 Neurological symptoms are getting worse. It'd be nice if one of you angels slash morons had a clue why. We did a full history. She never mentioned seeing or hearing anything unusual. That's a clip from that show, House the East Vian a few years ago, medical show about this arrogant, over-the-top arrogant doctor who has the answer for everything. And in this case, he's debunking a woman who sees the spirit of her mother across the room. And I thought, wow, what a great example of what a bubble I live in. I mean, in my bubble, after-death communication is well documented and widely reported. I mean, it's widely reported in hospice. We know that from people who've gone in and worked at hospice and talked to nurses and doctors. Well reported, but it's also in the medical literature, right? Like you've heard so many times on this show, after-death communication, not at all uncommon. I think if I remember the stats, 60% among couples that have been together for a long, long time, then have lost one or the other. But also just all the other stuff, terminal acidity, of course, near-death experience, reincarnation research, over and over and over again. Oh, and the medium research, of course, Dr. Julie Bryschild, the Windbridge Institute, and all the other stuff that we talk about in this show. In my bubble, that is all medical fact because, well, it is medical fact. But I think it's good to remember that that isn't mainstream. And even though there's been progress, most people still identify with the house guy here. And while this seems to be incredibly a stuck-on stupid kind of position, I also like to take note of the fact that it's blocking us from a deeper discussion, from what I always call the level three discussion. So I have an interview coming up in a minute with Mark Ireland, who 10, 12 years ago wrote the book Soul Shift, which was really an important book about his personal journey into exploring after-death communication. And I thought this discussion was really cool because we got to some places that I think really need to be talked about. And some of them are controversial, even within our community. And I just think it's interesting to note how these conversations can never happen until we get past the ridiculousness of Dr. House. Here's a clip from any of you with Mark. I did an interview a few months back with the Dr. Mark Pitstick, who is a colleague of Gary Schwartz at University of Arizona, and they're working on this project called The Soul Phone. I gave Mark pretty hard time. On the other hand, I don't discount the possibility that technology is going to play a role in whatever this connection we have is with the extended consciousness realm. And if we understand or think anywhere deeply about near-death experience, we see right off the bat that there's certainly a direct connection between near-death experience and resuscitation, which is a medical technology. I don't think God needs our help. I think things come together to help people and maybe a medium will help somebody at a point they need it or whatever. So that's just one of the topics we cover in this interview. We kind of go a lot of different places. And then one other place that we go that I want to let you know, because I posted this in the forum, but I'm not sure everybody saw it. Mark's main mission is to try and help people who are experiencing grief by connecting them with readings from qualified mediums. And if you remember from a long time back when we interviewed Dr. Julie Byshell, this, again, back to the science, a reading from a medium has been shown to be more efficacious in relieving grief than any other treatment we know of. More effective than the pharmaceuticals, they might throw your way, more effective than therapy. It's just those are the numbers. If you go do the research and do it properly, those are the numbers you come back with. And it doesn't mean that we understand what a medium reading is or that if it's talking with the dad or any of that stuff, it's just, hey, you can do that experiment and that's how it comes out. So I don't want to digress too far, but one of the things you need, once you accept that reality is you need good mediums. And Mark is trying to help make that happen and you can actually help and you can get a free reading in the process. So stick around and listen to this clip and then stick around for the rest of the interview. And if you're interested, you know, you can contact me or contact Mark and we'll try and help make that happen. Here he is explaining it. And we do need more sitters too. So if anyone wants to volunteer as a test sitter, I'm totally open to that, but there are responsibilities that come with it and some people are all excited to get the free reading but they don't want to do the back end work. So if they're interested in this, they can go to my website, hit my contact link and write me. Okay, my interview with Mark Ireland is coming up. Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. Today we welcome back Mark Ireland to Skeptico. Now, Mark as I was just chatting with him a little bit about is somebody I've known for like a long time. It was probably 10 years ago or so that we did an interview about his really, really remarkable book called Soul Shift. It's a book about the tragic story and the experience that him and his wife went through of losing their youngest son Brandon to a rather unusual accident that we'll talk about. And what the book is really about is the launching pad that that was for this spiritual journey that Mark has been on and has shared with so many people. And since that time, so we'll get into all this in the interview, but just to set it up a little bit. You know, since that time, Mark has pursued not only his own personal journey but he's had this amazing ability to connect with other people. He started, founded, helping parents heal a global organization for bereaved parents. I think you told me has something like 20,000 global worldwide members and a hundred affiliate organizations have joined in. And you know, part of his mission and I think part of his purpose is explained in why there was even a need for that and how it came about. So that's something we'll talk about as well. This has led to Mark's, a couple of subsequent books that Mark has written, messages from the afterlife. We'll talk a little bit about that. And a book that I almost attempted to say he co-wrote with his father, but it's not exactly, but something like that. Your psychic potential, a book that his father, Richard Ireland, who is an amazing, amazing person and then also plays into this story in so many ways. So Mark, as I was explaining, I was going through all this stuff and I go, why haven't I had Mark? We've exchanged emails over the years, but why haven't I had Mark back on? But now I have. So here you are. Welcome back. Thanks for being here. It's great to be back, Alex. It was actually episode 77 was my first time and it was 12 years ago, almost to the month. 12 years and one month ago. It's really incredible and it's incredible. All that has gone on since then and how much things have changed. But I think we have to start with the story behind your first book, Soul Shift. Sure. So looking back, at the time I was in the business field and working full-time and really focused on my career in advancing, which is kind of common of a lot of people in America and I had a family, a wife and two boys and probably didn't spend as much time or focusing on families I should have or would have. And there was one January day in 2004. I just started a new job and returned home from a trip to California. We lived in Scottsdale, Arizona. And so the night that I got home, I walked in the front door and went back to just, the first thing I did for whatever reason was walked in my son Brandon's room and opened the door and he was laying there watching TV, I gave him a hug and we didn't even say anything but I was happy to see him. And on a Friday night that was kind of unusual because he usually would have been out with buddies or whatever. The next morning we got up and I had been told that he had planned to go on a hike in the McDowell Mountains to the top of the McDowell Mountains which are in North Scottsdale, Arizona. And right after that, I got a little bit concerned and he climbed in these mountains often but for some reason I felt kind of an overwhelming concern about it almost like I was had a premonition kind of thing or whatever. And later as he prepared to leave, I asked him not to go. And he says, we're going dad, just like quit worrying about it, you know? So my wife and I went across town, we visited my nephew who was visiting. And later that afternoon, I get a phone call and thinking, oh, good, it's Brandon, he's back. It was actually a call from my older son, Stephen and he had been working that day, got a