Griggs Corners, Ohio

Transcription

[upbeat piano music] - In 1970, about 44 years ago, when I was a young man, I had a near-death experience. I was killed in a motorcycle wreck in Eugene, Oregon, and I happened to have this wreck in front of an ambulance location, and they just came around and picked me up and took me to the hospital. They put me in the ICU, the intensive care unit, and about three hours later, I went into a coma. I had rather extensive-- there's scars here on my wrist and stuff, leg injuries. I have steel in my femur here. I have lost the kneecap on my right leg. I had-- part of my wrist was up here by my elbow, pushed up under the skin. I was pretty well destroyed. So three hours later, I went into a coma, and I went out-of-body. - When I was about five years old, I was recommended to go in for a tonsillectomy because my, you know, my tonsils were supposedly infected, and it turned out that they actually weren't, so the doctor didn't take them out, but I did go through the operation. What happened was they took me into the operating room, and in those days, they had a big mask that they put over you for the anesthetic. It was a little different than nowadays. And when they put the mask over my face, he said, you know, he just said, "Breathe deeply," so I breathed, and it was okay, pretty much, except that I, of course, that I went out right away, which I would, being five, you know? [laughs] The next thing I knew, I just shot up out of my body and for a while, I-- I looked down and saw myself, you know, being operated on and stuff, and I thought, "Hmm, that's interesting." You know, I was just looking at myself and them, and-- [laughs] - I became aware of my clairvoyance at the age of 14 through a near-death experience. Off and on for six years, I just came to a point where I began to hear, feel, and see. I had a second near-death experience at 41 in a head-on collision, and in that experience, all I can remember is rising above my body into a vibrant green light, and when the two cars hit, I never felt anything. I wasn't present. It was as if I was hovering above my body. I could see myself very clearly. I could see myself three-dimensionally. My consciousness was floating above my body. The thinking part of me was up here. This down here just felt like a shell, but it was my shell. - I totaled my automobile, and my spirit and soul immediately left my body in the car and went through the tunnel we hear people talk about, quickly, all the way through to the other end and out the other end into pure white light. I also was spoken to with a voice, what some people call a conversation with God. I was told immediately when I entered the pure light by a male voice-- and we all hear whatever voice we need to hear in whatever language in which we need to hear it-- telling me, "Lewis, you were called here "to have this conversation and to be sent back, because you are not doing your work." - The being of light is definitely a being, but not with a face, a figure, or anything else. It's more of an energy center. It's a white light that's described as having gold around the edges, if you wish. It's the brightest, prettiest, most loving light I've ever seen. I've never been so in love or at home or with my family or with-- it's where I'm from. And I felt that this being and I had known each other for-- I use the term "thousands of years" or "eons." We had-- we'd always known each other. There was no beginning, no end, to how long we've known each other. If you think of each of our consciousnesses as one little grain of sand and infinite intelligence as the whole beach of sand, I was plugged back in. My little grain of sand was back on the beach where I belonged, where I came from. - And then, I saw somebody come up to me in a black dress, and it was my great-grandmother, whom I'd actually known until I was about-- well, she died when I was, I think, 2 1/2 or something like that? I called her Ga-ga. Everybody called her that, and I said, "Oh, Ga-ga, I haven't seen you in such a long time," and I put out my hand. She took my hand, and she said, "Well, you're just here for a little visit." I remember being in, like, a corridor of, like, a building that we had gone into, and there was a long corridor with doors off of it like a school. It had cla-- you know, like, classrooms, different rooms. Well, they opened the door to the classroom, and they said, "You can look at this, you know, this is a classroom. People are learning things." And they were at a keyboard. They were actually-- and you have to realize, this is, like, 1951, 'cause I was born in 1945. There were no such things as computers, especially personal computers. They were big, huge, room-sized things in those days, and nobody had ever heard of such a thing, you know? There were--like, there were typewriters, of course, but these were not keyboards like that. They had little squares, and they also lit up. I could see the light underneath them. Like, some were blue, and some were red, and some were green. And I remember that the man told me, he said, "You will see these later in your life." - But you know, I did have an encounter in that encounter with a fellow who came to me and introduced himself as Ben. He said that he had come to be with me in this moment so that I would not have to have the experience alone, and told me that the only thing that I needed to know moving forward from this experience is that I did not have anything to worry about. 