 on this episode of Skeptico, a show about psychokinesis and science and a show about love. I have an interview coming up in a minute with Cherily Black, and they remember that I mentioned her name during my recent interview with Dr. Dane Raiden. We were talking about the connection between near-death experiences and psychic abilities and whether there was such a connection, and we were squabbling over the question of whether there really is right and wrong. And I brought up Cherily because, well, she's a pretty extraordinary person in a number of ways. First, from this kind of supernatural, stranger things kind of way, she can move things with her mind. And she's one of probably only a handful of people in the world who've ever been tested in a laboratory to see whether this stuff is real. And it's real. She can really do it. And the other thing that's extraordinary about Cherily is she's a survivor of multiple near-death experiences. And we're going to talk about how all that might relate to the bigger picture. So let me start with a clip from Stranger Things. Remember the Netflix series, the kids and the little girl who was MK-UltraD by these evil intelligence agencies in order to develop her psychic powers. Here's a couple of really short clips of her doing kind of this psychic stuff. They're really short. Superpowers. Okay, so that's Netflix. That's Hollywood. And here's the real deal. Here's Cherily Black from the upcoming interview. Because your feelings, if they got real intense, could cause Stranger Things kind of stuff, lights going on and off, people feeling it, that kind of stuff, right? That's what you're experiencing. Yeah, that you could scare people with it. I mean, even just spinning the wheel into the pinwheel, I've had lots of people in my family who've seen it and said, oh, that's really creepy. And they don't say, oh, that's really interesting and cool. They look at it and go, that's really creepy. Stop it. Tell the story about when you were a kid in school. I hate that story. And because that was just an event that kind of had me labeled as a monster for years in school and really opened me up to so much abuse from teachers. And so there was a day when I was sitting there drawing in my sketchbook, trying not to be overwhelmed. And the teacher basically hit me in the face and threw my sketchbook across the room. I guess nobody had told this particular teacher that this was allowable behavior. And I was just so shocked. And the sketchbook basically picked itself up and launched itself at the teacher and hit her in the back. And here's another clip where she's telling a story about being in these laboratories where they're testing her ability to do PK. Yeah, that was actually not UVA. That was people from the Ryan Research Center. It was Jim Carpenter who wrote the book First Sight. He basically kind of organized this thing where we all went to this really good Mexican restaurant. And he just wanted to show people this effect because he thought it was really interesting. And so yeah, we had the pinwheel and the jar on the table at the restaurant. And I got it to spin. And then we were passing it around and everyone was getting it to spin inside the jar. And people were coming over and looking at what was going on at the table. And it was kind of this fun thing that everybody was doing. Okay, that's that. But as I mentioned, this is really a show about bigger, bigger, bigger stuff, the stuff that really matters. Because this whole psychokinesis, stranger things, superpowers, once you get past the fireworks, forces us to look at some really, really important questions about who we are, about what really matters. And it kind of knocks the nerd, bird, soulless, transhumanist, scientist on there. But if you really think about it, here's a final clip from the upcoming interview. And you're approaching it from a let's connect the dots and look for evidence, which, and I mean, there's a scientist part of me that's like, yeah, but and you're right, if the pinwheel spins in the jar, then there's something more to us. That's it. And if there's something more to us, then I would suggest that the burden of proof is on those who were always fooled into thinking that there wasn't more to us to put forth the best evidence that some of that more isn't love. Stick around, my interview with Cherilee Black is coming up next on Skeptico. Welcome to Skeptico, where we explore countries of science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Cares. And today, we welcome Cherilee Black back to Skeptico. Cherilee, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. Hi, Alex. Thanks for inviting me back. See, you thought I was going to do some long intro, and then I tricked you by just immediately saying hi. But I am going to do a little bit of an intro because you joined me back for people who remember or want to go back and listen on episode 470 of Skeptico to talk about your experience with psychokinesis. Primarily, that's what we talked about is your experience in the laboratory. So psychokinesis, just so we remember, is we talked about it kind of in Stranger Things thing or the men who stare at goats, movie kind of thing, people who can do things with their mind. So in your case, the reason that these major laboratories were scientists, real scientists, like at the University of Virginia or at Rhine or Laurentian and Canada or other places, they wanted to invite you in because you could really do this stuff. And like one of the experiments that you've demonstrated in these laboratories and other places where you've posted videos, there's like this sealed jar, and there's a little pinwheel in it. And you can, like the girl on Stranger Things, you can do something with just your mind and you can make the pinwheel spin. And that changes everything we know about science in some real, real fundamental ways. And we're going to talk a little bit about that, talk a lot about that, because that point that I just made there is really not argued. It just isn't