call from boys that Brandon was with on the mountain and Brandon apparently had some health problems. He was passing out they said and things weren't going well but their reception was really poor with the cell phone on the mountain so they asked if we could call. So Stephen relayed that to me, he was nervous and he was working so I contacted the authorities and then they sent a helicopter. We had about a 40 minute drive to get back home by the time we got to the base of the mountain there was a fire truck, ambulance, helicopter, about a hundred people I'd say it was pretty ominous. And then I went up to the first police officer I could find, told him who I was and he immediately introduced me to a chaplain which was concerning because I figured that was on the people's news. And short time after that, we had learned that Brandon had passed while he was climbing and we didn't really know the reason. Talked to his best buddy, Stu Garny afterward and Stu had told me that Brandon was not feeling great and he had, I guess he felt like he had a rapid heartbeat and he felt his limbs were kind of numb and then that he had vomited and then he said, I have to lay down, we lay down and that was it and he basically his eyes rolled back. So that was the low point for us as you can imagine we was very traumatic and we just went back home and people came over and tried to give us comfort and you'd go lay down for an hour and then you get up and talk to them and the grieving process is very very difficult especially when it's your kid I can't imagine anything worse, I've lost other people since then and just, I love them all but it's not the same. And that really led me into this journey and I don't know if you want me to continue or if you want to ask something else to kind of set up the next stage of where it took me. No, we definitely want to go to that next stage. The one thing that I'd add, it's a minor point but the MacDonald Mountains in Scottsdale are just right there, everybody looks at him it's not like he was extreme climbing and Everest. I think, I had one, what I see is an advantage over a lot of folks who may then lean on a religious faith or if they're non-believers in anything they would suffer more. I had a father who had tremendous abilities both as a psychic and as a medium as well and a lot of people may shake their head at that but I grew up with it, I know it's real and I saw examples that were undeniable and I had that as an evidence-based knowledge set in my mind and my heart that helped me immediately know that my son still existed in some form although at the time it didn't totally take away the pain it helped give me some measure of hope. Since you're gonna talk about your dad and we talked about it all those years ago in your first interview, I think it's a really important part of the story and I think it can be spun in a couple of different ways because I want you to tell folks who your dad was and how huge he was in terms of one of the most gifted psychics and he's on the, what amounts to the tonight show of today and Jimmy Kimmel or anything else you can think of and he's doing these incredible things he's blindfolded five times over and he's reading the serial numbers off of bills that people are randomly pulling out of his wallet but at the same time and this is always part of the story that I remember from you, he's not a perfect dad he's not a perfect husband, he's not a perfect guy either and your relationship with him is not perfect. So, at this point, I think that's what I read if I'm a guy, I hope I got that right but it's complicated. It's kind of life in general, that's life. Also, in the editing process, I will say that the publisher tried to create a little more tension there between my dad and I than was really there and I think that he just felt like that would make for a better read although everything in the book is true he just wanted to create that tension at a higher level than I saw because the truth is I always loved my dad and I never felt we had a broken relationship in any way. I would say that he wasn't around as much as I would have liked and my parents split when I was young and made it hard on me but let me go back to his kind of where he came from he and I actually interviewed my grandmother, his mom in 1997 to get more facts about him growing up so she actually recognized this in him as early as age three things that he would be able to know or whatever and then age five is when the breakthrough event happened he was born cross-eyed and his father his natural father actually teased him a lot about that and didn't like that and his brothers did too I mean paint the whole story they're growing up in Ohio you know and not like big city Ohio and you know he's the weird kid from the beginning and everyone's like why are you such a weird kid I mean what an upbringing and then to go on and realize that this is the guy who will become one of the most gifted psychics really that we can point to evidentially and saying we don't know what that means but he could do the stuff yeah they brothers called him crazy dick because he would make predictions and things you know or like they didn't even have a telephone and they went more in rural Ohio so he'd say hey grandpa's coming over and then sure enough grandpa would be there in 10 minutes or whatever and one time he says yeah grandpa's coming over but his beard will be gone and they're like you're crazy crazy dick you know he loves that beard he never shaved off grandpa shows up no beard turns out he was making taffy the beard got stuck in the tap and he had to shave it off but at the age of five he went into the Columbus Ohio Children's Hospital for corrective surgery on his eyes and when they were finished they had his eyes cupped in bandage and they actually tied him to a bed because they didn't want him messing with that and this one nurse felt bad for him and said I'll let you up you have to promise not to touch your eyes and he said that he wouldn't so she let him up she went on and her rounds came back to find him bouncing a ball against the wall and catching it thinking oh my God he's taking the bandages off but he actually hadn't which was probably even scarier to her and then she called in some doctors to say hey look at this kid and they tried some different tests on him he'd be in his bed and they'd have like one standing at the foot of the bed and another in the doorway saying okay who's in front of you now and he would always get it right so that was kind of a breaking out to where they knew you know he really had this ability but it wasn't until like age 12 or 13 that he kind of revisited it in a stronger way I think it was always there and he'd say those things like grandpa's coming or whatever but he actually stumbled into by then his parents had divorced and he was with his mother living in a little town called Ashley Ohio at the time and there was a spiritualist camp there that he stumbled into and this is kind of his introduction to this whole thing or thinking hey this is kind of normal for some people I'm not the only one. Shortly before going to that church he had lost his best friend in a car accident I don't know how whether it was weeks or months earlier and I think the kid's name was Melvin McCarty if I remember correctly so he stumbles in you know after this to the spiritualist camp he goes in and this woman asks you know what's your name or you know write your name on this piece of paper or ask a question he says I don't know what to ask she goes we'll just say a message please so he wrote that on paper, sat down and there was a man who at the time did what my dad would later do who blindfolded himself and got all these papers and he got my dad's and he says oh Richard Ireland he says I've got a young man here who has crossed over and he gives me a secret name and the secret name is Paisie well my dad and this kid had exchanged his code names and the kid's code name was Paisie so that wasn't on the paper and there's no way this guy could have known that so after that the man kind of took him under his wing and said you know I see you doing what I do someday and he kind of mentored him in the process but he kind of held off for the time being because my grandmother was informed like look at this age you don't want to get him to engage in this now he needs to grow up as a normal kid and it was around 18 or 19 that he really started developing more and demonstrating in public he ended up the National Spiritualist Association of churches at the time it still exists was a network of these spiritualist churches throughout America and he was ordained by them through the Morris Pratt Institute and then he became basically a traveling minister and demonstrate in the spiritualist tradition demonstrating this phenomena is really a core part of their whole thing