Psychedelics, Near Death Experiences, and the Nature of Reality: A Conversation with Dr. Pascal Michael
Dr. Pascal Immanuel Michael elucidates the profound potential for individuals to live a full life, as he navigates the intricate realms of consciousness, psychedelics, and near-death experiences. Throughout this enlightening discourse, he emphasizes the transformative nature of these experiences, suggesting they can evoke awe and a deeper understanding of existence. As we delve into the intersections of neuroscience and spirituality, Dr. Pascal shares insights from his personal journey and academic pursuits, advocating for a nuanced comprehension of the human experience. The dialogue further explores the implications of ontological shock, particularly as it pertains to grief and spiritual awakening. Join us as we embark on this intellectual odyssey that challenges our perceptions of life, death, and the mysteries that lie beyond.
The conversation delves into the profound intersections between near-death experiences (NDEs) and the utilization of psychedelics, particularly through the lens of Dr. Pascal Immanuel Michael's research. Dr. Michael articulates the intricate relationship between these phenomena, emphasizing how both can catalyze transformative experiences that challenge conventional perceptions of reality. He discusses the neurological underpinnings of NDEs, highlighting the brain's complex responses during critical moments of existential peril and how these correlate with heightened states of consciousness often reported during psychedelic experiences. Furthermore, the dialogue explores the implications of these experiences on individuals' worldviews, particularly in the face of ontological shock, which can arise from encountering profound truths that defy prior beliefs. Throughout the discourse, there is a clear call for more empirical research into these phenomena to better understand their potential therapeutic applications, especially in the realms of grief and existential inquiry.
Takeaways:
- Dr. Pascal Immanuel Michael highlights the transformative potential of psychedelic experiences, emphasizing their ability to evoke profound states of consciousness that may lead individuals to re-evaluate their understanding of existence.
- The distinction between near-death experiences (NDEs) and psychedelic experiences indicates that while both may share elements of transcendence, their underlying contexts and interpretations can differ significantly, particularly regarding the individual's psychological predispositions.
- An in-depth examination of the relationship between NDEs and psychedelics reveals that both phenomena can induce ontological shock, where individuals confront fundamental questions regarding their existence and the nature of reality.
- Dr. Michael suggests that the prevalence of distressing near-death experiences serves as a reminder that not all encounters with the afterlife or altered states of consciousness are peaceful, and these experiences can profoundly impact one's worldview and mental well-being.
- Research indicates that individuals who undergo psychedelic experiences may encounter entities or deities consistent with their cultural backgrounds, which raises questions about the nature of consciousness and the ways in which we interpret our experiences.
- The podcast discusses the therapeutic potential of psychedelics in treating grief and mental health conditions, indicating a need for further investigation into how these substances might aid in the healing process and enhance spiritual well-being.
Transcript
You can live a full life.
Speaker A:You can live like life to the full.
Speaker A:You know, you can still be in awe of the.
Speaker A:The way that the world just immediately presents itself to you.
Speaker B:Welcome to the Deadly Departed podcast, where the veil between the living and the dead is just a whisper away.
Speaker B:I'm Jock and along with my colleagues in Paranormal Daily News, we will be your guides through the shadowy realms of the paranormal and the unexplained.
Speaker B:In each episode, we will dive into the eerie and the enigmatic between.
Speaker B:With the help of today's leading experts in parapsychology, science and the supernatural, prepare to uncover the secrets that lurk in the dark and explore the mysteries that defy explanation.
Speaker B:Let's embark on this journey now.
Speaker B:Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, wherever you are in the world.
Speaker B:This is Jock here.
Speaker B:This is Deadly Departed.
Speaker B:I've tried going live with this.
Speaker B:I've never done live.
Speaker B:This is the Day of the Dead and we decided to do a special episode which, if you're listening to this, is going to probably be after Day the Dead.
Speaker B:Just imagine when you're listening, that's what it's going to be.
Speaker B:My guest today is my colleague, Dr. Pascal Michael, who is also my research colleague for the academic work that I do as well.
Speaker B:But we're going to dive into his work, his experiences and basically where he's come from and where he's going.
Speaker B:Dr. Pascal Michael is a lecturer at the University of Greenwich in London and is a psychonaut, actually.
Speaker B:And I only found that out last night and I was watching some of his other things that he did actually, because I didn't know that he had actually dove into psychedelics in a big way when he was studying as well.
Speaker B:I didn't actually realize that.
Speaker B:So, Dr. Pascal, welcome to Deadly Departed.
Speaker B:How are you, my friend?
Speaker A:Yeah, thank you, Joe.
Speaker A:Thanks for, yeah, us finally being able to be here because we said that we were going to do it for a while, so.
Speaker A:It's cool, yeah.
Speaker A:To be here with you.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:I'm good, I'm good.
Speaker A:I was at a Halloween event at my place where I live last night.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:If anyone could see any remaining eyeliner, mascara, that's due to that.
Speaker B:Listen, that's all good fun.
Speaker B:It would be boring if everybody did was the same.
Speaker B:And I'm glad that you actually went to Halloween night.
Speaker B:And I think it's very, very fitting considering that this is the Day of the Dead.
Speaker B:And you know, I have a history, my early years, formative years, flick and diet delving and seminary and monasteries and things like that.
Speaker B:So the Day of the Dead to us is All Souls Day where we pray for our loved ones going on.
Speaker B:And actually this is also my father's anniversary as well.
Speaker B:So this is really a nice.
Speaker B:A nice time, a nice Day of the Dead.
Speaker B:So it's an event that's in many cultures over the world, indigenous cultures as well.
Speaker B:And so this is kind of fitting, but I want to dive into not your Day of the Dead as such, but, you know, your interest, because you're well known.
Speaker B:I mean, you were literally unknown, and then all of a sudden you.
Speaker B:You became more known.
Speaker B:You ended up at Contact in the desert, and you had some great lectures that are online regarding your work with psychedelics.
Speaker B:And I don't profess to be anywhere near an expert or anything.
Speaker B:So I get from one of your interviews that you were doing, you had mentioned that your upbringing was more of a kind of spiritual type upbringing.
Speaker B:And so tell us a little bit about where you got your interest from before you went to university and became an expert in this field.
Speaker A:Well, about my upbringing, as you mentioned, I mean, I.
Speaker A:My mother was.
Speaker A:Maybe this was what you heard in the interview, that she was, as I was growing up, she was rather what you would call, like, New Age.
Speaker B:She had.
Speaker A:She was very much into the esoteric things.
Speaker A:And so.
Speaker A:So I was already brought up around that.
Speaker A:Engaging, you know, these kind of conversations shown as very young, that would.
Speaker A:They clearly opened my mind in an instrumental way, you know, in those.
Speaker A:Those formative years and stuff.
Speaker A:But then my dad is on the kind of other end of the spectrum and he was like, traditional, like Greek Orthodox.
Speaker A:And so I kind of.
Speaker A:Yeah, I got.
Speaker A:I got the best of both worlds in a way quite, you know, polar extremes in some manner.
Speaker A:But both.
Speaker A:Both still embracing it, obviously in a different manner of something, you know, beyond the purely material.
Speaker A:But, you know, that's not to say that my dad was also really, yeah.
Speaker A:Instrumental in my interest in the sciences because there was always a kind of a peculiar thing with him where he.
Speaker B:He was.
Speaker A:He was very, very passionate about the concept, the idea of God in a quite eschatological kind of way.
Speaker A:He would always idea that the kingdom of God, for instance, was very, like, close to his heart.
Speaker A:And we discussed that a lot, kind of theologically.
Speaker A:But despite that, like, he was actually quite.
Speaker A:He was quite emphatic about the necessity of evidence about.
Speaker A:Not about Christianity.
Speaker A:He had.
Speaker A:He had his own faith in that.
Speaker A:And that was very much more of a heart thing, which was also very critical for Me to be brought up around.
Speaker A:But he had a, you could say a bit of a juxtaposed like.
Speaker A:Yeah, interesting evidence for things like what my mom would be talking about of a more parapsychological nature or whatever or what I ended up studying.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And then.
Speaker A:But he himself had interesting experiences and I think like kind of maybe chief chief among switch was these sort of precognitive dreams.
Speaker A:And so he was quite, quite convinced about them and so was obviously interested in the kind of possible like illusory nature of time and.
Speaker A:Yeah, but then I had my own precognitive dream experiences as well from a young age and that was probably the first of these experiences which made, you know, open my mind in a more direct experiential way to these kind of things.
Speaker A:And then doing my own research, just reading books about again largely things which my parents would have given me like my mum for instance and Michael Talbot, the holographic universe and Bruce Lipton like what's it, what's the biology of belief?
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:But then I started to read her like near death experience books and that especially captivated me and I think yeah, as much as these other books and things that I'd be reading in her library were captivating, there's something about near death experiences which were.
Speaker A:Seems a bit more evidential in some way.
Speaker A:But you know, not only were they really inspiring glimpses into like apertures into like a potentially much vaster universe, including that which we are embedded with, within, in our individual lives and may reflect something about the.
Speaker A:A larger existence beyond this particular life like after death.
Speaker A:They were also quite amenable to like neuroscience.
Speaker A:And so ultimately that's one reason why I want to do a neuroscience degree.
Speaker B:I find that fascinating.
Speaker B:So your interest in near death experiences actually gave you the push to go and study neuroscience?
Speaker A:Yeah, I'd say that was.
Speaker B:And then you collated that between your psychedelic work.
Speaker B:I think that's.
Speaker B:We'll get into that a little bit later.
Speaker B:But I find that fascinating that you went to study the brain because in near death experience that's very unusual.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean it's just struck me that obviously these near death experiences, you can't unmarry them from the body and nervous system.
Speaker A:You know, they.
Speaker A:Because ultimately the initial trigger is whatever it is, whatever cardiac arrest, bodily trauma, it all ultimately ends up in an.
Speaker A:To the brain, right?
Speaker A:No, to the brain.
Speaker A:And so while ultimately it may look like this entirely transcendent non material phenomenon, like you can't, you can't escape the fact that the Original conditions are completely rooted in the brain.
Speaker A:And so there has to be some fundamentally important relationship therein.
Speaker A:Yeah, and, and the psychedelic thing came relatively soon after that in the latest, my undergrad and then.
Speaker A:But I don't think I wouldn't necessarily call myself a psychonaut.
