January 6, 2026 • 37 mins
In 2015, Robert was poisoned by someone he knew. A rapidly spreading infection sent him into emergency surgery—then into a profound near-death experience. In a vivid desert vision, a calm “guide” spoke to him in the precise, mathematical language his mind trusted, explaining reincarnation, non-linear time, and a threshold beyond which returning is impossible. A nurse later told him he had been clinically dead during the operation. Robert emerged changed: less nihilistic, newly attentive to meaning, and committed to leaving people and places better than he found them.
Contains poisoning, drug use, and discussion of clinical death. Listener discretion advised.
Story Producer: Nicholas Tecosky
If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story! Please email us at aliveagainproject@gmail.com We’d love to hear your story!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I was poisoned, I clinically died. I remember exactly what
happened during that near death experience or death experience, and
I spent the last ten years thinking about that.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(00:51):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So this was twenty fifteen, almost ten years ago, and
I put it this way, I spent a lot of
time in my life just like not taking good care
of myself, doing things that were not too smart, and
in hindsight, being involved with like people and things that
(01:27):
you know probably should have been a lot scarier than
they would to like kind of a shocking level. Considering
that I never really looked at myself was like part
of like why don't you call it the underworld or
crime or what have you. So I was kind of
living not about to see my pants. Like I was
(01:50):
professionally very stable and successful. My interpersonal relationships were always good,
but again just putting a lot of stuff into me
that was not a good idea and being around people
that were like very very largely involved the very shady
things as a result of that. The way I'd put
(02:10):
this and how I ended up in the situation where
I had this experience was someone I knew got the
brilliant ideas poison me. And this guy has pleaded everyone
was out to like get him in some way, including me,
Like he thought that stuff I was doing, which I
wasn't even had me to be considered, was like costing
(02:31):
him large sums of money or like deterring him from
taking his business to.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
The next level, if you will.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I think his goal was to make it so I
go away and it would just look like it was
something I did to myself or.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Something and that like I died in an overdose or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I mean, I was, you know, using drugs pretty seriously,
and you know when I don't know specifically what went
into this, but somehow they were like diluted in a
way that was meant for me to just get poisoned,
to get sickamore you die specifically threw like microsis of
the skin if you get like from injections and stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
But it was just like you literally kill you.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I'll be kitchen chemic Wilson.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I think the consensus at the.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Time, you know, I got these drubs from him very
quickly realized like something is really really really wrong.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Uh, you know, like my arm was getting.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Very very problematically, like like just like my arm was
fucked up, and it was like this isn't normal. This
is I mean, not that there's anything normal about that
kind of stuff, but like and so yeah, very quickly
devolved into like I got to go to the emergency
room and like they basically get this thing cut out
because it was like spreading through my arm and he
was like really really serious, like he was like septic.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
He was bad. He was really really quietly bad.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
And that it's important, but just bring this up because
it plays into like how the experience affected me. But
I've never been like a depressive, depressed or like suicidal
type person at all then or now orever really, but
as far as like before and after with spirituality and
how I looked at just like I don't know the
(04:21):
nature of the universe or like life and death.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I was kind of one of these.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
People that just like I don't know, man, I assume
just stuff ends and that's the end of it, you know,
Like I didn't put much thought into it other than
I assume that like death is bad, it's the end.
There's probably nothing to it, not necessarily even from like
a hardcore like atheism standpoint, if that makes sense. But
like just I don't know, Like maybe I've just never
(04:45):
been forced to really ask questions about it any like
serious way.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
That actually caused me to think about it too much.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
And the reason I brought up like the depressive thing
is again before this experience, again, I've never really wanted
to die. I've never been suicidal. I don't, even, to
be honest, like fully understand.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
That type of thinking. I'm aware that people do think
that way.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
But like, even at like the worst parts of life,
I still very much enjoy being alive. And I think
I've always appreciated life for being what it is, which
is like a cosmic miracle that on paper, and from
a statistician standpoint, it shouldn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
It really should.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
So yeah, I basically ended up like in an er,
having to get like emergency surgery to sort of like
clear up this like septic infection, and like a part
of my arm that was just bumped up beyond believe
that it would have spread even worse. At the time,
I was kind of living in a way where like
I didn't want anything bad to happen or to die
(05:52):
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
But if it did happen, it like for me, obviously,
it wouldn't have surprised me.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It was kind of just like I haven't put fought
into like long term life, if that makes sense, or
like what happens after all this. It was just kind
of like, well, I go to work, I make money,
I do this, and that's that until whatever. It's pretty groom,
pretty groom shit, to be honest.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
You know, some.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Very young surgeon comes in.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
You'll forget that.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
The guest surfer almost and he's like takes a look
at it and he's like, I mean that will reminds
you of like wreck we you very grieve or something.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
He looks at it, he's like, this is a fucking problem.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And it was kind of just like, you know, it's
happening very quickly. They're like running my insurance. It's like, hey,
we got to do this now. You know. It's not
like even very consultative.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
It's just like this is serious.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
There's literally no time to waste, Like we have to
cut this thing out, and I'm still trying to like
process the gravity of all of it. It's kind of
just like you're going to be operated on tonight. You know,
probably within an hour or two, we're going to be
cutting a part of your arm off and then like
grafting another part of your arm to your arm, Like.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You have to do this.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You know, if you've waited even a couple more days,
he probably would be dead before I know it. I'm
like sitting in one of those gowns they make you
where you know, it's like I'm waiting to go into
some i don't know what you call those, like oars
or where there's like six or seven people and they're
gonna knock you out under anesthesia.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
And so yeah, I knew I was gonna be put under.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Anesthesia, and it was kind of just sitting there spinning,
if you will, about how crazy this is, and they
do the thing they kind of top you through like
you're going to go in.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
They're they're telling you it's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Nurse of an anesthesiologist is like, Okay, you're gonna count down
from ten. Before you get to one, you're already just
like completely on another plane of existence, if you will.