'Cause I was hurt. I was--I was hurt, and I was trapped in the car for 45 minutes. But he had the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen and was very gentle. He called me by name from the first meeting. He spoke very softly and very gently. As soon as he touched me, I completely went limp. But then, as he stepped back from the car, he said, "I have to go now," and smiled and vanished in thin air. And I knew I had literally been touched by an angel. - I was in this state of consciousness which was with my soul and my spirit at this source. I was no longer in my body at all. I said, "Well, I surrender. Take me, I'm yours. I will do your work." And I was told immediately, "No, it's not my work you need to do, Lewis. It's your work." I then asked, "Well, what is my work?" Since I was in a place where all knowledge is known, and I could feel that, I assumed I was gonna be told what my work is. And instead of being told, I was asked, "Well, what is it that keeps you from being all you are capable of being?" Well, I didn't know, because I thought everything was fine. So I felt something about difference that prevented my soul from connecting with the soul of another. I did not know how to bridge the gap, and when I said this in the light, in "my conversation with God," then, just like the best moment in the movie "Amadeus," when Mozart hit a perfect note and went, "There it is!" the voice of God said to me, "There it is, Lewis. There is your work." And that was my conversation. I was then sent back down the entire same tunnel and white light until I remember coming into the body, until, like, those tight rubber gloves. I'm not fully in until I am, and then-- [pops and whooshes] this white light disappeared, and I was sitting in my automobile-- a totaled automobile, badly damaged-- with no physical damage. And I walked out of the car into the ambulance to tell them, "There's no problem." - I was a young man in my early 20s, and I decided to come back here. I wasn't done with the reason I had been here. I clearly remember squeezing down, getting smaller, and coming into my body. It was like slamming back into the pain of this existence. So I come back-- at that time, a college student studying mechanical engineering and physics-- I come back into this life, and I go on with that career, but they're teaching me Newtonian physics. They're teaching me that this is--3D is it, and I'm always, from the beginning, from then on, I'm on the other side. "No, no, there's all the rest of this energy. There's all the rest of this out here." - I don't remember going in specifically to my body, except that, you know, it was much-- it was like going down a very small-- like, a funnel or something. You know, it was, like, I just swooshed back in. And I heard the doctor say, "I thought we were going to lose her there for a minute." I tried to lift my arm, and it felt so heavy after having been really light, and it was so nice being not in a body, because everything was light, and I could just go where I wanted to, you know, without even thinking. And I tried to lift my arm and it weighed a ton, and I thought to myself, "Oh, no, not this again." [laughs] - And then, without any warning whatsoever, it's just like someone thrust me back into my body again. I came to consciousness about 90 seconds later back in my physical body. I was actually impaled on the dash with my knee for 45 minutes. About 20 minutes after the accident and after this fellow disappeared, then I started feeling pain in my right foot, my knee. My arm was broken, my ribs were broken. I can remember the young woman who was bound and determined to get me out of the car and was yanking on the door and screaming for people to help, for her to get me out of the car. But had she got out me out of the car, I probably wouldn't walk today. - First off, when I had the near-death experience in 1970, I started talking about it. And this--I was on the head injury floor, and so the chief psychiatrist wanted to put me in the nuthouse because this isn't true. "What, do you think you're Jesus? You died and you came back? What is that?" You know, "You're crazy." So he wants to throw me in the nuthouse, and the nurses, they know. They've heard, they've seen it too many times, and they're hugging me and saying, "Shh. Don't." "Yeah, but it's true. I got to tell him." So he's saying to me, "So you think you're Jesus?" And I say, "Look. "I went there, I did it. You got a degree. "You're a doctor and all that, but you've never been there, "and you're telling me it doesn't exist because you have a degree?" I believe they may have given my body painkillers, but I was out of the body. So people say, "Well, it's a drug effect in your mind." No, I'm out of the body. I remember coming back into the room and coming back into the body and seeing myself and coming into it. I finally get out of the hospital. I go to the pastor at my church, and he says, "Well, it can't possibly be true, because it doesn't agree with scripture." And I said, "Wait a minute. "It doesn't agree with your interpretation of the scripture. It's true, I went there." Those people who want to say, "Well, it was a drug," or, "Well, it was something else," they're looking for it to be something else because they don't want to