#2172 - Sebastian Junger

43:01I have no idea. I'm dying zero Right thank God because I would have been terrified and I would have been thinking about my family and I would you know I mean, you know like yeah, you don't want that right and So he said this is the emergency because I well if you say so go ahead have at it, right? So while he's working on prepping my neck And it did actually didn't hurt at all right, so if you ever have to have this done don't worry about it, but Um They want lying there and he's sort of working on my neck getting it took long It felt like it took longer than it probably actually did but I'm while I'm there All of a sudden and I have to stop and say I'm an atheist.

43:42I'm a lifelong atheist. I'm a rationalist. I'm not spiritual I'm not missed a mystic. I'm not woo woo. I like I'm nothing right and my dad was an atheist and a physicist I have to say all this because of what's coming and I'm still an atheist by the way, but so all of a sudden I sensed below me into my left This black pit open up this black abyss like this infinite black void and I was getting pulled into it and It's not like darkness that taken over the world the world was here. I could see the doctors I could see I was talking to them right. I'm here. I am but The darkness was contained in this hole that was underneath underneath me and I was getting pulled into it right I Did all I was dying, but I had this like this instincts of like a wounded animal like if I go under the pit The infinitely dark pit.

44:39I'm not coming out right like I just sensed like don't go in there because you're not coming back, right? And I started a panic because I felt myself getting drawn in right and then my father My dead father appeared above me into my left Now there's a whole body of inquiry of NDE's near death experiences and I didn't know anything about this stuff, right? I didn't know anything about it. It didn't interest me. I'm not culturally prepped for anything like that I'm not Christian. I didn't see angels like I'm just I'm a zero in that regard, right? There's my dead father above me, right? You've been dead eight years.

45:19I love him But I was not happy to see him right I was like I was shocked. I mean, I was dead Who what what are you doing here? Like and there he was and he was any communicated to me and so what I saw See isn't quite the right verb, but I don't know if there there doesn't exist the right verb. I sensed slash saw Him and it was his Essence his energy his presence, right? It's not like I see you, right? It's like oh there he is Right it wasn't with that clarity in some ways it was with a deeper clarity because it was his essence, right? And there he was his presence was right there and Above me and to my left it was like quite specific and he communicated to me again Not with words, but with some manner that I understood that I can't quite explain what it was but Basically the idea was you don't have to fight it you can come with me.

46:15I'll take care of you. It's okay It's okay. Don't be scared, right? I'll take care of you I was horrified. I was appalled. I was offended. I was like you're dead Why would I want to go with you? You're dead. You're the opposite of what I am Why would why would I possibly want to go with you and be dead with you because I'm alive with my family right now Like I'm not going anywhere with you like get out of here and I said to the doctor You have to hurry. I'm going right now I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I was sort of outbound and Once that happened I was there's no inbound but I sensed that I said you got a hurry you're losing me right now So what they do Well, they transfused me they stabilized me with three units of blood Eventually I needed ten units which is a full complement of blood like and so let me just pause for a moment and say Please donate blood like everybody who's listening I'm alive my daughters have a father because ten people who I'll never know Donated their blood and When you donate blood you are literally allowing another person to live and one day You might live because someone else donated blood and it's you know doctors can't manufacture that shit Like if you donate blood it takes an hour It doesn't hurt and your body will replace it in a couple weeks.

47:42It's the ultimate free lunch and I think it's quicker than a couple weeks I think it's pretty quick. It's pretty quick. Yeah, it it um Yeah, I mean to get up to a hundred percent. It's I think it's a little long but whatever it doesn't it doesn't matter Right, it's like we're talking about human life here And if you want to be part of something greater than yourself. It's blah blah blah All these things that we all kind of want like how do I Participate you know like no nobody needs me. I'm not part of anything. I feel lonely Give blood man, then you'll be part of something amazing, right? And you might so I give blood regularly so at any rate There's my pitch, but So they they they they stuff some blood in me through my jugular I Stabilized and they brought me to the interventional the cath lab the interventional radiology suite and what interventional radiology is it's a freaking miracle, right?

48:31like 20 years ago I've been dead, right? I mean even the advances are so fast and so miraculous So what they do is they put you on something called a florescope which is basically Sees into you with x -rays, but it's x -ray video right so they can see in real time What's going on in your body and then they pop a hole into your femoral from your right groin and they insert a catheter into it Which is a flexible rubber tube or a wire and because of the way these the heads of these catheters are designed They can they have those shepherd's crooks and low curves and all this stuff and they can navigate Through your vein a system through the twists and turns and they can get that thing Almost anywhere in your body and then once they're there They can pop a coil and plug a leak or they can inflate and put it in a stent or whatever they could do miraculous things They can inject radioactive dye and then they see where it goes and they turn on the florescope and then they can see The die is leaking into the abdomen from here.

49:34Here's where the leak is. It's amazing what they can do, right? And so they they popped a they popped the entry into my femoral and then threaded a catheter and Threaded a catheter up through my vein a system and Because of this ligament that's in the wrong place the my the arteries in my abdomen are very distorted Right and they're tortuous they're called tortuous and They couldn't get the catheter through these twists and turns right and They couldn't get it to the side of the bleed which they knew where it was right and they couldn't get the catheter there The alternative if you can't fix it with the catheter is You pull your gear out and you send the guy to the OR and You do this crazy Like race against time, but you cut them open and And then all that one of the reasons the blood loss slows down is that there's so much blood in your abdomen that there's back pressure And it keeps it slows down the blood loss from your artery because now it's trying to flow into a full container Right, and it doesn't leak as fast, right?

50:48So as soon as you open up the abdomen you can imagine what happens? I mean you guys are blood and you know you got to like Push the organs aside and it's this desperate search for the bleed Before you bleed out and as you can probably guess it doesn't go well very often, right? So it's not quite a death sentence, but if you go into the OR with an abdominal bleed You know they bring your wife in to say goodbye to you basically before you do that They don't tell you or her that but that's what they're doing and that's what they would have done with my wife Who got to the hospital? The ER doctor was like you better come now and so So at one point I'm in agonizing pain because I've got all this free -floating blood against my kidneys and my liver and my Spleen and just agonized like kidney stones, right?

51:36It's just I mean agony and they can't sedate me because my vitals are too low, right? so I'm conscious through all this and I'm watching the doctors and at one point I Watch one of the doctors just sort of give shake his head and shrug and was basically like well we tried This isn't working and the other doctor Not in use like yeah, we tried and It was the first moment where I realized oh my god. I didn't realize this is we're playing for keeps right now This might not turn them up turn out well. I might not be going home. I couldn't believe what I'd say and Then the first doctor who's this brilliant interventional radiologist named Dr.

52:19Phil Dombraski. He saved my life You Have in your mind a special relationship with someone I mean or I was anyone who has saved your life It's a very particular relationship and that I've never been in that position before and so Dombraski said That we can try one last thing. Let's try going through his left wrist and so what because of your vascular Sure like the left wrist allows a different point of attack you come down from above Instead of coming up from below and you don't have to go through all those twists and turns and he had to get through a problematic spot in my celiac artery That was impeded by the ligament that's in the wrong place where he was a lot of problems, right?

53:06And you had to be like a super high -level IR guy to even think of this much less do it like I was told a very very few few Interventional radiologists would even think of doing this, right, but he would he was genius, right? So The other doctor said I like the way you think and I watched them put a catheter to my into my left My left wrist I still I no longer have a pulse in that wrist because it messes up the artery and And they did it they got the thing to the place like they got they got the catheter to the bleed They popped a coil in there it blocked the block the artery block the leak and Then they sent me to the ICU they knocked me out sent me to the ICU I remember seeing my wife very briefly afterwards a held her hand and and That sent me off and I woke up in the ICU the next morning and so the blood in your abdomen do they drain it?

54:02Do your body absorb it? No, no, I guess maybe they do sometimes I know your body absorbs it. Wow. Yep Six points of blood like and you know, I could feel it in me. I mean it didn't feel good, right? You know Yeah, and you're sort of discolored. I mean, it's like it's awful. Not a good luck. Right now You keep saying you're an atheist But is what exactly how do you everybody sort of defines that differently? I feel like a lot of atheists are actually agnostic more than they're atheists because an atheist is someone who just doesn't believe I don't believe What do you think the experience with your father was the his presence?