So I remember like being wheeled in specifically, and then
like I got to like three. Yeah, so I remember
being put under. And the next thing I remember is
(07:57):
that I'm like sitting out on like a small hill
and like the Arizona Desert. I'm kind of like staring
at the stars.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I'm very big into.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Like outer space and everything that goes with that. And again,
you're not perceptually aware that you're whatever under anesthesia. It
just feels like you're awake, but I think like a
really vivid dream that makes sense. The next thing I
remember is that, you know, someone comes up and starts
(08:25):
talking to me in a way that really starts it
makes sense, and like the tone of voice in the
language you seem like oddly familiar. It's like someone you
can't really put a face on per se but it
sort of looks like an amalgamation of various people that
you've either like looked up to or respect. Is like
authority figures throughout your life.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It's how I put it.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
And it starts off and it's just like, oh, it's
a really nice night out. I don't know, like this
is really beautiful part of the country or something like that.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
It starts with like.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Small talk, and then after a certain amount of time,
it's sort of hits me that like, hey, this is
like where am I and what is this? Because I've
suddenly started losing that sense of like I can they
call ego death?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Like who you are? You know, you become very.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Disoriented because you suddenly sort of realize the context of
your surroundings, but you're not sure who you are or
why you're there. So this again, like I can't opt
to paraphrase because I don't.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Remember specifically, like a ton of a dialogue.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
But the stars sort of start falling onto the ground
and almost become these little like globe type things of
snow globe type things and you can pick up and
it kind of ticks me off that like, whatever this is,
it's not reality. But it's also like it's trying to
be some sort of metaphor for like what I'm about
to experience or what I'm about to get told, where
(09:48):
it's like, hey, you know, in the real world, you know,
the cosmos doesn't collapse on the ground. And so I
start talking to this person about this.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Like what exactly is this? Where are we? Why am
I here?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And in the course of this back and forth, at
some point I think I realized that, like, oh, I
think I'm dead, Like I literally think this is like, oh,
I've died, and this is some sort of transitional thing
that happens in between this.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Life and the next or what have you.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
And so there's you know, this person I'm talking to again,
it's nameless, it's not faceless exactly, but sort of starts
telling me that like that's correct. You know, I'm not
technically dead yet, but I'm no longer alive, and what's
happening right now is more or less a transitional process
that happens to like every single life when you pass
(10:44):
from one to the next. And the broad strokes of sort.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Of what I was being told is that there really
is no such thing as death, like you more or
less infinitely reincarnate, and every time that you die there's soret.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Like this, and it was explained to me in like
mathematical terms because that's what I would understand. There was
a big emphasis on you're sort of using the the
language you would use on yourself to be most convincing.
I imagine, like, you know, it's a gun to your head,
here are the facts. You've got to explain the facts
to yourself in a way that you'll believe. That's kind
of how like the wag wage felt like.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
It was like it was like my own.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Entity or whatever, using the exact wording that I found
most compelling or believable. So it's basically like, yeah, you know,
you're transitioning into a different life, and that happens eternally,
like there is no death, but what life is next
or like what that would look like, or what you
are or where you are or when you are is
(11:43):
more or less random, and I think some people would
find that terrifying, but I remember specifically finding that to
be like really reassuring what it meant to me, Like
at that point in life, I was like, well, if
this was it for me, you know, maybe onto the
next thing and maybe it could be better this time,
Like wasn't the worst outcome by your thinker of anything.
It was like really calling to know that there is more.
(12:07):
You know, there is more, there always will be than that.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
You know, it's not just the same thing over and
over again.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
It's kind of explains to me that like I don't
know what you want to call it, molecules or atoms,
Like you're sort of despawning from whatever this is into
the next thing, and that once you hit like the
greater than fifty per I mean, I do math and
like numbers for a movie, so like the greater than
are equal to fifty percent of like you're now the
next thing. It's irreversible. Like that's actually what death is.
(12:39):
Is that you've liked on a cosmic or you know,
existential spiritual level. You've transitioned into the next quantum life form.
I don't know what you want to call that, but
like the next thing, and it's like you're you're no
longer majority the makeup of whatever it is, your soul,
whatever you want to call that is no longer majority this,
It's now a majority that and that's like the irreversible
(13:01):
point from which there is no return. So so synesthesia
at least my understanding of it is something where the
you know, the traditional five senses that we define, you know, site, smell, hearing,
(13:23):
et cetera, a touch, they start to sort of blend together.
A common example is, you know, some people will claim
that they can they can see sounds or they can
hear colors.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
That's a pretty common form of it. Like I believe Van.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Goh famously or you know, the theories that he suffered
from synesthesia to a degree. And I started noticing that, like,
so this world, I mean, if you think about almost
like a I don't know, a video game cutscene or something,
it's like everything's getting slightly less visually coherent, and it
starts I start feeling elements of that. We're like, I'm
not sure what exactly it is I'm becoming, but you know,
(14:01):
like it starts to feel like sensory inputties these cross pollinating,
and all of a sudden, I am like I am
seeing sounds a little bit, I'm hearing colors, what have you.
So it starts becoming like both more coherent in that like,
well this is the new thing, but also less coherence.
It's like not the same framework that we operate over here,
(14:23):
I remember getting like, so I started getting really scared
by this. And also I was like struggling to understand
the idea of like like reincarnation. I can easily preprocess,
but the idea of like nonlinear time was really.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Confusing to me. Like it's not just the what and.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
The war might be different, but the when of whatever.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Next life is whatever you want to call that.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
And so I can't remember at what exact point this
was done, but like as we're talking in this desert landscape,
we're walking around.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
This almost felt like Bill and Ted to me.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
There was like a payphone at the beginning of this.
I think I omitted this part where like a phone
ring and I answered it and the person on the
other line like asked me some really stupid question in
my mind about like I don't know Christmas as a
kid or something in like Nintendo games something.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Like that, where it was like do you remember this,
and it was like what, I don't know. And then
towards the end of.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
This process I'm not telling you about what, we were
like walking in a different park that was like underground
sort of, and there was another one of these phones
and like I picked it up and it was like
I was on the other end of the same phone call,
but I also had like the ability to change how
(15:44):
the phone come went, So it was like experience and
a nonlinear out time moment to like demonstrate how that worked.
And as stupid as that sounds, like, he was very
again comforting, it made sense in the moment. Again, maybe
it was just I love Bill and Ted as a kid,
So like if I needed to explain this to myself
and would reference something I knew that to get up
that tracks the next thing I remember. So I mean,
(16:09):
that's really the broad like to put it in like
bullet points. It's like, okay, a loose definition of reincarnation
is how the universe works. There's an element of randomness
to it. And like if there is some sort of
thing as like permanent, like spiritual existence or like a
true soul, it's something you, I guess I would think
(16:30):
you'd figure out over like thousands or millions of iterations
of whatever this is. It's conveyed to you each time
you transition in a way that you yourself would write for yourself.
And as unusual as it was, like I actually wasn't
upset about it, because again, life was not necessarily in
a place that made me serially happy again. I wasn't
(16:53):
like looking forward to any of that, but I was
just like okay. I saw it as in a way
as like a fresh slate, as this is all happening,
and like the world sort of despawning and becoming this
incoherent like synesthesia or synesthesia mess. I was like painfully,
it felt like almost in jolting, like I remember thinking,
(17:16):
it felt like what I imagine it must feel like if
like computers could feel and they.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Were like powered off with powered on. And I was like.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Back in the waiting room of the OAR in the gown,
like face down, like drooling on myself, and like I remember,
I could see like that the surgery had been done.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
You know, it's like wrapped up with bloody. It's a disaster.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
But I was like extremely, extremely confused, and I couldn't
really move a lot in terms of like muscles, facial muscles,
like I was like almost frozen. And there was a
nurse to ask me if I was ready, and it
took me like a minute to be able.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
To talk again last like ready for what?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
And they're like, oh, you're going to go into this
operation now, and I was like, no, it already happened,
because like again I could see the accurate end result
of it, but seatingly, I'm now sitting in the lobby
before it happened. And then the next thing I know,
I'm just out. It's like a day later. So you know,
I wake up and I'm in one of these rooms,
(18:21):
like literally it's the next afternoon and everything's done. You know,
I start kind of waking up out of the whatever
you want to call that, and like kind of this
alone with my thoughts thinking about like what did all
that mean? That was a really interesting dream, but I'm
not sure how much more it means to me. And
again I'm now also thinking about like this life or
(18:42):
the practical like what am I doing now?
