us a little bit about John.
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Yeah, so there's a reason why I haven't spoken publicly before.
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And that's because, as you saw, I was a federal employee.
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I held a high-level clearance in the federal government, retired in January.
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And I've been wanting to tell this story because part of why I think people have these experiences,
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they want to share them with other people for certain reasons.
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And I've always wanted to do it, and I didn't feel comfortable doing it up until now.
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I'm going to sort of get into my origin story a little bit because it does play into my
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experience, I think.
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That's the conclusion I've come to.
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I grew up in New York, a very strict Catholic upbringing.
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My father was a violent person.
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He was abusive physically and psychologically to both my brother and I.
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And just never had a good relationship with him growing up.
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Neither did my brother.
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I mean, he would take his belt off and hit you with it.
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I mean, he almost knocked me out one time.
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He did terrible things like that.
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And then the psychological abuse, which is probably worse, really got to my brother.
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But I sort of never let it really get to me.
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And I always fantasized about getting out of my house.
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That was my goal in life, was to get away.
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And that's why I joined the military right out of high school.
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I didn't have the money or the grades for college.
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The Navy took me, of course.
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I got orders to Hawaii.
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So I got as far away from my old life as I could and did well enough in school.
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I was in the Navy to pick my orders.
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I was in the top 10 in my class and I was dating a girl.
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We were talking about getting engaged.
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We both picked Pearl Harbor as our first duty station, which is great.
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We went there together, you know, after about six or seven months, I come to find out that
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she was seeing a friend of mine.
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That relationship ended.
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And I mentioned that because I hadn't really got to know anyone else there very well.
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I wasn't really hanging out with anybody, but my girlfriend slash fiance at the time.
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So were you living on base?
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I was living on base, living in the barracks.
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Yeah, I kind of went inward.
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I've always been sort of a very introverted type of person.
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I think that's another reason why I haven't spoken about this publicly is it's a very
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difficult thing for me to do.
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I'm a private person.
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Join the club, John.
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So you understand.
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So I reverted back to something I used to do in my childhood.
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I would go to the library and that was sort of my safe place.
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And I would love to read books about sharks and the war, war two and all kinds of stuff
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like that.
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And I would spend hours in the library and we happened to have a really good library
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on the base.
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So I would, I started going there and I was going through the book, not really sure what
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I was looking for.
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I was a very spiritual person, grew up in a religious household.
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I kind of started shying away from Catholicism, but was always a very spiritual guy.
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And I found this book on auto hypnosis or self hypnosis and it really caught my eye.
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Check the book out.
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And it had this method for how to basically how to hypnotize yourself.
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It's a form of meditation.
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And so I took the book and I was going through this process for a couple of months.
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I lived with a guy in the barracks who never left.
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So we were two people in the small room.
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We had no privacy.
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So I would go in the, I would take these old, you've seen these old wool gray wool blankets
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with the U S written on them.
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I'm sure you've probably seen those.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So I'm, I'm picturing you kind of made a tent around your bed with those hanging down
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from his bed.
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Exactly.
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Right.
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So let's ask one thing before you get, cause you're jumping right into it, which is, which
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is great.
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Did you know anything about near death experiences prior to this time?
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No, prior to this time, my relationship with death was that I really didn't have one.
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It was based on my, my Catholic upbringing.
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So I didn't really, we didn't really talk about it.
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It's one of the things that was, you know, the way, the way we handle death in this country,
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I find to be a bit strange.
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It's a very clinical, corporate way of handling death, but actually fit really well in with
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Catholicism because the church played a part in that.
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And you would have funerals at the church and then, you know, you go to the cemetery
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and stuff like that.
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So I had not heard about NDE's and I didn't have a really healthy relationship with death.
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I would say at that time compared to how things have evolved for me at this point.
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So no, didn't really know anything about NDE's.
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Okay.
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So anyway, you, you made yourself a private space here in the barracks.
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Yeah.
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So that you could meditate, self-hitmatize, keep going.
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So this is 1991.
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I'll back up a little bit.
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So just to give you your younger listeners a frame of reference.
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Are you saying I'm not?
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Okay.
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I'm sorry to interrupt.
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Don't keep going.
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No, no, it's okay.
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So I had a phone card because cell phones weren't really a thing yet.
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And in order for me to call from Hawaii to New York, I would buy these phone cards so
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I can call home.
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Yeah.
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For the young listeners, there used to be a thing called long distance.
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And if you phone very far away, you had to pay for it.
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And one way to do that was a phone card.
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Yeah.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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And yeah, so that's how I communicated with my mother back home.
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I didn't really communicate with my father very much.
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Again, just, I get an example of sort of how, what it was like the day I left for the Navy,
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we had to go to Fort Dixon, New Jersey.
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That's where everybody's sort of on the East Coast, Northeast area goes to in process for
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the military.
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The day I left, my father refused to let my mother say goodbye to me or hug me goodbye.
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And I can remember my recruiter actually had to come pick me up to take me to Fort Dixon
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because my father refused to do it.
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So I'm trying to paint a picture of what our relationship was like, what kind of person
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he was, you know, what his reasoning was for doing that.
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I'm still not sure to this day, but I can remember walking out of the house and him
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holding my mother back and her crying her eyes out and getting in the car.
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And I got in the car and this, my theme song was become my theme song was Steve Miller
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band was a jet airliner just started playing on the radio.
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Oh yeah.
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Big old jet airliner.
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Yeah.
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It kind of came my song.
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Coming to take you away.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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And I heard that.
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I was like, wow, that's, that's funny.
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Back in Hawaii, I used to make this tent with my bed just to have a little bit of privacy.
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And I had a disc man again to date myself.
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A disc.
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We used to have CDs.
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You'd listen to music on and you have a player called a disc man.
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You would put the disc in and wear headphones.
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That's how you listen to music.
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Okay.
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I've got to date myself now.
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Okay.
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I had an original Walkman with a cassette in it.
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Yeah.
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But I used to use when I was running and working out and stuff like that.
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So a disc man that was like, wow, CDs.
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So we're talking 30, what, 33 years ago now.
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So I got it, I got in my bed and I was listening to a Japanese composer called Kataro and he
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does sort of new agey Japanese style new age music.
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And he's done some stuff for, for movies and I just really enjoyed it.
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And I'm laying in bed, put my headphones on, finding the music that I can kind of fits
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my mood at the time.
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I start going through this self hypnosis process.
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I'm not going to go deeply into that, but there's a method to hypnotize yourself.
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And I had been doing it for a couple of months and I'd gotten pretty adept at it.
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But the, the gist of it is you start at the top of your head and you work your way down
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to your feet and you repeat a word.
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My word was relax and you really focus on feeling your body and relaxing all of your
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muscles from your head down to your feet.
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And I got to the point where I could do it pretty quickly.
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If you'd like anything else with practice, it, it just becomes faster and easier.
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So I'm going through the process and repeating my word, relax, relax, relax.
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I get down to my feet and I am no longer, this, this is going to be hard to explain.
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It's hard to put a lot of this stuff into words as I'm sure you know, that, that ineffable
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quality that comes with these experiences.
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And I want to mention too, I know this is an NDE podcast.
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The difference for this story is I wasn't near death, but the situation and the things
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I experienced were a lot like a lot of other NDE's I've heard about.
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So this, I arrived at this place through meditation.
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It's what we call an OBE, outer body experience.
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Right.
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I'm no longer in my body, but I still feel like John.
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Okay.
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Hang on.
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Was there a process where you felt yourself leave your body?
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I was in my body and then I wasn't in the snap of a finger.
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There was no tunnel, no traveling anywhere.
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I was just in this void and I'm sure you've heard this plenty of times.
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It was a completely dark void.
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I was, the best way to describe it is I was pure consciousness floating in space.
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And it was just this vast darkness.
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There was no fear.