hear what we're saying. - I would say not to let other people discourage you. Some people let other people say, "Oh, well, you couldn't have seen that," or you couldn't have, you know, "da da da," and of course, I would say believe in what you have seen and what you've experienced, you know? If you did experience this, it's a good thing. - There was no confusion. This was not a dream. This was my real experience of my soul outside of my body, outside of my personality, outside of my ego, and outside of my human form, having a real experience at what I call "the source of all energy and all spirit from which we all come." Just, when I say "I've been in the light "and experienced all knowledge, "where there's nothing but love and light and truth and peace and grace," they are still not enough, when you add all the words together, to fully describe what I experienced. - It was more real than this reality. We all remember that experience better than anything else in our life. It is embedded in us. It is burned into our mind because it was more real. So, for people, how to believe it? They always want me to give them that one, how to believe it. Walk a mile in my shoes? Go have your own near-death experience? Here, let me get a gun. We'll shoot you, see if you die. You know, I mean, we can't do that. So they want-- they want to know like I do. I was lucky to be killed. Think about what I'm saying. I was lucky to be killed and then to come back so that I could say all of this and know all of this. - Well, my sense about near-death experience is the same as when I hear a story about psychic experience or mystical experience or in fact any strange experience. On the one hand, it is somebody's actual experience, so you need to listen to it carefully and compare it against other people's experiences. Then the question is, if it's very strange, if it doesn't happen very often, you have to figure out how to interpret what it means. Some people will interpret a near-death experience as meaning that they have literally separated from their body in some way and the identification of who they are is no longer like this, it's something else, a spirit, a soul, something like that. It's been very difficult to do scientific research on these kinds of experiences because it's not ethical to try to induce a near-death experience, and they tend to happen spontaneously, so it's very difficult to know when it's gonna happen. On the other hand, there are instances in which people claim to separate from their body, and they can correctly describe things from other positions, other places. That's when I become more interested, because those are things that can be tested, and you don't need to have somebody in a near-death condition in order to test it. So what we have focused on, what my research focuses on mostly is people who are not near death but just completely ordinary states who are asked, for example, to describe something at a distance or that is hidden. And we have pretty good evidence that people can do that. - For me to share with you that I have perfect memory of every experience I had in the tunnel and in the light and in my conversation with God and that I remember it as clearly as I'm talking to you now, is not able to be proven scientifically because our understanding of the word "memory" is that it is in the brain, and the brain was in the body, and the body was in the car, so no, I cannot prove to you scientifically how I can have perfect memory of this experience. - In standard practice in neurosurgery, the belief is that the brain creates the consciousness. This is a thing we're taught in grade school, that the brain makes the consciousness. The truth is, and they're coming-- physics is coming up against this one big-time now. The truth is that the consciousness makes the brain and not the other way around. The brain is just like a television set, it's a receiving station. The consciousness exists outside the body. If you think about your consciousness as existing outside of your body but telling itself that the locus of your consciousness is in your head, so then you're gonna experience everything inside the body, then you can see how easy it is to go out-of-body. You just shift where you're thinking it is. You say, "Okay, I'm no longer in this computer, "I'm out here in this one. Click." Now I'm out there. Okay, now I can look down at my body. Okay, if I want to make my locus back inside the head, "Click, I'm back in here." - Can we demonstrate that consciousness is non-local? And by that, meaning that you can gain information from a distance in space or time. The answer is yes, because we can do good experiments to test whether that is possible, and I believe that if you dispassionately look at the evidence that is available, then you will find that the answer is yes. Or at least that we have high confidence that the answer is yes, that people can gain information from a distance in space or time. Maybe consciousness requires the thing that we call "the brain" in order to be aware, and maybe not. Maybe any sufficiently complex system would do, but we don't know yet. - And since science does not yet know how to explain all this, there is-- there are many experiences which are very similar to how we felt when you and I tried to decide if the Earth was flat or round, and science could not yet prove one or the other. Or when we