they're not heavy on dogma they're more heavy on experience and demonstrating what you know Paul called the gifts of the spirit so that was my dad's kind of upbringing and breaking out so I would say he met my mom in 1956 at a church dance in Phoenix when he was traveling at the time he was set up on a blind date and they hit it off and then they were married pretty quickly so they were assigned to a few different churches but in like 1960 he broke out and he says even the spiritualist churches are still too dogmatic for me I want something where it's more free and open I just want to trigger people to think for themselves and come to their own spiritual conclusions so he started the University of Life church at that time and it was later probably in the mid-60s that he broke out of just the church thing and started doing secular venues, TV shows and whatnot because he really wanted to not just I guess talk to preachers of the choir so to say, but to open minds of skeptical people or just mainstream people who have no necessary belief set or whatever and that's when he got into doing things like the Steve Allen show and people could see that clip if they go to my website and other clips as well that's the best one I have unfortunately at this point I don't have a whole treasure trove of these but he essentially his he could do a variety of things including mediumship bringing through first and last name specifics about people that was very healing and he would do that more in the church in the secular venue it was presented more as entertainment because that's what people could digest at that time in the 60s and 70s and you had the whole Duke University parapsychology thing going on so he looked at that for credibility and essentially he would tape his eyes with 10 strips of Johnson Johnson medical tape which are sealed tightly around here and all of them and then three black blindfolds and then more taped down over here there are people who have tried to do blindfolds stuff where they are trickery they use trickery usually they would use coins over the eyeballs is what I've done some research on this and they would somehow learn how to push out the blindfold with the coins and then they could look down well my dad didn't use coins taped under the eyes the blindfolds over there and more taped down to here and when you see the information he'd share it wasn't just what was on the paper there was a lot more there very specific stuff about people's lives and direction and things like that and even though like if you watch this leave Allen he probably talks to, I don't know, eight or 10 people in a normal setting he'd have an audience of 100 people and he'd probably give a message to 50 people so there's no way you could have 50 plants out of 100 people and anyhow that's kind of the core of what he did and what he was about, I would say Yeah See, you were worried that I was gonna go all skeptical and yeah, yeah, just about to do that you know in reading about you personally one of the things I really resonated with is you just kind of saying I'm open, I'm open, I'm here, I'm a vehicle I'm about compassion, I get it I'm about compassion, I'm about love, I'm about spirit you take me where you need me to go but I also see you as kind of resistant to the idea that you need to go on the Steve Allen show the Jimmy Kimmel show it's like if that's where I'm pushed that's okay but we sure as hell see a lot of people that use the kind of end justifies the mean you know, God needs my help God needs me to set up a new church God needs me to recruit these people God needs me and it just it doesn't evidentially big picture, it doesn't fly it doesn't work it doesn't fit the whole scenario so let's jump right in really deep and am I right about that? You tell me how you understand your place in all this you're obviously a guy like I said who has feet planted in both worlds my dad, you know, I think his ego did he didn't go into it with an ego motivation but I think it did, it obviously expanded I think for a lot of people that's gonna be a natural outcome we're getting more attention and fame and that's what it's saying Why do you say natural outcome? I say the opposite of that it's an unnatural outcome I think if you're aligned with spirit you're constantly saying that's a pothole I don't fall into No, that's true and I think he got pulled back the time and again too for that and I think at the core of it his heart was in the right place I guess you have the question is if you have a gift to share how do you share it? Where's the framework? Do you go on TV? You're not be a hide it under a bushel you expose other people to things that tell them that there's more to us than just being a biological robot in the meaningless universe, like you said and that was really what he wanted to do so let's move on to me and my mission so after my son passed looking back on that framework and knowing that in my heart there's a spiritual realm and that some people can connect to it to share positive messages or give some sense of connection with those that they have luck that have passed that helped me and at that the first thing I did was contact my uncle because my father had passed by that point and my uncle had similar abilities and I asked him if he could help and he said well what can I do for you? I just said if you have any way to connect and let me know that Brandon's okay I'd appreciate that and it was I think three days later I was in the mortuary making arrangements either he called me or I called him I can't remember but he said hey Mark I've got something to share with you you know I tried to meditate last night I didn't get anything but I woke up this morning and did my meditation and your dad came to me he wanted you to know that Brandon that he was there to help Brandon cross over and adjust and that you're the best parents he ever could have had which is what we like to hear but then he also shared because we didn't know the cause of death at the time and he said your dad tells me that Brandon's death was caused by a lack of oxygen in his bloodstream that causes heart to fail and a couple of days after that I talked to the physician who did the autopsy she had noted that Brandon had died from a cardiac arrest caused by a severe asthma attack because it had dropped his blood oxygen level so essentially I got that before the autopsy and that was comforting after that I started thinking well shoot you know I'd like to have to dig deeper and know more and ironically now Brandon passed in January February I'm watching channel 12 News and Phoenix and lo and behold they're showing Gary Schwartz doing the human energy systems lab down at the University of Arizona he's testing different mediums this particular one that shared Allison Dubois a test medium with sitters behind that couldn't see and she's sharing some very specific information I was pretty impressed at that count I'd love to have a reading with her I'd love to be in that lab the very next day I get a call from a man named Jerry concert out of Dallas who was friends with my father and Jerry says, hey Mark I know you've been through a lot I know someone who might be able to help you her name's Allison Dubois here's a number you know so I call I made arrangements I got a reading with her later that year and then about a year later I actually ended up in that lab as a test sitter for a different medium for a discovery channel but so that was pretty cool and I had sought out I started meeting other people in this field in this field of mediumship of parapsychology Hey Mark share a little bit like you did with me some of the things that came through in the reading with Allison Dubois yeah and it was actually I'd say that she gave me a lot of good information but it was actually Linda Williamson and England gave me more of the future stuff but Allison had first off she didn't know me she knew really nothing about me when I came in some she had been told that my dad was a psychic that's all she knew but she was able to identify that I had a son pass cause of death you know she felt like it was a drowning in the lungs and actually the autopsy physician had described what had happened to Brandon a severe asthma attack causes the lungs to expand to almost touch in the middle that only happens in cases of severe asthma or drownings so that was ironic you know that description but I think with her the craziest thing was two weeks before I met with her I was handed a box that contained this manuscript that you mentioned earlier called your psychic potential and it was a book that had been written in like 1973 but was never published so the guy who gave it to me I said well how did you get this? He goes well before your dad died he gave it to me you were out of state at the time and I said well it's been 12 years since my dad died why are