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Type stuff that you would imagine what would think about.
And so later, you know, there's a nurse.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
You know, different nurses would come once every like four
hours just to like see how stuff's doing, medication whatever.
One of the nurses that came by either later that
night or like the next morning, like I don't know what,
her vibe.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Was just a little bit different. She's like hey.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
So there was a big debate about whether to tell
you this or not, but I feel like you have
a right to know, because like the consensus was that
we shouldn't tell you because you see, like you're in
a bad place right now. But I think it would
be wrong to not tell you. But like you were dead,
like you were clinically dead briefly during that surgery, and
that was like the complete.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Mind flocked for me. She's like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
She's like, I don't have a ton of details. And again,
the doctor's opinion was that they shouldn't tell you because
they're not sure it would do you any good mentally.
But my opinion, I hope you're not upset, would be
for telling you this.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
My opinion is that you should know.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And again I still don't know exactly to this day
what that meant, you know, like did my heart stop.
I don't know even the definition of like true clinical death,
but I'm guessing just like some conflict with like anesthesia
plus other stuff, that was when it.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Kind of hit me.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
They're like, Okay, maybe this is something thing quite a
bit more than what it felt like. And that's kind
of what led me to look at the rest of life.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Kind of a two step process, Like the actual physical
recovery was more or less what you would expect from
like a skin draft. Think it is just like it's
not much different than like a burn or something where
they think they used skin from one part of your
body to like effectively patch over another part and then.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Just wraps and heels and scars.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
And yeah, the physical recovery pretty straightforward, you know, unpleasant,
but it was what you would expect for that. But
why I kind of pretty immediately started really coming out
of the experience and like the surgery all that, like
I suddenly have this certainty if you will, then even
(20:58):
if you know the exact nature of the grander scheme
of like whatever the cosmos in the universe wasn't fully
accurately conveyed to me by me or whatever you want
to call that, that like this new found experience of
just like whatever whatever it is, like, there's more than
just this. Again, it was deeply comforting initially, just in
(21:23):
a time when not a lot of stuff was comforting period.
But what I started to notice pretty much right away
was that like little things here and there that I
used to think just didn't matter or were just coincidence,
if you will, like you, I almost started feeling like
you start noticing that just like the nature of reality,
sometimes if you look at it just from a mathematical standpoint,
(21:47):
like a lot of things just don't make any fucking sense.
I've never been one to prescribe like any sort of
like theological meaning to this or sort of what I believe,
But initially it just kind of started with seeing little
things as like more beautiful, more interesting, or like more
almost as if like the universe wants you to know
(22:07):
or remember that, like there's something a lot more to
all this, then one could be forgiven forward seeing just
when you're going about like your typical day to day
until average experience, if you will, you know, there's a
lot of it's it's easy to fall into the mindset
of like, well, what I do doesn't really matter because
the end of the day, there's just like nothing to it.
(22:30):
And like not that I was even remotely close to
being like.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
A bad person or like hurting other people or whatever,
but like the idea that you should try to you
should aim to.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Leave people in places and things of the world in
like a better place than you found it. However, you
are capable of doing that, actually mattering or being something
you should do, like, wasn't really something I was compelled by.
And as time has gone on, that's become a more
and more like it matters to me a lot more
(23:07):
I did take away from it. Like again, even if
there's some element of randomness to the nature of reincarnation
or whatever you want to call that, I can't imagine
that like.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
How you spend the life you know you have right.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Now doesn't have some sort of impact, and like this
eternal scheme of things that makes sense, Like maybe it
gets better each time if you live as a better
person or like try to.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Do good things.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
You know, if the opportunity to do something that like
comes at the disadvantage of someone else, that like isn't
really the right thing that I could get away with
or whatever. It's like, why wouldn't you do that? And
my answer now is just kind of like not that
I was doing that before, per se, It's just because
at the end of the day, I would know, like
if I was doing shitty things or being just a
(23:57):
shitty person, even if it was like no one else
would find out, that still is something I would never
want to do because it's just like at the end
of the day at least here and now it's just
you and your thoughts and like you're, you know, your
internal conversation about your behavior or whatever. Yeah, I mean,
I also wish that was a more common thing that like,
(24:19):
you know, doing the right thing always gets you the
best result, but it doesn't always work that way.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
But like the.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Price of knowing that you did a lot of things
that were not the right thing on purpose versus like
whatever you're the value or the weight.
Speaker 5 (24:36):
Of that on I guess your soul will call it,
it's a lot, and it's like not something I want experience,
like feeling guilty.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
About the way that I went about things.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Welcome back. This is a Live again joining me for
a conversation about today's story. Are my other Alive Against
story producers Lauren Vogelbaum, Nicholas Dakowski, and Brent die And
I'm your host Dan Bush.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
Hi everybody, Hi, Hi, Nick.
Speaker 7 (25:32):
Tell us how you found this story and just give
us a little background on it.
Speaker 6 (25:35):
I just found his story really fascinating. You know, of
all of these that I've conducted so far, i'd say
like maybe a quarter of them, or what you would
consider classic NDEs, right, you know, because we've focused a
lot on how these things change you and brushes with
(25:56):
death and just how the consciousness of death changes you.
But it's really great to find a story that is
so purely near death, that really is purely transformative, and
that is just it reads like some kind of like
Greek mythology. You know, he is like wandering into the
(26:18):
into the afterlife.
Speaker 7 (26:20):
He's got such like a mechanical, mathematical perspective.
Speaker 6 (26:24):
On the an engineer's brain.
Speaker 7 (26:25):
Yeah, he's got an engineer's brain. And so like he was,
he seemed frustrated that he had to continually have have
the universe, the mechanics of the universe translated into a
language he could understand. So at one point he was
describing being in like a Bill and Ted phone booth, right,
(26:47):
and he was simultaneously on both ends of the call
in this sort of Lynchian kind of weird way, and
he was having to explain to himself how nonlinear time works.
It was just interesting to me that the whole experience
to him is like this metaphor that was really trite
or contrived to him, Like right, like he's in the desert,
(27:08):
there's there's stars, like falling and he just I don't know,
he's great.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
Yeah, he kept sighing stars again.
Speaker 8 (27:18):
And I love that. I love that he has the
nerve to tell the godlike creature that how lame it
is to.