Speaker A:Maybe at the time I was like a budding psychonaut.
Speaker A:And you know, I did get into, you know, it's a subjective terms to what, you know, how you define it.
Speaker A:But I, I did get into a lot of very deep and complex and challenging rather mad auto states of consciousness a lot but in terms of like this sort of psychonautics of taking like massive doses of psychedelics, like classical psychedelics like psilocybin or DMT or whatever, like regularly, you know, in a way where you can, you can really sustain it and just navigate those, those completely far out landscapes of consciousness.
Speaker A:Like I never really got there because I kind of realized quite early on that my like neurological psychological constitution just wasn't that.
Speaker A:And you know, that was a responsible decision for me to make.
Speaker B:So let me ask you a challenging question which I find something that you say.
Speaker B:So you, you have mentioned that the near death experiences that you have studied and you have, you have done a lot of research into, you perceive if you will, that it's rooted in the brain.
Speaker B:So where do you then coalesce people that have a transcendent experience that might even be evidential in its nature.
Speaker B:Do you think that still comes from the brain therefore looking at it from a materialist perspective?
Speaker B:Or are you able to accept, or I don't know, maybe consider that the brain is merely the receiver.
Speaker B:Where do you stand there?
Speaker A:I am always asked that and I still don't know what other answer to give other than no.
Speaker A:It's obviously it's a natural question, but there is a lot of data that people who, I don't know either, people who aren't fair enough, they're not as engaged in the literature like, or they certainly have the opportunities to be, but they just don't, they don't look at it like they would be, they would be surprised to find out, you know, that there is a lot in the scientific literature about the neural correlates of the near death experience.
Speaker A:And that may be, or dying generally, you know, that may be rodent models, chemical level, what's going in the brain on a neuroelectric level.
Speaker A:What's going on with eeg, you know, as these rats are dying or human beings rigged to like more simplistic eeg, like the frontal cortex when they're being taken off life support or even more recently some more cases of like full EEG data coming from human beings who, who have also passed away.
Speaker A:And so, you know, there's, there is, so there's a lot of neurological data now and they.
Speaker A:Yeah, there's a lot of activity in the brain, basically lots of neurotransmitters, serotonin.
Speaker B:So this also brings up the fundamental question, which is a question that is confound in researchers and has done for probably hundreds of years.
Speaker B:But this nature of consciousness, and I can refer back to split brain examples and Ian McGilchrist work where consciousness seemed to still exist and had efficacy, had evidence even when the brain was apparently dead.
Speaker B:So therefore a lot of what you're saying.
Speaker B:Yeah, I can accept that.
Speaker B:I can accept that there is neural correlates, there's a pattern there that exists.
Speaker B:But there also seems to be that the brain is also not needed for these experiences.
Speaker B:And whether, whether it's from a psychedelic, which we'll jump into or a near death experience.
Speaker B:I mean this is not my interview, but it's all about you having my own near death experience and crossing over is so real that it makes you want to, it makes you want to kind of keep chasing it.
Speaker B:But then this evidence of consciousness, where it comes from or do we continue after the body gives up, the brain gives up and we have examples of it, we do have examples of conscious experience after the brain has gone.
Speaker B:And I think the work of Dr. Parnham and near death experiences and many others, I can't remember my name now other books where the evidence is strong, where the brain has closed, but the, there's consciousness and there's evidence.
Speaker B:How do you.
Speaker A:Well, because you know, as I say, there's all this activity and so it's really a matter of.
Speaker A:We don't really know exactly when the near death experience actually occurred because you have basically a timeline of the brain where it goes, experiences lack of oxygen and then it's, it's activity starts to decline and then it gets to a kind of like a critical kind of threshold thing where suddenly has this deluge of different neurotransmitters as this very high frequency like gamma wave, like activity, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker A:And then you know, if the person ensues to, to die, you know, in the technical definition of the terms irreversible death, then ultimately it will like go down to like this like delta wave, like the lowest wave and then obviously it'll flatline but within.
Speaker A:And so obviously with People who have near death experiences, they'll, they'll revive and you know, and their heart may have stopped so that their brain may have experienced this whole, this whole pattern, this whole timeline, obviously, other than post, you know, this end of this critical threshold thing where it goes to slow wave and then, and then, and then flatline.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So it was, it will go through that whole process beforehand.
Speaker A:And so theoretically the near death experience that they, they report could be owing to their brain going into enough of that, that phase in which there is this suddenly elevated activity on these different levels.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:The thing is, is that we still don't know the exact temporal correlation of the nd.
Speaker A:Like we don't know when it occurs.
Speaker A: quite a while ago, like early: Speaker A:It's like the brain's like flatlined, but they're still having these experiences.
Speaker A:That was before all this burgeoning evidence.
Speaker A:So, so now, you know, people who are very neurologically minded or, you know, reductionist will simply say it's obviously just due to all of this higher activity.
Speaker A:I'm not necessarily saying that.
Speaker A:I'm just saying that that has to be included in the equation.
Speaker A:Otherwise you're just, you know, it's just information bias.
Speaker A:But the thing is, is that now it's the question of when the NDE occurred.
Speaker A:Did it occur when the brain was not experiencing this higher level activity or when it was?
Speaker A:And if it was the former, then that's obviously more interesting because it shouldn't be able to produce all this very, very elusive, elaborate, rich, profound, transcendent experience.
Speaker B:If you are enjoying this episode of Deadly Departed, then please share it with your colleagues or share it with your friends.
Speaker B:And if you've got any ideas on anyone that you would like us to invite onto the podcast for an interview, then please let us know.
Speaker B:Once again, thank you for joining us today and please remember and subscribe.
Speaker B:God bless.
Speaker B:Now, you worked with.
Speaker B:This is where my interest lies as well, because the work that you did with Dr. David Luke University as well, you were involved in a research project that looked at the correlation between the near death experience and the use of these psychedelics.
Speaker B:Now what I'm interested in to find out from you is when people were using these psychedelics, were the near death experiences pretty much the same in terms of context and structure, or were they uniquely different?
Speaker A:What we're done.
Speaker A:I can obviously Say a lot to that, but I know that you're interviewing me, but it would be interesting.
Speaker A:Chris, from an initial appraisal thing, from your perspective, what would you say?
Speaker A:Because then I can bounce off that in terms of my answer.
Speaker B:All right, okay.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So I'm restricting rules.
Speaker B:So from my perspective, I don't have any psychedelic experience, right.
Speaker B:Other than, you know, back in my youth days, I was probably so when I was in the military, got so drunk that I couldn't remember where I was and would start to see things.
Speaker A:You're kind of familiar with.
Speaker A:When I had other people's psychedelic experiences or like people telling you or the.
Speaker B:Literature or something, I've spoke to people that were psychedelic.
Speaker B:You know, when I had a near death experience, it was in a bad car accident, my wife and I shouldn't be here.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:Was really, really bad.
Speaker B:And I had the experience where time stood still, bright light, and then I was kind of over another end.
Speaker B:I didn't meet any wonderful beings that taught me so many things, but I knew that I had loved ones there and I knew there was a higher force.
Speaker B:That was because I heard instructions, I heard voices, things like that.
Speaker B:So I knew that I was more.
Speaker B:I knew there was an interconnectedness to everything and almost could see everything, could be a part of everything.
Speaker B:And then eventually, you know, when I came back, I always tried to.
Speaker B:There's a sadness to it.
Speaker B:There's a sadness to any near death.
Speaker B:I think there's a sadness to any near death experience because you come back and you want to capture that experience again because it's so primordial, it's so part of you.
Speaker B:It feels so real.
Speaker B:It feels that that is what it should be.
Speaker B:And then you come to the material world and you try to replicate it and you can't replicate it, no matter how much.
Speaker B:I've been a professional medium for over two decades.
Speaker B:I've had many, many, many experiences in all sorts of things with various phenomena.
Speaker B:And my journey even to this day, trying to replicate that same feeling that I had when I had that NDE has been a failure.
Speaker B:And so no matter how much meditation I do, how much try to, even if you like, remote view the other side or whatever it is, I cannot get that same feeling.
Speaker B:So it kind of puts you into a little bit of a negative spiral where you feel disconnected from it, which brought me into the interest then of the psychedelic experience.
Speaker B:Now, I've never taken anything yet.
Speaker B:That's not to say that won't happen, because I am very interested to Find out even from a medium's point of view whether there's a difference in that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But then I've spoken to people who have taken it and I've had everything from they met their loved ones or they met a being or even an alien type phenomena and then they had these mystical experiences that kind of changed their whole view.
Speaker B:An ontological shift of everything, which is something that, you know, we're discussing in our research.
Speaker B:But there's been lack of evidence.
Speaker B:For me, everybody I've spoke to, for me there's been a lack and for me everything's about the evidence.
Speaker A:What would this difference be in terms of yours?
Speaker A:Or near death experiences generally, and then psychedelics.
Speaker A:What's evidential about NDEs, if someone can come.
Speaker B:So for instance, when you look a lot in research with NDEs, there's been examples where the person who'd left their body was able to identify, was on a roof, was able to identify a coin that was on a shelf and.
Speaker B:Or there has been connections where they've had loved ones that have given them verifiable evidence that had to be corroborated later, could not be corroborated there and then.
Speaker B:Right, so now you have something where maybe somebody would say it's super sigh.
Speaker B:They could, you know, maybe that's how they're connecting, getting the evidence of what they see or what they view.
Speaker B:But then you've got people that come back, have got the evidence from particular connection with loved ones that they have has to be corroborated later.
Speaker B:And so I haven't met anybody that has taken a psychedelic experience that's come out and say, hey, I met my great aunt Fanny who, you know, told me this and I had to research it and it became true.
Speaker B:Now here's the other thing that really intrigues me the greatest.
Speaker B:Even as me as a medium, the greatest example of continuing consciousness after death for me has to be past life research, which I used to be.
Speaker B:Past life research, past lives, right.
Speaker B:Because I used to be incredibly skeptical about it, all right?
Speaker B:And then I read, I wrote a book about it many, many years ago and I kind of changed my direction and what I felt.
Speaker B:And now when you look at a lot of these cases where the evidence is astounding and they're identifying past lives.
Speaker B:So that's to the point of addresses, names, places, you know, whole genealogy that's fascinating.
Speaker B:That to me says that there's something else that we need to know.