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There was none of the human emotions we associate with ourselves.
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There was no sense of time, no fear, no anxiety.
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I was just pure presence, pure consciousness.
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And it was the realest thing I've ever experienced.
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That is a difficult thing for people to comprehend, I think, where this life doesn't seem real.
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That seemed real.
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So I noticed there's some light starting to come in the distance, is starting to light
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up a little bit, sort of like a spotlight during a foggy day, kind of had that quality
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to it, that misty kind of quality.
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And I see this pinprick of light off in the distance, which would be to my left slightly.
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My attention is immediately drawn to this light, and it starts getting bigger and bigger,
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probably the size of a football or something, but still off in the distance.
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And I was drawn to this light.
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I wanted to go to the light.
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I just felt this magnetic pull.
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And the best way to describe the light, it was extremely bright, but you could look at
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it.
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So it wasn't like staring at the sun.
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You could look at it and it didn't hurt your eyes, and it gave off this light like a, like
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if you ever see a light shined or shown through a diamond, these facets, it kind of looked
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like that.
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And it carried emotion with it.
237
00:13:06,680 --> 00:13:15,440
You could feel emotion in the light, acceptance and love and just this pure feeling of belonging.
238
00:13:15,440 --> 00:13:20,960
And I was just completely awestruck looking at this light.
239
00:13:20,960 --> 00:13:28,360
And then off to my right, there is this being shaped like a human.
240
00:13:28,360 --> 00:13:29,800
It felt like a male presence.
241
00:13:29,800 --> 00:13:35,880
I don't know how to explain, you know, that I knew it was a male energy.
242
00:13:35,880 --> 00:13:38,560
I just knew somehow.
243
00:13:38,560 --> 00:13:44,400
And it was shaped like a human, but completely made of light, like a yellowish golden swirling
244
00:13:44,400 --> 00:13:46,120
light.
245
00:13:46,120 --> 00:13:47,680
And I felt like I knew this being.
246
00:13:47,680 --> 00:13:50,120
I felt like I'd always known this being.
247
00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:53,280
Again, this feeling of belonging and familiarity.
248
00:13:53,280 --> 00:13:56,160
And I'm staring at this being.
249
00:13:56,160 --> 00:14:03,360
I'm staring is the right word because I wasn't, I was just this consciousness.
250
00:14:03,360 --> 00:14:07,280
And he told me, I guess telepathically is the best way to describe it.
251
00:14:07,280 --> 00:14:09,480
He didn't have a face or a mouth.
252
00:14:09,480 --> 00:14:15,360
He said, in this very calming voice, your father's going to die.
253
00:14:15,360 --> 00:14:20,880
And just as quick as I entered this space, I was back in my body.
254
00:14:20,880 --> 00:14:21,880
Okay.
255
00:14:21,880 --> 00:14:22,880
Yeah.
256
00:14:22,880 --> 00:14:23,880
Let's stop there.
257
00:14:23,880 --> 00:14:24,880
Okay.
258
00:14:24,880 --> 00:14:26,400
Because that's going to be sort of chapter two.
259
00:14:26,400 --> 00:14:27,840
Okay, sure.
260
00:14:27,840 --> 00:14:29,520
What happens after that?
261
00:14:29,520 --> 00:14:32,560
And that is a cliffhanger, by the way.
262
00:14:32,560 --> 00:14:33,720
I like it.
263
00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:35,240
Tell me about the void.
264
00:14:35,240 --> 00:14:40,120
I've heard people say it's dark and black and full of nothing.
265
00:14:40,120 --> 00:14:45,520
And others tell me it's dark and black and full of energy and fills completely full.
266
00:14:45,520 --> 00:14:47,240
What did you feel about it?
267
00:14:47,240 --> 00:14:51,440
So I guess the best way to describe it in the movie, The Matrix, I'm sure you'd seen
268
00:14:51,440 --> 00:14:56,440
it hopefully, there's a scene when Neo is first taken out of the matrix and he goes
269
00:14:56,440 --> 00:14:58,120
to the loading program.
270
00:14:58,120 --> 00:15:01,680
And it's just this white room of nothingness.
271
00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:06,480
It reminded me of that, but it was dark, but I could see.
272
00:15:06,480 --> 00:15:07,840
That's the strange thing.
273
00:15:07,840 --> 00:15:11,680
It was this vast space.
274
00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:16,600
And then it was completely dark, but I could see because then the light, I'm assuming,
275
00:15:16,600 --> 00:15:17,600
was God's light.
276
00:15:17,600 --> 00:15:20,320
I don't know how else to describe it.
277
00:15:20,320 --> 00:15:21,720
It just felt very comfortable.
278
00:15:21,720 --> 00:15:24,400
I wasn't afraid.
279
00:15:24,400 --> 00:15:31,520
There was no human emotion or human point of reference to attach to it.
280
00:15:31,520 --> 00:15:33,880
There was no time.
281
00:15:33,880 --> 00:15:38,360
It was just this void, but it felt like there was something there.
282
00:15:38,360 --> 00:15:40,960
There was an energy there that you could feel.
283
00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:42,160
It's very difficult to explain.
284
00:15:42,160 --> 00:15:45,280
And you mentioned not feeling regular human emotions.
285
00:15:45,280 --> 00:15:50,840
See, I would think if I were in some kind of a dark void, that'd be scary.
286
00:15:50,840 --> 00:15:52,560
There would be fear.
287
00:15:52,560 --> 00:15:54,160
Did you feel any of that?
288
00:15:54,160 --> 00:15:55,160
No fear.
289
00:15:55,160 --> 00:15:56,160
No fear.
290
00:15:56,160 --> 00:15:57,160
Curiosity.
291
00:15:57,160 --> 00:15:58,160
I would say curiosity.
292
00:15:58,160 --> 00:15:59,160
Okay.
293
00:15:59,160 --> 00:16:02,560
Where am I and what is happening right now?
294
00:16:02,560 --> 00:16:08,360
And it's interesting to me also that it felt really big because when it's super dark, you
295
00:16:08,360 --> 00:16:14,120
don't know if you're in a two by two cubicle or the immenseness of the universe.
296
00:16:14,120 --> 00:16:15,120
Right.
297
00:16:15,120 --> 00:16:16,440
It was definitely big.
298
00:16:16,440 --> 00:16:20,560
And then I could, once this light appeared, it didn't stop very quickly.
299
00:16:20,560 --> 00:16:27,480
It was this gradient of light, this white light and then this gradient kind of filtered
300
00:16:27,480 --> 00:16:28,480
down through the space.
301
00:16:28,480 --> 00:16:32,600
And I could see there was nothing there until that being showed up, that light.
302
00:16:32,600 --> 00:16:33,600
Yeah.
303
00:16:33,600 --> 00:16:34,600
Okay.
304
00:16:34,600 --> 00:16:37,160
Were there any other beings that you observed or just the one?
305
00:16:37,160 --> 00:16:38,440
Just the one.
306
00:16:38,440 --> 00:16:41,400
And the only communication was about your father?
307
00:16:41,400 --> 00:16:42,560
That's right.
308
00:16:42,560 --> 00:16:47,240
Did you feel anything that was not communicated?
309
00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:48,240
Yeah.
310
00:16:48,240 --> 00:16:52,560
Just like I said, I felt like I'd known this being forever.
311
00:16:52,560 --> 00:16:54,480
How that is, I don't know.
312
00:16:54,480 --> 00:17:02,800
I'm assuming wherever we come from before we come to Earth, this sounds very strange
313
00:17:02,800 --> 00:17:06,600
to hear myself say that, but I don't know how else to describe it.
314
00:17:06,600 --> 00:17:10,400
I felt like wherever we were before, we were always there together.
315
00:17:10,400 --> 00:17:11,400
Okay.
316
00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:12,400
That's interesting.