Speaker 6 (27:23):
Like yeah, And I think that's kind of great too,
because it has this very acute self awareness to it
that I think that like is is very personalized to
the user in his sense, you know, it's like he's
having this dialogue with himself and there's and there's always
(27:43):
this meta narrative going on. You know, you you can't
just talk about life. You're talking about how you're learning
about life. You know, you're talking about how you're how
you're understanding death, and and there's the critic in sight
of you the whole time going does it have to
be so outenous? And I love that about this, you know,
(28:05):
And if you ever meet this guy, he is very
he is very analytical, and he is very He's always
i think, examining the tropes that the news is delivered
in to him and how he understands things. And I
think that like, yeah, I think that death is no
exception to that. I think, you know, in this sense,
(28:28):
it's like he's dealing with death the same way he's
dealing with life. Our brains are dealing with what we
can understand, and I think that if we are self
aware enough, our brains can kind of roll their eyes
at us.
Speaker 7 (28:44):
It was almost like he was he was sort of
annoyed because he knows that he knows that he's I
don't know how about this something like he knows that
his soul is like hyper intelligent, beyond anything that he
and his human form could ever comprehend, and it's attainable,
but there's a wall between him and that I don't know,
(29:05):
And it was frustrating to him that that He's like,
I know that I'm brilliant on multiple dimensional levels, but
right now I'm still stuck in this one forum and
I'm having to have this shit translated to me like
a dog or something.
Speaker 6 (29:17):
Yeah, it's like it's like I could just get to
the secrets of the universe if it weren't for this
gold darn meat wall of it every day though, I mean,
come on, the software is incredible, but the hardware is
like a Commodore sixty four. It's like I cannot I
(29:38):
cannot get three of the actual housing that I am
in in order to you know, really understand this, and
that that also that that thing about like the fifty percent,
If I go past fifty percent into this other form,
then there's it's irreversible.
Speaker 7 (29:57):
His idea of reincarnations that we just slowly do from
one form into another entity. If you get over the
fifty point of the new makeup, then you can't you
can't go back, right.
Speaker 6 (30:12):
But I also I also think that like he doesn't
state this explicitly, but I think it's kind of implicit.
Implicit to that is that like, you know, again, that's
his current form. What keeps him from crossing over is
like his sort of ego. It's his current form. It's
like it's it's the the reticence to go into the
unknown that we all sort of have, even though we're
(30:33):
so interested in it, you know. And I think that
that that that is a very universal human thing. There's
a draw toward the dark, there's the lapel du v,
the call of the void. But then there's the part
of you that's.
Speaker 9 (30:45):
Like, yeah, but like I want to have a hamburger
for lunch. They're not done with the pleasures of the
flesh yet. I want to open myself to universal understanding,
because I've got like, the severance.
Speaker 6 (31:00):
Isn't over you, right, you know, I still don't have
a c And by the time you listen to this severance,
season two will have ended. And I sure god if
any of you bastards come back with the time machine
or try to reach out through the void to me
to ruin this. But anyway, Yeah, it's just I think
that there's this like fantastic, fantastic push and pull between
(31:22):
this life and the next. In this story, he.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Goes from the shift of seeing life as statistically miraculous
but utterly meaningless.
Speaker 7 (31:32):
At the beginning, he starts off with that kind of
it's like, Okay, statistically all of this is crazy that
it even exists, so we should all feel like we
hit the jackpot just to be alive, right, although there's
no inherent meaning in any of it. And he went
from that to this other quite different feeling of certainty
that there is more to reality than what meets the eye.
Speaker 6 (31:50):
Right, sort of sort of nihilism into some foremost existentialism,
I guess, yeah, But he went from.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Also from skepticism into this sort of certainty, like he says,
he described it as a certainty.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Right, He's sure that there is.
Speaker 7 (32:06):
More, there's more to this reality than what we are
currently experiencing.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
Shit, that sounds comforting, Yeah, And it.
Speaker 10 (32:14):
Was comforting ultimately that the greater version of himself or
the greater version of the connected universe was trying so
hard to put it into even like slightly condescending terms
that he would understand. I was very comforted by that.
I was like, Oh, that's so nice, like thank you, Like, okay, well.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
I love that.
Speaker 8 (32:32):
I love that he thinks that his experience is such
a cliche nde, but this are the most original near
death experience I've ever heard. Like, we've kind of dismissed
a lot of these. I passed on to the other
realm and I met a spiritual guide and this is
what happened to me just out of hand. But the
concept that your body dissolves to this fifty percent point,
or the fact that this godlike figure that is speaking
(32:55):
to you is the representation of every authority figure that
you respected.
Speaker 6 (32:59):
In your life.
Speaker 8 (33:00):
I was like, those are some really original takes on
this story that we've heard many many times.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
And but the but the but the the the spiritual
guide leading you through this is also you somehow like
I love this idea, but it also you know, in
a sense, it really opens it up to like, you know,
reincarnation being like the self resolving back into the pool,
you know, before before coming back.
Speaker 7 (33:29):
But it's so striking his awareness of his own projections,
Like he's like he's he was so aware during this
vision that it was being put into terms that he
can understand down to, like, oh, I love Bill and
Ted's excellent adventure. So this is the Bill and Ted
phone booth, and of course I'm talking to myself, you know.
(33:50):
It's so fascinating.
Speaker 6 (33:52):
Yeah, like that that he plays the teacher and the
student in this that just opens up so many fascinating
other philosophical questions. You know, if you take this story
as as biblical truth, it just opens up so many
fascinating philosophical questions about you know, are we separate from
(34:13):
the universe? Are we an individual entity? Are we just
kind of like I don't know, trapped in these sort
of like meat antennas. Who are who are absorbed? You know,
who like pick up the spiritual like the soul is
really just a radio signal and our little meat radios,
you know, and that when that meat radio turns off,
it doesn't mean that the radio waves go away, They
(34:35):
just go to another meat radio.
Speaker 8 (34:38):
But like he says, he doesn't want to do anything
to damage his soul. You know, like there is something
that persists through each of these destructive and creative acts
that is singular to your experience. I think is kind
of a fascinating thought.
Speaker 7 (34:53):
Yeah, if before he potentially was like, I don't know
that any actions or consequences really matter in the grand
scheme of things, And in the end of this experience
he was kind of going, actually, yeah, it's you know,
you're not doing yourself any favors if you're aggressive or
mean to other people, like kind of hinting at some
sort of karmic rule, right, Yeah, I don't know. I
(35:15):
don't know how he put it, but it was like,
you're not doing yourself any favors by being mean to
people or by being an asshole. You've got to be
compassionate if you want to access deeper levels of yourself.
Speaker 10 (35:24):
Eventually, even if no one else is there to see
you being an asshole, right, you're still seeing it, and
that is that is important, right.
Speaker 6 (35:32):
And in a sense damaging to the soul.
Speaker 11 (35:38):
Next week on a Live Again, we meet Brooke Nisley,
who's fall from a tree led her into sobriety, a
new method for organizing your life, and a hair raising
encounter with a man who wasn't what he seemed.
Speaker 12 (35:50):
I don't regret falling out of the tree, and I
don't regret the brain damage. I wouldn't have got sober otherwise,
I realize now I'm not happy all the time, but
you're not supposed to be happy all of the time.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent die
Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett, additional
music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
production support. Our studio engineers are Rima L. K Ali
and Noames Griffin. Today's episode was edited by Mike w Anderson,
(36:28):
mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host
Dan Bush. Special thanks to Robert for sharing his story.