you giving this to me now? He goes I don't know I just feel like I'm supposed to so here it is two weeks later down with Allison to watch he goes your dad show me a book I feel it's his book and he's handing this to you it's for you to take forward does that make sense? I thought that was pretty crazy so one of the other mediums that I went to was Linda Williamson in England and she's famous or somewhat famous for having given John Edward a secret code now John Edwards a pretty well known medium on the East Coast John's mom died and they had agreed to a secret code like the Houdini code thing and so he had been to two mediums before her to see if somebody could bring through the code so he goes to Linda Williamson and she starts off and he thinks I'm more of the same and then all of a sudden she says your mother's here and she's telling me that she's the guiding light in your life he's like that's it that's a secret code she was a soap opera fan guiding light was her favorite show so that's her claim to think but when I had this meeting with Linda Williamson she had brought through a lot of information about me and my place at the time now I was a no buddy and I was I didn't have a book or anything at the time she said you know you're gonna you're gonna be leading an organization it's gonna form around you you know you don't really know how yet or why but they're gonna be guiding you and helping you arrange this and you'll meet the right people and people will come and build around you all you have to do is just tell your story and be yourself that's all you have to do and this thing will expand and grow I'm like okay well I don't know what you're talking about and but like brought up earlier helping parents heal now has close to a hundred affiliates worldwide and 20,000 members at least Facebook members on what's a private group it's actually hard to join because we wanna make sure the people who are joining actually are really parents one of the things she shared with you that I thought was interesting and again we can take in a lot of different directions but she says there is this network on the other side and you will be joining this network and you will be working with people on this side I hate when they always say side thing but with the living and with whatever this extended realm is right I mean that's part of the thing that's what she said she names her momo's monagu keen who is a researcher of mediums in parapsychology in England and ironically he had passed away within days of Brandon's passing but he did very good work at the time I can't remember who else she mentioned maybe some others but she said the network is comprised of people who were here long ago people on earth today that are involved and interested in this work but they always picked people of integrity is what she said and I haven't met a number of people both the researchers and these top mediums since then like I know Gary I know Trisha Robertson who you had on not too long ago she was the president of the Scottish Society for Psychological Research which is a branch of the SPR out of London I knew a guy at Lyon Playfair who's passed within the last year or so he was in the SPR and John Pointon who was president of the SPR Julie Byshele and others and then in the medium realms I mean and some of these have been really helpful to helping parents heal too and I could talk when we get to that about what differentiates our group from others but like Gordon Smith UK highly recognized guy very high integrity person very gifted Suzanne Giesman who you've had on the show dive into helping parents heal for a minute what is unique? What are you guys doing? Here's how this whole thing started it's kind of wacky but now I'm a few years into this think back this is like 2010 or so and I had Soul Shift out by now and I started to do some talks and workshops and stuff and some of the mediums I've met actually invited me hey we wanna do a workshop together you give a talk and then we'll do training and I was actually using some of my dad's material out of your psychic potential that book kind of boiling it down into key elements for people who wanted to try and develop so I'm doing a talk with Jamie Clark who's one of the mediums mentioned in Soul Shift and during that there's a break and this woman comes up to me and she goes oh hi I just moved here from Florida and I'm trying to network and meet new people her name is Suzanne Wilson and she's fairly big now but she said well it's ironic about your son because I just met a woman and gave a reading to this woman named Elizabeth Boyce and her son died on a mountain as well that was in the Himalayas he was on a field trip for the University of Arizona actually he was a cheerleader for the football team on the cheer squad and he went on this trip and they basically took them up the mountain too fast he got altitude sickness and died so I said well you know what let me give you a book to give to her as a gift so I gave her a signed copy two days later I get a call from Elizabeth and she says I've read your book already I love that I'd like to meet you and your wife so we got together and she said hey I'm doing a group meeting I put together this group you know here in Scottsdale Cave Creek area for parents who have been through this because she went to I'm not gonna name the organization's name but another organization for bereaved parents that was much larger and she says it was just so depressing because I saw people that were there that had been going for 10 years and all they do is draw on how bad things are and what happened and just coming back to the same place they're not really healing so I wanted to have kind of a different vibe so she invited me to be her first speaker so I go to this meeting there's like 30 people there and it actually was very uplifting and some people got stuff off their chest or whatever there were two fundamentalist Christians that showed up trying to convert people I guess to get them to go to their church while we were there but I knew enough biblical stuff to be able to talk through their arguments and things and eventually it's like, hey look people are here because they need this you don't need to be here trying to recruit but the meeting on the whole was very good Elizabeth then started doing these meetings once a month and I went to them as often as I could fast forward maybe six to 12 months I'm leaving a job in the corporate world at the time and trying to figure out what I'm gonna do next and I'm still in the corporate world by the way unfortunately but not for much longer but my other me and friend Tina Powers who you may have read about in messages from the afterlife very gifted, wonderful person she's talking to me she was Mark I think really your main purpose in life is to help other parents who have lost kids and maybe think about how you could have some sort of organization to do that so that was kind of my trigger and then I thought, well, you know there is a need for that on a big scale you know, Elizabeth's meetings work well but it's just one location so instead of reinventing the wheel why don't I just talk to her you know really what we need is a website a newsletter, some other resources and then the blueprint what she does and take it out so I contacted her and I said hey, do you wanna try this on a bigger scale and so long behold, she agreed she was excited at the time she had the organization's name was Parents United and Lost and they said, how about helping parents heal and she said, oh, I love that so that's what we did, you know I built the initial website using some template and then we started the newsletter and then expanded, we put a board together and this thing just grew like wildfire to where it is now and you can ask her the questions that I can tell you what the main differentiators are Well, I think there's a couple of different questions to ask like you mentioned Julie Beischel and I've known Julie for a long time she's been on the show multiple times and I think she's a fantastic Winbridge Institute she left University of Arizona working under Gary Schwartz and wanted to do solid research on after death communication one of her findings which is all about what you guys at Helping Parents Heal is about is that grief is something we've studied for a long time it's a healthcare issue there's millions and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on counseling and all that if you look at the efficacy of a medium reading for grief, it's highly significant so if you want to take it strictly from a science standpoint there's a lot there but there's this gap between what people who might have experienced this grief a knowledge gap between what they might know and feelings they might have about gee, you know I've heard about that or I have a friend who's done that that sounds kind