317
00:17:12,400 --> 00:17:17,600
Like there was just this feeling of acceptance, this feeling of, I just knew who this being
318
00:17:17,600 --> 00:17:18,600
was.
319
00:17:18,600 --> 00:17:19,600
I knew this being.
320
00:17:19,600 --> 00:17:21,800
And you had for a long time, it sounds like.
321
00:17:21,800 --> 00:17:22,800
Exactly.
322
00:17:22,800 --> 00:17:27,320
I've always known this being, he was always part of my existence.
323
00:17:27,320 --> 00:17:33,520
My last question on this part, as you said something about the feeling that you had there
324
00:17:33,520 --> 00:17:36,400
was that it was more real than it is here.
325
00:17:36,400 --> 00:17:38,120
Please explain that some more.
326
00:17:38,120 --> 00:17:39,200
I'll do my best.
327
00:17:39,200 --> 00:17:43,720
So I never said this would be easy.
328
00:17:43,720 --> 00:17:49,200
You know how many times I've told myself this story and I remember it like it happened yesterday.
329
00:17:49,200 --> 00:17:50,400
That's the other thing about it.
330
00:17:50,400 --> 00:17:53,480
It's so clearly imprinted in my mind.
331
00:17:53,480 --> 00:18:01,480
I can't tell you what I did last Friday, but I can describe this like it just happened.
332
00:18:01,480 --> 00:18:04,040
So I think that's another really interesting thing.
333
00:18:04,040 --> 00:18:09,000
Being able to bring that back from wherever I came back from.
334
00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:14,080
It's one of the things that separates it from, say, let's say you just fell asleep on your
335
00:18:14,080 --> 00:18:17,400
cot there and had a dream.
336
00:18:17,400 --> 00:18:18,400
Yeah.
337
00:18:18,400 --> 00:18:19,400
Yeah.
338
00:18:19,400 --> 00:18:22,200
It would be like that real now.
339
00:18:22,200 --> 00:18:26,080
You would not, I mean, I certainly don't remember dreams from years ago.
340
00:18:26,080 --> 00:18:27,080
Yeah.
341
00:18:27,080 --> 00:18:28,080
Exactly.
342
00:18:28,080 --> 00:18:29,800
So keep going with the more real.
343
00:18:29,800 --> 00:18:30,800
Yeah.
344
00:18:30,800 --> 00:18:37,000
The best way I think to describe it would be if you picture yourself wearing a human suit,
345
00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:43,400
taking that suit off and your consciousness releasing, there was just a clarity.
346
00:18:43,400 --> 00:18:50,960
Because the other thing, aside from my sight, there were really no other human senses involved.
347
00:18:50,960 --> 00:18:52,320
I couldn't feel anything.
348
00:18:52,320 --> 00:18:54,560
Like there was no tactile feel.
349
00:18:54,560 --> 00:18:56,880
Like right now my hands are cold for some reason.
350
00:18:56,880 --> 00:18:58,960
It's really cold where I live right now.
351
00:18:58,960 --> 00:19:00,280
There was none of that.
352
00:19:00,280 --> 00:19:04,880
And there was no need to hear because whatever this being told me, I could hear it in my
353
00:19:04,880 --> 00:19:06,800
mind.
354
00:19:06,800 --> 00:19:09,280
That's another thing that's really difficult to explain.
355
00:19:09,280 --> 00:19:16,840
Just the clarity of vision and being able to sense everything at once without having
356
00:19:16,840 --> 00:19:20,760
the senses we have now in our bodies.
357
00:19:20,760 --> 00:19:21,760
There was no need for that.
358
00:19:21,760 --> 00:19:28,480
And it was just this pure, clean, exposed consciousness floating in space.
359
00:19:28,480 --> 00:19:32,360
Just remember the clarity of it, the cleanness of it.
360
00:19:32,360 --> 00:19:36,280
It's like looking through a, I've heard somebody say, a filmy screen.
361
00:19:36,280 --> 00:19:38,520
I can't remember what book that was from.
362
00:19:38,520 --> 00:19:43,200
That's the best way I can describe it is just being stripped of the confines of a human
363
00:19:43,200 --> 00:19:44,200
body.
364
00:19:44,200 --> 00:19:48,280
If you could picture that, that's what it felt like.
365
00:19:48,280 --> 00:19:49,280
Interesting.
366
00:19:49,280 --> 00:19:50,280
Yeah.
367
00:19:50,280 --> 00:19:53,800
Now you were told, tell me the exact words again.
368
00:19:53,800 --> 00:19:55,440
Your father's going to die?
369
00:19:55,440 --> 00:19:57,720
Your father's going to die.
370
00:19:57,720 --> 00:20:00,080
You had a bad relationship with your father.
371
00:20:00,080 --> 00:20:01,080
I did.
372
00:20:01,080 --> 00:20:03,400
So did you feel anything from that?
373
00:20:03,400 --> 00:20:06,600
Like oh no, or oh yes, or?
374
00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:09,440
Yeah, I was terrified.
375
00:20:09,440 --> 00:20:16,120
When I, there's a lot more to this in chapter two, but at that moment when I woke, I think
376
00:20:16,120 --> 00:20:24,400
woke up, when I was back in my body in the stream of consciousness, I currently am in.
377
00:20:24,400 --> 00:20:25,640
I freaked out.
378
00:20:25,640 --> 00:20:27,520
I didn't know what to make of it.
379
00:20:27,520 --> 00:20:33,200
It was just, and I'm a pretty pragmatic logical human being.
380
00:20:33,200 --> 00:20:38,840
So to experience something like that and not have any way to explain it, it did, I was
381
00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:43,680
scared, but fear isn't really a good way to describe it.
382
00:20:43,680 --> 00:20:45,480
I just, I was confused.
383
00:20:45,480 --> 00:20:47,560
I didn't know what had just happened.
384
00:20:47,560 --> 00:20:49,200
Well, that makes sense.
385
00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:53,000
This has never happened to you before, or anybody that you know.
386
00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:54,000
No.
387
00:20:54,000 --> 00:20:56,360
Okay, proceed with chapter two.
388
00:20:56,360 --> 00:21:03,080
So I jump, I pull my headphones up, I jump out of my bed, my roommate kind of jumps back
389
00:21:03,080 --> 00:21:04,480
and looks at me.
390
00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:10,560
I start just kind of incoherently babbling, looking for my phone card, because my first
391
00:21:10,560 --> 00:21:12,600
thought was I need to call my mother.
392
00:21:12,600 --> 00:21:14,560
I need to warn her.
393
00:21:14,560 --> 00:21:18,400
Like I need to warn her, you know, you need to hear the story.
394
00:21:18,400 --> 00:21:23,560
You need to do, take action, because I fully believed what I was told, by the way.
395
00:21:23,560 --> 00:21:29,560
It wasn't like, ah, that, you know, I believed what I was told was true.
396
00:21:29,560 --> 00:21:33,400
Did you have any idea how long it would be before he would die?
397
00:21:33,400 --> 00:21:34,400
No idea.
398
00:21:34,400 --> 00:21:35,600
No idea.
399
00:21:35,600 --> 00:21:39,480
So he's going to die, could be in five minutes or five years.
400
00:21:39,480 --> 00:21:40,480
Right.
401
00:21:40,480 --> 00:21:45,400
Well, and that's the one thing all human beings share, no matter how poor or rich you are,
402
00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:47,720
how famous or anything.
403
00:21:47,720 --> 00:21:50,640
The one thing that bonds all people together is death.
404
00:21:50,640 --> 00:21:51,640
And birth.
405
00:21:51,640 --> 00:21:57,960
The fact that you are going to die someday, I am going to die someday, it is, you know,
406
00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:02,240
it's the not knowing when, right, that's the key, is not knowing when you're going to
407
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:03,360
die.
408
00:22:03,360 --> 00:22:05,760
And I had no idea when he was going to die, but I knew it would happen.