fully processed. And then the politics around science around that aren't really processed. And you've been on the front line of that for a number of years. You're still a PhD candidate in good standing, even though you're getting your PhD in geology, you were very involved with the scientific part of understanding this psychokinesis thing, this parapsychology thing, and what goes on in these labs. Ma'am, is everything I've just said accurate and correct? Is there anything you want to change? No, as far as I know, I'm still a PhD candidate in good standing, but that may change after this comes out. Who knows? Okay, point number two that you should know about Shirley, and this is all part of my long introduction, is that she's had near-death experience. And I said that in a funny way, because I didn't know how to say it, because when you say somebody has had three near-death experiences, I know from experience that people freak out. They freak out, and they kind of, for some reason, they don't believe it. Like if somebody says, I've had a near-death experience or somebody, oh, yeah, I've heard about that. I saw a video, I read a book, yeah. Somebody says, I've had three near-death experiences. Oh, come on, man, you're making that up. That ain't real. Well, in your case, it is real. And if people want, they can go to INS, the International Association of Near-Death Experiencers, I think, or... Near-death studies. Oh, near-death studies. I'm sorry. Good. Yeah. Where you did a really terrific presentation. It's up on YouTube, like 100,000 views. And what I loved about that presentation, let me pause for a second. I'm going to bring that up just so people can see it. You're laughing because I've just pulled up on the screen if people want to share it. Presentation that you gave that audience, terrific. You're really a very effective speaker. You're very articulate. You're just smart. But you included in here, I guess, in a very nice, non-threatening Canadian kind of way, proof that what you're saying is true. And proof about some of the larger aspects of your near-death experiences, that they really kind of fit this pattern in your life of kind of extraordinary experiences. And I'm highlighting that by bringing up this little image where you're showing like your second or third grade report card, where the teacher has written, Shirley seems to be in another world at times. So the connection that I am making, because you have made it in this presentation and in your fantastic book, which I'm going to make sure one way or another, that thing gets published because it's a very, very important book in my opinion. But you document this stuff. This stuff really happened. The stuff, the psychokinesis stuff really happened in the laboratory. Scientists have reported on it. Scientists have said, yes, this is the woman we've had in. This is the peer reviewed work we did. Here we published it. And in the case of near-death experience, it's the same way. You really did come very, very close to dying in your third near-death experience in a horrific, horrific car accident that they left your husband at the time to say, come identify the body thing. There was no way they thought you were going to live through it. So that those near-death experiences are also connected in a way with the psychokinesis. And that's another thing we're going to want to talk about because that's point number two of this whole journey. Ms. Black, is everything I said accurate and correct so far? Number two. So you really did have three near-death experiences. So here's the clincher of this long introduction. So I just published an interview with Dr. Dean Raiden. Cheryl Lee has been a longtime friend of mine through the show. And not in a kind of waving her arms out there, I'm so great. I've done all these things kind of thing. Actually, just the opposite. I didn't know really anything about her background. I was like, okay, there was somebody in the forum, seems to know this stuff. Well, over the years, as I've come to know, Cheryl Lee, I'm more and more and more amazed at what her background is and what she knows at a very, very personal level and has experienced. So I've come to rely on her more and more in terms of just writing her emails and bouncing. What do you know about this guy? What do you know about this thing over there? What do you think is really going on here? And she's been very generous and very open about talking about that. So now I'm going to give her a chance to talk because what's happened with the thing with Dean Raiden is it affected me, I think, at a level that much more than it probably affects other people. Because there's something fundamentally important about how we are to understand all this stuff that we're talking about. Consciousness, extended consciousness, morality. Who are we? Why are we here? How are we supposed to live our lives? Is there good? Is there bad? Is there right? Is there wrong? Is there something more? Is there light? Is there love? When I set up this interview and I said the things I want to talk about, you really set the tone again when you came back to me and said, what I really want to talk about is I want to talk about love. And that's what I want to talk about. Because my issues with the interview that I did with Dean Raiden is you can't talk about love unless you talk about the moral imperative. Unless you talk about there is light. There is love. There is good. There is bad. So I've kind of laid out the whole interview. Now we just have to do it. So now I can really say welcome back. Thanks for joining me. And now we can kind of jump into the real heart of this thing. So now what do I say? I don't know quite where to begin to be honest with you because like one of the questions one of the questions I have is and it's not even a question. It's like what can science do for us? Science can't save us but what can science do for us? And I guess if I was going to turn that into a question is why did you think it was important for you to go and have this