of wacky oh that goes against my religious beliefs that could be a scam all the rest of that stuff one of the purposes of what you're doing is to kind of close that gap and point people towards some of the real information that's out there in terms of the healing that can come through these readings, right? Right, so there I kind of come up with like five pillars of healings but one of them is hope and that's what's missing from these other organizations because they've done a lot of discussion about these topics or people's personal experiences a lot of people will have their own ADC they'll have some sort of visitation and they want to share this with other people but they aren't allowed in these other forums so we openly embrace that we don't have any dogma we don't, you know we embrace people whether they're atheists or Jehovah Witnesses not that one would come to us you know, any background it's really about people who've been through this helping each other you know part of that comes from hopefully people heal if they have a supportive family network that doesn't always happen and the next thing is having people around that have been through the same thing that they can relate to third one is service providing service to others heals you too people aren't always immediately able to do that but when they can it will help bring it around the next is guilt and letting go of guilt and anger towards others or towards yourself because I guarantee you 90% of people who have a loved one past blame themselves just like Elaine Pagels did and it's irrational but you can do it anyhow, you know so letting go of that guilt forgiving others who you may feel are had a hand in the passing of your loved one either directly or indirectly and then the last one is hope peace and the hope comes in our view from what we've seen from people thinking or understanding there's more than just physical reality and that their kid does go on in some other form in some other way maybe we can't explain that to the degree that we like but that hope element's huge and so having sharing information whether it's on NDEs and all the research and books available on that you know my background and understanding my area of expertise is more with the medium stuff I love the NDEs stuff and it's probably even a better tool for that but the thing is not everybody's gonna have an NDE but anybody could see a medium but the other part that comes in there is you have to make sure they're getting a qualified medium because there are a lot of people that are not gifted and they think they are they're just kidding themselves and there's frauds out there too I've actually encountered that and it's very, very frustrating and that's what the skeptics, the debunkers cling to and jump all over you know they'll say oh they're just using people and they're using these breed or breed people like we're stupid or something and that's why you know I actually set up my own medium certification program and for any mediums that are gonna be as an affiliate or as a provider on HPH they have to go through this process and I'm not as stringent as a Julie Weischer would be that's not my purpose I personally know that this phenomenon exists, it's real and there are people that are good at it so I come from that standpoint I'm just trying to separate the wheat from the chaff so that people who are bereaved are not going to somebody who's either unqualified or is out for the wrong reasons Yeah, I was gonna bring that up not actually not those points but some other ones your website findacertifiedmedium.com is a really important service in a couple of ways one, what I've experienced and I am like so tangential to the stuff that you're talking about but I do get people on a regular basis who email me and wanna know about the medium thing and you overcome two of the problems which is one lot of people when they get to that point they've gone through a lot of work already to get to the point where they can even think about reaching out to a medium and then I can only imagine in your situation where you're dealing with people with this tremendous loss so it's a huge thing for them and then they go out it's like okay I'm gonna go look at here's a medium and it's $300, $400 a session and the book for the next two years and I read in your site that that's one of the things that you saw was you wanted to tackle it's like hey there's a lot of good mediums out there that you can sit down with them in a relatively short period of time and it doesn't have to be outrageously expensive kind of thing right? I mean, do I have that right? That's exactly why I did it because I know some excellent mediums that are celebrity mediums are well-known well-regarded and some of them are just phenomenal but like you said, they may have a two-year wait list and some charge a lot and part of the reason I'm not gonna justify what they charge it's up to them what they want to charge Exactly who cares? I hate to be getting into that stuff why even people talk at you charge what you want it's a business, it's a market Yeah and some of them it's very draining there's one I just learned about I haven't read from them but I trust the people who I know Caroline Clapper charges a lot but she's phenomenal Allison was phenomenal there's a lot of folks out there John Edwards phenomenal but they have limited capacity it takes a lot out of them and some of them like Caroline does one per day because that's all she can physically handle So I needed to find other resources for people that were more affordable and that were vetted and that had availability and so I think I'm up over 30 of them now we're constantly testing it's amazing how often we're getting people wanting to apply for it it's I think it's getting better known out there and we do need more sitters too so if anyone wants to volunteer as a test sitter I'm totally open to that but there are responsibilities that come with it and some people are all excited to get the free reading but they don't want to do the back end work so if they're interested in this they can go to my website hit my contact link and write me but here's what I'm looking for you're gonna have to sit through one or more readings it's gonna be recorded you're gonna have to transcribe it when it's done and then you're gonna have to grade it and that means going through statement by statement to know if it's correct, incorrect or it's an indeterminable statement and if it's a bonus statement like okay you got my son's birthday you named my son you said his favorite pizza was pepperoni and olive you know whatever that's what's required on the back end so if anyone's interested, hey we need more sitters maybe we'll do that as an episode on Skepticole awesome because then I think that would draw attention to it and I think it also would kind of reveal the protocol behind this that you use so real quickly I got a bunch of skeptical questions I want to get into but let's not leave this topic before because you just kind of touched on it what about, like you were just mentioning dues, don'ts, advice for a medium reading but you were talking about it in terms of the protocol you guys use in kind of judging these mediums what about in general, what do you tell people when they're considering going and having that sitting and what do you tell them to get the most out of it? Well first off, pick somebody who's been validated that either you personally know someone who's gone and trust or a list like mine but make sure you go into somebody who has good references I'd say and when you go there, do your best if you can for them not to be front loaded with any information about you I hate to be deceitful but if they don't even know your name, that's good if you could somehow make the appointment with maybe a friend makes the appointment for you or whatever and again, I hate to use trickery but if you're going to somebody that's been vetted I don't think you need to worry about it as much anybody on my site's already done five blinded readings themselves you can trust them but I find that some people are so skeptical that if they go to somebody and they get good information and they're gonna think, how did they get that? They knew my name or whatever So let's just interject there for a minute because you're kind of going over it in the big picture I totally get what you're saying and the little bit that I've experienced with this I give people the same advice because which I think you're really getting at is that last part that you've got right there is the the most significant thing you can get out of that reading is validation that there is this extended realm and a lot of people I think go in it expecting or not even expecting but hoping for the home run kind of, you know huge kind of thing and I think it's much better to go in and saying you know