409
00:22:05,760 --> 00:22:11,840
But there was more of a sense of urgency, I'll say that, to being told this, you know, like,
410
00:22:11,840 --> 00:22:14,960
hey, you know, I need to do something about this if I can.
411
00:22:14,960 --> 00:22:19,120
Well, and you wouldn't get that kind of a message if it was 40 years off.
412
00:22:19,120 --> 00:22:21,400
That wouldn't make any sense at all.
413
00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:23,400
It was obviously going to be a short time.
414
00:22:23,400 --> 00:22:24,400
Right.
415
00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:25,400
Of course he's going to die.
416
00:22:25,400 --> 00:22:26,400
Yeah.
417
00:22:26,400 --> 00:22:27,400
Right.
418
00:22:27,400 --> 00:22:30,440
But the word that was left off was soon.
419
00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:32,560
But that's what you believed.
420
00:22:32,560 --> 00:22:33,560
Okay.
421
00:22:33,560 --> 00:22:34,560
Yeah.
422
00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:42,000
And we can get into the nuances of that here in a little bit, the why behind it and how
423
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,680
did they know?
424
00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:46,960
How did these beings know this was going to happen?
425
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:48,880
So we talked about that in chapter two.
426
00:22:48,880 --> 00:22:56,600
So I find my phone card and at the end of the hall, it was the call of Allah and I and
427
00:22:56,600 --> 00:22:59,320
why it's like a porch that ran around the whole building.
428
00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:00,480
It was a three story building.
429
00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:02,640
It used to be a hospital in World War II.
430
00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:04,800
It was now a barracks.
431
00:23:04,800 --> 00:23:07,680
I run to the end of the hall where there's a bank of pay phones.
432
00:23:07,680 --> 00:23:12,560
Again, to date myself, not something you see anymore.
433
00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:15,400
And the way the phone card worked is you would pick it up and there was a code.
434
00:23:15,400 --> 00:23:21,400
You'd punch this code in the state code, then the phone number and luckily my mother
435
00:23:21,400 --> 00:23:22,720
picked up.
436
00:23:22,720 --> 00:23:26,560
So you have to imagine what she was experiencing.
437
00:23:26,560 --> 00:23:29,840
They were in the process of moving to Pennsylvania.
438
00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:32,080
They had the house half packed up.
439
00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:33,760
So she's busy.
440
00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:39,960
The phone rings out of the blue and it's her son who's a few thousand miles away in Hawaii
441
00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:41,960
in a complete mode of panic.
442
00:23:41,960 --> 00:23:47,280
And I said, mom, something just happened and I told her the story the best I could.
443
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:48,720
And she didn't know.
444
00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:53,440
I mean, in all fairness, how do you respond to something like that?
445
00:23:53,440 --> 00:23:55,840
She tried immediately started trying to rationalize it.
446
00:23:55,840 --> 00:23:57,760
Well, you probably was just a dream or bubble.
447
00:23:57,760 --> 00:23:58,960
I said, well, you need to tell dad.
448
00:23:58,960 --> 00:23:59,880
He needs to go back.
449
00:23:59,880 --> 00:24:01,200
He just had to check up.
450
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:02,560
He's fine.
451
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:03,520
Don't worry about it.
452
00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:07,960
And she just immediately started talking me down and blowing me off.
453
00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:10,440
I said, OK, is dad there?
454
00:24:10,440 --> 00:24:12,560
And she says to put him on the phone.
455
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:13,320
I got on the phone.
456
00:24:13,320 --> 00:24:15,920
I said, told him the same story.
457
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:17,600
I said, you need to go to the doctor.
458
00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:18,880
So I just was at the doctor.
459
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:19,440
I'm fine.
460
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:21,920
Don't worry about me.
461
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:25,040
And they just didn't want to hear what I had to say.
462
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:27,040
What else can you do?
463
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:28,040
Nothing.
464
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:32,400
If I was to tell you the same thing on one on one hand logically
465
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:36,520
as a logical human being, you know, you're going to die.
466
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:41,720
But, you know, of course, you know, just the when that's that's what we don't know.
467
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:48,720
So we talked for a little while and I hung up.
468
00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:52,680
And I had a friend there named Jerry, who is a very spiritual guy,
469
00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:56,240
was a Christian, a boarding and Christian, but he was very open minded,
470
00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:58,640
very spiritual kind of person.
471
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:01,320
And we'd gotten pretty close.
472
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:03,080
And I said, I need to talk to you.
473
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:08,800
And this is going to sound crazy, but I have to tell somebody who will at least
474
00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:14,040
be open minded enough to hear me and maybe make some sense of it.
475
00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:18,520
So I told him the story and, you know, he was amazed.
476
00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:22,560
And he said, you know, God spoke to you and he put it in a Christian.
477
00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:26,360
Sent in a Christian sense, which is what he understood.
478
00:25:26,360 --> 00:25:28,440
You know, he packaged it and they're nothing against religion.
479
00:25:28,440 --> 00:25:31,120
I am not a religious adherent to any religions anymore.
480
00:25:31,120 --> 00:25:36,320
But that's how he he put it into the terms that he could understand
481
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:39,080
and relay those back to me.
482
00:25:39,080 --> 00:25:40,920
So I said, OK.
483
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:45,240
And I tried to.
484
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:49,240
Understand what had happened and integrate that somehow into my experience
485
00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:52,880
and into my life, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
486
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:54,000
It was always there.
487
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:56,120
And I still I think about it all the time still.
488
00:25:56,120 --> 00:25:58,320
And this is in nineteen and eighty one.
489
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:00,160
It's I think about it all the time.
490
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:01,520
There's probably not a day that goes by.
491
00:26:01,520 --> 00:26:06,120
I don't think about it because it has changed my life.
492
00:26:06,120 --> 00:26:08,000
About a month goes by.
493
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:11,080
I got to know some guys that I was working with.
494
00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:17,960
We decided we were going to rent a house out in Ewa Beach in Hawaii.
495
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:20,600
And there's a process there for doing that because you have to get approval
496
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:21,920
from the military.
497
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:23,600
They give you money to live off base.
498
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:30,840
So it took probably another month for us to find a place and get all the paperwork done.
499
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:32,720
And this was in March.
500
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:39,800
My birthday is in March, which is another reason it's it seemed interesting.
501
00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:43,000
So it was my first weekend moving into this place.
502
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:45,880
And I didn't have we didn't have any phones yet.
503
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:47,720
We didn't have any of that stuff set up.
504
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:51,280
The only people who knew where I was was at our personnel department
505
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:53,080
because that's where I filed the paperwork.
506
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:56,480
Because you have to put an address on it with the amount of the rent
507
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:59,120
and what would have been my portion of the rent.
508
00:26:59,120 --> 00:27:04,200
So we go to the place and it was you know what twenty, twenty one years old,
509
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:08,440
something like that, a young guy living in a house with a bunch of other dudes.
510
00:27:08,440 --> 00:27:11,200
And it was like a dream come true, you know.
511
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:14,040
And I went to work.
512
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:16,640
So this is about two months later.
513
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:19,440
That's my best recollection of the time frame.
514
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:23,600
I go to work on Monday and my supervisor.
515
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:26,280
As soon as I got there, he said, hey, I need to talk to you.
516
00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:27,000
So OK, what's up?
517
00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:27,640
Because come here.
518
00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:30,320
And he took me in this back room and there were two chairs there.
519
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:33,560
It was the only thing in the room with these two chairs facing each other.
520
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:36,160
I was like, what's what is going on here?
521
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:37,080
He said, I need to talk to you.
522
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:38,320
Sit down.
523
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:40,840
And he said, I got some bad news for you.
524
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:41,480
And I looked at him.
525
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:44,640
I said, my father died.
526
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:46,240
He said, yeah.
527
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:48,200
And I immediately started to cry.