Alive Again is a production of I Art Radio and
Psychopia Pictures. If you have a transformative near death experience
to share. We'd love to hear your story. Please email
us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com. That's
(36:49):
a l i v e A g A I N
p R O j E C T at gmail dot
com
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I was poisoned, I clinically died. I remember exactly what
happened during that near death experience or death experience, and
I spent the last ten years thinking about that.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(00:51):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So this was twenty fifteen, almost ten years ago, and
I put it this way, I spent a lot of
time in my life just like not taking good care
of myself, doing things that were not too smart, and
in hindsight, being involved with like people and things that
(01:27):
you know probably should have been a lot scarier than
they would to like kind of a shocking level. Considering
that I never really looked at myself was like part
of like why don't you call it the underworld or
crime or what have you. So I was kind of
living not about to see my pants. Like I was
(01:50):
professionally very stable and successful. My interpersonal relationships were always good,
but again just putting a lot of stuff into me
that was not a good idea and being around people
that were like very very largely involved the very shady
things as a result of that. The way I'd put
(02:10):
this and how I ended up in the situation where
I had this experience was someone I knew got the
brilliant ideas poison me. And this guy has pleaded everyone
was out to like get him in some way, including me,
Like he thought that stuff I was doing, which I
wasn't even had me to be considered, was like costing
(02:31):
him large sums of money or like deterring him from
taking his business to.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
The next level, if you will.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I think his goal was to make it so I
go away and it would just look like it was
something I did to myself or.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Something and that like I died in an overdose or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I mean, I was, you know, using drugs pretty seriously,
and you know when I don't know specifically what went
into this, but somehow they were like diluted in a
way that was meant for me to just get poisoned,
to get sickamore you die specifically threw like microsis of
the skin if you get like from injections and stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
But it was just like you literally kill you.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I'll be kitchen chemic Wilson.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I think the consensus at the.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Time, you know, I got these drubs from him very
quickly realized like something is really really really wrong.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Uh, you know, like my arm was getting.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Very very problematically, like like just like my arm was
fucked up, and it was like this isn't normal. This
is I mean, not that there's anything normal about that
kind of stuff, but like and so yeah, very quickly
devolved into like I got to go to the emergency
room and like they basically get this thing cut out
because it was like spreading through my arm and he
was like really really serious, like he was like septic.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
He was bad. He was really really quietly bad.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
And that it's important, but just bring this up because
it plays into like how the experience affected me. But
I've never been like a depressive, depressed or like suicidal
type person at all then or now orever really, but
as far as like before and after with spirituality and
how I looked at just like I don't know the
(04:21):
nature of the universe or like life and death.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I was kind of one of these.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
People that just like I don't know, man, I assume
just stuff ends and that's the end of it, you know,
Like I didn't put much thought into it other than
I assume that like death is bad, it's the end.
There's probably nothing to it, not necessarily even from like
a hardcore like atheism standpoint, if that makes sense. But
like just I don't know, Like maybe I've just never
(04:45):
been forced to really ask questions about it any like
serious way.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
That actually caused me to think about it too much.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
And the reason I brought up like the depressive thing
is again before this experience, again, I've never really wanted
to die. I've never been suicidal. I don't, even, to
be honest, like fully understand.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
That type of thinking. I'm aware that people do think
that way.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
But like, even at like the worst parts of life,
I still very much enjoy being alive. And I think
I've always appreciated life for being what it is, which
is like a cosmic miracle that on paper, and from
a statistician standpoint, it shouldn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
It really should.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
So yeah, I basically ended up like in an er,
having to get like emergency surgery to sort of like
clear up this like septic infection, and like a part
of my arm that was just bumped up beyond believe
that it would have spread even worse. At the time,
I was kind of living in a way where like
I didn't want anything bad to happen or to die
(05:52):
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
But if it did happen, it like for me, obviously,
it wouldn't have surprised me.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It was kind of just like I haven't put fought
into like long term life, if that makes sense, or
like what happens after all this. It was just kind
of like, well, I go to work, I make money,
I do this, and that's that until whatever. It's pretty groom,
pretty groom shit, to be honest.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
You know, some.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Very young surgeon comes in.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
You'll forget that.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
The guest surfer almost and he's like takes a look
at it and he's like, I mean that will reminds
you of like wreck we you very grieve or something.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
He looks at it, he's like, this is a fucking problem.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And it was kind of just like, you know, it's
happening very quickly. They're like running my insurance. It's like, hey,
we got to do this now. You know. It's not
like even very consultative.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
It's just like this is serious.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
There's literally no time to waste, Like we have to
cut this thing out, and I'm still trying to like
process the gravity of all of it. It's kind of
just like you're going to be operated on tonight. You know,
probably within an hour or two, we're going to be
cutting a part of your arm off and then like
grafting another part of your arm to your arm, Like.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You have to do this.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You know, if you've waited even a couple more days,
he probably would be dead before I know it. I'm
like sitting in one of those gowns they make you
where you know, it's like I'm waiting to go into
some i don't know what you call those, like oars
or where there's like six or seven people and they're
gonna knock you out under anesthesia.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
And so yeah, I knew I was gonna be put under.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Anesthesia, and it was kind of just sitting there spinning,
if you will, about how crazy this is, and they
do the thing they kind of top you through like
you're going to go in.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
They're they're telling you it's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Nurse of an anesthesiologist is like, Okay, you're gonna count down
from ten. Before you get to one, you're already just
like completely on another plane of existence, if you will.
So I remember like being wheeled in specifically, and then
like I got to like three. Yeah, so I remember
being put under. And the next thing I remember is
(07:57):
that I'm like sitting out on like a small hill
and like the Arizona Desert. I'm kind of like staring
at the stars.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I'm very big into.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Like outer space and everything that goes with that. And again,
you're not perceptually aware that you're whatever under anesthesia. It
just feels like you're awake, but I think like a
really vivid dream that makes sense. The next thing I
remember is that, you know, someone comes up and starts
(08:25):
talking to me in a way that really starts it
makes sense, and like the tone of voice in the
language you seem like oddly familiar. It's like someone you
can't really put a face on per se but it
sort of looks like an amalgamation of various people that
you've either like looked up to or respect. Is like
authority figures throughout your life.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It's how I put it.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
And it starts off and it's just like, oh, it's
a really nice night out. I don't know, like this
is really beautiful part of the country or something like that.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
It starts with like.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Small talk, and then after a certain amount of time,
it's sort of hits me that like, hey, this is
like where am I and what is this? Because I've
suddenly started losing that sense of like I can they
call ego death?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Like who you are? You know, you become very.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Disoriented because you suddenly sort of realize the context of
your surroundings, but you're not sure who you are or
why you're there. So this again, like I can't opt
to paraphrase because I don't.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Remember specifically, like a ton of a dialogue.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
But the stars sort of start falling onto the ground
and almost become these little like globe type things of
snow globe type things and you can pick up and
it kind of ticks me off that like, whatever this is,
it's not reality. But it's also like it's trying to
be some sort of metaphor for like what I'm about
to experience or what I'm about to get told, where
(09:48):
it's like, hey, you know, in the real world, you know,
the cosmos doesn't collapse on the ground. And so I
start talking to this person about this.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Like what exactly is this? Where are we? Why am
I here?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And in the course of this back and forth, at
some point I think I realized that, like, oh, I
think I'm dead, Like I literally think this is like, oh,
I've died, and this is some sort of transitional thing
that happens in between this.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Life and the next or what have you.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
And so there's you know, this person I'm talking to again,
it's nameless, it's not faceless exactly, but sort of starts
telling me that like that's correct. You know, I'm not
technically dead yet, but I'm no longer alive, and what's
happening right now is more or less a transitional process
that happens to like every single life when you pass
(10:44):
from one to the next. And the broad strokes of sort.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Of what I was being told is that there really
is no such thing as death, like you more or
less infinitely reincarnate, and every time that you die there's soret.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Like this, and it was explained to me in like
mathematical terms because that's what I would understand. There was
a big emphasis on you're sort of using the the
language you would use on yourself to be most convincing.