54:44Well, that's right them the billion dollar question, right? So yeah I'm an atheist in part because I I respect the The highest intentions of religion too much To take them lightly now there's a plenty of religious expression which is Not at a very high level which I find even offensive and destructive but at its at its best like journalism like Psychology like everything at its best, right? It's a very noble Thing that helps people live with more dignity and less fear and blah blah blah, right? I mean I get it so so I take that stuff really literally and so for me Believing in God is an active thing Right and and really it's not like that you found God.

55:40It's God found you like oh my God suddenly God was in my life right and and it's like when you fall in love You can't choose to fall in love right It's an overwhelming feeling that you can't resist and if it's not you're not really in love, bro You might have married Betty, but you're not in love with Betty, right? But when you you know when you have that experience of overwhelming love like oh my God I'm in love with that person. I got to be with I'm my life is with them like that's love finding you you didn't Manufacture it and you didn't make an executive decision Well, I'm in love with Betty now and we're getting married I mean people used to do that and it just isn't love.

56:23It's a contract. It's a decision It's an arrangement no problem, right? And so what I can't do is make an executive when people say you got to find God you got to find Jesus I'd listen man Even if I wanted to which I don't what do you want to it doesn't work that way right? I can't just decide to love God. It's not that's not a feeling that you can summon and dictate to yourself So I'm an atheist because I don't God I don't make God a sort of part of my daily practice It's not part of my life. It just isn't right and I can't just choose to make it be I Could fake it and I could go to church every Sunday But I respect religion and in its best form too much to freaking fake it right so and I'm not an agnostic Because you know if I if I saw In my mind agnostic is like a hung jury, right?

57:12It's like you know what? I don't know There could be a God there might not be a God. I don't have an opinion on it right a hung jury You might be innocent and I might be guilty You know we can't you're on our we can't decide either way and we can make an argument for both so What it's a hung jury like we can't we don't we don't know right in the legal system that means he's innocent if you can't come to a Decision of guilt that he's innocent right but so in the in the sort of agnostic sense like There's evidence for evidence against I don't I can't decide so I'm an agnostic and but for me there is No evidence that there is a God I mean there's belief right which is a beautiful thing But I've never in my life actually seen something happen whereas like oh my God there went God I just saw him Holy shit like are you kidding like there is like now I believe there's a God had I while I was dying Had God come to me whatever that would even look like right whatever that is had God come to me Afterwards I'm like you know what I don't know maybe there is a God right because I saw some strange shit and That's the only explanation I can think of is that there actually is a divine power in the world.

58:24I encountered it It changed my life like Even if I'm not religious I'm at least agnostic, but I've never it's never happened to me right so I'm not an agnostic because I just I have no reason to to think there is a God it never happens right I'm an atheist right so I'm happy to be staying corrected if someone offers up some proof But it has thus far it hasn't happened and when people say you know what the proof proof of God is that the universe exists Who created the universe mother fucker like who do you think it has to be God right and I'm like well Not really like because if complex systems need a creator and that's your proof of God clearly God is a Complex system that's at least as complex as the universe he created So who created God like that will not get you that doesn't prove anything right so that's the So the theology the theology is side like What did I make of my father appearing above me right so?

59:28The next morning to get in there I have to sort of say what happened to me right and if I may The next morning I woke up in the ICU to the nurse saying Good morning, mr. Younger Congratulations, you made it like it's a miracle. We almost lost you last night and No one can quite believe you were alive. It's You know welcome back to the world basically I Cannot tell you how shocking It is to get news like that if you had no idea you were dying I mean, I knew I something was going on with me belly pain Maybe I'm gonna wake up to shitty news about a tumor, you know cancer and my you know whatever I mean I was aware that this might not be a fun day tomorrow My no idea I was dying in that moment right so it's absolutely shocking so that I and Particularly if you have children right and my little girl.

1:00:27I mean immediately thought about my little girls and Then I remembered my father. I'm like oh my god. I told my father last night and the pit right all came back to me and I Didn't know what to do with it. I was Jesus like are you kidding? What was that and? and So I'm left there with my thoughts. I'm throwing up blood. I'm a freaking mess, right? And then the nurse comes back later and says how are you doing? Like not that great frankly like thanks to you what you told me is terrifying like I can't stop thinking about it and I almost died and and she said try this She had an awesome Boston accent.

1:01:14She was like one of these. She was sort of middle -aged lady like Like hard -of -gold Straight shooter tough as nails buried three husbands, you know, whatever. She's one of those I see you nurses, right? I like to enormously and she and she was like try this Instead of thinking about it like something scary try thinking about it like something sacred Walked out like a hell of a thing to say to an atheist, right? So I'm you know for me all those wonderful words like blessing and and and sacred they you know They have one they have beautiful secular meanings as well. So I feel entitled to interpret them in my own way and for me You know say something sacred is anything that allows as I was saying before any any work any task any knowledge anything that allows people to live with more dignity with less fear More connection more love that just helps the human condition a little bit like that's that sacred knowledge, right?

1:02:09You know, it could be a minister, right? It could be a shrink. It could be a journalist, right? It could be you could be doing sacred work for people. I'm sure you are and so you know the things that you say are helping people and Advocate their painful lives. Yeah, bro. Absolutely. We're all capable of sacred work, right? That's what it means to me. So when she said that I'm like, okay I'm gonna go in her front lines my whole life and coming back with knowledge that you know in my my most grandiose moments, right? I thought might help humanity like what's going on in you now? I wasn't in Ukraine But right now like what's going on in Ukraine?

1:02:42What knowledge can we come back with that will help the world in the United States make better decisions about it How to preserve human dignity and human life like whatever that whatever that means, right? So that's that's at its best. It's sort of a sacred task like many others are and so and now I'm not going to front lines anymore. I went to the ultimate front line I went to my own mortality the place where the front line were all headed to and That most of us are scared of like and I was allowed to look over the edge and Then I came back. I was allowed to come back Did I come back with sacred knowledge in other words with knowledge that would be helpful to me and other people lead their lives and with less fear more dignity et cetera and That was the challenge and I said about doing it at that moment.

1:03:33I just lay there. I was like, all right What did I learn? What did I learn and the big question that I had to answer for myself was? What the hell did I see with my father like what was that and does that mean that there's something quote more? Right is there something after we die That we can sort of like look forward to and count on Or is it just the dying brain hallucinating some shit because we're so friggin scared and the You know the synapses are shorting out and it's going haywire and That's what you get you see some weird stuff, right? Which is it and so I started researching NDE's near death experiences and there's a whole body of literature Our whole body of knowledge and frankly a whole cottage industry So much shameless cottage industry around that you know proof of heaven blah blah blah But you know the flakiness aside there's some legit you know There's a it's very very common and the NDE's that people have had thousands of cases of them from all over the world different societies different cultures even different ages There are historical accounts of this and what the interesting thing about them If you give a room full of people LSD they'll have a wide variety of hallucinations and we know how that works Right we know what happens in the brain when you take LSD no big mystery there and they'll hallucinate a whole bunch of crazy stuff Right with NDE's what sort of strange is that the experiences are there aren't infinite number of them right?

1:05:02It's not like some people see ham sandwiches and other people see kangaroos, right? It's like they fall into some some like three or four basic buckets, right? And that's across culture throughout you know throughout the eight you know through history and Which sort of argues for a sort of seminal Seminal human experience rather than just a sort of function of brain chemistry and drug and essentially drugs, right? And dodging as drugs being released in your brain in your final moments and And so there are a lot of people very well credentialed smart people who are like listen these accounts amount to evidence of an afterlife Right Sorry like that there's so many of them.

1:05:44They're so consistent. How do you explain this shit like come on? Right and then there's other people well credentialed equally smart center, etc Like nonsense. I'm a neuroscientist. I'm a neurochemic You know like we could explain all this through you know you put you fighter pilots in a human centrifuge Spin them to five G's they will see a tunnel of light. They will see God They will experience their entire life in one moment blah blah blah. You know epileptic same thing When brain seizures like we can reproduce all of this in the lab like this isn't evidence of anything right? But isn't the problem with that that you're actually killing a person when you're spinning in the center future?