what, if I could get validation that there really isn't afterlife and that my loved one is there that would probably be the most and it is so that's why you set it up the way that you do and you do it like a frickin experiment so you can come through and say, dang I gave that person nothing and they came through and gave me this, this, this, this I mean I almost think anyone especially for a first reading should be going in and following the protocol that you use to test your mediums because at the end of the day I think for a long time after that's what you're gonna reflect back on and go no, wait a minute, I really didn't give them anything and I didn't answer and I didn't lead them on and I didn't get all excited, you know what I'm saying? So that's the other part of it is, you know there's front loading and then there's cold reading so you wanna avoid potential of either so the front loading is them knowing anything about you before you get there. Cold reading is a technique that's a lot of debunkers claim is common I know it probably happens but I don't think it's common or common with good mediums and that whole idea is that they're reading your body language they're reading your reaction or you're feeding them information without even thinking about it, telling them too much so you wanna minimize your responses not just to say yes and no but don't go overboard and say, oh yeah, yeah that's my son, he was this tall and he rode a skateboard don't get too excited and go off there just try and measure that but you wanna be positive because it is an energetic connection the medium does feed off the sitter's energy and they need that positive environment and some feedback, like, hey, yeah, that's right that statement makes sense to me, thank you, go on that kind of approach so just don't spill your guts and try not to overreact. See what I always do my thing is kind of related to that is upfront I tell the medium I say, look I am not here to debunk you I'm totally confident that there is this realm and you can connect to it and then I just say, for me what would be most beneficial for me right now is to not respond to anything you're saying if you're open-minded or you've read books on the subject and you already kind of believe you may not need to go to the nth degree but if you're a very skeptical person and you're gonna question stuff after the fact then just go ahead and have a friend make the appointment for you and pay for you and then you can reimburse them and then when you get on, you can reveal, you know hey, my name is actually Mark Steve couldn't make the call today, sorry I hope you're doing the reading for me it's still gonna go well if they're a good medium so I don't think that's always necessary but if you're a skeptical type and you're gonna question it after the fact like I've had people do that that had come to me and said, hey, I want to go to somebody good and I'll steer them to somebody good and then they're like, oh, that was too good you know, they must know they didn't but you didn't listen to me you know, if you're that tight that's probably what you want to do. You know, and I want to talk about a little bit more about that type because there is, we're all different types and I know this is like a little bit controversial and probably pissed some people off but that's okay the whole grief thing is interesting to me because I have four kids my wife and I love our kids we can't stand the slightest little injury emotionally or physically happening so I can't imagine the loss I can't imagine the grief at the same time I don't do grief because it's a process it's really a skeptical process but I like have no doubt about the survival of consciousness because of the evidence because of scientific evidence I have no doubt about the after life as it's described in the dear death experience and as it's described from mediumistic readings although they contradict I think there's a common thread through there so I don't want to put down anyone's grief but that's not me that's not where I'm about and I don't feel like I would totally be in that mode if something happened so I just think it's all part of the spiritual journey I think that we enter in on and I guess I just want to throw that out there because I feel like that has to be okay too I love that you come from a compassionate heart place and that's the space that you're trying to expand and I am too and that can manifest in you one way and it can manifest in me in another way of saying I don't really resonate with your overwhelming sense of grief either and that's okay, that's your journey but it's not my journey do you get what I'm saying at all? I do, but I think until you've been through that you can't imagine what that feels like the other thing is for us, my wife and I heal way fast compared to other people for a lot of people they're years into this and they're still going through it I'd say within two weeks we were like 70, 80% it was pretty phenomenal people couldn't believe it but it's because I had that knowledge in that background that I do just like you shared that you have so I think in your mind you'd think I'm not gonna agree because of that but part of it is there is a biological part component but there's also the sense that this is a major change and my kid, I'm never gonna be with them in the same form they were in and not be able to relate to them that way again, that's a loss so that part you may think you wouldn't agree but I think you would but you would probably heal much faster than those people Yeah, I hear you and maybe that came off the wrong way because it's certainly not for me to say certainly not for me to judge other people and certainly not for me to predict how I would handle that situation what I'm just exploring is the possibility that we have to be open to the other side of that too which is let's not judge people who are experiencing it a different way Well, just hanging on a little bit like Elizabeth Boyce and who's my partner in this and she's president of the organization she's so upbeat and so positive and has been since her son passed I mean right away she felt him actually hug her as she describes it at the time of his passing like he was immediately there and spirit form or whatever however you want to say that she's always so upbeat people sometimes question is she for real because you got people that are deeply in grief and they have been and they just don't understand how somebody could get to that point but you know everybody has their own process and their own way of dealing with stuff like that I did an interview a few months back with Dr. Mark Pitzdick who is a colleague of Gary Schwartz at University of Arizona and they're working on this project called the Soul Phone and I gave Mark a pretty hard time because I have some real issues in the way that they present that and the premise behind it and it pops up again even in some of the stuff that you're talking about it's kind of this God needs our help kind of thing you know it's like we have to develop a Soul Phone technology so that we can communicate with the dead because God needs our help in developing this technology for the future and there's something about that that just is like okay you know I can hear that I just challenge that I wonder if that's really the case especially since this kind of idea that God's needs our help we've seen it misapplied in so many different ways for every war every scam artist every cult leader has kind of used the same thing on the other hand I don't discount the possibility that technology is going to play a role in whatever this connection we have is with the extended consciousness realm and if we understand or think anywhere deeply about near-death experience we see right off the bat that there's certainly a direct connection between near-death experience and resuscitation which is a medical technology more people are resuscitated than used to be resuscitated and there's better resuscitation so we already have a technology link there to deal with but there are these two elements that we have to kind of weigh and I think that's what makes this so challenging if we're really willing to engage in the data you know and then the thing that I really pushed Mark on was you know this is typical Gary Schwartz I love Gary Schwartz but he really riles a lot of people for a lot of reasons one of the things he comes through is hey guys not only are we developing the soul phone but we have a whole group on the other side that's helping us they're the A team and like by the way it includes Michael Jackson he's an A team player isn't he and I'm like whoa I don't know a lot about Michael Jackson but a little bit that I think I know about who he was on this side I want to put him on my A team so you know what do you think about all of that that I just threw out there