ability that you have the men who steer it go its PK ability? Why did you feel you needed to go put that under the microscope or allow other people to put that under the microscope? How does it connect for you with what I'm talking about with love, with near-death experience, with all the rest of that? Well at first I didn't really think it was connected to love but it was I mean at the time I was working you know my science education and I wanted to know that I wasn't crazy. You know I wanted to know that everything that I'd experienced well actually for a long time I wanted to cure. I wanted to cure for the experiences. I wanted to prove to myself that that this stuff was just nonsense because that's what my education had kind of been teaching me and then it didn't seem to work out that way like you know I went to Laurentian University and you know Dr. Persinger and Bill Roll were like no this isn't found to see this this is real stuff and we're going to study it and I mean that first trip to Laurentian that was a really big game changer for me and it's funny because so many parapsychologists had told me not to go there you know and yet that was a huge game changer for me because because you know it taught me that you could study these things and that there was some reality you know to what was going on and that I wasn't crazy and it's very hard to accept the love when you think you're crazy you know so by figuring out that you're not crazy then you can be open to the love really and so it was I mean science was kind of my way in but even then like you know you could see like I didn't realize it so much at the time like now you know since I've been talking to you and we've been kind of you know hindsight being 2020 and realizing that that Persinger was far more brave than I realized at the time that he was willing to actually study these things and I I mean he really had a hard time with his university did not want him looking into these areas at all and and it's you know I mean he funded his own work which I mean not very many professors will do that because he just felt that it was so important and and that you know that that I had no idea at the time just just what a good person he was. So I kind of see it differently in a way because your story your history to me is you're someone who had extended conscious experiences from a very very young age right yeah didn't you have grandpa at the at the at the grave site really early right my misremembering that didn't you see a grandma grandma so I kind of got it right that was pretty close you had that that stare like what are you talking about no I mean yeah you know I did see my grandma when I was little and yeah I did have those experiences but you know I kind of went it's funny because before I had an education in science I didn't worry so much about having those experiences and then after my car accident and suddenly I was really really super interested in science and it was really the education in science that was like you know you must be crazy like you know like it really didn't fit with what the university was telling me and on one hand I felt like the science was important like because you know I came back thinking the science is really important and and on the other hand the science is telling me you're imagining things like what am I you know what am I going to do you know and it's kind of funny because if I'd actually looked into these things more if I'd know what to look for at the universities I mean University of Manitoba where I did my undergraduate degrees they have a very large collection of spirituality photographs and you know I guess the first head of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Manitoba was known for holding seances and there's a fairly extensive collection at the University of Manitoba that I had no idea was there while I was a student and I wish I had known you know and it's like it's a dirty secret of you know academia that you know it's kind of like you don't look at Newton's other interests you know like you know like when you look at Newton and and you you know you look at gravity and things but you don't look at the fact that he was also interested in alchemy and yeah I don't know quite where to take that because when you know I don't know that the interest in alchemy was that spot on either I mean no but the fact that people do you know that that it's like only the accepted parts of them are allowed to carry on through history and so you don't realize when you're a student particularly as an undergrad how much is edited before you get to it you know well I definitely think that's true I guess it's it's your it's your story in your life you know and I'm reading it and interpreting it but I gotta say I'm interpreting it a little bit slightly differently than you are although maybe the same is that you're a person in this family who has these gifts that are unexplainable and a lot of people in your family most people in your family are like she's weird yeah we don't know what's going on and there's maybe one person in your family who's like no she ain't weird she's special this is really a gift and it needs to be somebody needs to tell it's good and it's really important so you go through this life kind of not feeling totally confident because this essential part of you is kind of not so well yeah put down yeah and it's funny because when I look into the history of my family like I'm certainly not the first one like me and you know some of the women that were like me I mean one was like the first woman to be a doctor in the province that I grew up in you know to have a have a medical practice and and she was like me and another one was you know a registered nurse who grew up in a traditional Mennonite family that became a nurse and a private nurse of a millionaire and traveled the world and did things that were not really considered what you do when you grow up in a traditional Mennonite community you know and and and when she had dreams and everybody would