Speaker B:You know, I'm not going to say it's 100% everything is right because I always say it warrants further investigation.
Speaker B:Even as my work as a medium is like I'll never say this is 100% the way it is.
Speaker B:You know, I can say that I know something, I very rarely ever say that I believe something.
Speaker B:I try to also say I know something from my soul.
Speaker B:But I'll always maintain this warrants further investigation.
Speaker B:And this is where I can see where we go with the near death experience, psychedelics, afterlife research, mediumship as well and the continuation of consciousness by past lives.
Speaker B:And so but anybody that I've spoke to, and I'm hoping even in the grief research that we're doing between ontological shock and psychedelics and grief, the journey, integration, I'm hoping that there will be some correlation to psychedelic experiences that have an evidential nature.
Speaker B:Yeah, I don't see me have seen that now.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean naturally, you know there are these, these components near death experiences that people get especially excited about.
Speaker A:Really cool out body experiences like you mentioned, so called peak in daring experiences where you see people who, you know, in your near death experience who you never even knew or didn't know they were dead at the time and then it's corroborated after it.
Speaker A:Or even the blind.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, studies of people being congenitally blind and having not just near death experiences in terms of all the other kind of features of it but you know they're quite convinced that they are a visual nature even though they've never experienced light before.
Speaker A:So you know, it's so interesting.
Speaker A:But there are.
Speaker A:Why I asked that is because it's just the standard bit of evidence that like a scientist in order to say that there is like really considerable supporting evidence for it, like if it's high.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So with psychedelics there are plenty of the like corresponding things.
Speaker A:There's not much systematic research in terms of like these really quite hard experiences or the peak in daring thing or even in the blind.
Speaker A:But myself and or David Luke have been looking into that in some respects and the, the research that we were doing with DMT before my PhD, what that was a, like a psychedelic parapsychological or like.
Speaker B:Just explain to people.
Speaker B:Sorry, just explain to people who maybe listening don't know what DMT is.
Speaker A:It's just a.
Speaker A:Explain what it is classical psychedelic, like, like the same compound that's.
Speaker A:Imagine mushrooms.
Speaker A:It's a very similar compound to that and it's the kind of main ingredient responsible for the psychedelic visions in Ayahuasca, this Amazonian shinomic brew.
Speaker A:And so yeah, I mean, thing is is that indigenously it's been used for this kind of divination purposes.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So this is just like contemporary parapsychological methodology to like to do similar things.
Speaker A:And you know, we found that it's complicated in terms of final analysis but basically the people on DMT compared to the control condition were much more likely to correctly.
Speaker A:It's not so simple as I correctly slit peered into the future, but they were more likely to have a vision which corresponded to one of a series of videos that we would then show them directly after their experience, basically.
Speaker A:So, you know, so there's that not just anecdotal evidentiality, you know, it's like that's not, that's, that's a scientific method, you know, like all science, scientific studies.
Speaker A:It obviously has its limitations, but that's obviously interesting.
Speaker A:And just lastly in terms of these like correspondences.
Speaker A:Yeah I'm wanting to do a study on, on, on critical abuse for psychedelics.
Speaker A:I have several people that I've already contacted who have had these peak and darian things with psychedelics since like being on acid and their grandmother passed away during those six hours or whatever without them knowing obviously.
Speaker A:And they had this whole encounter and apparition of their grandmother which was obviously corroborate directly afterward.
Speaker A:And we actually did do sort of a small scale study with some people who were blind, like congenitally blind and had taken, had had other auto states.
Speaker A:But a couple of them had psychedelics, one of them had a high dose mushroom experience and, and they, they, you know, it's obviously very.
Speaker A:This stuff isn't really in the, in this qualitative mali.
Speaker A:It's not something that you can prove but the way that there could be narratives like read or this guy's account, you know how it sounded was very comparable to the blind near death experiences and being like very astonished as to the sensory experience that they're having in the sort of state being someone that's been blind their whole life.
Speaker B:Does it have the same structure as a normal near death experience where they say the bright light they feel connected to everything, the auditory senses and visual, I mean.
Speaker B:Or is it different?
Speaker B:Could you take one near death experience without a side psychedelics say for instance mine or somebody else's and say yeah, that's the same kind of structure.
Speaker B:They went through the, the tunnel or anything like that?
Speaker A:Not really.
Speaker A:Yeah, that is what's pretty interesting about the near death experiences is that they are pretty, they are actually pretty, pretty reliable in terms of their, their repeated structure.
Speaker A:I Mean not necessarily like temporally there's, there's a couple of like competing papers on that.
Speaker A:Like one is quite emphatic that there is no.
Speaker A:The only temporal structure is actually really narrow.
Speaker A:Like it's, it's.
Speaker A:They like a decent proportion of near death experiences are likely to like fulfill a sense of peace, have an out body experience and then, and then like see a light or go through a tunnel from River Witch and then obviously have some experience of coming back obviously.
Speaker A:So it's interesting that aligns with the most common experiences and the most common experiences are usually going to be the shallower because, because the deeper ones are going to be a bit rarer.
Speaker A:So amongst the more common and less like really deep ones there tends to be this simple like order.
Speaker A:And you could argue that that is actually something that you can quite easily map on to like a breakthrough DMT experience for instance, that you do get a sudden like body rush and it might be like the sense of euphoria but then you become disembodied very quickly and you can't even feel your body any longer and you have this sense of like rushing through some like non conventional space.
Speaker A:Then you might perforate something and you find yourself in an entirely different landscape and then you.
Speaker A:And it's going to be extremely vibrant and colorful, you know, and bright and then, and then you'll, you'll have a return experience of like reassembling and like reintegrating back into your body.
Speaker A:So you know, those very basic layers around which everything else will be built.
Speaker A:You know, the basic, most layers are pretty much the same.
Speaker B:You know, maybe also I mean there's so many things I want to go down and I want to jump into perhaps the negative experiences.
Speaker B:And also I'm thinking as well of the cross cordisport where you're talking about maybe research the cross.
Speaker B:So the cross correspondencies as you know that have been reported widely in SPR from back in the day where they were able to at a distance be able to corroborate, identify evidence maybe in a book or something from one end of the country, a little bit like kind of remote viewing.
Speaker B:And I'm wondering if there's a potential in research with psychedelics to be able to do something like that where you can.
Speaker B:I find it fascinating that you've corroborated some evidence where they had some element.
Speaker B:Element, sorry, of precognition where they could potentially, you know, tell or feel the future according to Darrell Berm.
Speaker B:You know, you feel the future there.
Speaker B:So I wonder if There's a potential research into elements like cross correspondences from way back in, way back in the day where you could take subjects and get them to get information from a target, almost like remote viewing, but utilizing the psychedelic.
Speaker B:And also this.
Speaker B:And another thing I want to about is that also what you're explaining, is it a near death experience that, that people that are having this psychedelic experience or is it an out of body experience and not near death?
Speaker A:Are people who are having these kinds of psychedelic experiences having more like obese.
Speaker B:Rather than NDEs, more like an OB than an end?
Speaker A:I mean, yeah, you could argue that in a way.
Speaker A:Like if you mean that kind of ob, which is more like a kind of astral projection you kind of thing, because they're obviously being disembodied, they're going into another space and they're like traversing that and it's all very celestial and stuff.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And obviously they're in a context where they're not actually near death.
Speaker A:So you know, it's a kind of a fair, fair comparison.
Speaker A:It's just OBEs that.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean in a way OBS don't follow such an obvious structure and GMT doesn't really either other than, you know, this, this like more generic structure that I mentioned.
Speaker A:Whereas near death experiences do seem to be more structural and maybe sequential in a way.
Speaker A:So maybe they're a bit different in that respect.
Speaker A:And the why indies might be like that is because I do think that a lot of it, you know, maybe not all of it, but a lot of it is kind of neurologically determined so that there may be like time signatures involved within that like different recruitment, sort of different like neural activity and stuff at different times.
Speaker A:So yeah, maybe obese is an interesting comparison.
Speaker A:I just was not really that interested in obese.
Speaker A:I was interested in NDEs, you know, because it's, it's.
Speaker A:We're talking about death, you know, and that there's nothing more intimate, you know, than that.
Speaker B:But the pro.
Speaker B:I think, I think, I mean I know you're not interested in it, but I think a lot of people that would claim to have an ND are essentially having an ob.
Speaker B:And maybe even the data that you get from people having ND experiences is the non evidential aspect of it is possibly maybe it's just an obe, that experience.
Speaker A:You can delineate them quite like because the near death experience is something like a classical near death experience is when they're actually in a context of the near death, you know, they've got some threat to life.
Speaker A:And that could be on a psychological level, but there's still like a potential genuine threat to life as far as they perceive it or whatever.
Speaker A:They're in some physiological condition, whereas that's obviously not the case with this broadest term of what obese are.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They just happen, you, whatever you can induce them, you know, around sleep or spontaneous or what.
Speaker A:Whatever.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And, but also just definitions wise from someone that's deep in NDE research.
Speaker A:I guess, like me, like whenever, whenever I think of the ob, that's one component of the near death experience.
Speaker A:When they first come out of their body and they might see themselves before they have this subsequent, more like transcendent phase where they not only leave their body, but they then like leave this terrestrial space.
Speaker A:And so yeah, it just becomes like a semantic thing I guess.
Speaker A:Like the OB that you're referring to is, is, can potentially incorporate all of that.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Then seeing themselves and.
Speaker A:Or going beyond.
Speaker A:It's just the context which is the most distinguishing factor.
Speaker B:Do you think there's a correlation to terminal lucidity and the nde?
Speaker A:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker A:I mean the terminal lucidity can quite directly map on to this idea that I was saying about near death experiences maybe being importantly contributed to by some terminal activity like in the brain.
Speaker A:You know, because a lot of these, your body's getting to this critical point and so your body like starts to recruit all of these adaptive.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Like mechanisms for neuroprotection sake.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So if there's particular neurotransmitters released for that purpose, then that could happen in a very acute and dramatic way like when the heart stop being.
Speaker A:And then this whole process I mentioned before happens to the brain.
Speaker A:But a similar principle may be happening with terminal acidity, just not at that point.
Speaker A:You know, it's a, it's a kind of a precursor and a more like protracted thing where person is like in bed or whatever and they're on their way out.