528
00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:50,720
This was two months after your experience?
529
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:52,120
About about two months.
530
00:27:52,120 --> 00:27:52,800
Yeah. OK.
531
00:27:52,800 --> 00:27:53,360
To me, too.
532
00:27:53,360 --> 00:27:57,960
Yeah, it's hard to remember exactly the lot going on at that time.
533
00:27:57,960 --> 00:27:59,840
Two to three months, I would say.
534
00:27:59,840 --> 00:28:02,440
Nobody could get ahold of me because I didn't have a cell phone.
535
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,200
I didn't have a phone at the house yet, like a landline.
536
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,000
And that was another thing from when you were.
537
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:11,280
Most older older guys, you know, you'd have a phone in a room.
538
00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:13,200
That was the phone, right?
539
00:28:13,200 --> 00:28:15,160
It had a cord attached to the wall.
540
00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:16,320
Not a cord. Yeah.
541
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:18,520
Look, hopefully it was long and you could take it in your room,
542
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:20,080
have a little bit of privacy.
543
00:28:20,080 --> 00:28:24,400
So he looked at me like wondering if I had already known.
544
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:26,760
I didn't go into that with him.
545
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:27,640
I started crying.
546
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:33,280
And I was like, man, you know, this is it immediately hit me.
547
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,640
The weight of this experience.
548
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:37,880
It blew.
549
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:39,280
I don't know how to describe.
550
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:41,320
I thought it blew my mind.
551
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:44,360
And I immediately started thinking, what?
552
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:45,840
This doesn't make any sense.
553
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:46,520
What happened?
554
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:47,920
How did this happen?
555
00:28:47,920 --> 00:28:49,000
I just started going crazy.
556
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:50,520
I didn't know what to do.
557
00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:53,920
So obviously I get my mom on the phone.
558
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:56,640
Yes, she died the other day.
559
00:28:56,640 --> 00:28:57,840
And he'd been dead for a while.
560
00:28:57,840 --> 00:29:01,440
I think he died on a Saturday and I didn't find out until Monday.
561
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:05,280
So, you know, she's like, we couldn't get ahold of you.
562
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:06,360
I'm sorry.
563
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:08,440
And I said, well, what happened?
564
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:13,760
He was bringing an outboard engine for a boat to his friend's house.
565
00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:15,080
And he's sitting at a stoplight.
566
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:17,200
He had his old station wagon.
567
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:21,480
And there was a police officer in the lane, not next to him,
568
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:25,440
but sort of the lane that would cross where he would have gone.
569
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:29,600
Sitting there at the red light, he just happened to be watching my father.
570
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:30,440
The light turned green.
571
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:34,360
My father started to go, slumped over on the steering wheel
572
00:29:34,360 --> 00:29:35,360
and hit a telephone pole.
573
00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:36,240
Not at a high speed.
574
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:39,000
He just kind of bumped it and he was dead.
575
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:42,080
Come to find out it was the widowmaker.
576
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:48,800
He had a 95% occlusion of this widowmaker artery.
577
00:29:48,800 --> 00:29:49,920
And he died instantly.
578
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:52,240
It was instant cardiac death.
579
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:55,000
You know, so I'm just feeling dizzy.
580
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:58,920
And, you know, if you could imagine, my father just died.
581
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:01,600
I've now got to get go to the personnel office.
582
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:03,080
I've got to get orders cut.
583
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:04,320
I've got to get plane tickets.
584
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:07,200
I've got to fly home and bury my father.
585
00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:12,400
And in that time, I had been, I started going to night school,
586
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:14,440
working on my degree.
587
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:17,360
I would write letters home to both my parents.
588
00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:22,040
And I wanted my, I really wanted my father's approval
589
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:23,240
because I never felt like I had that.
590
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:30,440
I never felt like I could be the person he wanted me to be.
591
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:35,280
I had this thought that everything I had been doing in my life up to that point
592
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:40,120
as an adult was to try and please my father.
593
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:42,480
And I realized I wasn't living for myself.
594
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:45,280
That was a realization that I took from that.
595
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:51,360
And I kind of felt lost because I needed to figure out what it is I wanted to do for myself
596
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:52,800
and not to try to please.
597
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:55,400
Because, you know, even if you have a bad relationship with your parent,
598
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:56,960
you still want to please your parent.
599
00:30:56,960 --> 00:30:58,360
You want your parents' approval.
600
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:00,320
Every child does.
601
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:03,160
Is this one of those weird coincidences?
602
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:07,040
I was walking to the personnel office and I had to go through this gate.
603
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:11,320
And who is coming from the personnel office but my friend Jerry,
604
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:13,520
the guy I had told about this.
605
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:15,360
And he could tell I was distraught and he said,
606
00:31:15,360 --> 00:31:16,440
you're all right, man, what's going on?
607
00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:17,440
I said, I have to fly home.
608
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:19,040
My father died.
609
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:20,320
And he didn't say anything.
610
00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:22,600
He just stared at me with his mouth open.
611
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:24,040
And I said, I have to go.
612
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:24,960
And I kept walking.
613
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:29,840
I looked back and he was still staring at me with his mouth open
614
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:33,360
because he was now sharing this experience with me.
615
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:37,080
And as much as he thinks he could rationalize it through his beliefs
616
00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:40,440
and Christianity, you really, you can't.
617
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:40,720
Right.
618
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:43,920
There's no, there's no nothing you can learn.
619
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:47,120
I don't think your mind is just blown.
620
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:49,600
Totally blown, totally blown.
621
00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:52,160
So I get on the plane.
622
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:55,840
I had to go through Chicago back to New York.
623
00:31:55,840 --> 00:31:57,080
I don't remember that.
624
00:31:57,080 --> 00:31:59,480
That time was a blur.
625
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:02,720
I went to the funeral and he was a veteran.
626
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:08,520
So the VA came out and he had a veteran's funeral.
627
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:09,520
And I had to go back.
628
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:10,520
I had to go back to Hawaii.
629
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:11,400
I was in the military.
630
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:13,080
I was an adult now.
631
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:16,800
People relying on me back there couldn't just stay home.
632
00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:20,840
And I was only home for a few days, four or five days maybe.
633
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:25,880
Got back to Hawaii and just tried to integrate this the best I could.
634
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:27,600
And I had a really hard time with it.
635
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:29,760
Because like I said, I didn't know who I was.
636
00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:34,480
I didn't, living a life trying to show my father I was worthy.
637
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:36,880
So I had to reevaluate my entire life.
638
00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:39,480
And I kind of went off the deep end for a while.
639
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:42,760
Started drinking heavily and partying and kind of going crazy
640
00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:47,320
until I kind of figured things out and straightened things out.
641
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:50,280
OK, let me ask you a couple other questions at this point.
642
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:50,880
Yeah.
643
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:53,760
You had told your mom a couple of months earlier, hey, dad's
644
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:59,400
going to die when you got back and were with family and stuff.
645
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:01,560
Did she ever bring that up again?
646
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:06,120
Was it rough emotionally for her to deal with that?
647
00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:09,680
So you have to remember they were in the process of moving.
648
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:11,200
So now her husband's dead.
649
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:13,280
And they've got a house picked out.
650
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:14,400
They've got to continue.
651
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:15,200
She's got to continue.
652
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:16,880
I have to continue with my life.
653
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,840
She's got to continue with her life and carry on by herself.
654
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:21,520
And she had no help.
655
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:22,720
So that never came up.
656
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:27,600
There was just too much stuff going on, too much stuff
657
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:30,880
we had to do for the funeral and all this other stuff.
658
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:32,680
So that never came up.
659
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:34,600
It was always in the back of my mind.
660
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:36,080
And maybe that's better, because I
661
00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:38,240
would have hated for her to feel some guilt.
662
00:33:38,240 --> 00:33:42,160
Like, hey, I was warned and I didn't twist his arm enough
663
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:44,440
to get him to go to the doctor or something.