be like oh she you know this is what she had she dreamt about and it was kind of an adult conversation like when I was a kid you know you didn't really talk openly about what she what she dreamed about but clearly other people took it seriously even while they were cuckooing it and then I had an uncle who was horribly scarred has a veteran of the Second World War and he actually ended up in a concentration camp and you know he saw the ghosts of his battalion and you know he carried those with them until he passed away but but I mean he was the first adult when I was a little kid that I remember talking about seeing ghosts like it because and I used to wonder well I thought everyone saw them but the adults just pretended they didn't or just it like it wasn't talked about in like company like sex you know like I just thought it was just one of those things you didn't talk about openly but that everybody knew it was there yeah so you know when you tie that into like your near-death experiences but in particular your third near-death experience where you almost died in this car crash so a couple interesting things come out of that and again I tie it back to what I was saying at the beginning you know there's this crazy interplay that we're going to have in this conversation the interplay is between science and spirituality and I think science has a role to play here that's why we're having this conversation well when you have your near-death experience you don't know totally how to process it but you gain some benefit from some of the science of near-death experience that tells you that the after effects you're having which in your case is increased psychic ability which has now been documented by other researchers into near-death experience and said well sharely I don't know if you're experiencing that or not but if you were to it would not be all that uncommon that sometimes happens to people who have near-death experiences and that's important information for you because we can hear from your story how difficult it was for you to process that change that going from a person who's artistic and musical to a person who just wants to study science and it's like why why is that happening and why am I having these increased psychokinesis powers why when my first husband tries to kill me does all the lights in the house go on and off and he gets so frightened that he has to run out of the house this is right out of again some movie but this is your life and it's super duper important as it relates to science and to sciences fundamental assumptions so I want to start piecing that together in a scientific way how much did you know about the near-death experience after you had your car wreck nothing I didn't know it I I didn't know anything about it and the first first bit of information I got was from an army chaplain you know a Padre actually and and he like because I had questions and I you know I was in the military at the time and I had questions and I asked him and he told me that well he didn't have a name for the experience but he said that it was a common experience for people in the military who'd almost died or had been you know in terrible combat situations and and you know he said that this was actually a fairly common experience for people who'd undergone you know trauma and and almost been killed but he didn't come up with a name for it but what he did do is he said we don't want this on your record in any way so I'm going to send you to a friend of mine in this in this church in your community and we'll just keep this quiet and you can go talk to this person and we'll keep this out of your military records because you're not crazy but we don't want this on your record okay in that partially that partially answers it from one way but see the thing that that doesn't I mean you know this stuff is real right so this is another I don't know quite how to tracess this frickin shirley you know it's real so that the chaplain doesn't doesn't know the Padre he doesn't know he's just repeating back and he's following the procedures you've seen ghosts your whole life so whatever it is you're doing in terms of processing the near-death experience in the near-death experience that you had you're processing it from your experience right yes but you know there's this thing that I you know like the big difference between the near-death experience and seeing ghosts is that when you see ghosts you will forget like there's just some part of us and there's some part of these experiences like if I didn't write everything down it just amazes me how much of it I just managed to put out of my mind and forget and you know like when I was writing my book I went through old diaries and I was like oh my god like now I remember this because I'm reading this again and I and and now it's like coming back to me full force but but you push things away where the near-death experience the weird thing about the near-death experience is you can't get rid of it it it has a hold on you and you carry it with you in a way that the other experiences aren't able to stay with you okay again I don't know I don't know that this is this might be a totally useless interview for anybody but but me but me because for me I'm fascinated because see it doesn't it doesn't sink up here again it's like it's like there's two us you know who are kind of being pushed in this different direction through this journey that we're on because the next thing that you talk about is gee I'm having these paranormal experiences and I one I just want them to go away which I can't really process on a complete level that you ever thought that was really but but let's just take that because there's a lot of trauma it's causing you in your life but then too you know I'm gonna agree to go to these laboratories and have them test this in this very very narrow way because here you are somebody who has this incredibly extended view of these extended realms and you're gonna say okay you I'm going to spin a wheel under a glass okay let