1:06:20No, no, no, they do this with fighter pilots Right, but you know if you keep doing that you'll die. Oh absolutely and your body knows that too So you are in a near death experience You're near death well, you're near death because blood's not getting to your past and your body knows that It means you are opening that door whether you're opening that door in a safe manner You're still opening that door absolutely. Yeah, you're right. You're right But the argument for you're absolutely right and I never thought of it that way But the argument by the scientist the rationalist is look we can we can reproduce all of this in the in the lab Yeah, but it's a dumb argument because what you're doing in reproducing it is bringing someone close to death right right Well another thing they can do is stimulate the brain in during brain surgery And they do that to make sure that they're not scooping out the scooping out tumor not you know your piano your piano lessons or whatever right and one of the things They can do is they stimulate certain parts of the brain they can Give people a sensation that they're floating or that they oh my god my my grandfather, you know, whatever they can do weird shit with the brain with you know a tooth basically a toothpick and a and a bone saw right and and so At any rate just just suffice it to say there's that there's the sort of slightly mystical Argument of this is proof of an afterlife and then there's the sort of rationalist argument.

1:07:34No, no, no We can we we understand the physiology of all this and so there was a guy in I think it was Estonia an older guy who fell and hit his head Had a hematoma they put electrodes on his scalp to See what the brain activity was because he was having seizures Other stuff happened to him that the family said, you know, he doesn't have a chance of recuperating Pull the you basically pull the plug let him die he had the Electro's on his on his brain monitoring brain activity Before the decision to pull the plug so they did something that would otherwise not be ethical if someone's going to die You're like hey, let's hook him up to see what his brain does.

1:08:12That's not ethical right this guy already had that stuff in place as part of the Life -saving measures so they were able to see what happened at the moment of death, right? So what happened in the human brain in his brain was that there was a flood of I think it was Gamma in his brain that That is associated with long -term memory a flood of gamma in his brain right and And that was and one other frequency I can't remember it at any rate there was this the brain did basically did what brains do when they're Remembering very very old stuff, right and that they even found that in in rats that they ethically Are able to kill like hook him up kill him what happens in the brain, right?

1:09:03And so the the most ancient sort of memory Memory source centers of the brain are activated at the moment of death while there's a sort of lingering dying consciousness So boom all of a sudden you're five and you're talking to your grandfather You know whatever it whatever it is we don't know with a specific Things that that man saw but we know that the His brain was activated in ways that suggest memory retrieval, right? So the rationalist like okay the brain dies all of a sudden you see your you know, you have these old memories, right? So Now The for me as I as I read so I got so I got home So I was a rather convoluted story, but I hopefully it's interesting so I got home I was a Week in the hospital was surprised everybody, but I'm the reason I survived at all Was that I'm a fit athletic person and so they gave the some the doctor some of the work with it also meant that I recovered quite quickly So instead of three weeks in the ICU I was five days and then boom I'm out of there, right and So I came home and it's you know, it's not the kind of party you would expect right like I came home And I was like who I'm alive.

1:10:11I made a bubble by it's like oh my god I almost died on a totally ordinary day and It could happen again This also could be the day that I die right maybe I have another aneurysm like we don't know and I completely freaked myself I was a classic post trauma like anxiety panic reaction like it was all over a classic It was way worse than combat way worse, right and but one of the problems I Started to have the sense that I wasn't really there and then maybe I had died Which sounds freaky, but apparently it's quite common and people that almost die that they get their seized with this Fear that they're actually a ghost and they didn't make it.

1:10:53I know it sounds insane And you right, but I can just tell you like I sincerely had that worry It was the ultimate panic disorder, right like that you're dead like what is there anything bigger to panic about that You're actually dead right so and the pro the reason I had that and this gets to another rather mysterious slightly woo -woo part of this whole story Is that two days prior? You know, I had no idea Obviously that I had something that was gonna kill me in my abdomen I had no conscious idea but two days prior at dawn my family and I we we Coast we still co -sleep and so we sleep in a group on a pad on the floor and we sleep as a family the four of us and so at dawn on the previous night so 36 hours prior to almost dying I Was woken by this horrific nightmare The worst nightmare I've ever had and I've ever heard of and the nightmare was this That I was hovering above my family and They were crying in grief And I was waving to them they were crying in grief that I died and I was waving to them I was like I'm over here.

1:12:08I'm right here. I was shouting. I was waving my arms and they couldn't hear me they couldn't see me and I didn't know why and then I was made to understand in the same way that my father communicated with me It was just a sort of transmission of knowledge, right? I was made to understand That they couldn't hear me because I'm dead I'm a go I'm a spirit. I'm not there and I'm above them and I'll be going now. I'm out your mr. Younger your outbound and you're not coming back. It's too late You can't go back. It's over and I was so anguished that it woke me up and I woke up next to my I happen to be next to my oldest daughter and I just like clutched her like a stuffy like I was like Oh my god, thank god because it really felt like I was dead Thank god, that was just a dream.

1:12:59I'm actually here. I'm alive, right? so then You know 36 hours later. Oh, what's that pain in my abdomen off to the hospital almost almost die Doctors have later told me not the doctors have saved me but other doctors who Were honest with me like it's a miracle you're alive, right? Like it's isn't just oh good well done. It's a freaking miracle like 10 slices of Swiss cheese 10 holes have in the lineup and you threaded the needle through those holes, right like so I got back home and I was super emotional every time I heard a siren I'd start crying like I mean I was just a freaking mess, right and And then I thought oh my god I died in my sleep That and that that dream because I started to read about NDE's and one of the most common is that you're hovering above your family Another is that you see a dead relative, right?

1:13:58So like oh My god, and I knew nothing none of this right? So my god, that wasn't that wasn't a dream That was my experience of actually dying right the kind of experience that many people who almost died and were saved were Reservient we're resuscitated report having had I was hovering above my family and I Died and I died in my sleep my wife woke up next to her dead husband. It's over I just don't know because I'm have I'm in the middle of a dying hallucination I'm a ghost. I'm not here. I think my daughter's talking to me. I Think she's on my lab. I'm not bro. You're not here, man You're like good just face it right and you know you can't just prove it right and if you're crazy enough It actually feels like it might be what's happening and I was plenty crazy enough for this right and I'm not a naturally neurotic person, but it turned me into one for a while right and I went point I went to my wife like honey just told me I'm really here that I survived we're here.

1:14:57We're good like Just told me you said of course you're here you survived You know it's not right but my mind or like that's exactly what a hallucination would tell you right and It I was inching towards madness right and so so finally So sorry long long long story just to sort of finally answer your question What I where I landed you know, I'm sorry. I'm reading the NDE stuff and this sort of like the scary academy is like Oh, wow, that's pretty convincing like maybe maybe there is an afterlife Maybe we don't have to be worried like wow how pleasant right how pleasant to think like that There's something to go on to right nothing is scared nothing to be scared of And then I then I read afterwards The sort of like you know party poopers right just sort of like the rationalists come in like nonsense We can explain all this it's all neurochemistry like there's no freaking afterlife like come on so and because of Partly because of them father I grew up with like who really valued rationalism like I was like oh well You know nice try like you know close but no cigar.

1:16:11Oh well. I guess when we're dead we're dead and so then The one thing that didn't quite make sense was That there's this incredible Consistency in people like an enormous percentage of the time and I can't remember off the top of my head But quite a large percentage of the time the dying People who have NDE's and are resuscitated and report their memories like I was I was able to They are received by the dead right the dead come to receive them sometimes it's your father sometimes it's a friend who died decades earlier Sometimes it's someone that you might not even like very much But the dead come to receive the dying in the way that my father did you know my mind I'm like I don't know you know like I get it you give everyone else Dean they all have hallucinations and the dying brain produces hallucinations But it's sort of odd like okay you stir up the memory banks of the brain when you die with the gamma and all that stuff So all right, so suddenly I'm five years old and we're playing by the swimming pool now suddenly I'm you know I'm camping with my buddy at 12 and so yeah, there's a whole array of memories.

1:17:19That's different than dad showing up Like dad showing up saying come with me into the afterlife. That's not exactly memory recall right That's something that's something else right so and then I started talking to hospice nurses and Supercom and experience older people the people dying of cancer in their last days and hours What are they doing they're having conversations with people in the room that no one else can see They're having conversations with the dead who are clearly there to take them. It's okay come with me might it happened to my mother She suddenly scowled in her last hour. She scowled and Looked up at the corner was like and said what's he doing here and She had a terrible relationship with her brother who had died in his fifties, you know like decades earlier, right?