I imagine, like, you know, it's a gun to your head,
here are the facts. You've got to explain the facts
to yourself in a way that you'll believe. That's kind
of how like the wag wage felt like.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
It was like it was like my own.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Entity or whatever, using the exact wording that I found
most compelling or believable. So it's basically like, yeah, you know,
you're transitioning into a different life, and that happens eternally,
like there is no death, but what life is next
or like what that would look like, or what you
are or where you are or when you are is
(11:43):
more or less random, and I think some people would
find that terrifying, but I remember specifically finding that to
be like really reassuring what it meant to me, Like
at that point in life, I was like, well, if
this was it for me, you know, maybe onto the
next thing and maybe it could be better this time,
Like wasn't the worst outcome by your thinker of anything.
It was like really calling to know that there is more.
(12:07):
You know, there is more, there always will be than that.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
You know, it's not just the same thing over and
over again.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
It's kind of explains to me that like I don't
know what you want to call it, molecules or atoms,
Like you're sort of despawning from whatever this is into
the next thing, and that once you hit like the
greater than fifty per I mean, I do math and
like numbers for a movie, so like the greater than
are equal to fifty percent of like you're now the
next thing. It's irreversible. Like that's actually what death is.
(12:39):
Is that you've liked on a cosmic or you know,
existential spiritual level. You've transitioned into the next quantum life form.
I don't know what you want to call that, but
like the next thing, and it's like you're you're no
longer majority the makeup of whatever it is, your soul,
whatever you want to call that is no longer majority this,
It's now a majority that and that's like the irreversible
(13:01):
point from which there is no return. So so synesthesia
at least my understanding of it is something where the
you know, the traditional five senses that we define, you know, site, smell, hearing,
(13:23):
et cetera, a touch, they start to sort of blend together.
A common example is, you know, some people will claim
that they can they can see sounds or they can
hear colors.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
That's a pretty common form of it. Like I believe Van.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Goh famously or you know, the theories that he suffered
from synesthesia to a degree. And I started noticing that, like,
so this world, I mean, if you think about almost
like a I don't know, a video game cutscene or something,
it's like everything's getting slightly less visually coherent, and it
starts I start feeling elements of that. We're like, I'm
not sure what exactly it is I'm becoming, but you know,
(14:01):
like it starts to feel like sensory inputties these cross pollinating,
and all of a sudden, I am like I am
seeing sounds a little bit, I'm hearing colors, what have you.
So it starts becoming like both more coherent in that like,
well this is the new thing, but also less coherence.
It's like not the same framework that we operate over here,
(14:23):
I remember getting like, so I started getting really scared
by this. And also I was like struggling to understand
the idea of like like reincarnation. I can easily preprocess,
but the idea of like nonlinear time was really.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Confusing to me. Like it's not just the what and.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
The war might be different, but the when of whatever.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Next life is whatever you want to call that.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
And so I can't remember at what exact point this
was done, but like as we're talking in this desert landscape,
we're walking around.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
This almost felt like Bill and Ted to me.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
There was like a payphone at the beginning of this.
I think I omitted this part where like a phone
ring and I answered it and the person on the
other line like asked me some really stupid question in
my mind about like I don't know Christmas as a
kid or something in like Nintendo games something.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Like that, where it was like do you remember this,
and it was like what, I don't know. And then
towards the end of.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
This process I'm not telling you about what, we were
like walking in a different park that was like underground
sort of, and there was another one of these phones
and like I picked it up and it was like
I was on the other end of the same phone call,
but I also had like the ability to change how
(15:44):
the phone come went, So it was like experience and
a nonlinear out time moment to like demonstrate how that worked.
And as stupid as that sounds, like, he was very
again comforting, it made sense in the moment. Again, maybe
it was just I love Bill and Ted as a kid,
So like if I needed to explain this to myself
and would reference something I knew that to get up
that tracks the next thing I remember. So I mean,
(16:09):
that's really the broad like to put it in like
bullet points. It's like, okay, a loose definition of reincarnation
is how the universe works. There's an element of randomness
to it. And like if there is some sort of
thing as like permanent, like spiritual existence or like a
true soul, it's something you, I guess I would think
(16:30):
you'd figure out over like thousands or millions of iterations
of whatever this is. It's conveyed to you each time
you transition in a way that you yourself would write for yourself.
And as unusual as it was, like I actually wasn't
upset about it, because again, life was not necessarily in
a place that made me serially happy again. I wasn't
(16:53):
like looking forward to any of that, but I was
just like okay. I saw it as in a way
as like a fresh slate, as this is all happening,
and like the world sort of despawning and becoming this
incoherent like synesthesia or synesthesia mess. I was like painfully,
it felt like almost in jolting, like I remember thinking,
(17:16):
it felt like what I imagine it must feel like if
like computers could feel and they.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Were like powered off with powered on. And I was like.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Back in the waiting room of the OAR in the gown,
like face down, like drooling on myself, and like I remember,
I could see like that the surgery had been done.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
You know, it's like wrapped up with bloody. It's a disaster.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
But I was like extremely, extremely confused, and I couldn't
really move a lot in terms of like muscles, facial muscles,
like I was like almost frozen. And there was a
nurse to ask me if I was ready, and it
took me like a minute to be able.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
To talk again last like ready for what?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
And they're like, oh, you're going to go into this
operation now, and I was like, no, it already happened,
because like again I could see the accurate end result
of it, but seatingly, I'm now sitting in the lobby
before it happened. And then the next thing I know,
I'm just out. It's like a day later. So you know,
I wake up and I'm in one of these rooms,
(18:21):
like literally it's the next afternoon and everything's done. You know,
I start kind of waking up out of the whatever
you want to call that, and like kind of this
alone with my thoughts thinking about like what did all
that mean? That was a really interesting dream, but I'm
not sure how much more it means to me. And
again I'm now also thinking about like this life or
(18:42):
the practical like what am I doing now?