me see if I can spin a wheel under a class I mean that's like a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what this stuff is all about but if you want me to spin a wheel under a class okay do you get how that looks do you get do you know what I mean how that looks from you know if you're really trying to process your the whole thing that you're about there's this like little bit of a disconnect it is but you know because at the time I was studying science I actually really really wanted to come up with a small repeatable effect like I wanted it to be a small effect not too big an effect I mean that was because I thought if it's a big effect people will be terrified of me I'll be terrified like I thought I mean I was worried I'd be I was becoming a monster you know like there there is that feeling that you know does this make me a monster like this what if everyone does because your feelings if they got real intense could cause stranger things kind of stuff lights going on and off you know people feeling it that kind of stuff right that's what you're experiencing yeah that you know that you could scare people with it I mean even just spinning the wheel under the pinwheel I've had lots of people in my family who've seen it and said oh that's really creepy and they you know like they don't say oh that's really interesting and cool they look at it and go that's really creepy stop it you know and so so you know you you don't do it anymore and and you don't talk about it and and they will if you ask them if they've ever seen it they'll deny it you know that's the one thing I find that that that if anything big happens even people who are used to little things happening if something big happens people who are close to me they'll forget the big things moving you know it's just because it's just too much and so I didn't want that I didn't want to be a monster like you know and I mean now that I read some of the books like the pk man you know like like he did at whether or not he caused you know bad things to happen to people he thought he did you know then that that would open up the whole et can orms I don't even want to go there uh tell tell the story about when you were a kid in school and the book no I hate that story and why do you hate that story because because that was just an event that kind of had me labeled as a monster for years in school and really opened me up to so much abuse from teachers and and you know um that that really like I was I was always bored in school and I was always overwhelmed because I you know I've had a near-death experience when I was 10 my my appendix basically burst and afterwards like before that had happened I had been this really cute popular little girl you know and I had lots of friends and and everything was really good and then suddenly you know I had this experience where my appendix burst and I got really sick and then afterwards I was just overwhelmed by everything like being in a room full of people was just an overwhelming experience because I would pick up feelings and emotions and it was too noisy and I just couldn't handle it and I would do everything I could to get removed from the classroom whether I you know and you can only stay home with the tummy ache so often and you know and so I started doing what I could just to get kicked out of class and it got to the point where I was allowed I was told well if you're sitting and drawing in your sketchbook and that gives you that little bubble of peace that you can kind of stay in the classroom then whenever you start to feel overwhelmed just take out your sketchbook and start drawing and we'll cut you some slack in class like that's what I was told by this you know the school guidance counselor that I could sit there and draw in my sketchbook and as long as I was keeping up with the homework and studies nobody would would bother with me and so there was a day when I was sitting there drawing in my sketchbook trying not to be overwhelmed and the teacher basically hit me in the face and through my sketchbook across the room I guess I guess nobody had told this particular teacher that this was allowable behavior and I was just so shocked like I was just you know I felt safe in school until that point and then suddenly I wasn't safe and the sketchbook basically picked itself up and launched itself at the teacher and hit her in the back and after that it I was just I was the school monster you know and I mean that teacher actually ended up needing some psychiatric help So Shirley let's make sure we we got that because I think it's in it it's like a super important story if it's real if it's real it's really important so how do we know that it's real well like I said if you go to the ions video that you presented you go back and you say hey here's when I had my appendicitis and almost died here are all the lovely letters that all my classmates are sending me and all the rest of that and then you also have um the other works from your school that would suggest that the story has some veracity to it some realness to it is there anything else you could add that would be like if let me put it this way if someone pushed you because one they'd have to think it through and think how important that story is and we'll explore that fully but said you know what I'm in if you can prove it do you think you could prove it in the way that people normally think about it I don't really see how I could because I mean it was do you could you could you find other students and I'm just saying hypothetical I'm not going to you know I'm just saying hypothetically do you still know students who were with you in the class who could say I remember that day and I remember that book just picking itself up off the ground in Harry Potter style flying across the room and I remember the commotion afterwards I had one friend who saw it and she passed away like one friend that I still kept in contact with for the most part I mean I was kind of a pariah like nobody came near me and then even I