1:18:10And I just guessed I was like mom that's uncle George and he's come a very long way to see you and You have to be nice to him and She frowned and she said we'll see about that It continues into the afterlife right it's not over when you die right it goes on right there's a sequel Wow, right so So these these visits are not necessarily a sort of benevolent like all the dying You know sort of need some kind of comfort and they manufacture a vision of a loved one to make them feel better It's not quite that either and then there's super poignant stories I Talked to a hospice nurse who who was taking care of an older gentleman who was dying painlessly You know no morphing at all so of clear mind right?

1:19:00You know in his 80s or 70s or 80s and And in his last you know 12 hours or so he suddenly The nurse that I talked he said that the man looked and he's like Barbara Oh my god, you know, it's so good to see you like oh Thank God you're here, you know like So the nurse who's been through this a million times says okay, he's in his last hours now Well, this is the fun. This is the end game right thank God because he's dying and it's you know like needs to resolve and so She went into the kitchen where the wife was and said I Think we're in the last ages. He's because he's he's he's reckoning You know, he's he's seeing he's seeing someone in the room.

1:19:47He seems very very happy to see her if someone in Barbara Does that name mean anything to you? So the wife says Yes, that was his one true love So of course the nurses like oh my god. I stepped in it right and then she goes That was our 19 year old Right, I mean how do you start tell that story and not start crying right? I mean, it's like so that kind of story Is super super common so in my mind, right? I'm like okay. I buy the I buy the centrifuge I buy the You know like endogenous DMT and the blah blah the gamma I get it I get it when I don't understand is the consistency of the visions Of the dead coming to and like my father did Yeah, I mean you you I get that we hallucinate in times of extreme stress But not that I don't get the content being consistent across cultures across ages manners of death like on and on like Really like how do you like?

1:21:01So to me that doesn't prove there's a quote after life But it raises a legitimate question like what is it we're talking about here and So where I land and I promise I won't like drag us into a long conversation about quantum physics But what you know basically the the rational The the argument that's both rational and open -minded And my mind has been enormously open by this experience not to God but to maybe we just don't understand the nature of existence completely Right, it's been open to that so that the rational and open -minded explanation for some of this stuff If you don't dismiss it if you don't dismiss it as Just neurochemistry and you're not going to go whole hog on well, you know God exists Thank God Lulia and you're not going to do either of those two things the conversation that I think can be had is Maybe there is some sort of post death existence at the sort of quantum meaning the subatomic level that we just don't understand and Some post death existence for the individual and not necessarily post death consciousness We're not on a hammock with a daiquiri.

1:22:11You know, it's not like you know, those are human projections, right? but like but maybe at the quantum level that we just don't quite understand what death is what reality is what consciousness is and One of the so my father was a physicist and my Just weirdly my great aunt had a long passionate affair with Schrodinger the physicist who Schrodinger's cat. Yeah, right and one of the mysteries of quantum physics And I'm sure you've come into this in your you know in your studies and your research and your conversations You know one of the profound mysteries of quantum physics that was sort of broken wide open about a hundred years ago by people like Schrodinger and and Heisenberg That when you observe a subatomic particle it acts differently than if you don't observe it, right?

1:23:01So you create basically the act of conscious Conscious observation like if I you know if I look at that ashtray The ashtray does exactly what it does if I don't look at it right in the macroscopic world conscious observation doesn't change anything right at the In the subatomic world it changes everything right so a subatomic particle an electron is in all positions as a as a statistical probability It's in all positions until you observe it and then it's in one position Right if you fire a photon at two slits in a metal plate With some photographic film on the other side to mark where the photon hits If you fire the photon at a plate with two slits is the famous double slit experiment fire the photon at two slits and Monid actively monitor it with a photon detector while it's moving It will go through one slit and hit the strike plate on the far side with a signature of like Passage through one slit right If you fire a photon through two slits and don't monitor it It's simultaneously Goes through both slits and leaves a signature on the other side of having done so Right in other words and this is that one of the deepest mysteries of of existence right at the quantum level our act of observation Creates the reality that we are observing and that if we don't observe it It's another reality right so given that deep unresolvable mystery Is it possible In the sort of like the electrons in all places at once until we watch it and then it's in one place and that's a Basic sense of a profound mystery at the quantum level.

1:24:58Is it possible that there's an equivalent mystery around Biological death the existence of consciousness which people still don't understand right Like they can't even define what it is exactly right Is there a mystery around that what that we not only don't understand can't understand and one of the theories Super out and I'll end with this but it's just it's a super out there theory. It's called biosentrism There's a guy named Adam Lonza that you might be interested in talking to he's a brilliant guy He's one of the sort of pioneers of biosentrism and basically what he's saying is a look if consciousness determines reality at the quantum level and the universe ultimately is a quantum is a quantum reality It's possible that Consciousness is part of that there's a subatomic particle associated with consciousness Just like the Higgs boson is associated with gravity like gravity exists because of the Higgs boson It's a subatomic particle that we can measure right and maybe Consciousness is associated in the same way is part of the physical existence of the universe without gravity There is no universe.

1:26:15There's no there's no nothing right. It's essential to existence and maybe consciousness is essential to the existence of the universe in the singular form that it takes And it was and it landed in the singular form with the arrival of consciousness Maybe it's all one in the same thing and That actually coincides quite nicely with troidinger Who was of the opinion that there was a universal consciousness? There was a kind of colossus of consciousness That we are all a tiny part of and when we die we return to it right on some quantum level that no one has any freaking idea As I say in my book we might understand reality about as well as a dog understands a TV screen like with absolutely no concept Of the machinery the mechanism the processes that produce the flickering images that are in front of us We might like the dog doesn't have that understanding of what it's looking at We might not have an understanding of of the cosmos that creates the system that creates the reality that we are seeing and that we think is existence Yeah, I'm entitled To believe that we are entirely to arrogant in our Understanding of what we know and that we have a very limited amount of information even though it's incredibly complex for our understanding for our Understanding the leaps and bounds that we have made since using leeches to treat diseases is off the charts, right?

1:27:47And you're living testament to it But I think it is a very very shallow understanding of an infinite thing that's happening all the time Have you ever seen they just recently made images of quantum entangled photons? No, I mean I know about quantum entanglement another great mystery I haven't seen the images spooky action in a distance. Yeah, take a look at what this looks like quantum entangled photons look like a Yin Yang Like exactly. Oh awesome exactly. That's it. That's a quantum entangled phone. Yeah, oh my god. Oh my god So each one contains that at its center a bit of the other exactly so Maybe someone knew this Thousands and thousands of years ago the idea that the the Chinese or whoever created that initial symbol The idea that they just stumbled accidentally upon an actual image of quantum entangled photons Very very unlikely that just seems too insane and too amazing That's fascinating fascinating right and to find that out when was that discovered Jamie was that very recently?

1:28:57Yeah, I saw it in some science It goes like last year, okay And entanglement has been around for decades, but but those images right just research that's stunning. That's stunning That's amazing. Yeah, so I Think this whole thing that all we know what's going on in the brain Oh, we know the human neurochemicals that get all we know we can stimulate the brain Oh, we know we can stick you in a center of huge you don't know shit You this is a we are at the edge of a vast forest and we're peering in and we're arrogant and we're arrogant because the people that know No more than everybody else the people that do have an understanding of human neurochemistry and do have an understanding of how the body works No far more than I do no far more than most people do so they have an arrogance of this Understanding this rational sort of reductionist perspective of what reality is But I I think it's nonsense.

1:29:51Well listen to physicists to give them there do They are they are the branches of science which is actually fully aware of the You know the drop off where the mystery began knowledge ends in the mystery begins Yes, they could not explain this stuff when it happened and actually unsettled those guys Shrodinger and Sure Einstein and Eisenberg and all it really quite unsettled them right they were like Whoa, what are we unfolding here do and are we sure we want to unfold this right uncover this and once or are there Eddington said there's a wonderful thing he was asked about these sort of central mysteries of quantum physics in the universe and And he said Something something that we don't know is doing we know not what I right right so they're like yeah, there's some humility right now, right and at its core quantum physics There's a there's a mystery at the core of quantum physics equivalent to the mystery At the core of religion.