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Type stuff that you would imagine what would think about.
And so later, you know, there's a nurse.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
You know, different nurses would come once every like four
hours just to like see how stuff's doing, medication whatever.
One of the nurses that came by either later that
night or like the next morning, like I don't know what,
her vibe.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Was just a little bit different. She's like hey.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
So there was a big debate about whether to tell
you this or not, but I feel like you have
a right to know, because like the consensus was that
we shouldn't tell you because you see, like you're in
a bad place right now. But I think it would
be wrong to not tell you. But like you were dead,
like you were clinically dead briefly during that surgery, and
that was like the complete.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Mind flocked for me. She's like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
She's like, I don't have a ton of details. And again,
the doctor's opinion was that they shouldn't tell you because
they're not sure it would do you any good mentally.
But my opinion, I hope you're not upset, would be
for telling you this.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
My opinion is that you should know.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And again I still don't know exactly to this day
what that meant, you know, like did my heart stop.
I don't know even the definition of like true clinical death,
but I'm guessing just like some conflict with like anesthesia
plus other stuff, that was when it.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Kind of hit me.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
They're like, Okay, maybe this is something thing quite a
bit more than what it felt like. And that's kind
of what led me to look at the rest of life.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Kind of a two step process, Like the actual physical
recovery was more or less what you would expect from
like a skin draft. Think it is just like it's
not much different than like a burn or something where
they think they used skin from one part of your
body to like effectively patch over another part and then.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Just wraps and heels and scars.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
And yeah, the physical recovery pretty straightforward, you know, unpleasant,
but it was what you would expect for that. But
why I kind of pretty immediately started really coming out
of the experience and like the surgery all that, like
I suddenly have this certainty if you will, then even
(20:58):
if you know the exact nature of the grander scheme
of like whatever the cosmos in the universe wasn't fully
accurately conveyed to me by me or whatever you want
to call that, that like this new found experience of
just like whatever whatever it is, like, there's more than
just this. Again, it was deeply comforting initially, just in
(21:23):
a time when not a lot of stuff was comforting period.
But what I started to notice pretty much right away
was that like little things here and there that I
used to think just didn't matter or were just coincidence,
if you will, like you, I almost started feeling like
you start noticing that just like the nature of reality,
sometimes if you look at it just from a mathematical standpoint,
(21:47):
like a lot of things just don't make any fucking sense.
I've never been one to prescribe like any sort of
like theological meaning to this or sort of what I believe,
But initially it just kind of started with seeing little
things as like more beautiful, more interesting, or like more
almost as if like the universe wants you to know
(22:07):
or remember that, like there's something a lot more to
all this, then one could be forgiven forward seeing just
when you're going about like your typical day to day
until average experience, if you will, you know, there's a
lot of it's it's easy to fall into the mindset
of like, well, what I do doesn't really matter because
the end of the day, there's just like nothing to it.
(22:30):
And like not that I was even remotely close to
being like.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
A bad person or like hurting other people or whatever,
but like the idea that you should try to you
should aim to.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Leave people in places and things of the world in
like a better place than you found it. However, you
are capable of doing that, actually mattering or being something
you should do, like, wasn't really something I was compelled by.
And as time has gone on, that's become a more
and more like it matters to me a lot more
(23:07):
I did take away from it. Like again, even if
there's some element of randomness to the nature of reincarnation
or whatever you want to call that, I can't imagine
that like.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
How you spend the life you know you have right.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Now doesn't have some sort of impact, and like this
eternal scheme of things that makes sense, Like maybe it
gets better each time if you live as a better
person or like try to.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Do good things.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
You know, if the opportunity to do something that like
comes at the disadvantage of someone else, that like isn't
really the right thing that I could get away with
or whatever. It's like, why wouldn't you do that? And
my answer now is just kind of like not that
I was doing that before, per se, It's just because
at the end of the day, I would know, like
if I was doing shitty things or being just a
(23:57):
shitty person, even if it was like no one else
would find out, that still is something I would never
want to do because it's just like at the end
of the day at least here and now it's just
you and your thoughts and like you're, you know, your
internal conversation about your behavior or whatever. Yeah, I mean,
I also wish that was a more common thing that like,
(24:19):
you know, doing the right thing always gets you the
best result, but it doesn't always work that way.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
But like the.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Price of knowing that you did a lot of things
that were not the right thing on purpose versus like
whatever you're the value or the weight.
Speaker 5 (24:36):
Of that on I guess your soul will call it,
it's a lot, and it's like not something I want experience,
like feeling guilty.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
About the way that I went about things.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Welcome back. This is a Live again joining me for
a conversation about today's story. Are my other Alive Against
story producers Lauren Vogelbaum, Nicholas Dakowski, and Brent die And
I'm your host Dan Bush.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
Hi everybody, Hi, Hi, Nick.
Speaker 7 (25:32):
Tell us how you found this story and just give
us a little background on it.
Speaker 6 (25:35):
I just found his story really fascinating. You know, of
all of these that I've conducted so far, i'd say
like maybe a quarter of them, or what you would
consider classic NDEs, right, you know, because we've focused a
lot on how these things change you and brushes with
(25:56):
death and just how the consciousness of death changes you.
But it's really great to find a story that is
so purely near death, that really is purely transformative, and
that is just it reads like some kind of like
Greek mythology. You know, he is like wandering into the
(26:18):
into the afterlife.
Speaker 7 (26:20):
He's got such like a mechanical, mathematical perspective.
Speaker 6 (26:24):
On the an engineer's brain.
Speaker 7 (26:25):
Yeah, he's got an engineer's brain. And so like he was,
he seemed frustrated that he had to continually have have
the universe, the mechanics of the universe translated into a
language he could understand. So at one point he was
describing being in like a Bill and Ted phone booth, right,
(26:47):
and he was simultaneously on both ends of the call
in this sort of Lynchian kind of weird way, and
he was having to explain to himself how nonlinear time works.
It was just interesting to me that the whole experience
to him is like this metaphor that was really trite
or contrived to him, Like right, like he's in the desert,
(27:08):
there's there's stars, like falling and he just I don't know,
he's great.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
Yeah, he kept sighing stars again.
Speaker 8 (27:18):
And I love that. I love that he has the
nerve to tell the godlike creature that how lame it
is to.
Speaker 6 (27:23):
Like yeah, And I think that's kind of great too,
because it has this very acute self awareness to it
that I think that like is is very personalized to
the user in his sense, you know, it's like he's
having this dialogue with himself and there's and there's always
(27:43):
this meta narrative going on. You know, you you can't
just talk about life. You're talking about how you're learning
about life. You know, you're talking about how you're how
you're understanding death, and and there's the critic in sight
of you the whole time going does it have to
be so outenous? And I love that about this, you know,
(28:05):
And if you ever meet this guy, he is very
he is very analytical, and he is very He's always
i think, examining the tropes that the news is delivered
in to him and how he understands things. And I
think that like, yeah, I think that death is no
exception to that. I think, you know, in this sense,
(28:28):
it's like he's dealing with death the same way he's
dealing with life. Our brains are dealing with what we
can understand, and I think that if we are self
aware enough, our brains can kind of roll their eyes
at us.