tried to decide if the Earth went around the Sun or the Sun went around the Earth because science could not describe one or the other to our left frontal lobe's satisfaction. That is where we now are in this description of our experiences out of our body. - Unless we know what consciousness is, or awareness, then we can't explain anything. So then it changes the question from, "How do I become aware of what I'm capable of at an unconscious level?" And the traditional answer to that, which I think is probably the safest method, is through meditation. Meditation, in many ways, is all about getting in contact with your unconscious. You get to deeper and deeper levels of awareness about what's going on, and eventually, you reach a level of awareness where we might say that somebody would become extremely psychic. In the case of near-death experience in particular, all of those people, by definition, come back, so their brains couldn't have been too dead, just dead enough to be-- to be declared near-death. And so we don't know what would happen if a person actually is-- dies and doesn't come back. We don't know what the answer is. - We all leave in many different ways, but it's very similar, you know. The sleeping, I've heard that and I feel that, you know, people feel like they go into a deep sleep or there's something that kind of pulls them out of their body right before the incident happens. There was a young girl that was in a car accident-- I'm trying to remember the reading-- and she said to the mother that right in the moment of impact, she actually didn't feel anything, and it's not that she blacked out, but on the moment of impact, it was like something pulled her out of her body so her consciousness and awareness of being in the body and actually experiencing pain or things being pushed into her body or being in the vehicle on impact, none of that stuff was there. She had peace, and she didn't experience the pain, although on the physical side, us as humans, we see a car crash and we see a body and we see a girl who is mangled or who is injured. - The body does die. The heart stops beating, and the lungs start, you know, moving, and yet those of us who have had any form of being out of our body are convinced that our soul and spirit survives and does not die, in fact, never dies. - Most common, what they say to me is it's like flipping a switch. Pfft, it's done. It's an instantaneous process. In some cases, though, people have so much fear of passing that I actually-- they hold on and they grab. In some cases, I think it can actually make it much more difficult if there's a lot of fear around the actual passing. - So I've actually helped my father in his 90s and my mother in her 90s both understand, with my guarantee, where they are going, with no fear, and it has helped them leave in peace. The very first experience I had, in my first near-death experience, when I left the automobile, was exactly the-- what I call almost a human desire to reach those that I loved and who loved me and let them know that yes, I had just left the body, but I was in such peace and grace and light and love that they should have no anxiety about where I am. They can have human sadness that I've left that form, and they should have no sadness about where I am. That was the very first thing, I wished I could communicate to them. - Once you understand, from the near-death experience, that the afterlife is real, then you will want to maybe talk to your relatives who are sitting over there, the ones who are passed on, the ones you love, your grandmother, things like that. When you start wanting to talk to them, and you do talk to them, things begin to change. So this is why you want to know your relatives. They do love you. They're still over there. - My own mother's passing in April of 2012, I stood right beside my mother when my mother passed away, and within an hour of my mother's passing, my mother spoke to me. She told me, "I've made it. I've crossed over. I'm there." So--I heard it as clear as day. - There are many people that, either because of their experiences out in the light, after their near-death experience, or many people without having had a crisis called a near-death experience, do have enormous access to their sensitivity and intuition and clairvoyance, an ability to see clearly and feel clearly other entities that have left the body form but are still with us. So I'm very open to it. There's no conflict between the experience I've had in the light and that. In fact, it enhances my belief and trust. - A lot of people want to know, what are the signs? You know, my mother passed away. My father passed away. I've been praying. I want them to come, to let me know that they're okay, that they're at peace. How do I know? I'm at the mercy of the spirit that comes through. They show me what they want me to see. If they want me to know that they were overweight and they had a belly, they will show me that if they feel like it's relevant to what the person needs to hear or know. - I had a woman come to me at a psychic fair, and when she approached my table, she looked as if she had been emotionally beaten. She looked very distraught. She looked very tired, very worn-down. When she sat down in front of me, I instantly felt the presence of her mother and father come in on my right. I felt the presence of her daughter and her husband