1:30:51Mm -hmm. The end of the day religion is an act of faith right and and and you can't answer these questions, right rationally and at the end of the day the physicists themselves will say Look, we just don't know these these these test results make no sense In the macroscopic rational world that we live in every day You can't the macroscopic and the subatomic world They make they they're completely opposite to each other they make the laws or laws of physics are completely different at the macroscopic level and the and the subatomic level Yeah, and you know just the fact that if you look at atoms themselves, it's mostly empty space Yeah, like what the fuck is going on?

1:31:35What's it? That's right. There's all of this we have a cursory on a cursory understanding of something that's infinitely complex We have an understanding of it and far greater every year and they keep just They keep exploring to but I think we're also cursed with these fucking primate brains You know these primate brains that we have already talked about today are filled with flaws and you know childhood trauma and bipolar and depression and schizophrenia and all these different issues with the primate brain and we are The dog looking at the television screen. We are and I think I've talked to a lot of these doctors that have this reductionist perspective and Very few of them have had psychedelic experiences.

1:32:20Right. I think I think the brain is capable of opening up a door And I think that door opens when you die and I don't know where and it doors a bad word It's not the right word. It's but it's all I have it's it's an opening. It's a gateway. There's something going on inside of us There's something going on we are interconnected in ways that are far greater than Our understanding of human social interactions. There's something going on with us and that we experience that with love We experience that with the love of you know your wife or your husband or the will love your child or your your family members We experience this connection that's it's like this It's very different.

1:33:01It connects us like as souls and that's what I think I'm getting to there's I think the soul is real and I really didn't have that That thought really I was pretty pretty atheist. I grew up I was went to Catholic school when I was very young For first grade and had a really bad experience there and it just says like religions bullshit My parents were breaking up, but I was young And I was I got really into religion Because I felt like At least like if there's chaos in my family life, you know, there's always God like God's gonna make sense Then I went to Catholic schools like okay, okay, God has nothing to do with this like this is fucking ridiculous Then my grandfather died.

1:33:42I was very close to my grandfather. I loved him very very much. I stayed with him When I moved to New York and I was like 23 years old and I didn't have a place to study him any money I just got signed by this manager and I was gonna go to New York to do stand -up companies like Got to chase my dreams. So I was living with my grandfather and it was My grandmother had an aneurysm and they gave my grandmother 72 hours and she lived for 12 years at least 12 years it might have been a little longer and She was bedridden and I was staying with him and her and my grandfather had been dealing with his wife dying for all these years and She would do like moan and pain you'd hear like Make these sounds and I knew they were They were he was a old and she was old.

1:34:42They were got they were dying and I knew she was gonna die probably quicker than him And it was this transition in my life from Me like going forth on this great adventure to seeing this man that I loved And just darkness was like yeah, it's wife My grandmother was bedridden. It was agony. It was depression They lived in a very bad neighborhood. They lived in north ninth street in Newark, New Jersey When they lived when they moved there in The 1940s. It was an all -tallion neighborhood And then they started doing this thing called blockbusting And what blockbusting is is they would real estate agents would come in and they would say black people are moving into your neighborhood You have to sell now if you don't sell now you're gonna lose the value of your home And it's the way they like they fired up the real estate market and they they crushed communities this way and My grandfather's like I like black people.

1:35:49I'm not going anywhere And he never moved and he stayed there and it changed from a black neighborhood to Primarily Hispanic neighborhood and when I was with him when I stayed with him just before just before after I got there I can't really remember it's 30 years ago The kid next door was selling crack and police broke down the door and like he had an Audi I remember he had an Audi in the driveway. I remember looking. I was like how this kid of a fucking Audi So nice car you know in 1990 and um It was just bad everything was it's very depressing. It was a depressing depressing space like the neighborhood's depressing His life was ending you know he It was very very sad and When I went to his funeral When he was in the casket I'd looked at him and I'm I'm sure you've been to a funeral before and I know you've seen dead people before But there's something about seeing a dead body Where you like oh he's not there.

1:36:56Yeah, it's not it's unmistakable. He's not there. It's not it's simple as You know He stopped moving right no, he's not there. Yeah, he wasn't there anymore Yeah And I remember I remember this feeling of like Understanding came across me like oh Like the thing is inside of you whatever that is is real It's not just as simple as you're alive Right And I at that moment At that moment I see my grandfather in his casket. I started considering a soul I started thinking like oh this is impulsio and then I started thinking like how arrogant it is to assume that you know That all these people for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years have talked about souls Right, it's not it's a universal idea.

1:37:49It's not common to one specific culture. It's not isolated It's a universal concept of there being something inside of you and I think it's and I think it's something that we intuitively Understand that we know we we we are aware of it. We know it's real Yeah, we just can't put it on a scale. We can't put a ruler on it and measure it. We can't but there's it's a thing And I think that thing Is It's intertwined with consciousness. That's what I think this is just my own feeling. I think you're so Interacts with consciousness and consciousness is a force And I think we're all experiencing consciousness.

1:38:31We're just doing it in this weird way. We're doing it With different biological entities different life experiences different People and stimuli you're around different neighborhoods different parts of the world But it's the same thing and the way I've described it is like I think that you are me I know it sounds like it's a hippie nonsense horseshit But I think if you live my life you would be me and if I lived your life I would be you and I think we are all people I think all people are the same We are just living through different genetics different biological experience different biological filters different life experiences I think we're all the same.

1:39:10I really do and I think that what your soul is is your connection to consciousness I think your thing the thing that in in that you intersect with And I think Whatever we are There's like a place that that thing goes right and I have a feeling that that's what these near -death experiences are That's with what a lot of psychedelic experiences are I think it's a looking it's a looking into the other side I don't think all these cultures have had this same idea by accident Yeah, structurally like at their core and they're all Yeah, probably similar and there's there's the realm of the dead right and so yeah I think there's also a very limited There's a there's a perspective of what God is and there's a perspective of the universe itself like oh who made the universe if God didn't make the universe or who made God I think we are limited by our our own biological perspective which requires a birth and a death That a beginning and an end and that there has to so it has to come from somewhere I don't necessarily think that's real and I have a feeling that this concept of a God is even Greater that what what it entails is even greater than an entity I think it's all things right.

1:40:36I think what God really is is the universe. I think it is all things right Right. Well, that's Biosentrum is sort of along those lines. Yeah, it's all one huge thing. Yeah, I've come to this thought like In steps over time They were it makes more and more sense. I'm not trying to comfort myself. I'm not looking for some sort of rational That's not what I'm doing. I'm just I feel like All these cultures have this idea for a reason right and I don't think it's I think We're tuning into it in these little blips and we're bringing back evidence from the other side We're bringing back stories and anecdotes and feelings that you get Intuition, you know things that happen at certain times in your life where you're just like okay.

1:41:31What is that? What is it you're I think We all know also that if you're if you have love in your life and you you love your friends and you have good times Like there's an elevated feeling that comes with that. That's bigger than just fun There's like there's a there's a bond that we have because it's the moment in these great These great times of love where we recognize that we're one That's right you lose your the shackles of your individual you lose your ego you lose your biological limitations The biologist chimp body and chimp mine that wants to keep you alive That wants to make sure you spread your genes and control resources and do all the stupid things that humans do That that thing confuses you that that's what life is right right There's a there's a cemetery a veteran cemetery in the woods near in the town where my mom used to live by mom passed away Obviously and and I'd go running there and it's a beautiful little spot So I hidden away and there's a gravestone of a World War II vet who died Later in life right he lived a natural life and died in his 80s and it's a very simple gravestone.

1:42:40I can't remember his name. I wrote it down And it's all it says is All that survives of us is love That's all beautiful. Yeah, right and I think and I think that's right and you don't need to be Religious to think that way you don't have to you can be whatever it's just like such a profound truth like that's all the survives Yeah, and I think a lot of religions are simply people's Effort to try to consolidate all these thoughts and feelings into a doctrine Into something that you can tell people that you have the answer and whenever someone tells you they have the answer Well, that's impossible That's impossible so you don't have the answer But there might be wisdom in these ancient teachings that I think is real And I think that's really what fascinates me about religion.