Speaker A:But it's not like they've had some cardiac arrest or whatever and the nervous system is still slowly preparing for that experience.
Speaker A:And it could account for.
Speaker A:Because for instance, I'm not saying this is a direct, you know, we have no direct evidence for this.
Speaker A:I'm not saying it's a one to one analogy, but there is.
Speaker A:If psych, endogenous psychedelic like compounds are released in the body, then what they do is they, what psychedelics do is they.
Speaker A:They increase entropy in the brain.
Speaker A:And that is just kind of unpredictable patterns of activity in the brain.
Speaker A:But that may seem like chaos.
Speaker A:But what that does actually index is like the richness of phenomenal conscious experience.
Speaker A:So that can account for like mystical kind of states and stuff with the actual like acute near death experience potentially certainly the mystical experience stuff in psychedelic, high dose psychedelic experiences, you know.
Speaker A:So if we're talking about terminal lucidity where before they're in a very low conscious state and suddenly they have this like window of being able to be alert all of a sudden, being able to, to connect, et cetera for however translate it is, it could be a similar process there going on like where the entropy of the brain is being like adaptively modulated and stuff.
Speaker A:And you know, they're even doing trials of psychedelic ketamine psilocybin for people in coma to precipitate exactly the same response.
Speaker B:Do you think Pascal, that the brain.
Speaker B:There's a great kind of belief or acceptance certainly from me and from people in my side of things that we feel that the brain is a receiver and acts as a receiver and then transmits through to the physiology, the biology, et cetera.
Speaker B:Maybe we can reverse it.
Speaker B:And the brain as you're explaining it can also be the transmitter to the mind function and maybe the experience is transmitting and therefore the experience is still beyond the brain.
Speaker A:Yeah, I'm very, very open to that.
Speaker A:You know, it always sounds like I'm a reductionist when I talk about other neuroscience, but I'm not.
Speaker A:No, I'm just an inclusionist.
Speaker A:You know, I just want to include all of the neuroscience as possible.
Speaker A:While also yeah, nothing is great to.
Speaker A:Because ultimately it is hubris.
Speaker A:I get it though.
Speaker A:You know, like scientists have a really unbelievably admirable grasp of the natural world.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And so you can even unconsciously you can become quite hubristic about I know what the world consists of and how it works.
Speaker A:And so you might be given, you know, you might be vulnerable to reductionism and you know, not entertaining something beyond the brain like when considering these kinds of experiences.
Speaker A:But yeah, it is premature and there is a level of kind of close blindness or arrogance.
Speaker A:Not amongst all scientists.
Speaker A:I know plenty of scientists that all they want is data.
Speaker A:They're literally like me, like they're all completely open to it.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's not actually that they have some narrow minded a priori negation of it.
Speaker A:It's actually just that the unfair enough that there isn't compelling enough evidence of a nature that is, that will convince that it lies in the hierarchy of evidence that is needed for, for a potential, you know, rewriting or, you know, upheaval of all the models that we've got so far.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So there's a lot riding on it.
Speaker A:But despite, you know, and I'm very interested about psychological predispositions that certain scientists or neuroscientists might have against wanting to be, you know, more sympathetic, these kind of things, because it can be, it's not just institutionally or professionally, it's like ontologically very challenging.
Speaker A:But I still think that there are plenty of scientists that don't have any of those hang ups.
Speaker A:And actually if they were given, you know, some of them were even doing these studies that I know, you know, if they were given that data from theirs or other labs, then they'll be, they're like scientists.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They'll just have to keep repeating the experiment over and over with different modifications and furthering that line of inquiry until they, they'll first really scratch their chip and then they'll be the be blown away.
Speaker A:But they'll, I think if that does, that line of inquiry does continue to be fruitful.
Speaker A:Some of them will be embracing of it and accepting of it.
Speaker A:And we also always see this in the circuit of scientists that talk about these spiritual kind of phenomena.
Speaker A:You know, the whole spiritual science kind of sub community of researchers and speakers and whatever, they've kind of already been through that, so they're kind of on the other side of it.
Speaker A:But everyone's different in terms of the, the quality of evidence that they're going to need and you know, and that could be personal experiences as well.
Speaker A:And for them that's sort of enough.
Speaker A:But for a third party, it's not necessarily.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:I think I've always said that every man's failure is another man's evidence or every man's evidence is another man's failure.
Speaker B:It kind of boils down to that.
Speaker B:If you are enjoying this episode of Deadly Departed, then please share it with your colleagues or share it with your friends.
Speaker B:And if you've got any ideas on anyone that you would like us to invite onto the podcast for an interview, then please let us know.
Speaker B:Once again, thank you for joining us today and please remember and subscribe.
Speaker B:God bless.
Speaker B:I want to kind of the way that we are talking is that all these experiences, something that we're interested in, that we're doing some research on together is ontological shock and a spiritual awakening.
Speaker B:Ontological shock shift as well as we talk about these experiences, the near death experiences, I mentioned that there's an element to it that can cause some not psychosis but can cause some mental imbalance where you're all searching for it.
Speaker B:Not every experience with DMT psilocybin, anything else can be positive.
Speaker B:There must be.
Speaker B:I want to kind of go into the dangers of it.
Speaker B:Where have you come across people that have had negative experiences and that may mean as well is meeting other beings or other, other intelligences when they're having the experience and how does it affect their worldview when they come back if it's a negative thing that they're experienced?
Speaker B:Because what we are talking about is people having these wonderful ND experiences and something that shifts and they have this vibrancy and it can't always be rainbows and buttercups over there, if you know what I mean.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean you can talk about the near death experience thread or the other psychedelic thread like that near death experience, like with 14% of them or so, you know, the later papers are of this distressing nature.
Speaker A:You know, that's just a word, distressing.
Speaker A:Like when you actually read some of them they're kind of like categorized.
Speaker A:It's weird.
Speaker A:There's been two papers, one in the 90s and then one like in the last 10 years or so.
Speaker A:And the three major categories of these distressing near death experiences are basically the same.
Speaker A:Which is again it speaks to what I was saying before about the kind of almost uncanny repeatability of these NDEs you would have.
Speaker A:The near death experience is kind of like any other near death experience, some of the features and stuff, but they're interpreted emotionally and like ontologically in a very, very different way or existentially rather than ontologically that there'll be experiences.
Speaker A:It was just very, very frightening.
Speaker A:And that'll be, you know, for different reasons for those people.
Speaker A:Or you'll have void type experiences where a person kind of experiences like non existence in some sort of paradoxical way.
Speaker A:You know, it's a sense of like nothingness and emptiness and that might involve sense of like meaninglessness on a more existential level.
Speaker B:Yeah, I can see that if you're, if you're hoping there's something on the other side and you go into this whole nothingness.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:That could cause a little bit of.
Speaker A:Shock and then like quite like standard, like from a historical perspective, like hellscapes, you know, quite like pastiche, almost medieval Dante's Inferno type stuff.
Speaker A:So you read the description.
Speaker A:But to have the experience can be really like obliterating of your, you know, your ongoing experience after it.
Speaker A:So it's not the funnest of stuff to Talk about ultimately is it like for them.
Speaker A:So it may be even be another station for, for people to communicate about.
Speaker A:So there's.
Speaker A:Yeah, maybe there's been a, an over emphasis on the positive ones, but there really is a, it's a difficult thing to, to reconcile even to accept, you know, on a grander scale of things.
Speaker A:Looking at it like these, some people can, I mean it basically it's over a macrocosmic experience of like life.
Speaker A:You know, some people have some, you know, grace and blessed experiences in life or death or near death in this case.
Speaker A:And other people have, they have really hard luck and they have traumatic experience and it's tragedy and, and this is the idea of just fate.
Speaker A:For whatever reason, some people have these completely polarizing experiences.
Speaker A:And so with, you know, and it's interesting to see why.
Speaker A:You know, I say fate, but I say that in a looser fashion.
Speaker A:I mean there hasn't been really systematic research on predictors of these so called distressing near death experiences.
Speaker A:Like why.
Speaker A:It's certainly not because these were bad people.
Speaker A:You know, that's very silly.
Speaker A:Like superficial appraisal might be.
Speaker A:It's my interpretation.
Speaker A:I mean in a way, you know, I'm just, I'm just preempting whatever research there might be on it.
Speaker A:But it would be very, you know, segueing to the psychedelic stuff.
Speaker A:There is now quite a lot of burgeoning research into the predictors of what in that literature is like referred to as challenging psychedelic experiences.
Speaker A:And you know, these would be things like having past experiences of trauma or scoring very highly on neuroticism, like having kind of like an anxious personality.
Speaker A:Certain, like if you're given to like if you've got a history of family history of like schizophrenia, things like that.
Speaker A:Having psychedelic experiences which are challenging might be more predicted by like having borderline personality in your past and things.
Speaker A:So it may be because of mine and other people's research on, on the, on the legitimate comparability between NDEs and psychedelics.
Speaker A:Obviously that certainly not just a, you know, one to one relationship, but because of that I'm sure that there's going to be similar sign signals in terms of difficult NDs as well.
Speaker B:Are we, are we inducing an NDE?
Speaker B:Are we deliberately inducing the ND experience by dabbling with psychedelics?
Speaker A:Well, yeah, I mean it's your, Yeah, I mean like with ketamine for instance, John Lilly referred to it as something like adventures in experimental death, you know, and.
Speaker A:Yeah, so this kind of.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And they're considered like if good Experimental models of near death experiences like especially DMT and ketamine actually.
Speaker A:So yeah, that's one obvious difference is that you're doing something yourself in order to have this kind of experience rather than it just happened to you when you do ultimately kick the bucket.
Speaker A:But obviously that's, that's something which is being recognized since who, God knows how long back.
Speaker A:Like this is something that you can say that is something that indigenous cultures do if they're, if they use these entheogens or these psychedelics, they have to use them for this purpose of having a death rebirth experience.
Speaker A:And you know, there may be antiquity, there may be similar things going on with certain mystery cults taking certain concoctions.
Speaker A:You know, if it's like spiked wine with the Dionysian mysteries or potentially some psychoactive concoction with the Greek Eleusinian mystery, there's a lot of like debate there as to what it could be.
Speaker A:They certainly incorporated a drink.
Speaker A:But whether it was that directly or it was the entire context which was ritually and elaborately like curated around that and all the, the, the preparations that these people made beforehand for months and this kind of psychological sort of priming for this kind of experience and whatever, you know, maybe that's sufficient.