come in on my left. So I told her, "Ma'am, I feel your mother and father "on my right, in spirit, "and I feel your daughter and your husband file in in spirit on my left." And she says to me, "My husband just died two weeks ago." Well, as soon as she said that, I hear him say to me very emphatically, "Tell her, tell her I heard her the last four days of my life." So I said, "Ma'am, your husband wants you to know "very emphatically that he heard you the last four days of his life." And my client just burst into tears, and she said, "My husband was in a coma "the last four days of his life, "and, boy, did I do a lot of talking. "I forgave for everything that needed forgiven. "I asked forgiveness for everything "that needed to be forgiven. "And I told my husband that I loved him. And until this moment, I didn't know he heard me." And I literally watched 50 pounds of weight come off my client's shoulders. She lit up. She released all of that struggle. All that guilt and worry was just gone instantly. - So I always tell people, "Have an open mind, "but also, whatever comes through, "if it's true for you and it resonates, then hold onto that. That's your evidence. That's what you need," you know? You--you don't need someone to go down a long list of 100 different things for you to finally get it and believe, because my job isn't to convince you that there's an afterlife or that I'm really psychic or that I can really pick up on things. My job is to just be the messenger, and to let you know that they're with you, to let you know that there's things that they're bringing through that they're simply acknowledging so you know that it's really them, 'cause only they would know 'cause they're close to you. They're connected to you. - Like, a medium's experience is-- their experience is that they're talking to a dead person, but we know that our experience is a construction. That--maybe that's what's going on. Maybe that's not what's going on. So... People who want to believe that we survive bodily death, they don't like what I'm saying. They don't like the uncertainty. They would much rather have absolute certainty that something continues to survive. And I understand that, and I have sympathy with that approach, as well, but I can't go there. I don't have that certainty. However, one thing I can say is, about mediums, that I'm convinced by the data that when a medium is gaining information, that the information is not chance and it's not techniques like cold reading. Now, that could be used. I mean, there are fraudulent mediums, too, who will do that, but mediums who are legitimate and good can get real information. From my perspective, knowing something about psychic phenomena, I'm assuming that what they're doing is very similar to what a psychic does. Maybe I'm right, and maybe I'm not right, but that's my assumption. - Well, you know, mind-reading mentality, things and telepathics come here. Again, this comes right up through the center of my being. It's not necessarily something that I will hear. I mean, I will do this in the course of a reading to try to adjust my ability to perceive. - There are a few cases where it begins to stretch what we understand about psychic ability, and those cases typically involve a skill on the part of the medium that they say that they're getting from somebody else or something is working through them, a skill that is complicated, like speaking another language or being able to play chess, something of that sort, which doesn't seem to fit what we know about psychic ability at this point. - This happens all the time in the course of readings. I'll say something, and I'll notice when I say it, those aren't the normal words that I would use to convey this thought. And the person across from the table from me is going, "Oh, my god, "that is exactly what my dad would say. That is exactly what my mother would say." So they're not my words. They're words of spirit. - No matter who I've talked to, even when I've talked to people that are not open spiritually or have open minds, they still have a sense that their loved one is still with them. They don't-- they can't explain it. You know, I talk to people all the time that says, "I don't know how I know. "I just know my mother's still with me, and I'm gonna know that forever," or, "I know my father's still with me." This is something we've always been able to do. We just forgot, and then we're afraid. We block it out for religious reasons. We think that it's evil or negative, and so our conscious mind blocks it out, but then when we begin to remember the nature of who we are and connect to our heart again and meditate and then we open up to these subtle energies, and we're able to really realize that there's so much more to life than the physical world. - I have had experiences with other deceased entities-- like, we call them "ghosts"-- that have appeared, and the most amazing one happened when I moved into an apartment, and I could feel the energy of somebody that was very anxious. And to make a long story short, I discovered later, after the owners of the building told us the truth instead of lied to us, that the man who had killed himself there because his wife had died of cancer was the entity, the spirit that was still hanging around with anxiety because when he killed himself, there was ambivalence, and his anxiety was still there. And at 5:30 