1:43:28It's it's ancient man's Attempts to understand and define this whole thing with this monkey mind that we have right Right Sometimes people ask me so how did this change you you know? Did you find God? You know? No, I didn't but you know It did change me and one of the ways to change me in is that I Realized even if you're in good health even if you're not in a war zone blah blah blah That we don't know none of us none of us know that this is this is not our last day Right, right none of us know. I mean probably not hopefully not but we don't know for sure June 16th 2020 was an utterly ordinary day when I woke up that morning and no idea I was I really slated to die in 12 hours right no no clue and And so if you somehow knew you that you were going to die in 12 hours somehow knew that Who would you want to be that day?

1:44:22Right, I'm guessing you wouldn't be scrolling through Instagram I'm guessing you wouldn't be wasting your time hating on people that pissed you off. I'm guessing you'd be so it's Just holding your loved ones close and just being amazed at how beautiful a tree is or I don't know what right like it's almost a religious vision of what existence is I think it would inspire that and so so My question is like you don't know that today isn't your last day. So who do you want to be today? Right because you never know So who do you want to be in the world and hopefully day after day you're that person And then you don't have to die at the end like what a beautiful way to live and that's so it sort of changed me in that sense I I saw after I finished the book I read a I read a story about Dostoevsky the great Russian writer who suffered a mock execution When he was in his 20s.

1:45:17I mean what is sadistic thing to do to a young person or anybody, right? so he was a um He was a radical, you know, like he and his and his sort of like radical friends was sitting around talking about outrageous stuff like liberating the Surfs and crazy ideas like that and this is in the 1840s and so Zarnickel is the first, you know He didn't take that kind of thing kindly and and um The police arrested them all like six of them Through him and jail wasn't a particularly serious crime, right? But through him and jail It's it's it's Zara's Russia, right? It's a it's an oppressor state, right? And after eight months they finally released them and these young men assumed that they were gonna be like Put in a wagon and driven to the courthouse and just charge a return to their families after eight horrible months, right?

1:46:02Like okay They put in a wagon and they're driven to a city square They only had minutes to adjust to this instead of being released. They were tied to posts And a firing squad was lined up in front of them and the order was given to the soldiers to charge your rifles ready aim And at that moment A rider galloped into the square and said the Zara forgives them Okay, so what so what the you know the question my question would be like what does the world look like like how hallucinatory is it If you know that you're gonna be dead in seconds. What does the world literally look like to you? perspective Because World does stay up ski right?

1:46:56I mean the command of fire Isn't maybe in three five seconds it might be in 50 years But we're all waiting for the right we're all getting the command eventually So what does the world look like to someone where all of that that whole lifetime is compressed into a few seconds What's the world look like? We should understand that vision of the world and incorporate it to some degree into our experience of our hopefully 50 80 90 years of life Right, so the certain intense little capsule of reality like Let what is what is so what did he what did he see in those moments because he wrote about it This is valuable information like what's the world look like What's it really look like when you're about to be torn from it right and So he said he was standing there and he saw sunlight glinting off the steeple of a church And he had this amazing thought which goes to your point right this amazing thought He said in moments.

1:47:53I'm going to join the sunlight. I'm going to be part of all things We're all part of all things and in minutes That's where that's what I'll be and then he said if I should some in his mind He thought if I should by some miracle survive this I'm going to live my life turning Every moment into an infinity Wow mind blowing right so two of the six men in that group It broke them they were insane for the rest of their lives Dostoevsky he survived it psychologically And to deepen him enormously and he wrote through other characters he wrote about that experience Yeah, if you have knowledge of your death You know, it's I used to do this bit about um there was a Uh a tiger attack in San Francisco and like I guess it was like the early 2000s or something like these kids were throwing pine cones at a tiger in uh in an enclosure in the zoo and They didn't know that the tiger when they built the zoo that they made the fence 14 feet high They thought that was enough It's not enough.

1:49:08I know what's coming. Well you have a A mom but the joke was if you have a monster in a box in the middle of the city Maybe she put a fucking roof on the box like how expensive is it to put a cage On the top Well, these kids are throwing things at the tiger the tiger leaps Leaps up gets a hold of the top of the fence and the thought was like if you're that kid and you see those paws Hit that fence and you see that thing like flying through the air coming right at you Do you even see it or is it just like this Collider scope of psychedelic images right as this thing you know It's over like you're looking at the most beautiful death that's currently available It's the most beautiful animal that can kill you a tiger.

1:49:53I mean they're gorgeous And they're also terrifying at the same time and it's running at you like a psychedelic experience Wow did yeah they died yeah one guy lived I think I think one guy lived I think Unfortunately the kid is throwing the pine cones lived. I don't remember I don't really remember the whole story one died to Survived yeah, okay to survive and they had to kill the tiger of course They always have to kill the tiger because it went tiger. Yeah, did what it's I mean Yeah, look I fucking hate zoos. I mean I used to take my kids to him because my kids loved them But they're fucking prisons their prisons for animals that didn't do anything wrong.

1:50:32Yeah and Last time we went we're in I think it was in Denver and We were turning towards this primate section where they have all these monkeys in these cages And this monkey's Wailing just screaming in agony just wow Like a crazy person locked up in a cage. I'm like that poor mother fucker Like what are they doing to him just so people could stare out and go oh there it is. Oh there it is Yeah, and yeah, it's awful Tigers are nature's balancing system. You can't have too many deer So you have to have tigers and Axis deer are the kind of deer that live around tigers. I don't know if you've ever seen your axis deer They're beautiful.

1:51:21They have white spots over their body and they move like bullets. Yeah, you've never seen an animal move that fast Um Axis deer they just fucking go because they're just always looking out for tigers So this animal is primed by nature to be chasing things and killing things that is literally it's biological reward system That's what's here for that's why it's 600 pounds of fucking tissue and talons and What do we do we give it cold meat that they push out on a platter and it just eats the meat It doesn't get to kill anything and then things stare at it and look at it in the eyes Which is fucking insane that you ever look a tiger in the eye in the wild you would be fucking frozen in fear and this thing Has to endure Other puny little things throwing stuff at it over its fence And this universal Carmic moment it realizes that they can get them There's an amazing poem by Ted Hughes called wolf watching Wolves are of course equivalent to tigers right the canine equivalent to tigers and he goes to the zoo And looks at the wolf and the poem wolf watching is worth it's worth looking up It's just one of the most extraordinary poems about exactly what you're talking about and the look in the wolf's eye And what he knows you're doing to him.

1:52:50Yeah, and he's superior to you and he knows this It's an unbelievable poem Ted Hughes wolf watching you got it. I mean seriously like mmm look it up Oh Yeah Where bizarre where bizarre with this whole fucking zoo thing The zoo thing is very weird It's like and on one hand it helps preserve diminishing populations of some animals right You know and they do do that but in the other hand like why do you have a polar bear in a fucking swimming pool in the middle and What are you doing? Yeah They go crazy they just go in circles. Yeah, first bears and what's closer where they just water around circles?

1:53:34Co crazy too a solitary confinement. Uh -huh. I mean, you know people can't take it more you know like it drives it breaks their brain. Yeah Yeah, yeah um You you keep saying like the word like I'm an atheist do I believe and got why even Why even have a belief? I mean, I don't I don't have any belief you don't have anything anymore So but you still consider yourself an atheist and atheists is someone who doesn't believe in a god right I don't I don't have that belief so you don't believe or not believe I mean not believing isn't an active right. I mean We don't know right that this is why this is why the atheism thing usually kind of drives me nuts with people Like when people say there is no god like Well, that's not atheism right atheism is that I don't believe in God It's not claiming to be able to prove there is right.

1:54:33There's a little more arrogance to there is no god I don't know whether than I don't believe in a god and you can't make yourself believe in something right Right, so if you want to tell me the gravity doesn't exist I can't make myself believe that Right, and I can't make myself believe god exists Contrary you know it just Despite the complete lack of evidence that he does or she'd or whatever like I can't force that that belief right in myself even if I wanted to but I would never ever say Oh, there is no god. Yeah, I would never assert that right and I wouldn't even I wouldn't even say I'm agnostic Like I don't know one way or the other wouldn't even say that I would say I don't believe in God I don't run my life according to a belief in God I Jordan Peterson says whether or not you believe in God if you live your life as if God is real you'll live a better life Well, you paraphrasing right that's essentially what he's saying Well, he's exhorting people towards moral behavior.