664
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:45,320
Yeah.
665
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:46,840
And the same with you.
666
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:49,080
You did all you could do.
667
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:51,520
You couldn't make your dad go to the doctor.
668
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:55,160
So if I could, this thought just occurred to me.
669
00:33:55,160 --> 00:34:00,400
After I had this experience and talked to my father
670
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:04,880
after I heard about it or told him what I had heard or
671
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:07,640
experienced, we started talking.
672
00:34:07,640 --> 00:34:10,840
And we had a terrible relationship.
673
00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:14,320
And he told me, I'm going to try not to get emotional.
674
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:17,560
I called him back a little while later.
675
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:19,520
And he said, I had these pictures taken
676
00:34:19,520 --> 00:34:22,120
when I was in boot camp of me in my uniform.
677
00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:27,520
And he said, sorry.
678
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:30,000
He said, I have coffee with your picture every morning.
679
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:35,520
He apologized.
680
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:37,960
And I'm sorry.
681
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:40,120
I knew this was going to happen.
682
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:42,800
He apologized for how he treated me my whole life.
683
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:48,920
And we were able to reconcile to some extent.
684
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:51,160
And I think that was the whole point.
685
00:34:51,160 --> 00:34:52,520
That's awesome.
686
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:52,800
Yeah.
687
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:57,720
We were able to finally have a relationship of some sort
688
00:34:57,720 --> 00:34:59,120
that was positive.
689
00:34:59,120 --> 00:35:01,560
Because he told me when I left, you'll be back in six months.
690
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:03,600
You will fail.
691
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:06,120
And that just made me want to do better.
692
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:08,640
That made me want to be even more successful.
693
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:09,600
We did reconcile.
694
00:35:09,600 --> 00:35:13,360
We talked a lot in that time period.
695
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:16,960
The only thing that really makes sense about why this happened,
696
00:35:16,960 --> 00:35:21,600
and this is the tough part to really logically think through,
697
00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:24,760
would I have had this experience had I not
698
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:26,520
taken that book out at the library,
699
00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:30,480
had I not taught myself how to hypnotize myself,
700
00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:31,400
would this have happened?
701
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:34,280
Would I have been in the time and the place,
702
00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:40,880
in the mental state to enter this realm, had I not done that?
703
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:43,640
And if you want to go even a layer deeper,
704
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:46,800
was I drawn to that book?
705
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:48,240
I don't know.
706
00:35:48,240 --> 00:35:50,480
It all seems a little bit too coincidental.
707
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:54,560
And if I think about it over the last 30-something years.
708
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:58,280
And of course, the question I have still that I can't answer
709
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:03,920
is these beings, I don't know what to call it, God, my spirit
710
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:05,600
guide, whatever, I don't know what to call it,
711
00:36:05,600 --> 00:36:08,880
without sounding too like, you know,
712
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:12,560
crystaly hippy woo-woo kind of thing.
713
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:14,440
Because you saw my background.
714
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:16,080
You know where I've come from.
715
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:17,640
What I did for a living.
716
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:19,040
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
717
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:21,520
I live the life you want to live if it makes you happy.
718
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:22,480
That's fine.
719
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:25,080
Well, you did criminal investigations, right?
720
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:25,920
I did.
721
00:36:25,920 --> 00:36:26,440
Yeah.
722
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:27,240
OK.
723
00:36:27,240 --> 00:36:30,360
That lends a lot of credibility to what you're talking about
724
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:33,680
here, because those people deal in facts.
725
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:36,800
They don't deal in hearsay and woo-woo and whatever.
726
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:37,960
That's right.
727
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:40,200
Yeah, I went to law enforcement after the Navy.
728
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:44,600
I met my wife and didn't want to be a military guy anymore,
729
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:47,160
because I wanted to be with my wife and started applying
730
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:47,840
for jobs.
731
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:50,760
And Baltimore Police Department was the first one that took me.
732
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:53,800
And I wasn't itching to be a cop.
733
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:56,800
It's not something I always wanted to do, but I needed a job.
734
00:36:56,800 --> 00:36:58,960
And it went from there.
735
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:01,040
I did that for 27 years.
736
00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:03,720
I wound up in the federal government eventually after 9-11.
737
00:37:03,720 --> 00:37:08,360
But yeah, like I said, a very pragmatic, serious kind
738
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:11,000
of existence, professional existence dealing
739
00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:13,120
with I did digital forensics for a while.
740
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:17,120
So I did a lot of child exploitation work, very serious
741
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:21,240
work, very logical, very fact driven.
742
00:37:21,240 --> 00:37:27,320
That sort of was my mindset over the last 27 years.
743
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:33,120
But the question remains, how did these beings know?
744
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:39,280
Was God taking my father at that time for a specific reason?
745
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:41,920
Or did they know he was clogging and he was going to die
746
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:42,880
no matter what?
747
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:47,960
Somehow these beings could see either into the future
748
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:49,640
or that was his plan.
749
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:51,040
That was his path.
750
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:55,400
He was going to die at 47 of a massive heart attack.
751
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:57,160
And that's the question I can't answer,
752
00:37:57,160 --> 00:37:59,920
is how did they know?
753
00:37:59,920 --> 00:38:02,840
And could it have been avoided?
754
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:03,920
I don't think so.
755
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:05,840
I don't think that was the reason I was told this.
756
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:07,240
I think the reason I was told this
757
00:38:07,240 --> 00:38:10,920
was so I could have reconciled with my father before he died.
758
00:38:10,920 --> 00:38:12,160
I agree with you.
759
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:12,800
Yeah.
760
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:16,640
Earlier you mentioned that in that void,
761
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:19,200
you felt no time and space.
762
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:20,320
No time.
763
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:20,800
Right.
764
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:22,480
No time.
765
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:24,880
Now you just now you referred to how
766
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:27,160
did they know something in the future?
767
00:38:27,160 --> 00:38:31,000
If there's no time, you see where I'm going here.
768
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:32,080
Yes.
769
00:38:32,080 --> 00:38:34,760
How hard is it to look into what we call the future?
770
00:38:34,760 --> 00:38:38,680
How, why would that be a problem for them to know?
771
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:42,160
Just because it's our future doesn't mean it's theirs.
772
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:43,160
Yes.
773
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:45,960
The thing is, when we're in these bodies,
774
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:48,840
we're constricted to three dimensions.
775
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:50,080
We think in three dimensions.
776
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:52,640
We live our life by our senses, what we could see and touch
777
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:54,080
and feel.
778
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:56,480
And I think that's something that's really difficult
779
00:38:56,480 --> 00:38:59,360
for people to grasp is the possibility
780
00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:02,480
that there are beings that exist in more than three
781
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:04,240
dimensions.
782
00:39:04,240 --> 00:39:08,120
If you've just seen the movie, what was the name of that movie?
783
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:11,040
With Matthew McConaughey, where he goes to space.
784
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:12,080
Can't remember the name of it.
785
00:39:12,080 --> 00:39:16,240
But yeah, they talk about that where these beings existed
786
00:39:16,240 --> 00:39:19,640
in five dimensions, which allows them to not control time,
787
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:21,680
but see through time.
788
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:24,200
So I don't know the answer.
789
00:39:24,200 --> 00:39:26,800
I'm not saying that's what I believe or that's the answer.
790
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:29,120
All I'm saying is somehow they knew.
791
00:39:29,120 --> 00:39:30,600
I don't know how.
792
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:32,800
And they gave me this message, I think,
793
00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:34,880
so I could reconcile with my father before he died.
794
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:37,240
I think this is why this whole thing happened.
795
00:39:37,240 --> 00:39:40,440
But it completely changed the trajectory of my life.
796
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:44,240
I did suppress this, by the way, for a while, probably
797
00:39:44,240 --> 00:39:45,880
about 10 years.