Speaker A:Maybe it was like a placebo type thing in the drink itself.
Speaker A:Like maybe it was a ritual drink for something psyched.
Speaker B:You know, I think I read somewhere, correct me if I'm wrong because I don't know if this comes from obviously your Greek charities, but didn't the Delphi oracle or the Oracle of Delphi, didn't she take a psychoactive concoction before she actually did divination?
Speaker A:I don't fully know.
Speaker A:There's going to be lots of different conversations on that, I'm sure, but there's certainly some thread about the location of Delphi and the real possibility of like gases, you know, maybe being deliberately like funneled through into the Delphic oracular chamber.
Speaker B:So do you think then, now with all the research you've done with the NDE and this is something that you and I are interested in as well and the use of psychedelics, that there is a therapeutic, a strong therapeutic potential to this, to helping people through grief on the grief journey?
Speaker B:And also you mentioned, and I'm kind of fascinated with this as well, the schizophrenia side of things, like we have a mental health component where we can perhaps look at psychedelic or even inducing a near death experience to cope with an imbalance such as schizophrenia, which I am of the opinion is 90% a spiritual problem and not really a brain problem.
Speaker B:But that again that's my opinion.
Speaker A:Well the psychedelics for the schizophrenia thing there's some, you know, the psychedelic renaissance as it's been called is, was treading on eggshells to start and then it started to just, you know, just be a bit more careful because the landscape was still a bit precarious while it was still growing.
Speaker A:So you know, they were focusing on less risky indications, you know, like intractable depression, you know, think things which there was more urgency around because of a lack of responsive medication and stuff like that.
Speaker A:But yeah there's a bit more like the survey research and there's some like narrative reviews about how psychos could be useful for that.
Speaker A:And so people who have diagnosis of some psychotic condition and they, they take psychedelics themselves and, and what their experiences are and, but obviously you know that's going to be, that's obviously a bit of a biased sample because these are people that are really taking it and they're not going to presumably they're not on the whole going to be keep taking it if it's really bad food.
Speaker A:That's not to say that that might not happen.
Speaker A:And I have heard at least one case of someone continuing to exacerbate their psychosis with high dose mushroom.
Speaker A:But so, but anyway there's, yeah, so they report that it can be helpful for self medication in some regards.
Speaker A:Like they, they'll have a bit more insight, you know, so they'll in a clinical definition that's to say that they can discern what is reality and what isn't a bit better.
Speaker A:And that's you know, a hallmark feature of schizophrenia.
Speaker A:You lose that insight.
Speaker A:You can't distinguish what's fancy in reality and in terms of your hallucinations and delusions and so called like consensus reality at least.
Speaker A:So that's interesting.
Speaker A:You know the differences in auto states that they'll be, they'll experience between the trip and their psychosis might be helpful in discerning that for these people at least.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Some other things can't remember now but it's interesting preliminary data and there's schizophrenia, very complicated.
Speaker A:There's different phases and dimensions to it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So they can help with the negative symptoms for sure because those map quite a lot onto like depression symptoms and you know, being very withdrawn, like no motivation or pleasure.
Speaker A:You know, it can even be like you know, catatonic kind of stuff.
Speaker A:So psychos can be really helpful for that certainly.
Speaker A:But this is not depression, it's schizophrenia.
Speaker A:So in helping with that you may elicit psychotic type symptoms.
Speaker A:And that's very similar to things we see with bipolar disorder.
Speaker A:Like psychedelics are very useful for unipolar depression.
Speaker A:But if you treat, if you were to treat someone with bipolar psychedelics, it could induce manic symptoms.
Speaker A:Again, there is a bit more research into that and that's not necessarily universally going to be a complication, but it will be for some.
Speaker A:So that's the problem.
Speaker A:Obviously, like with some people, they're going to respond very well and it's not going to induce psychotic or manic symptoms of a sarma would be the very worst thing for them.
Speaker A:So yeah, I mean, there was a recent paper I saw about MDMA for schizophrenia that may help with the negative symptoms while not being so dangerous in terms of maybe eliciting psychotic symptoms.
Speaker A:You know, things like that.
Speaker A:And it would help with like social cognition and empathy and stuff which can get eroded risk schizophrenia stuff.
Speaker A:And also importantly, both endomet and especially these other psychedelics are very neuroplastic.
Speaker A:You know, they're like psychoplastogens.
Speaker A:So they help the brain to form new synaptic connections and things that potentially create new neurons.
Speaker A:And schizophrenia is, you know, chronically can end up being like a neurodegenerative thing.
Speaker A:You do see loss of cortical like gray matter and stuff.
Speaker A:So the thing is, is that the trip is the potentially jeopardizing part of this for these people.
Speaker A:So there are these new compounds being produced which are based on psychedelics, but have kind of pruned out the trip inducing part of it by modulating the chemicals.
Speaker A:So they still induce neuroplasticity without the trip.
Speaker A:So I think that I'm personally super excited about the continued development of them because that's going to be a potential game changer for neurological diseases, but also for neuropsychiatric conditions where there's a risk with the.
Speaker B:Can it help?
Speaker B:So look, we've gone over time what we normally do.
Speaker B:Are you all right to carry on?
Speaker B:Because I think this fascinating.
Speaker B:Can it help with helping our brain?
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Because obviously come from a neuroscientific point of view helping our brain get healthier or even to, you know, maybe to help us developer, memory developer or capacity within our brain to a stronger potential.
Speaker B:And also it kind of, it makes me think of can the use of this psychedelic or this near death induction also help with things like Alzheimer's psychedelics.
Speaker A:Or near death experience?
Speaker B:Both, because essentially, remember, we're inducing a near death experience, right?
Speaker B:So or we're inducing Some kind of experience utilizing the psychedelics.
Speaker B:So is there a potential to help the brain and also can that also have a correlation to potentially treatment of something is really is far distant in terms of finding a cure for something like Alzheimer's?
Speaker A:Well, yeah, I mean there's studies now for psychedelics for Alzheimer's.
Speaker A:So you know, we'll watch this space.
Speaker A:I mean whether like near death experiences.
Speaker A:I mean it's a kind of similar thing with what we're saying with terminal lucidity.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Someone can have quite advanced Alzheimer's and then they, before they do actually shuffle off the coil, they have this sudden lucidity and that's quite beautiful thing.
Speaker A:Like you know, it might be some random effect, the brain is trying to preserve itself before this climatic event, whatever death.
Speaker A:But actually it facilitates this quite amazing opportunity for closure with loved ones.
Speaker A:And then it can therefore like enable a much easier passing away for the consciousness that is in that organism.
Speaker A:You know, and that's a, that's just a crazy feature of the universe.
Speaker A:Like whether or not that was some kind of.
Speaker A:Maybe there's.
Speaker A:Is there some evolutionary value in that?
Speaker A:I don't know, is it just this beautiful bug in the system or.
Speaker A:It was designed that way.
Speaker A:So there's that relationship with Alzheimer's, something kind of similar to near death experiences.
Speaker A:But I'm.
Speaker A:I don't know if I've read like an account of someone who had Alzheimer's, had near death or just dementia and then had a near death experience and then came back and it was kind of like cured because it's not really as simple as that.
Speaker A:Because it is, it's a lot of genetic determinism and it's like a degenerative process, but they may well be helped for some time.
Speaker A:And similarly to terminal acidity stuff, that'd be interesting to see that.
Speaker A:I would not be surprised if that has happened several times.
Speaker A:But I am very interested in.
Speaker A:And again I've written some grants and stuff for this idea of near death experiences in psychiatric or neuropsychiatric populations.
Speaker A:Because I. Oh, that'd be interesting because I've never seen an account of someone's near death experience like reflecting whatever mental illness that they had at the time, which could have been quite severe.
Speaker A:Like it's.
Speaker A:There's very, there's interesting anecdotes certainly about near death experience.
Speaker A:Like basically their experience being completely free of whatever mental suffering that they had beforehand and then to see if that continued afterwards.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And just lastly about this link.
Speaker A:I mean there was a study by Bruce Grayson.
Speaker A:There was an outpatient population, psychiatric patients and they, the, what was it?
Speaker A:The, the, the.
Speaker B:We need psychedelics to help us with our memory.
Speaker A:Yeah, definitely there was a.
Speaker A:What was the link that he was looking at?
Speaker A:It was really interesting.
Speaker A:It was the link between, between near.
Speaker B:Death experience psychedelics and the potential psych helping.
Speaker A:Let's just leave that one unfortunately.
Speaker B:So listen, I want to change it, I want to change it up a little bit because a lot of people maybe don't realize that you have.
Speaker B:Obviously you were at contact in the desert.
Speaker B:I don't know what you were lecturing there, saying I wasn't part of it or anything.
Speaker B:But is there a correlation to near death experiences and the use of psychedelics in the ufo, UAP world?
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean that's something that actually was looked at like in the early 80s and it's barely being looked at again.
Speaker A:But I became really, really interested in that because I was looking at psychedelics and near death experiences and in many respects actually weren't that similar.
Speaker A:But the like alien entity encounter or like even abduction scenario for some of our participants and it was much more, much closer.
Speaker A:Some of our DMT participants.
Speaker A:But then what about that, the other relationship within that kind of holy or unholy trinity, you know, the near death and the UFO or abduction stuff.
Speaker A:And I gave a talk in my hometown of Brighton the other day which did talk, just did speak to this a little bit and I got a couple of, you know, understandably because it sort of for better or worse, that's why I was wanting to look more into it because it was.
Speaker A:They were disturbed and I, you know, as I was by this relationship, you know that because I did a like an informal study of like dozens of near death experiences which just looked like abduction experiences that look the same.
Speaker B:That's what I think.
Speaker B:See, I think some near death experiences, there's a correlation between these experiences and abduction experiences because when you listen to someone who's been abducted you're like well that sounds like near death.
Speaker B:And then near death you're like well that possibly.
Speaker B:And the only differentiation that I have have is the evidential component.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's hard to find like evidential stuff with, with the abduction stuff for sure.
Speaker A:But you know, it's just because there's been quite good continued research in the death experience since like the 60s and there hasn't been nearly as much with the abduction.
Speaker A:So it could just be an artifact of that.
Speaker A:Maybe it is there.