I know Mark actually he actually has been a supporter of HVH and writes articles for our newsletter and so forth he's a good guy but and I heard that episode by the way so I got the gist of it I'm personally I don't think God needs our help I think things come together to help people and maybe a medium will help somebody at a point they need it or whatever do we need to go overboard in terms of trying to control everything I don't personally think so the soul phone to me seems like a glorified region board in a way like a mechanism for I don't feel the same way about that as I do having a medium reading with somebody who's a sincere person as opposed to some device or whatever I don't know if they're able to have a breakthrough and it helps folks out and it does take us to the next step fine it just the way it's been described to me I don't know that it's that it does it will do that maybe it will what do you think about technology I'm really torn you know if I have to come back to a bigger philosophical view of why I think we're here and we go through challenges in life because I think we're here to refine ourselves and to grow and suffering is part of that so I think we need little things to help us carry on and get through but I you know it's just like I'm trying to think of a recent interview you had where people talk about suffering and challenges and as though it's always a bad or horrible thing and I think that those help refine us so what's the technology for I'm torn it's tricky isn't it because the idea that we need technology and the technology is going to advance us and that there's this group your network or Gary Schwartz's network that are actively trying to get that new app out it just doesn't ring true to me and one of the ways it doesn't ring true is because the whole thing with time I'm just not sure you know let me ask you this question straight up do you think we are in a special time right now that's been put about by a lot of folks I don't know I mean I think it's special in that within the last 10 to 15 years people are more open to this phenomena and there's much more access to information about near-death experiences mediumship ADCs deathbed communications all these kinds of things than ever before so in that way I'd say yeah it's a different time it's a it's a time of change and progress towards hopefully countering materialism and opening people's minds and I don't think that's going to happen through academia you've been skeptical about a change within that whole realm and dismantling materialism but I think it can happen at the grassroots level and that's where all these things play in if there's enough people who have an experience or are open to this or have read the material they don't maybe want their tax dollars going to fund the ongoing secular materialism and that whole philosophy that's happened at this point so from that standpoint I think it is a special time in a way I don't think it's like some people portray you know massive shift in vibration and people floating off or anything like crazy like that well it and I don't even know that that's crazy I think that's all on the table you know one of the more interesting interviews I did in the last couple years was with a guy named Bruce Fenton and his wife Danny Fenton and they've done this kind of amazing research and she's incredibly psychic herself but he's very much of an archaeology get the evidence kind of guy researcher 780,000 year history tectites in Australia that match up with the native Aboriginal people saying visitation from aliens which anyone who isn't down with that just you know pick up the New York Times please you know pick up the Washington Post I don't know what the real story is but where they're leading us right now is acknowledging the reality of all that stuff and it has to has to factor into all this discussion we're having because E.T. is telepathic E.T. seems very connected into this extended realm I wouldn't even say connected but they have a different way apparently of interfacing this extended realm that's what all the accounts say but back to the time thing it just shatters it take Michael Cremo if you're familiar with him they'll forbid an archaeology stuff which is phenomenal phenomenal hard science you know in the the minor 49ers guys are digging their digging digging digging away in the gold mine and they find a hammer buried in rock that's millions of years old and it's a freaking hammer and how did it so there is a lot of evidence pointing to the idea that the timeline that we're operating under and part of it is because our religious traditions kind of box us into a very narrow timeline is completely unsustainable in terms of the evidence we have and that would push me in a completely different direction regarding time but I'm also with you in terms of everything that you said and then in terms of there does seem to be an increased number of people that are having these kinds of experiences and we can even point to technology that would point to that you know there's not only resuscitation but for gosh sakes how can we get past the genetic revolution and the fact that we are on the verge of being the last humans I mean that is just we're gene splicing and you can't stop that that just is going to happen AI is going to happen you can be the Luddite who wants to bury your head in the sand but the rest of the world is going to move on so I'm torn on it I just I wish it was more a real part of the conversation because I think it gets into a very challenging bit of subtlety about all this stuff that we're talking about do you have any thoughts on any of that? Well do you only thought I had I was kind of drifting off to this whole idea some of these materialists thinking like oh I want to embed my consciousness in some sort of AI robot thing so I can live forever because their view of what life is is strictly materialist I don't know how you do something like that but I don't know where AI is going what's going to happen hopefully it could be useful to society and to humanity and help us repair some of the damage we've done but I don't know I mean there there are people with alternative motives ulterior motives potentially too that could stir it in the wrong direction as long as we have divisiveness and people who are wanting to use it for other reasons or against other cultures or nations or whatever it could go the wrong way so I I just don't know well but is that far enough given what we know you know the show you know we've covered the MKUltra stuff extensively we are MKUltra we are living that our society United States of America we are putting Whitley Streber at nine years old in a Faraday cage in order to create Disassociative Identity Disorder because it creates an opening for beings that occupy this extended consciousness realm and we don't understand the topography of that extended consciousness realm we can talk about the goodness and the healing and all that stuff but we don't understand the other forces that seem to occupy that realm I've mentioned frequently on the show my interview with Dr. Tom Zinser who was a psychologist in who was a psychologist and hypnotherapist in Grand Rapids, Michigan before he retired but part of his whole experience in counseling with people and he's a people helper right he's trying to help people overcome traumatic experiences that have caused them to have this kind of ego-state separation which we all have to some extent and we can all relate to those different parts of ourselves and he's trying to help people integrate that I don't want to digress too far but sometimes the interference that's coming is coming from your mother who's the spirit right that's what he reports so I think that again and when we talk about mediums and we talk about all this stuff it's like we have to broaden the conversation and understand just the range of possibilities that exist out there so the person comes in and they're anxious and they're having this anxiety and this other stuff and through his work and through deep hypnosis Tom is able to discover that it is a deceased mother who's there who's causing that and then he's able to bring you can probably relate to this or we don't know if it's true but we can relate to the story brings in the spirit guide brings in the light helps reach the mother helps show her that she needs to move on and that this is really what needs to happen but this whole I don't want to call it a story this whole bit of evidence this whole bit of data puts a completely different spin on it as does the darkest part of the MK Ultra program we're like sure bring in that demonic entity as long as they'll do some work for us for the United States government as long as they'll do give us some stuff yeah you can come in here you can invade the mental space and traumatize this child no problem with