798
00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:47,760
I forgot about it.
799
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:49,080
I willingly forgot about it.
800
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:51,040
I didn't want to deal with it.
801
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:53,040
I didn't have time for it.
802
00:39:53,040 --> 00:39:56,520
And one day, it just kind of reared its head again
803
00:39:56,520 --> 00:39:58,880
and said, you're going to deal with this.
804
00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:02,360
And for probably the last 20 years,
805
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:06,760
I've been reading everything I hands on about NDE's
806
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:11,360
Dr. Moody's stuff, podcasts, YouTube videos, you name it.
807
00:40:11,360 --> 00:40:16,880
I've been just ingesting it for a long, long time.
808
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:18,720
And it's become a part of my life.
809
00:40:18,720 --> 00:40:22,000
And like I said, in my email to you, I actually,
810
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:23,800
this is what got me to contact you.
811
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:28,280
You had somebody on Cali on your show.
812
00:40:28,280 --> 00:40:33,400
And the similarities between her experience, not just the NDE,
813
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:37,280
but her life experience and mine were so similar.
814
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:38,960
I thought, I've got to try and reach out to you.
815
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:40,600
Was it Cali or Brie?
816
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:40,880
Brie?
817
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:41,480
Was it Brie?
818
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:42,400
Yeah, maybe it was Brie.
819
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:43,040
I'm sorry.
820
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:44,080
I don't know why I came up with that.
821
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:45,920
I believe it was Brie that you're thinking of.
822
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:46,560
OK.
823
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:48,160
Just recently, yeah.
824
00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:49,480
It was recently, yes.
825
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:53,600
It pushed me to get involved in hospice work.
826
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:55,440
So I became a hospice volunteer.
827
00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:59,400
Now, I had an experience with my grandmother.
828
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:00,680
She was 93.
829
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:02,800
And when you're that age, she got sick and decided
830
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:03,520
that was it.
831
00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:04,880
She was done.
832
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:07,040
Basically, that's what it felt like.
833
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:09,560
She stopped eating for about three days.
834
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:12,080
And my mother said, this is it.
835
00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:15,280
So we brought a bed and a apartment built on the house.
836
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:17,840
We brought a bed in and a hospice nurse.
837
00:41:17,840 --> 00:41:20,360
I got to spend the last two weeks of her life with her,
838
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:22,560
which was an incredible experience.
839
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:25,240
Because she said and did things that were equally
840
00:41:25,240 --> 00:41:28,960
as intriguing and interesting as what I experienced.
841
00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:30,640
And I can tell you about that.
842
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:32,920
And she was a little, she was from Wales,
843
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:36,200
just a little tuffled lady lived through World War II,
844
00:41:36,200 --> 00:41:37,960
lived through the Depression.
845
00:41:37,960 --> 00:41:40,040
They don't make people like that anymore.
846
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:42,160
And we were very close.
847
00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:43,280
I really love my grandmother.
848
00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:48,200
And I remember she was about a week into it.
849
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:50,840
She was in this bed, was not eating solid food.
850
00:41:50,840 --> 00:41:54,160
She was drinking ginger ale and taking morphine, which
851
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:57,320
is a common thing that I learned about people on hospice.
852
00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:00,640
The goal is to keep them comfortable as they die.
853
00:42:00,640 --> 00:42:01,640
That's right.
854
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:03,280
So she had this big hospital bed.
855
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:04,880
It took up a good portion of the room.
856
00:42:04,880 --> 00:42:07,600
And I remember one day I was standing at the end of the bed.
857
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:10,280
And at the end of the bed was the bathroom.
858
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:12,080
And she said, don't stand there.
859
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:12,920
So, oh, OK.
860
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:14,320
And she was very adamant about it.
861
00:42:14,320 --> 00:42:15,920
I said, why not, grandma?
862
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:19,440
She said, my brother Dennis is in the bathroom.
863
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:22,040
He died like 20 years before.
864
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:23,560
He'd been long dead.
865
00:42:23,560 --> 00:42:25,440
He's in there and he's wearing a funny hat.
866
00:42:25,440 --> 00:42:28,240
He keeps poking his hat out, smiling at me.
867
00:42:28,240 --> 00:42:29,120
I said, oh, OK.
868
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:30,760
Sorry, I didn't know.
869
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:32,840
So I went around the bed and I sat on the end of the bed.
870
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:34,960
She goes, you can't sit there either.
871
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:36,360
I said, well, why not?
872
00:42:36,360 --> 00:42:37,920
So that's where the angel sits.
873
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:39,600
He's waiting for me.
874
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:42,880
And had I not had the experience I did have,
875
00:42:42,880 --> 00:42:45,240
I probably would have said, OK, grandma, you're just high
876
00:42:45,240 --> 00:42:47,960
as a kite and you're dying, which
877
00:42:47,960 --> 00:42:49,600
is why you think you're seeing this.
878
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:51,400
But I didn't think that.
879
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:55,280
I realized that she had one foot in life and one foot
880
00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:55,840
in death.
881
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:59,800
And that happened a long time ago.
882
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:01,440
It was probably 13 years.
883
00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:04,000
And I'd always wanted to get involved in hospice,
884
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:04,880
and I finally did.
885
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:08,080
And I come to learn that that's a very common thing,
886
00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:10,760
that people who are dying see these things,
887
00:43:10,760 --> 00:43:12,960
they experience these things.
888
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:14,200
It was an incredible experience.
889
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:17,760
I'm glad I got to go through that, share that with her.
890
00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:20,880
Because it's also a very intimate, personal experience
891
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:21,880
as well.
892
00:43:21,880 --> 00:43:25,760
And I wanted to be closer to death,
893
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:30,080
because like I said earlier, I don't agree necessarily
894
00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:34,040
with the funerary business, the way it's made into a business,
895
00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:38,000
the way it's very cold and impersonal.
896
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:39,680
Death is ugly.
897
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:42,080
To see somebody waste away when my grandmother,
898
00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:46,080
the day before she died, she lost her ability to speak.
899
00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:48,040
And I remember looking down at her chest
900
00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:49,600
and she looked like a baby bird.
901
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:52,600
You can see her heart beating in her chest.
902
00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:55,480
And I remember, and I hope I don't start getting choked up,
903
00:43:55,480 --> 00:43:57,520
even though I was in law enforcement for 27 years
904
00:43:57,520 --> 00:43:59,760
and in the military, I am a very sensitive guy,
905
00:43:59,760 --> 00:44:02,640
prone to cry now and then.
906
00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:07,640
So the last thing I said to her, she grabbed my finger
907
00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:10,440
and I was talking to her in her ear.
908
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:12,840
I said, grandma, it's OK to let go.
909
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:15,640
She squeezed my finger.
910
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:17,680
And I knew because I knew she could still hear me
911
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:20,920
and her mind was still sharp as a tap right to the very end.
912
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:22,920
Her body was just, she was 93.
913
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:24,280
It was time for her to go.
914
00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:26,920
And that night she died.
915
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:28,680
So I'm glad I got to experience it with her
916
00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:30,040
and be there with her.
917
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:32,560
And it gave me a completely different outlook on life
918
00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:34,840
and death, what happens when we die.
919
00:44:34,840 --> 00:44:40,440
I have no doubt in my mind that you don't just die.
920
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:42,080
The lights go out and there's nothing else.
921
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:46,640
Obviously, I think we continue on.
922
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:50,000
After death, our energy, our soul, whatever you want to call it,
923
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:53,680
goes to wherever this place is, whatever dimension it is.
924
00:44:53,680 --> 00:44:55,440
I can't tell you those things.
925
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:56,320
I don't know.
926
00:44:56,320 --> 00:44:57,960
But that's what I believe.
927
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:00,160
And another interesting note is there
928
00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:03,560
is nothing religious about the experience.