every afternoon, it came rushing out of the kitchen, down the hall, toward the living room, and I could feel it, and I could feel-- that was not my anxiety. I don't have anxiety as strong as I felt. And my one-year-old daughter one day not only felt it but saw it, the way children can see, and screamed, you know, and I had to hold her, and I turned to this entity and said, "You stay away from my daughter," and so-- "Your energy's okay here. I can handle it, but she can't." - I think they exist pretty much around the same level as we do. Physically, we have a certain molecular make-up. You know, we have, like, a crust, and you can feel the person, and you can-- but--but I don't think that every level of existence is like that. It's like a frequency. It's like the radio, you know, you can't see the radio waves, but there are lots of them, and you can tune into different channels or stations all the time. - It's right here where we are. It's a different frequency in the same place we are. When they're in that fourth dimension, they're almost at our frequency. That's why they can see us. We can't see them, but they can see us. - Yes, they can see us, and we--some of us can see them. I believe all of us have the ability to see them, but if we don't believe in them or we choose not to activate them, they're not going to work. But it is very clear in Corinthians, in the Bible, that unto all men are given equally, liberally, of these gifts, as much as he would will. - I now know, or believe based on my own experience, that there is much that we cannot see but we can feel. So when I hear things like the string theory and others and quantum physics, all of it are examples of science beginning to understand and to explain what until now has never been able to be explained. - What's important about quantum mechanics is that it's the best physical theory that we have. It describes the physical world as accurately as any theory that we've been able to develop so far. So we're physical creatures. We live in a physical world. Physics has to be compatible, at least, with the kinds of phenomena we're talking about. So if somebody claims that they can-- they can project their mind somewhere and get information from a distance, physics has to allow that, because otherwise, it doesn't make any sense. So up until perhaps 100 years ago, with classical physics as the best description, there wasn't any way that physics would even allow for these kinds of phenomena. So somewhere about 100 years ago, a little bit more now, the idea of multiple dimensions came along, and so people doing my kind of work suddenly became very interested in the possibility that there are other dimensions here. Like, you go to CERN, for example, and talk to the particle physicists who are beginning to figure out, based on things like the standard model in physics, how to explain why when you mash together a bunch of protons or neutrons, why do you get the results that you get of this bunch of particles? Well, some of those series require that you'd need more than three dimensions of space and one of time in order to describe it. So that's how you begin to find these other dimensions. The mathematics are very, very-- are much simpler when you deal with higher order dimensions than if you imagine that all there actually was is three dimensions of space and one of time. So that's--I mean, that's where the comfort comes from in physics, that the mathematics say, "Well, there ought to be 11 dimensions." That's when everything kind of works really nice, and that allows you to predict that if you take certain hunks of matter and you mash them together, that the behavior of that should look a certain way with 11 dimensions, but it would look very different with 3. - And physics says we have 7 levels in string theory and 1 more level in M-theory for a total of 11 dimensions. Those 8 extra dimensions which we have not discerned are the dark energy, the 96% of the universe that we cannot yet even detect but we know mathematically that it's there from our astronomy. We know that the dark energy and the dark matter exist and make up 96% of the universe, which we don't yet see. There's a lot of room for a lot of afterlife and a lot of different levels out there. But the materialist scientists, who only want 3D, they won't look at it. They won't even--this-- "No, it's a bunch of baloney." They don't even look. They just say, "No good. Impossible. I'm not even gonna look at it." Well, how do they know it's impossible? They see 4% of the universe, and the rest of it's impossible. What--that's ridiculous. We have to remember that it's not in our 4%. We can't know it all yet, but we're now at a point where we are making beachheads on a new territory, those other dimensions. - I think if when you're a scientist working on the edge of the known, if you really require certainty to feel comfortable, you're in the wrong business, because most of the time, you begin to recognize, when you're studying over the edge of what is known, nobody knows what's going on. For me, that's exciting, and so I don't mind that we don't understated it. The challenge is, how do we become clever enough to be able to study that unknown space and begin to understand it? - The quarks and the gluons which make up our atoms, string theory is that they're made up of a vibration, and you think about a vibration without