me let's see what we can get out of it yeah I I agree with you that there is a higher hierarchy of consciousness and if people dabble in this and don't think about that it's a mistake I mean the mediums that I know all have a practice they're trying to get to a higher level where they're guarding themselves I mean I can't prove that this is how it works but it seems to work because the information they bring through is healing and helpful it's not for those kinds of purposes but yeah there are other I think other variations of the realms that maybe lower in vibration consciousness whatever you want to call it that people might tap into and like you said if they don't care they open themselves up to potential problems associated with that what about the scary part that the more we look the deeper we look into the Jeffrey Epstein's and Ghislaine Maxwell is that that is us that is the United States of America Empire that is who we are that is how we got on top and that is how we will stay on top for the next however long we stay on top that's unsettling yeah how do we change that I mean it's sad are we supposed to change that which gets back to this doing thing gets back to my thing world what world are we really about trying to change this world or and again I relate it back to I relate to your model let me try and increase my ability to be compassionate to the ones around me to the ones let me see the whole thing let me look at the abyss and understand that it's there so that I can step over it not that I can stare into it but let me not get fooled into that's my job is to develop a frickin soul phone no just you know I was talking to Dr. Evan Alexander and terrific guy I love what he's done and what he's been through and you know of course he's the guy wrote the New York Times best-selling book well what's the name of it he wrote for heaven right for heaven you're right you're right so anyways you know Harvard neurosurgeon all this who was put through the ringer by whatever those cultural forces are out there that want to deny that you are more that you have a connection that you're a spiritual being whatever that energy is and I think that energy is very dark and very subtly dark a lot of people don't see through it but anyways I'm talking to Evan Alexander and you don't get to be a Harvard neurosurgeon without being a doer without being a get the job done kind of thing and I bounce this off of him that like you know I struggle with it as kind of a non-dual kind of yoga kind of person world what world why are we trying to do constantly because I'm a doer too you know at UR2 we're both business guys and he goes you know what I gotta back up I gotta agree with you my partner Karen that's what she says be the love you are and I thought that was such an awesome quote it's not be love which is more doing it's just that's what you are you're a spirit being you're pure love just allow that to be you don't have to make a freaking soul phone it's not your the world isn't waiting for you to do that I don't know that I could see both sides of it I just throw that out there as potentially an interesting topic to kind of hash out yeah I think if all of us do our individual parts and we all take that path then you can bring up then change could happen whether we think it's supposed to happen or not but if we each are loving and caring and we're being that love like you said I think that can have an exponential effect it kind of goes back to the grassroots kind of thing I talked about earlier and maybe if we have this infrastructure of our government within the world that we're not going to be able to change or whatever then maybe that's the best approach individually collectively we treat people the right way we show love caring empathy compassion and that's who we are that's the best we can do maybe and that's maybe that's good enough yeah I almost think it has to be good enough and I also always come back to the ET thing because people who want to leave that out of the equation it's like can't leave that out of the equation I don't know what to make of it I don't have any special knowledge I don't have any special connection visitation information any of that stuff I just look at the data and the data is right there in your face but the one point that intrigues me about that is apparently where they're at in the technology leap they could do whatever they want right I mean they disabled those nuclear weapons in Wyoming or Montana wherever they were they can just as easily use them to do it and maybe some of them are doing some very nefarious things but I guess where I'm scaling that is on the hierarchy scale at any time God could change everything right I mean that's kind of implied in this whole thing so again it gets back to be I think I just want to take my foot off the gas of the I need to be the change agent I do need to do everything that feels like the right thing for me at the moment but I wonder if I really need to think that I'm the doer you know rather than just being it's an interesting dichotomy in this world because I think you have to have enough ego for certain things to happen but at the same time that's not really who we are it's part of manifesting something in the world that maybe has to unfold so maybe it's a balance between those I'm not I'm not sure that's well put and you're not sure but you keep going forward so where do you see yourself going forward from here what's gonna what's gonna happen with this work you're doing well once I quit the corporate world hopefully you for too long I mean I'm getting there I would like to invest more time with the helping parents the organization to do even more for people and to expand for people whose needs aren't being met that have that need and I'm writing another book now that's more about what it was like growing up with the father that I had and then sharing some of those insights and stories I would like to you know continue that certification process for the mediums maybe get back to you and see if we can do an experiment with that that would be kind of cool we can even see if we can pull in skeptical listeners but if we can share some of that I think we'll have to figure out how to format that yeah and then you know on a personal level I like to travel I look forward to traveling overseas again and I'm a grandfather now and spend more time with my baby granddaughter and the other one that's on the way so those are some of the aspirations I have for the future and as you know I like to do a lot of different things I play guitar I like to write songs I like to write books I'm slow at doing it but when you when you're dabbling in a lot of areas it can take time but I just enjoy people I enjoy like your podcast just opening up my mind to new perspectives and hearing the guests that you have and where they're coming from I enjoy that and I'm even doing with Gordon Smith right now a mediumship development course so I'm going through that myself just to see what's there because I've actually had some of my own experiences I mean coming from the lineage I have is Julie Byshell notes you know it's often a hereditary thing and I've had some pretty crazy stuff that you know validated I do have this at some level I've just not really sought to bring it out or do that and I think if I ever did it would kind of shift you know the perspective on who I am and what I'm doing today is then you can no longer be this impartial person who's who's writing about this and and everything yeah I wanted to mention that we've kind of touched on this but you really have throughout your journey opened yourself up to a lot of things I love the story I was hoping we could get to the story on the chakra centering story it's just an amazing story but we'll leave that for people to pick up messages from the afterlife a book that describes that and a lot of other encounters and you are definitely someone who's living through that spiritual growth in a very real way and people also should check out your psychic potential very very interesting and we look forward to hearing more about your relationship with your dad and what that was like growing up and then you know I think the the twist there is you don't go in that direction you know and then you're pulled in that direction and that whole thing has got to unfold itself so a lot to stay in touch with and keep track of so it's been absolutely terrific having you on Mark thanks again for joining me thanks Alex I had fun thanks again to Mark Garland for joining me today on Skeptico the one question I'd have to tee up from this interview is do you think technology has a role to play in after-death communication let me know your thoughts track me down in the Skeptico forum email me find me however you're guided to find me that's going to do it for today until next time take care and bye for now