Speaker A:I mean there was one account from Whitney Strieber's book.
Speaker A:The communion letter.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Again, you know, I remember sayings he on this one, but basically he was in a car with his, his daughter and then you know, driving on the road at night as it's like classic thing.
Speaker A:And then the daughter said what's that in the sky?
Speaker A:And then this like object like moved toward them and, and, and then he like blacked out and then woke up like through the windscreen.
Speaker A:And his daughter was.
Speaker A:He like had some communication something and then you know, he was, he asked where's my daughter?
Speaker A:How's my.
Speaker A:Is she okay?
Speaker A:You know, she was fine.
Speaker A:But then she communicated to him after that the people who took her all and said that she was, she's not going to live and she was really sorry and they were really sorry about that.
Speaker A:And then she died later.
Speaker A:And then weirdly, someone, a family friend at the funeral then also said that they had a dream of these weird beings and this guy's daughter like descending into their house through the roof and the daughter imparting some last message like you know, saying that she's sorry that she couldn't be with him, you know, her father any longer.
Speaker A:No, really, like that's fascinating, compelling and crazy experience.
Speaker A:But you know, that way it was very much like this weird anecdote which like melded an individual's death and an abduction, but with a precognitive level to it.
Speaker B:I'm keeping on the subject, but have you watched Resident Alien?
Speaker B:You've got to go and watch it.
Speaker B:It's hilarious.
Speaker A:It's supposed to be a comedy.
Speaker B:It's hilarious.
Speaker B:Not as hilarious.
Speaker B:Right, but there is a serious element to it because they've obviously studied some UAP UFO stuff.
Speaker B:Some of the stuff that you're talking about is indicative of what the, the, the, you know about the abduction and the precognition it's in, you know, it's a series that you watch.
Speaker B:It's absolutely hilarious.
Speaker B:Go watch it.
Speaker B:Because what you're talking about is actually replicated in that show.
Speaker B:My wife loves it.
Speaker B:I didn't, I didn't get into it.
Speaker B:And then she, you know, she started watching it and then I was right in a way and then I got hooked on it and then the writing went and I just got.
Speaker B:But it's interesting because there does seem to be this correlation to the near death experience and UFO abduction experience now.
Speaker B:And the other thing I'm interested in is some people utilizing psychedelics to have contact and even in a near death experience, maybe they don't meet, meet their loved ones.
Speaker B:But they meet another intelligence.
Speaker B:Have you come across that, have you come any examples where it's not their loved ones they meet, it's another intelligence through either the psychedelic or just the near death experience?
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean with psychedelics you don't tend to see your loved ones.
Speaker A:You can.
Speaker A:And if it's in grief context it's much more likely.
Speaker A:Maybe there's a bit of prime in there.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:So I think.
Speaker A:But yes, psycho.
Speaker A:It's always especially DNS here Ayahuasca or it's all these crazy ass entities, you know.
Speaker A:And with near death experiences it typically is deceased loved ones, family, friends or whatever.
Speaker A:Like not just, it's more likely to be family, friends or whatever human beings.
Speaker A:It's like they are loved ones who've died.
Speaker A:That is the most common.
Speaker A:But then you frequently get.
Speaker B:But I wonder if there's any.
Speaker B:You know, I met this reptilian under near death experience and met a reptilian alien.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean that's sort of what I was alluded to before.
Speaker A:I mean they, they usually like these more.
Speaker A:You know, they're going to be like figures which is culturally consistent and they.
Speaker A:So they usually are, you know, if you do have a, you know, a significant enough religious, religious exposure in your life, whatever or belief, then it's usually going to be consistent with that like prophet or a God or whatever.
Speaker A:But not always.
Speaker A:And if not not consistent then it's going to be.
Speaker A:It's not, it's less likely to be completely inconsistent.
Speaker A:Like if you're a die hard Christian and you're not really going to see Ganesh or something.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That's not really, I mean it's interesting when you see those anecdotes and they can't pop up.
Speaker A:Yeah, but you know, it's usually going to be something a bit more like universal like a kind of a being light, you know, which is an interesting descriptor.
Speaker A:You know, it's hard to kind of wrap your head around what that is, is some kind of sentience, intelligent sentience which is like emanating from or like composed of light and that may be still in some kind of form or maybe completely formless.
Speaker A:You know, it's a bit confounding to think about but it's still very inspiring to think about.
Speaker A:But yeah, like there was this little study I did and you know they met and they met like quite a few of them weirdly because it was.
Speaker A:They were totally independent people and stuff and prior to their ND they weren't like really into the Niche parts of this whole alien scape.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Because I'm, I'm more into that as they, the nate may have been prior to their nde.
Speaker A:And I still don't go into all these rabbit holes about the kind of classifications of all these like aliens.
Speaker A:Like that's not really my bag.
Speaker A:But they then saw like things which are.
Speaker A:What I latterly learned was like Arcturians, you know, like it's like tall, blue, luminous, like big eyed being.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Which are usually, I don't know, benign.
Speaker A:I don't know, but they certainly were benign in these NDEs.
Speaker A:And you know, it's just a striking thing because I can't remember exactly how many.
Speaker A:Maybe like 20 or something like four of them had very similar, not identical, but like beings like this.
Speaker A:But none of them out of the 20 or so were like these really hostile abduction accounts where you know, these beings are completely indifferent to you or they're maligned and they're like dissecting you and all that.
Speaker A:There's hybridization.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Like there's nothing like that.
Speaker A:You know, it was just, they still were in like a craft.
Speaker A:There were these things which you would call an alien, you know, if you had to give it a descriptor and you were in like a kind of clinical environment, there was technology that what you were being to face with in some way, you know, it's fucking weird.
Speaker A:Sorry.
Speaker B:That's all right.
Speaker B:You can, you can curse, there's no problem.
Speaker B:Listen, the amount of times, you know, because of me being a medium and everything else that I, I try to hold back it and it slips.
Speaker B:It's like, you know, I'm still an ex soldier, so I still have, I still have that about me.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Yeah, you're all right.
Speaker B:You're all right.
Speaker B:Yeah, I actually, I find it freaking amazing.
Speaker B:I remember many, many years ago I went to a, a MUFON conference and I was asked to go there and I was meeting some people and people that were having an experience.
Speaker B:Now what I potentially took it down to was more of an obsession possession experience from another type intelligence, but not alien.
Speaker B:And that what they were experiencing was from a mediumistic point of view.
Speaker B:And I mean that's a whole other bag.
Speaker B:But there is so much that we don't understand and there's so much that I think we can learn not only from the ND experience, but utilizing these psychedelics.
Speaker B:But the also thing, the interesting thing is people being primed.
Speaker B:I would find that more compelling for someone who didn't really have a religious bias or Was interested in hauntings.
Speaker B:Was interested in.
Speaker B:I once got called out to a haunting, potential haunting, and by a guy that is totally freaking materialistic, totally fucking skeptic.
Speaker B:He was like, yes, I don't know what's going on, but I see these things and turns out it just.
Speaker B:It was a spirit from the other side and.
Speaker B:But he didn't believe in anything.
Speaker B:So for me it's more compelling if nobody believes in the UFOs but they have an experience with an abduction experience and then it changes their horror, their ontology changes everything.
Speaker B:You know, their whole worldview changes from these experiences.
Speaker B:Whether they meet loved ones or whether they meet an alien.
Speaker B:How does that shift their whole worldview?
Speaker B:Those people that you did the study on that said they were meeting the Arcturians.
Speaker B:What happened after?
Speaker A:Yeah, they.
Speaker A:I didn't.
Speaker A:I wasn't specifically focusing on the after effects actually with that study.
Speaker A:In that case it's.
Speaker A:It may be a matter of, you know, really, who knows?
Speaker A:There was a talk.
Speaker A:So I was at this Soul foundation conference the other day in Italy.
Speaker A:And Soul foundation is like this crazy thing where like, you know, the UFO stuff or the deeper recesses of it, like you know, the hybridization program or whatever or.
Speaker A:Oh yeah, okay, the, you know, finding back engineer craft and bodies in Area 51 and stuff like that.
Speaker A:That was like Tim4hat stuff right before.
Speaker A:And now if not that specifically, you know, necessary, it's still the larger UFO phenomenon like that now with, as I see it, like with this sole foundation thing just in the last three years has almost become like elitist and it's very similar to what's going on with psychedelics.
Speaker A:That was very fringe and stuff.
Speaker A:And then now it's like billion dollar industry, bloody blah.
Speaker A:That was interesting itself.
Speaker A:But yeah, so I was there and Diana Pasulka was talking and she is a Catholic theologian and she's been going into this field a couple of books recently.
Speaker A:And she was referencing this individual who was the chief historian of.
Speaker A:For NASA and he was main like pioneer in developing ideas of what intelligent life in the universe may look like or where would it come from or how likely is it if it exists and stuff like that.
Speaker A:But he in his, you know, he kind of concluded that.
Speaker A:He concluded things that you wouldn't necessarily have expected or I don't think NASA would have.
Speaker A:I still don't know if, you know, NASA doesn't necessarily endorse it, but his personal conclusion was that it's most likely to be like a post biological thing.
Speaker A:They've transcended biology.
Speaker A:And he refers to, like, non.
Speaker A:These things as being, like, non supernatural gods.
Speaker A:And so it's a kind of a opportunity for the naturalization of divinity, divinity.
Speaker A:And these beings.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:May have existed and may have developed to such a degree.
Speaker A:And he.
Speaker A:And that, you know, there may be some illusions and things for the kind of ancient astronaut thing of like.
Speaker A:Well, that's why we encountered them as deities and treated them as such, because they were tantamount to that if we had any interaction with them.
Speaker A:Anyway, I'm going a bit off on a tangent with this, but she was referencing his stuff and he referred to this idea of a culturally adaptive interface in reference to the way in which these beings may present themselves because they aren't just limited to physicality.
Speaker A:And, you know, I don't know the details of it, how if he does become so explicit about this thing, but, like, they.
Speaker A:There's a.
Speaker A:There's some.
Speaker A:Some.
Speaker A:Some engagement they can have with consciousness, you know, some.
Speaker A:Somewhere where they can mediate our perception of them.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And so that's why we might see them in a culturally consistent way.
Speaker A:And even Carl Sagan, he was incredibly beyond his time.
Speaker A:He was obviously just a visionary when he was.