a string vibrating. Now you have what-- what we-- what quarks and gluons are made out of, a thought, a vibratory thought, and that's consciousness, and that's what makes the whole universe. Well, if consciousness comes first, then this whole idea that the neurosurgeons are using, that the brain, the wet brain creates the thought, is bullshit. - Science does not have an explanation yet. I mean, when we think about what does it mean to have an explanation? In science, what that typically means is we want a causal explanation. We want to know that this interacts with that, and that interacts with this, and we have a causal sequence that explains how things work. So from that perspective, we have no idea. We don't know how psychic abilities work, but we also don't know how consciousness works. We don't have any explanations for that, either. We're still very young creatures, and science is too new. So I think about other planets out there that may be a billion years ahead of us. They probably know a little bit more than we do if there are people who are scientists there, and they would look back at us, what we're trying to do now, and say, "These creatures don't have any idea what's going on." I mean, most of the really fundamental questions that we would have about life and us and the planet and universe and all that stuff, which are all very interesting questions, we have some answers, but it's just barely begun. And all scientists learn very quickly that there's certain things you don't talk about. You don't push against the social environment in science, because if you do, you won't have a job. You won't be able to do what you want to do. So it is no different than in politics or in any other domain of human affairs, that we learn that there are certain things you talk about and certain things you don't. - I know, when I say I'm a medium, that all the other scientists look at me like, "He's not a scientist. He's a nut." But it's okay, I'm retired. Who cares? I don't care anymore, okay? They still have their career. They're still worried about everyone else thinking they're crazy, you know. So they are careful about saying things, and I understand that, but more of them should have a little more courage and say, "I don't know everything. I'm going to look instead of saying it's impossible." They should look. And I believe in physics, and I've--you know, I'm a naval architect. I've designed many ships, and I know all about how to use physics in our 3D to make things work, but I also know that that's just a limited little corner of the world, and that there's huge universe out here besides that. And this huge universe, we don't know anything about. And I can stand up there, even if the guys who want to hide in the 4% little corner want to laugh at me, let them. They're the fools. I'm not the fool. I realize we don't know. - Most scientists tend to be pretty smart, and the smarter you are, the easier it is to fall in love with a theory, and theories are explanations. They make us feel comfortable in the world, so if you spend your entire adult life learning about a certain description of the way that the world works, you become comfortable with that, and after a while, you begin to see the world in those terms. I happen to have a lot of friends who are theorists who can only see the world through their theory. So it is that combined also with a certain social taboo about what you're allowed to talk about in science and what you're not. And taboos are interesting because, I mean, by definition, this is what you can talk about, and this is what you can't talk about. Well, why can't we talk about this? Well, that's a whole topic unto itself. Why are we not allowed to address fundamental questions about who we are? Younger scientists are grown up in a very different kind of context, and especially people paying attention to surprises and strange things about quantum mechanics and the physical world, I think it's beginning to loosen up people's previous assumptions about what do we actually know about physicality. And that alone could be enough to eventually change how people feel about these topics, as well. So consciousness studies 30 years ago was just beginning to become popular, and then it went into a quiet period, and now it's coming back much bigger. You see conferences on consciousness everywhere, and an academic can study consciousness, and they don't lose their job. That's happening around the world. So that is a big change. - There's a huge change in human consciousness now compared to the past, and it continues to change. And now that we are beginning to talk more openly about it, then we are better able to hear and understand and believe other people's experiences and talk more ourselves about it. And that change is happening very quickly. - It's true that because of rising interest in consciousness studies that-- some of it is science, but a large part of it is also scholarship and philosophy. So there are many different ways of getting into this topic, and sometimes philosophers and scientists don't know how to talk to each other, and sometimes the scholars and the historians are talking about something completely different, but that's okay. You know, it's a big and important topic, and so you have conferences with thousands of people all coming at it from slightly different angles, which I take actually as