1:55:35Which is totally fine But you don't need God to be him look you don't need God. We got some people some people might and some people need laws To not rob banks right the con the concept of it that we're all connected in some way That's greater than just this life experience Is what what that's the foundation of this understanding of it Well, if so then what I would say is because as soon as you say God it presents some logical problems I would say you know live your life as if you believe in a Universal unity a colossal unity yeah, right. I think the word God is the problem Yeah, it's it's just been kind of co -opted and it gets co -opted by visuals of like a person you know Patriarchal leader who's in the sky with a fucking book of all the shit you did wrong Right, yeah, right and that's a silly.

1:56:31I mean, I was so I you know a guy raised his hand at one talk and he was quite incensed and that I was still said I was an atheist right and And he said you know you were he was quite you know he came right at me right and you know atheist don't I mean I don't care if someone's a believer like why would I care and what you believe you know like but but often Believers are quite upset that you're an atheist which is bizarre bizarre quirk of the psychology that I don't understand and then you're ready raised his hand He said he said you know you're only alive because of God's grace and You're you you have to be thankful you have to find Jesus and you have to be thankful The God for saving you because it was only his grace that saved you and I said you know what Um, I flatlined right I did like what I do with upset people like I didn't get emotional.

1:57:20I went to zero. You know zero Kelvin. I said you know what My problem with that is why me Like why me and not Tim Tim heathering Tim was my buddy at a restaurant. Oh the guy made the movie was trouble with it was killed in combat and Libya He died like I did he blood out except he blood out from an aneurism from a shrapnel wound in his groin right So why why me and not Tim right and for that matter why me and not a nine -year -old with cancer Like and what you're saying so what you're saying is unless you can answer that question Which I don't think you can what you're saying is that there's actually a kind of random lottery for God's grace And if that's the way he runs things.

1:58:01I don't want anything to do with them because that's cruel right And uh, so that so that's my that's my quibble with the word God, but you know versatility You know i'm good right? Shroiners. You know, it's good for Shroiners good for me, you know, whatever and uh So you know, I would um I don't know the the the the the violence of the emotions around all this is just is puzzling to me like I don't understand why people get so heated about What someone else believes? Well people get heated about everything if you know, I I've had conversations with people that are just demo crats To the end That's my team.

1:58:43I'm with the Raiders, you know, and that's that's just how it is with everything and people are that way with religion They're that way with the state they live in the football team. They support they're that way with everything That's just humans. Yeah, it's just that's some it's just some primate. Yeah, and I think the real discussion is in What how do you feel? Why do you feel the way you feel and what do you think and what do you know that has Sort of educated these thoughts And you know if you believe that human beings are inherently bad and then only a fear of a fear of um hell And if fear frankly if not a love of God a fear of God will make you act well If you really think that's what humans are then sort of religion makes sense But so for me for example, I'm assuming for you and Most people that I think we probably know like I don't murder people and rob banks and things like that because I'm afraid to go into jail I refrain from doing those things because I don't want to be someone who does those things I have my own inner morality About how what it means to be a good person to not be a freaking psychopath like I don't it's I mean, I don't want to go to jail either But you don't need the laws you don't need the courts to make me act well in that sense So if you need God in order to like not rob banks and kill people and rape people Bro, you got a freaking problem, right?

2:00:07You're still a problem even if you don't do those things because you're scared of God. You're still not a person that I trust Yeah, no, I I share that perspective. I think what This whole thing is for a lot of people and that the one of the problems with religion and true believers is Boy folks, there's a lot of different versions of that story And you gotta make sure you're betting on the right one because there's a billion people that don't think you are And you think you're smarter than them like I think it's people trying to get a map of what this is all about and I think it's been that way forever I think people have always tried to figure it out and they have little bits and pieces and we're putting it together and unfortunately we also like to Look at these things as if they're like this doctrine is 100 % factual.

2:01:02I've seen Muslims do it. I've seen Christians do it. I've seen Jews do it people have this This belief that their way is the way It's the only way everyone else is the other which seems contrary To the word of God of the real thought the concept of this interconnected thing that we're experiencing I think it's I think it's all way weirder. I think Everyone's scared to die, but no one's scared to sleep Because you know you're gonna come back. Yeah, but you do it every night every night you go to some crazy place You're shut off and you you you return and you assume Because you have memory and because you have an understanding of the environment and you have a task that you have to do Oh, God, I've got to be at work by nine you have all this stuff in your head.

2:01:55You're assuming Just assuming that as you woke up today that this is your life at 56 years old Continued along the same path, but it might not be it's just guessing We're just we are we're we're have our eyes closed and we're feeling Through the darkness. Yeah, and we don't know and we give ourselves These rules and we give ourselves these stories we give ourselves these religious practices to put structure into this thing and to put certainty into this thing that is absolutely uncertain And we get angry if someone questions our certainty because our certainty defines our ability to exist in this experience In a in a way that keeps us sane like God has a will God has a plan.

2:02:49This is all yeah, I think it's way weirder I think it's way weirder and I think that's what you experienced when your dad came to you And that's what you experienced when you look down at the pit. I think I think the whole thing is way weirder I don't think I don't think it's as As simple as why would God take a child and give it I mean I think the whole thing is An uber complex interaction of emotions and experiences that we're all going through simultaneously And I have a feeling that part of the thing that moves us forward unfortunately is negativity and the the positivity battling against that negativity with strengthens the positivity because of the resistance I think it like the evil of the world is almost like an important factor in the whole equation of our existence Yeah, and I think humans have always struggled with it and they've come up with theories that sort of like help them get by and some of them even support human dignity some don't and And here we are with the great you know still surrounded by the great mystery the great mystery and you know what like Let's hear it for the great mystery like yeah, if you think about it This thought came to me the other day like we're in a kind of sweet spot.

2:04:08So if you sort of knew For sure like we could if the scientists could prove right the nerds could prove that there was an afterlife And what you got to do was just more of the same except it's a lot more pleasant For eternity if we could prove that It would strip the value out of these precious decades that we are allotted right one of the reasons that life is so precious because It's so finite Right, so if you could prove there was an afterlife Don't worry about it like you're gonna you know, okay, you know, you know Your wife dumped you and blah blah blah, but you don't worry about it because soon the afterlife's gonna start and then you're good forever So just don't don't sweat it Right fat.

2:04:49Why don't you just kill yourself right now and just get on to it because that's when the good part starts Right, it would ruin what life is it would strip it of value. Yeah, and the other hand like The two other guys in Dusty Epski's group of friends if we could prove like literally prove Scientifically that there is no afterlife and you can't prove a negative But somehow if we could prove there was no afterlife Whatsoever were biological beings when we die that's it we rot we return to the soil that's it done If we could prove that that might be so psychologically devastating that That it would be actually quite hard to lead a meaningful life because you remind to think and well What's the friggin point right right?

2:05:34So where we're at right now? There's the perfect level of ambiguity That there's not such a proof of afterlife that what you know, why bother leading our lives But there's also not such a Such a doubt about it that it's psychologically devastating. We're in this sweet spot Which allows us This sort of invest maximum meaning in the least amount of psychological distress In these decades that were allotted So in a weird way where we're at right now is the sort of tuned perfectly to the human brain Forgiving the maximum amount of meaning to this time that we have here on earth And if you go in the extreme of either direction of absolute certainty that there is an afterlife or is no afterlife If you go to that extreme it actually just robs us of what we do know for sure that we have Which is this life right now right?