Speaker A:And he.
Speaker A:Unfortunately, to spoil the book or the film and, you know, you mute yourself now if, like, you don't want to hear it because it's beautiful, but it is visionary because this person ultimately is given, like, this blueprint to create this machine that allows them to.
Speaker A:To travel to this extraterrestrial race.
Speaker A:But that.
Speaker A:That kind of, you know, ambassador or whatever of this extraterrestrial race comes to her in the form of her deceased father.
Speaker A:So again, that is a really interesting.
Speaker A:It is a laugh already between what we're saying with the alien.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Phenomena.
Speaker A:But also just generally in terms of how these things may potentially, like, deliberately.
Speaker B:So they.
Speaker B:It's almost.
Speaker B:It's almost like shape shifting.
Speaker B:They almost.
Speaker B:They have a choice.
Speaker B:They can.
Speaker B:If you're a Buddhist, they can appear as a Buddhist.
Speaker B:If you're Catholic, they can appear as Mother Mary.
Speaker B:And they can interact with territory because.
Speaker A:Obviously there's so much psychological, neural, computational, neuroscientific reason stuff that we can.
Speaker A:We can be quite clear about how these things can.
Speaker A:You know, you can have these perceptions based on just your cultural priors.
Speaker A:Your.
Speaker A:Your brain is a predictive engine, is just going to be able to create a perception which is consistent with what you expect and stuff like that.
Speaker A:So it, you know, it's just whether both things are happening at once or not.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I can't even remember your original question, why I talked about that, about this whole way that they present themselves.
Speaker A:It was, it was related to your question.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So, I mean, I think I find it fascinating.
Speaker B:Sorry, sorry.
Speaker A:I'm sorry to cut you off.
Speaker A:This is just the last thing I'll say on that, just so I want to close the loop, is because you're saying like, oh, do they have ontological shock after the Arcturian thing?
Speaker A:Yeah, but the thing is, what happens after, where our cultural landscape is evolving so much in our technologization and secularity and stuff.
Speaker A:Maybe if they saw Jesus, that's going to be more of an ontological shock.
Speaker A:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker A:So maybe that's a way that they, they interface with us because it's actually less shocking.
Speaker A:For instance.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, go for it.
Speaker B:Oh yeah.
Speaker B:Because only your case.
Speaker B:See, I know if I saw Jesus or Mary, if I had an experience like that, I would, that.
Speaker B:But if I saw like a 12 foot fricking alien that looked like a serpent or a snake, I would not want to.
Speaker B:That would put me in the ontological shock.
Speaker B:I mean that would, that's going to be a big no, no.
Speaker B:And I'm interested in how people's experiences, whether it be NDE or utilizing these, or even from a UFO point of view, that it can cause them spiritual crisis or it can change their whole where you know, they become more fearful, they become more, they go into some kind of, I mean they go into some kind of negative shock and even it could cause psychosis.
Speaker B:But then maybe, and this is something that leads on to some of the research that we are doing could become an awakening experience for them where, but then you come back to this world.
Speaker B:It's like, you know, when I had my near death experience, you come back to this world and you're like, oh wow, it's a bit of a letdown when you come, you know, you kind of come back.
Speaker B:But, but it must be terrifying from someone who has this experience and then, and if it is a negative experience to come back to this world with what they've experienced and whether it's UFO or not.
Speaker B:And you know, 90%, I think personally 90% of these UFO claims are unfounded.
Speaker A:The claims of what are unfounded exactly?
Speaker B:Their abduction experiences are unfounded.
Speaker B:I think there's a lot of people that want the experience and can manifest it.
Speaker B:They have an interest, they have a bias.
Speaker B:I'm more interested in people that have no interest in it at all and then have these experiences like if you're Catholic and you believe in exorcism and demons are going to possess you, it can become a reality.
Speaker B:Because that.
Speaker B:So I'm more somebody who's not Catholic and then has an experience that is, you know, and maybe even in the same as UFO experiences or in the same as using a psychedelic as a negative experience.
Speaker B:And they're not, they're not religious in any way.
Speaker B:But then it changed their whole worldview.
Speaker A:Even if, I mean, yeah, the inconsistency is interesting and you're right, it probably does align with the astrological shock thing.
Speaker A:So it's kind of interesting when it's disaligned like in terms of their background and the content of whatever it is NDU looks like they experience.
Speaker A:That's interesting for two reasons.
Speaker A:Because it's more important for two reasons, because it is an anomaly.
Speaker A:So it's like, well, you can't just explain it because of their background, but also it's got clinical implications because you're right, it probably does align with it being more ontologically shocking for them.
Speaker A:So yeah, I mean, I'm trying to remember like interesting anecdotes.
Speaker A:There's one from a book by Stan Groff, I think it's beyond the Brain and it was like an LSD high dose LSD experience.
Speaker A:This person had an encounter with a particular pig deity of.
Speaker A:Well, at the time it was just described in this particular way, you know, this detailed way of this data based on like a boar pig.
Speaker A:And then afterward, you know, they subsequently learned that it was exactly the same as this like very niche deity in this particular religious tradition, whatever it was.
Speaker A:And so he spoke about that expressly about it being really weird for that reason.
Speaker A:So it does happen and it happens with DMT experiences a lot like with Hindu related deities which maybe now, you know, it's much more common to be familiar with them, but some decades ago, less so, you know, where they were at home, they weren't, they weren't aware of these particular deities and, or they were just, just manifest in their trip in a way which is very similar to subsequent depictions that they would see, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah, and it can be.
Speaker A:The ontological shock is interesting for either of these kinds of experiences because it doesn't need to be distressing and to have this shock value.
Speaker A:Like it can be beautiful, it can be utterly blissful and beatific and you know, this kind of transcendent near death experience, psycho experience.
Speaker A:But you know, in their mystical nature, you know, unitivity and transcendence of time, space and Everything, sense of the sacred.
Speaker A:And then, you know, like you were kind of alluding to before, like you had your own death experiences or those who speak to like, they then come back and it's a very, very grueling experience to like re incorporate into this body and into this, not just this physical world, but the nature of society where you are special as, you know, as blessed as we are in the modern day in many respects there are certain dimensions of which which they can become very sensitive to which, you know, maybe darker.
Speaker A:And that is real like tragedy for them.
Speaker A:And they're like endlessly yearning.
Speaker A:And so there is this.
Speaker A:So it may be shocking obviously still in terms of how they may have been a materialist before, but maybe they were, you know, maybe they still actually believed in this stuff, had a consistent background and it was still a spatific, like near death experience for instance.
Speaker A:But because belief and background is what doesn't hold a candle to the profundity and depth of the experience, of the experience when you actually have it.
Speaker A:They can still have real protracted challenges, like lifelong challenges.
Speaker A:And so, yeah, that's just why.
Speaker A:And so you can imagine like if they have all of that, but then also there's other elements of it.
Speaker B:Which.
Speaker A:Are a bit more bizarre, whether it's like, you know, this UFO related stuff or not.
Speaker A:But there's obviously the need, the increasing need for care of these people to be taken seriously on like an institutional level so that, you know, they don't lose their minds over this and, and can actually be, you know, can actually harness this for more like an awakening, like trajectory.
Speaker B:You know, it's interesting, there's been examples of mediums who have had experiences, ended up in a psychiatric unit because of the shocking experiences they've had or the fact that they've opened up so much that they can't switch it off anymore.
Speaker B:And I don't want to mention any names, but I'm going back to an example of a particular medium back in South Wales that was well known and ended up in a psychiatric unit getting help and equally a schizophrenic patient that I worked with that was really mediumistic and once that was identified and trained and educated, had no more schizophrenia experiences, they were gone.
Speaker B:It's interesting and that's something as well that you're going to come on my other podcast, my own personal podcast on Pillars of Grief and we're going to talk more about ontology and ontology of shocks and grief and integrating the grief journey and psychedelic and everything else and mediumship.
Speaker B:And afterlife and how it all kind of blends in.
Speaker B:I'm looking forward to that because there is definitely even everything that we've spoken to today, there's a potential even in mediumship research and how this.
Speaker B:These experiences could affect the outcome of mediumistic experiences.
Speaker B:And that's something I'm interested in.
Speaker B:Is with my sensitivity of being a medium, should I take something psychedelic?
Speaker B:How is that experience going to affect me?
Speaker B:Is it going to be wonderful where I open up even more?
Speaker B:So, for instance, I mean when I had my experience, my nd my ability was a lot stronger after it.
Speaker B:Much stronger after it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So then you think about taking the psychedelic.
Speaker B:Is that going to strengthen the abilities that I have or the experience or is it going to put me in a state of turmoil because the experience may be positive or negative and I go into ontological shock, but a negative ontological shock.
Speaker B:So there's an element there that warrants investigation.
Speaker B:Is interesting.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean I've always wanted to do a study on modern psychedelic mediumship because this is something which has been done in indigenous contexts, text all the time or like syncretic Afro Caribbean stuff from Brazil and they take ayahuasca and that's the whole thing.
Speaker A:They contact the deceased or like spirit guides for psychopompic stuff and whatever.
Speaker B:I'm known for that.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:So, you know, I just wonder if people would do that in other non indigenous contexts that they take to connect with.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Are they.
Speaker A:Are they like.
Speaker A:Like formal mediums in that way?
Speaker A:Like other mediums.
Speaker A:But they.
Speaker A:They have.
Speaker A:That's their tool of getting into that kind of trance or what not, you know, and.
Speaker A:Or directionality there.
Speaker A:Like were they mediums and then they took psychedelics or they took psychedelics and they had these psychic openings which does frequently happen.
Speaker B:Awakening.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Experiences after it as well.
Speaker A:So, you know, interesting to see what your thing is.
Speaker A:I mean if.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I mean that could be an interesting thing for you to look into, you know, that exact field.
Speaker B:It is something I am interested in.
Speaker B:It's something I might, you know, I certainly wouldn't want to take any compound that was chemically made.
Speaker B:Rather more a natural like mushroom or something like that, you know, and.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:And maybe see what happens after, you know, in terms of any sentence or readings I do or my experience.
Speaker B:And noting that experience down.
Speaker A:I would say that because obviously there's different types of mediums.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like and some are more.
Speaker A:And there's a kind of a spectrum of trance.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So if you're.
Speaker A:I don't know what kind of medium you are.