a good sign, because it means it's not likely to collapse prematurely into "This is the way to do it." It's a very complicated topic, which makes it interesting and also challenging to figure out what's the best way to study. And maybe there is no best way. It's--everybody has their own best way. - My experience in the light enabled me to feel a deeper sense of spirituality less defined by any one religion or another. So all religions, in my opinion and experience, have true spirituality at the core, and all religions, to different degrees and in different ways, are guilty of a form of righteousness that has the details of their description be perceived of as the correct ones and the others the wrong ones. So the more we come together as one and realize the common goals we have and listen to each others' spirituality and whatever we believe, actually, we will start to learn that, at the core, we are all feeling and believing mostly the same things, and that the details that are different aren't actually so important that they deserve killing one another over them. - I would say we're experiencing a spiritual evolution. 70% of Americans do believe that there's an afterlife. Okay, around 35, 40% truly believe in mediums being able to talk to the other side. - I have seen a tremendous increase in the last two years, but I noticed the increase, probably about five to eight years ago, begin. People are awakening and seeing more, and especially in children who are being born today, they're being born much more perceptive, much more psychic, much more clairvoyant, much more empathic than they've ever been before. My belief, my hope is that it is to improve the circumstances on the Earth plane, to bring us back to love. So that we can better help one another. - I don't think that that experience necessarily changes you, per se, into a person who's selfless and helpful and all that, you know, and good and whatever like that. I think people have been having that experience for centuries, but they may or may not have gotten more enlightened afterward. Hopefully that they would be, and it's kind of nice to think that the world would someday turn into a place that people would want to stay and want to live. But the fact is that I guess we're in the world because we are supposed to be presented with problems to solve, and that's the way we're trying to do it. - A lot of people have wounds in their heart, and those wounds in their heart make them feel more separate than more connected, and so a lot of people feel like it's, you know, it's-- it's a race to make the most money, to have the biggest house, to have all these external things that none of us really need, but there's a part of them, and there's a part of us that believes we need that to be happy, to have joy. When people ask me questions, "Well, why do people suffer if we all have angels? Why do people suffer? Why do bad things happen?" We all have free will and we all have a choice. We can choose to be angry or we can choose to be at peace. None of us are alone, and if we really knew who stood beside us and behind us and in front of us, we'd never fear anything. We'd never be afraid to go after our dreams and live our best life and take that chance and take that risk. We wouldn't be afraid that we didn't have money to do the things that we wanted to do. We wouldn't be afraid to do anything. We'd be more fearless, and we would walk with blind faith, just knowing that everything was always gonna work out and that we'd be okay. - As my friend and spiritual teacher who passed away would say to me, "Every moment, every breath, is a moment of creation." Some people get so s-- caught in the process of, "Oh, I want this, and I want this, and I want this," and then it doesn't show up immediately, so then they're like, "Well that's not gonna happen." Well, every moment, every thought, every breath is a creation. Now you've got five minutes of moving toward it and all of a sudden, "Oh, well, it's not going to happen." You just shut it down. [laughs] So--and I mean, I tell-- I tell my clients that as well that come here, you know, I can predict but I can't make it happen. So when you come to me for a reading, I give you a snapshot of what I see as possibility. It's up to the client to create it. We project our own energy. Have you ever had a day that just started out to be the absolute worst day, and you were in the absolute worst mood, and it just progressed through the entire day? That's because your energy's progressing negativity. [laughs] If you can stop, take a breath, refresh, and refocus... I tell people, "Turn on your GPS. "Turn on your GPS. "When you get up in the morning, when your feet hit the floor, you state what you want your day to be." - Just believe in yourself and what you see and what you know, and if you're doing something good and trying to be, you know, trying to be good and beneficial to the world, then the things people say are not-- they're not real. They don't matter. So that's what I--that's what I usually say, you know. Just believe in what you have as your own intuition. - There are only two ways, fear and love, nothing else. The rest doesn't exist, and fear is false. We use it, "False evidence appearing real." F-E-A-R. False evidence appearing to be real. that's what fear is. It's not real. It's not real at all. Fears are based on nothing. [piano music]