929
00:45:03,560 --> 00:45:08,000
I have heard NDEs where people say they mean angels or Jesus
930
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:12,280
or whatever religious figure they're comfortable with.
931
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:14,120
I didn't experience that.
932
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:15,920
It had nothing to do with it.
933
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:20,200
Except for the love I felt, the peace, that sort of thing.
934
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:22,440
So like I said, it changed my life.
935
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:24,800
And I do not fear death.
936
00:45:24,800 --> 00:45:26,480
I mean, obviously, I don't want to suffer.
937
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:28,200
Nobody wants to suffer.
938
00:45:28,200 --> 00:45:30,560
If I had my way, I'd go quick in my sleep
939
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:31,480
or something like that.
940
00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:35,400
But I'm not afraid of what comes next, not at all.
941
00:45:35,400 --> 00:45:38,560
And this experience has been a blessing and a curse.
942
00:45:38,560 --> 00:45:40,800
And I'm sure you've heard this before.
943
00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:43,800
I'm going to try not to make this sound strange.
944
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:50,360
But when there's really tough days in life and things are hard,
945
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:53,800
I think I know what's waiting for me.
946
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:56,960
And sometimes I wish I could go there now.
947
00:45:56,960 --> 00:45:59,040
I wish I could go to that place.
948
00:45:59,040 --> 00:46:01,440
And that's just also based on other NDEs I've heard.
949
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:04,760
People actually going to places, going through the tunnel,
950
00:46:04,760 --> 00:46:10,640
going into the light and experiencing this world.
951
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:11,880
It's very intriguing to me.
952
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:16,400
And I don't have faith that this will happen.
953
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:18,640
I know it with every fiber of my being.
954
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:20,640
I know that when we die, we go somewhere else.
955
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:22,480
This is not the end.
956
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:27,480
So yeah, it's really completely altered my outlook on things
957
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:29,520
and changed my life completely.
958
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:32,880
And I wish I could share it with more people
959
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:35,880
and give them comfort is my goal.
960
00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:40,480
And I'll tell you, about 10 years after this happened,
961
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:42,480
I remember I took a 10-year break from it
962
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:45,080
because I just couldn't deal with it.
963
00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:49,080
I set a meeting up with my mom to get lunch one day.
964
00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:53,120
She had remarried, become a fundamentalist Christian.
965
00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:56,360
And she was the only person I knew,
966
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,760
aside from Jerry, who I still can't get a hold of for some reason,
967
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:05,200
that knew this had happened, that was involved in the process.
968
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:07,800
And we went to Applebee's.
969
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:09,040
And I bought her lunch.
970
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:11,720
And I finally decided, OK, and how's the time?
971
00:47:11,720 --> 00:47:14,480
I said, Mom, I want to talk about this.
972
00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:17,040
Because we didn't talk about it for years.
973
00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:21,760
And she broke my heart because she told me, well,
974
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:26,120
you have to be careful because the devil plays tricks on people
975
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:27,600
and went through that whole thing.
976
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:29,800
And I was like, oh, man.
977
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:32,080
I really wanted to have a meaningful conversation
978
00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:32,840
with her about it.
979
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:36,080
And she just couldn't do it and just told me
980
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:39,200
that it was probably Satan trying to trick me.
981
00:47:39,200 --> 00:47:40,960
And you have to be careful with stuff like that.
982
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:43,480
And that was the last time I mentioned it to her.
983
00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:44,960
We never spoke about it again.
984
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:46,560
I'm sorry that happened.
985
00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:47,400
Yeah, me too.
986
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:49,120
Obviously, that's not what it was,
987
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:52,200
because good things happened because of it.
988
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:52,600
Right.
989
00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:55,720
And it wouldn't be of the devil if something good came of it.
990
00:47:55,720 --> 00:47:56,320
Exactly.
991
00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:57,680
That's my belief.
992
00:47:57,680 --> 00:47:58,160
Yeah.
993
00:47:58,160 --> 00:48:00,280
And that totally makes sense to me.
994
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:03,680
Jerry, if you're out there someplace, reach out to John.
995
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:05,240
He wants to talk to you.
996
00:48:05,240 --> 00:48:06,840
Please do, yeah.
997
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:09,480
John, now that you've had a chance to finally talk
998
00:48:09,480 --> 00:48:13,160
about this publicly, how does it make you feel?
999
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:16,320
It makes me feel like a load has been taken off my shoulders.
1000
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:17,960
It makes me feel a lot freer.
1001
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:20,360
It's something I've been wanting to do for a very long time.
1002
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:23,840
And I felt like I couldn't do because of my job.
1003
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:26,840
It took a lot of courage, especially for somebody
1004
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:29,920
like me who's an introvert who doesn't very person.
1005
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:33,560
I'm a very private person to share this experience.
1006
00:48:33,560 --> 00:48:34,520
But I feel a lot better.
1007
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:37,000
I feel if you can imagine something
1008
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:38,720
you've been wanting to do for a long, long time,
1009
00:48:38,720 --> 00:48:41,880
finally getting it done, I feel relieved.
1010
00:48:41,880 --> 00:48:43,800
I can tell by the smile on your face.
1011
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:44,280
Yeah.
1012
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:46,000
You look relieved.
1013
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:47,400
You look like.
1014
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:48,400
I really am.
1015
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:50,960
Man, I just carried a camel across the desert.
1016
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:53,880
Now I'm done and I'm getting a big drink.
1017
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:56,360
It's good to talk about it.
1018
00:48:56,360 --> 00:48:59,640
And especially to somebody who I'm assuming you are a believer,
1019
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:02,560
I'm assuming you do this because you believe it.
1020
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:05,520
And I've told this to people.
1021
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:08,000
And I just, you know, they don't know it.
1022
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:09,000
They don't know how to handle it.
1023
00:49:09,000 --> 00:49:11,560
So to talk to somebody who believes it and understands
1024
00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:14,800
it to be true is helpful as well.
1025
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:17,000
Well, thank you for sharing with us.
1026
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:17,840
You bet.
1027
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:19,720
And we do need to wrap up.
1028
00:49:19,720 --> 00:49:21,880
And thank you so much for sharing.
1029
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:24,160
You did a great job, John.
1030
00:49:24,160 --> 00:49:25,640
I really appreciate it.
1031
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:26,960
Is there anything else that you wanted
1032
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:28,440
to leave with the listeners?
1033
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:32,480
No, just I would say try to be open-minded about
1034
00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:36,000
the inevitability of what will happen someday in your life
1035
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:39,240
and have hope that this is not the end
1036
00:49:39,240 --> 00:49:41,640
and that what you do in this life matters.
1037
00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:44,520
And try to treat people with as much love and respect
1038
00:49:44,520 --> 00:49:47,800
as you can and realize that we're all the same,
1039
00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:49,760
no matter what somebody might look like or believe
1040
00:49:49,760 --> 00:49:51,280
or your sexual orientation.
1041
00:49:52,240 --> 00:49:54,640
You know, you treat people how you want to be treated
1042
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:57,760
and try to be good to people and try to love people
1043
00:49:57,760 --> 00:50:01,360
because I feel in the end that will come back up
1044
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:04,080
and you'll have to deal with it at some point
1045
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:05,840
and feel those feelings.
1046
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:07,000
Excellent.
1047
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:07,840
Excellent.
1048
00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:08,680
Thank you, John.
1049
00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:09,520
You bet.
1050
00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:14,000
Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast.
1051
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:16,800
Don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button
1052
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:20,160
and sign up for our newsletter at roundtriptest.com.
1053
00:50:20,160 --> 00:50:22,800
If you want to share your near-death experience
1054
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:25,200
or if you have questions or comments about the show,
1055
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,760
send an email to eric at roundtriptest.com.
1056
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:30,800
Until then, I wish you everything good
1057
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:33,760
that you're looking for in this life and the next.