Speaker A:But, like, if you're more one of those ones which do enter into a cute, like, auto state in order to connect, then if you're, if you're already acquainted with navigating these kinds of significant shifts in consciousness, then you know, you're very well placed to do that.
Speaker A:Much more than many other people who don't have any kind of training or familiarity with the auto states at all.
Speaker B:And yes, I am.
Speaker B:That's what's interesting me.
Speaker B:And of course, I have a big.
Speaker B:In terms of trans mediumship, I have my own feelings of trans mediumship.
Speaker B:A lot of what I see or what is claimed as trans mediumship is not trans because they're not really in a deep altered state.
Speaker B:It's more, you know, and like we would do when we had our own church, our own spiritualist church, myself, my wife, and we demonstrate in other churches, you would go up in the pulpit or I would go up in the pulpit and it would be inspirational.
Speaker B:And we'd been trance.
Speaker B:It would just be inspirational speaking where you would open up and you would allow spirit to come through and you would just inspirationally teach from that point.
Speaker B:And I think that's what a lot of people are thinking is trans mediumship.
Speaker B:Because when you see real trans experiences, it's different.
Speaker B:The medium is down.
Speaker B:There is no, I'm gonna say there's no consciousness.
Speaker B:They're not there.
Speaker B:There's evidence as well, and they don't remember anything.
Speaker B:You know, when you experience.
Speaker B:I'm not gonna end any seances.
Speaker B:Real kind of trans mediumship is very unique.
Speaker B:And I think if you get that ability and you can marry that with the potential of psychedelic, there's a potential there for real research on another dimension, really, that interests me.
Speaker B:Maybe that's something in the future.
Speaker B:That's something maybe we can do together again at some point after this next one.
Speaker B:Pascal, it has been brilliant.
Speaker B:I'm really noting that we've gone on way over and I'm mindful of your time as well, and I'd love to have you back and we chat more about these things.
Speaker B:You're going to be a guest with me on Pillars of Grief as we go in, more in the afterlife and mediumship and our research, because we are doing some really unique research together as well on psychedelic, ontological shock and spiritual awakening, the grief journey, the experiences through grief.
Speaker B:And I'm really excited about that.
Speaker B:We're working on that just now.
Speaker B:And so we'll dive in more into that, into Pillars of Grief.
Speaker B:Let people know how they can get involved with this.
Speaker B:I always like to ask everybody at the end of the show, from your research and from your own experiences, what is one lesson that you can give to humanity now that you would say from your research, from experience, what's the lesson that you wished you knew back then, back in the day, that you could teach now?
Speaker A:Trying to think of the right way to formulate this.
Speaker A:Don't.
Speaker A:Don't lose.
Speaker A:I'm really.
Speaker A:Because this is a very important message, actually.
Speaker A:So, you know, I'm glad you.
Speaker A:You did.
Speaker A:You did ask, but.
Speaker A:So just because of its importance, I'm just trying to think of the best way to formulate it.
Speaker A:But that's all right.
Speaker B:Take your time.
Speaker B:We'll edit the spaces out anyway so it won't sound like you're waiting anytime.
Speaker B:I've got a great editor.
Speaker A:Okay, good, good.
Speaker A:You can.
Speaker A:I still don't.
Speaker A:Okay, well, glad you got an editor, because I'm just gonna.
Speaker A:Just fail.
Speaker A:Fumble around now.
Speaker A:Trying to say that the most succinct way of getting this across.
Speaker A:But don't get into all of this stuff if you don't have to, basically, because I.
Speaker A:It's too late for me, like, glimpsed already, you know, behind.
Speaker B:Why is it too late for you?
Speaker A:Just because I'm deep in the research and I can't unknow the things that I know or I can't, like, unthink the things.
Speaker A:The things that I think about.
Speaker A:Oh.
Speaker A:Because it can be quite ontologically challenging in terms of what we're talking about.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So you don't just need to have these experiences.
Speaker A:It's just a matter of engaging with it at all.
Speaker A:That can.
Speaker A:That can affect and potentially, like, disrupt your.
Speaker A:Your urban, like, relationship with this world.
Speaker A:And the thing is, is, like, this world is like that which is immediately imminent.
Speaker A:Like, that is the only thing that you can truly know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Anything else is it.
Speaker A:It then edges more into the realm of pontification or fantasy or whatever, you know, can be better or worse.
Speaker A:And it's so just.
Speaker A:It's just a matter.
Speaker A:It's just a message of recommending a level of discernment and groundedness and the.
Speaker A:That, you know, if you take it from someone like me that's gone into this, it's not necessary.
Speaker A:You can live a full life.
Speaker A:You can live, like, life to the full.
Speaker A:You know, you can still be in awe of the.
Speaker A:The way that the world just immediately presents itself to you in all of its glorious materiality, you know, and you can Accept that which is quote, unquote, trivial if you, you know, or in.
Speaker A:In.
Speaker A:In light of it being in actual.
Speaker A:In, you know, in actuality, like really anything but mundane, you know, it's.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Maybe the most pithy thing that I could have said is like the most cliche Hallmark card thing ever, which is.
Speaker B:Like, well, no, I think you're on.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Life is the Prince.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You realize that when you come out of life, when you, for instance, that could be anything, you know, but especially with psychedelic experiences, you come back and you realize that actually it's this entire world which is inexplicable and miraculous.
Speaker A:It's easy.
Speaker A:It's similarly, like, it's easier for me to say that having had psycho experiences or having gone down this, like, research rabbit hole and stuff, and then coming back and then it's maybe a bit like, not hypocritical, but inconsistent for me to then say people that they don't need that.
Speaker A:And just take my word for it, you know, life's amazing.
Speaker A:You don't need to like, like, you know, potentially lose yourself in all this.
Speaker A:Further fringes of reality and experience.
Speaker A:But maybe it's still an important thing to him.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:I also think it's.
Speaker B:Even these experiences can be great teachers for us.
Speaker B:As I've always said that grief can be your greatest nemesis or your greatest teacher.
Speaker B:It's up to you how you approach it.
Speaker B:And what you're saying also reminds me of, like, Sir Marjorie Willacott, who literally changed her whole.
Speaker B:She went.
Speaker B:I mean, talking about ontological.
Speaker B:So her whole worldview changed.
Speaker B:Everything changed.
Speaker B:And she was like you.
Speaker B:She was a neuroscientist and so steeped in it.
Speaker B:And I, you know, Marjorie and I had a great conversation before all about that and how she changed her things.
Speaker B:And then one of my other, who I've had.
Speaker B:I can't remember her name now.
Speaker B:She's great.
Speaker B:Waking.
Speaker B:Lisa Miller.
Speaker B:Dr. Lisa Miller.
Speaker B:I love her.
Speaker B:She's great.
Speaker B:I mean, she really had.
Speaker B:And her ontology changed totally.
Speaker B:And she was, you know, neuroscientific, and her experiences went beyond the science and then it totally changed her worldview.
Speaker B:So, yeah, you don't have to experience it, but when you do, it can be a dramatic awakening experience.
Speaker B:And that's obviously some of the research that we are doing as well, which I'm excited, excited about Pascal.
Speaker B:I've thoroughly enjoyed that.
Speaker B:And if anybody's listening, by the way, Pascal's got a great voice, he's a great singer.
Speaker B:I've checked to it because Yeah, I mean, I've done singing in the past of that, but anybody who's listening this in a musical, actually, I can see him in Jesus Christ Superstar, you know, and singing.
Speaker B:Although there's a few.
Speaker B:There's a few.
Speaker B:There's a few notes in there that are.
Speaker B:Yeah, they're octavist.
Speaker A:If any of you are employing me for jazz.
Speaker B:Not half, actually.
Speaker B:Not half.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Go check it.
Speaker B:Go check his channel out and listen to him singing.
Speaker B:He's done a little good skit as well before, which I watched last night before during lockdown, and that was quite interesting.
Speaker B:I'm listening to him.
Speaker B:I was like, he's got a good control of that voice there.
Speaker B:Going from my own singing.
Speaker B:But who knows?
Speaker B:You might get.
Speaker B:At some point, we'll have an event and maybe I'll be singing with Pascal on stage.
Speaker A:That'd be cool.
Speaker B:That would not be too far from the truth.
Speaker B:The big PDN event.
Speaker B:That's what I'm going to do.
Speaker B:Ladies and gentlemen, the big PDN event that we have because PDF is quite substantial.
Speaker B:We're gonna.
Speaker B:We're working on putting a big event together.
Speaker B:Pascal will come over and then we'll have a little bit of a sing song.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's definitely because I love.
Speaker B:I can see Les Miserables as well.
Speaker B:I can see us doing dueling with, you know, being Javert.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And Jean Valjean.
Speaker B:Shotgun Javert from Les Mitch.
Speaker B:Beautiful.
Speaker B:You're gonna be back on.
Speaker B:Pascal's also maybe doing that.
Speaker B:You probably don't know that we've spoke about, but I'm going to force him to do it because this is fascinating stuff.
Speaker B:Stuff and courses and all sorts and get more involved.
Speaker B:Pascal is also one of our new editors in the Para Wise Journal, which is launched and we're developing over, looking for a first edition coming out in December.
Speaker B:So look out for that and join us on Pillars of Grief.
Speaker B:We'll let you know.
Speaker B:This is the Day of the Dead.
Speaker B:Remember your loved ones, remember your experiences.
Speaker B:This has been a fantastic, longest episode I've ever done on Deadly Departed, but absolutely fantastic.
Speaker B:And guys, ask any questions, you know the drill.
Speaker B:Send them in.
Speaker B:Join our private community, part of News Network, and we'll have him back because there's so much to unpack that we haven't even covered.
Speaker B:We could go deeper and deeper and deeper in all sorts of ways.
Speaker B:Pascal, brother, thank you for joining me today.
Speaker B:This has been phenomenal.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, no problem.
Speaker A:It's been really, really, really fun.
Speaker A:Jock, thanks so much.
Speaker B:Look forward to awesome if you are enjoying this episode of Deadly Departed, then please share it with your colleagues or share it with your friends.
Speaker B:And if you've got any ideas on anyone that you would like us to invite onto the podcast for an interview, then please let us know.
Speaker B:Once again, thank you for joining us today and please remember and subscribe.
Speaker B:God bless.
Speaker A:It.