Speaker 7 (28:44):
It was almost like he was he was sort of
annoyed because he knows that he knows that he's I
don't know how about this something like he knows that
his soul is like hyper intelligent, beyond anything that he
and his human form could ever comprehend, and it's attainable,
but there's a wall between him and that I don't know,
(29:05):
And it was frustrating to him that that He's like,
I know that I'm brilliant on multiple dimensional levels, but
right now I'm still stuck in this one forum and
I'm having to have this shit translated to me like
a dog or something.
Speaker 6 (29:17):
Yeah, it's like it's like I could just get to
the secrets of the universe if it weren't for this
gold darn meat wall of it every day though, I mean,
come on, the software is incredible, but the hardware is
like a Commodore sixty four. It's like I cannot I
(29:38):
cannot get three of the actual housing that I am
in in order to you know, really understand this, and
that that also that that thing about like the fifty percent,
If I go past fifty percent into this other form,
then there's it's irreversible.
Speaker 7 (29:57):
His idea of reincarnations that we just slowly do from
one form into another entity. If you get over the
fifty point of the new makeup, then you can't you
can't go back, right.
Speaker 6 (30:12):
But I also I also think that like he doesn't
state this explicitly, but I think it's kind of implicit.
Implicit to that is that like, you know, again, that's
his current form. What keeps him from crossing over is
like his sort of ego. It's his current form. It's
like it's it's the the reticence to go into the
unknown that we all sort of have, even though we're
(30:33):
so interested in it, you know. And I think that
that that that is a very universal human thing. There's
a draw toward the dark, there's the lapel du v,
the call of the void. But then there's the part
of you that's.
Speaker 9 (30:45):
Like, yeah, but like I want to have a hamburger
for lunch. They're not done with the pleasures of the
flesh yet. I want to open myself to universal understanding,
because I've got like, the severance.
Speaker 6 (31:00):
Isn't over you, right, you know, I still don't have
a c And by the time you listen to this severance,
season two will have ended. And I sure god if
any of you bastards come back with the time machine
or try to reach out through the void to me
to ruin this. But anyway, Yeah, it's just I think
that there's this like fantastic, fantastic push and pull between
(31:22):
this life and the next. In this story, he.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Goes from the shift of seeing life as statistically miraculous
but utterly meaningless.
Speaker 7 (31:32):
At the beginning, he starts off with that kind of
it's like, Okay, statistically all of this is crazy that
it even exists, so we should all feel like we
hit the jackpot just to be alive, right, although there's
no inherent meaning in any of it. And he went
from that to this other quite different feeling of certainty
that there is more to reality than what meets the eye.
Speaker 6 (31:50):
Right, sort of sort of nihilism into some foremost existentialism,
I guess, yeah, But he went from.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Also from skepticism into this sort of certainty, like he says,
he described it as a certainty.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Right, He's sure that there is.
Speaker 7 (32:06):
More, there's more to this reality than what we are
currently experiencing.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
Shit, that sounds comforting, Yeah, And it.
Speaker 10 (32:14):
Was comforting ultimately that the greater version of himself or
the greater version of the connected universe was trying so
hard to put it into even like slightly condescending terms
that he would understand. I was very comforted by that.
I was like, Oh, that's so nice, like thank you, Like, okay, well.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
I love that.
Speaker 8 (32:32):
I love that he thinks that his experience is such
a cliche nde, but this are the most original near
death experience I've ever heard. Like, we've kind of dismissed
a lot of these. I passed on to the other
realm and I met a spiritual guide and this is
what happened to me just out of hand. But the
concept that your body dissolves to this fifty percent point,
or the fact that this godlike figure that is speaking
(32:55):
to you is the representation of every authority figure that
you respected.
Speaker 6 (32:59):
In your life.
Speaker 8 (33:00):
I was like, those are some really original takes on
this story that we've heard many many times.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
And but the but the but the the the spiritual
guide leading you through this is also you somehow like
I love this idea, but it also you know, in
a sense, it really opens it up to like, you know,
reincarnation being like the self resolving back into the pool,
you know, before before coming back.
Speaker 7 (33:29):
But it's so striking his awareness of his own projections,
Like he's like he's he was so aware during this
vision that it was being put into terms that he
can understand down to, like, oh, I love Bill and
Ted's excellent adventure. So this is the Bill and Ted
phone booth, and of course I'm talking to myself, you know.
(33:50):
It's so fascinating.
Speaker 6 (33:52):
Yeah, like that that he plays the teacher and the
student in this that just opens up so many fascinating
other philosophical questions. You know, if you take this story
as as biblical truth, it just opens up so many
fascinating philosophical questions about you know, are we separate from
(34:13):
the universe? Are we an individual entity? Are we just
kind of like I don't know, trapped in these sort
of like meat antennas. Who are who are absorbed? You know,
who like pick up the spiritual like the soul is
really just a radio signal and our little meat radios,
you know, and that when that meat radio turns off,
it doesn't mean that the radio waves go away, They
(34:35):
just go to another meat radio.
Speaker 8 (34:38):
But like he says, he doesn't want to do anything
to damage his soul. You know, like there is something
that persists through each of these destructive and creative acts
that is singular to your experience. I think is kind
of a fascinating thought.
Speaker 7 (34:53):
Yeah, if before he potentially was like, I don't know
that any actions or consequences really matter in the grand
scheme of things, And in the end of this experience
he was kind of going, actually, yeah, it's you know,
you're not doing yourself any favors if you're aggressive or
mean to other people, like kind of hinting at some
sort of karmic rule, right, Yeah, I don't know. I
(35:15):
don't know how he put it, but it was like,
you're not doing yourself any favors by being mean to
people or by being an asshole. You've got to be
compassionate if you want to access deeper levels of yourself.
Speaker 10 (35:24):
Eventually, even if no one else is there to see
you being an asshole, right, you're still seeing it, and
that is that is important, right.
Speaker 6 (35:32):
And in a sense damaging to the soul.
Speaker 11 (35:38):
Next week on a Live Again, we meet Brooke Nisley,
who's fall from a tree led her into sobriety, a
new method for organizing your life, and a hair raising
encounter with a man who wasn't what he seemed.
Speaker 12 (35:50):
I don't regret falling out of the tree, and I
don't regret the brain damage. I wouldn't have got sober otherwise,
I realize now I'm not happy all the time, but
you're not supposed to be happy all of the time.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent die
Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett, additional
music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
production support. Our studio engineers are Rima L. K Ali
and Noames Griffin. Today's episode was edited by Mike w Anderson,
(36:28):
mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host
Dan Bush. Special thanks to Robert for sharing his story.
Alive Again is a production of I Art Radio and
Psychopia Pictures. If you have a transformative near death experience
to share. We'd love to hear your story. Please email
us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com. That's
(36:49):
a l i v e A g A I N
p R O j E C T at gmail dot
com
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