2:06:28And that's part of the magic of it right The magic of it is the uncertainty the the the temporary nature of it the finite nature of existence All of it yeah, and the reason you know Karl Marx hated religion Be is because basically the his the peasant class had been told listen don't worry about it You're your lot sucks right the serves like your lot sucks you repressed your poor blah blah blah But don't worry about it because there's an afterlife So and Marx is like they'll never be revolution as long as people think that once they die everything gets nice Right right right and uh, so that's that's why the Marx hated religion and it's totally legitimate point yeah It's a legitimate point, but he thinks you know even that is like There's too much we don't know and it's too hard to not know things So we pretend Right and the version of religion that he was rebelling against is like look the meek shell inherit the earth right Right, you're crushed under the boot heel of Zara's The Zara's boot heel here in life, but you know the meek shell inherit You're so just wait a little while and then it's all gonna come to you like that's what you know Marx wasn't objecting to a sort of like transcendent Not knowing right transcendent mystery right he was objecting to a completely calculated and manipulative like um Social program that kept people oppressed which is oftentimes what religion becomes particular when people have groups of people that they control They're power like gingas gone famously let people practice any religion they wanted people like always so open -minded Like no, that's not what it was he wanted order and he's like yeah believe that go believe that yeah, that's right Yeah, that's right He also apparently just screwed his way across Asia because I think it's 11 % of the population in the areas that he conquered Are directly descended from him his DNA.

2:08:23Yeah 11 % he killed 10 % of the population of the planet and replaced the We did I mean if he in his lifetime Because of his actions somewhere between 50 and 70 million people died It's so many that you can you can see when they do core samples of the earth a difference in the carbon footprint of human beings Yeah, the areas that they devastated Reforested to the point where there's a difference in the level of carbon wow that's amazing. Yeah, that's how many people to killed There's a famous story of Dan Carlin's hardcore history is this amazing podcast and he has this series called the wrath of the con In one of the stories they talk about the charisma and Shaw who goes to visit gin China and They think what they see in the distance is a snow covered peak and as they get closer they realize that it's a mountain of bones And they had killed over a million people in the city and piled them up on top of each other And they had to abandon their they were pulling wagons They had abandoned the roads because the roads were so mocked up with decaying humans That the roads had become muddy you couldn't traverse them To so many people had rotted and decayed in the roads that it became mud That's insane But he was really open mind when he came to religion Yeah, and he opened up trade to the east like there's a lot of like Wives yeah, well, I don't think they were wives.

2:09:59They were wives. I think they were yeah He did a lot of raping a lot of murder and and horrible torturous murdering and like you the stories It's just like what we just what we know just about how about the way they hid his burial site Yeah, do you know that that story? Yeah, they fucking killed everybody Everybody who went and buried him everybody who killed the people who buried them they killed them You know, they just they killed thousands of people just to protect the location of his grave and to this day nobody knows where it is Yeah, that's right wild Yeah, there's an amazing book by is it Jack weatherford?

2:10:36I think his name is about genkis gone like the classic book It's amazing book worth reading Jack weatherford. Yeah, I mean what a It just What a fucking bizarre Moment in history where there's one genius is like really the best at killing people and taking over countries Yeah, and he he does it at a scale and then it goes away, which is a real lesson for America Because the Mongols ran Everything for a long fucking time for hundreds of years and then they didn't because of infighting yeah In fighting, uh -huh, not they weren't defeated from the outside. It was infighting. Well also Genghis Khan was dead and the genius behind the whole operation, you know, he had a particular Tactical war mind that was just different than everybody else.

2:11:28He was a genius. Absolutely. He was just a genius applied to killing people and That was gone once his children took over and this how it always works. Yeah, I mean that's right But that's us folks when people when I talked to left wing people about you know aggression right and how it's how it's sort of bad like How it's maladaptive it would be anthropological term like maladaptive it produces bad outcomes, right And I'm like look arguably the most aggressive man on the planet in history was genkis con And he left the largest genetic footprint on the human genome on the human race of any individual ever right so aggression at that level in Darwinian terms right is absolutely rewarded Right the shy guy that was writing poetry had one kid right Genghis Khan Right 11 % of the population of the area that he conquered is descended directly from him He's their daddy that was because of his aggression right so you just you have to understand the evolutionary terms aggression is richly rewarded So the trick for human culture is to blunt that with some cultural values That bring people back into a place of peace and dignity and cooperation and blah blah blah, right?

2:12:56But just don't tell me that aggression is counterproductive, right? It's that's complete nonsense Well, it's just it's a utopian perspective Yeah, you know aggression's bad toxic male energies bad Yeah, until someone's invading your fucking country. Yeah, and yeah, those are toxic males Yeah, I get it, but guess what you need someone your side too and that's the only way we survive It's the only way we made it to 2024 That's I mean listen chimpanzees do the same thing. Mm -hmm males will invade a rival territory And kill off individual males by ganging up on them. This isn't a fair fight right?

2:13:31This is 10 to 1 Beat them to beat the males rival males to death from the rival troop Beat them to death and when they're shrieking in terror There are buddies in the rival troop Don't rush to their aid like humans would They run away That's the difference between chimpanzees and humans is the male co what's called the male coalition Exists in chimpanzee society But they don't run to the aid of their brothers if they're you know when the chips are down They save themselves individually Humans don't do that we will rush to help we will rush to help a brother who's in danger as it work Right, like even at risk to our own lives.

2:14:14It's one of the few Unique traits that human have humans have that other mammals don't which is probably how we made it Yeah, exactly no because we're better off in a group Even a group in a desperate situation and but chimpanzees The rival troop that's getting beaten to death one by one eventually they're wiped out Because they will not form they don't form a coalition to defend only to attack They'll form a coalition to attack But not to defend right? So what happens is the the more aggressive troop of chimpanzees Wipes out the males of the rival troop one by one because they the the rivals won't form Coalition to defend and then they take over the territory all the food resources of that territory and the females And now the aggressive troop of chimpanzees is now bigger and stronger and those genes will be passed on at a higher rate than the genes Of the poor bastards who got beaten to death one by one right?

2:15:17That's how Darwinism works and that's why aggression exists In the world there's a genetic reward for it That's why we're here and that's why we're here and human all gods plan and then human cults That's right that's right it's all gods and human culture came up with this extraordinary thing is like you know what guys We're all one thing where this tribe or that tribe we we have to fight to the last man to defend each other and defend our families blah blah blah because otherwise we're not gonna make it because the fucking Vikings are coming over the rich Right so who's with me? No brave heart, you know whatever.

2:15:50I mean there's a endless stories about that kind of heroism like we're all together We'll die together if we have to but we are all together right and that's a uniquely uniquely human trait Yeah, it certainly is and the problem is when you Have a utopian perspective and you want everyone like I'm not dangerous. I want the world to not be dangerous Well the problem is the world is dangerous and it's genetically dangerous. It's like it's always been dangerous It's just this is what it is and I think we're in this enormous process It's certainly much better to live today at least it is here than it would be during the time of duskyevsky If you live back then it's The less information it's danger more dangerous Some people have more control of people.

2:16:38They're cruel or yeah, it's more common Things get better over time, but it's a slow slow process. Yeah, that's right And we're in the middle of it. That's right and you know we look back and we say oh those fools But in the future they're gonna look back at us and say the same goddamn thing the same way we look again Is Khan they're gonna look at us like what the fuck did they do in Ukraine? What the fuck did Israel do in Gaza? What the fuck is going on in Sudan? What the fuck is going on and wherever fill in the blank? Anywhere in the world. Yeah, that's right And you know there is some hope like sort of global alliances blunt some of this stuff like so there is some There there is a sort of cultural evolution from the sort of like ancestral the ancestral ancestral origins of the species.

2:17:29Yeah, and so there you know alliances do You Often stabilize things which is which is great. I mean, that's a good thing But again alliances can also precipitate conflict so whatever. Yeah Yeah, it's uh, it's a complex mixture of things happening and I think it Again not to get to like woo woo spiritual, but I think that's a part of our journey a part of our journey is nag navigating The good and evil right that's right these are real forces. That's right. Yeah I will be killed publicly Executed like that's the F scale was by my publisher if I don't say the name of my book I know you don't want that set down.

2:18:12I definitely don't want you to kill especially after what you've been through In my time of dying how I came face to face with the idea of an afterlife All right, man. Well listen brother. It's always great to see you. I'm glad you're alive You really a really enjoy these conversations we've had me too, man me too I they're really wonderful and thanks for having me on and having such a great long talk about all this stuff my pleasure Did you read the audiobook? I did yes good beautiful. So you got to listen to it on the treadmill. Yes, I will do that Thank you very much, man. Thanks for being there.

2:18:42Appreciate you my pleasure. All right. Bye everybody