started to doubt it for a while because it was just driven home by the teachers this is not what happened I mean I remember you know my parents were basically tried to push into putting me on these seriously nasty drugs to shut me down or I wasn't going to be allowed to stay in school and what did they tell your parents had happened they told the parents that I was a bad kid and threw a book at the teacher they didn't tell that my parents that she hit me you know like that was the other thing is that part of it was completely like no no no the teacher did not hit her and nobody in this class will say that she did you know and well hold on for a second I get you but take that part of the story because the part of the story we care about is that the book I know is over on the other side of the room and they acknowledge that you threw the book at the teacher they're saying yeah she threw the book at the teacher yeah so you weren't there to throw the book at the teacher at least not in your physical form there was part of your consciousness that was there so but that well and I mean I didn't think it was me doing it anyway because I just you know like I just thought that things just moved by themselves I didn't really you know I didn't I didn't see it as something I was doing when I was that little I just thought stuff moved but get it get over it but no like I I mean I had it drilled into me that no that this didn't happen like I said the teacher needed psychiatric help so maybe she maybe she was dumb enough to admit the book moved because she didn't want me in her classroom um I know that I was taken out of class every every Wednesday for like a number of years and sent to special testing that did nothing but you know make me feel even more like a weirdo because everyone thought that there must be something really wrong with me that I had to go to the room with the two-way mirrors every week so what makes this so what I push that good enough so again what makes this thing interesting in the scientific realm that we're going to talk about is that eventually you wind up in a laboratory where there's like quote unquote real scientists which I don't know where we want to go with that but there's people who are saying okay let's see if you really can do this pk stuff which in and of itself would add validation to your earlier story unless we think that you just this is the only thing you can do is you know spin wheels inside of classes that's what god has put you on earth to do so tell folks again in a way that they would make it really believable to them in a very matter of fact way why we should why we should believe that you really were in a laboratory and you really did spin a wheel that was under a glass can I have a two-minute break sorry I apologize absolutely sorry I just need a two-minute break I'll be right back what kind of dog is that um he's a lasso so apparently the the tradition is that Tibetan monks if they were too goofy and didn't reincarnate the way they were supposed to they'd come back as lasso so that's a great story that's a great story that's why you're that's why it's considered really bad form to sell one um that the original ones that came to North America were gifts from the from the Dalai Lama yeah he's they they're thought to be reincarnated monks that didn't take their studies seriously I mean you know we could spend an hour talking about all that because it's like no in a way that's again this intersection of science and spirituality and what we want out of science and then what we don't get out of science you know so we want to some way know whether there's anything to that story at all right I mean we do that's kind of like a pretty incredible story yeah and when science comes back and goes well you know probably not for these reasons in they're verifiable then you're like great but then when science goes one step further and says yeah because we're all just our brain and there's nothing more and you can't really love that love that you feel for that dog that isn't really real I mean yeah not to completely switch gears but and now let's just continue continue with the story because where I was at in trying to this is that you know out of me well yeah I know I know I'm difficult no I don't I don't see it that way I don't see it that way I I I don't think you're difficult at all I think you're incredibly open and incredibly brave and people say that a lot and it can mean a lot of different things but you've had a lot of experiences that similar folks are just not able to process and they just run from completely and you are consistently throughout your life running into the fire you know there's the fire and you're like okay let's run in there and see what happens because that's what happens when you go to these labs because the your experience in these labs in these psi labs where they're going to do the men that stare at goats and let's be clear because we touched on this last time and people hear it and again it's one of those things it doesn't fit into their paradigm and they just blow it off but this is a lot of the abc agencies you know naval intelligence cia military intelligence it would be irresponsible for them not to understand pk because if you can spin a wheel under a glass then who's to say you can't stop the heart of vladimir putin in russia it is that is the that is men who stare at goats that is what that movie is about and that movie is about what really happened in mk algea program where they said hey can this guy stare at a goat and make the goats heart stop so it would be it it would be irresponsible for us not to understand whether that could be done to us which is always the excuse for us to weaponize it and do it to other people so when you are walking into those labs that is part of the agenda and the way that that game works is some of those people in the lab know that a very very very small number know it at some level most of them don't and they're just doing what they think is good curious research which it is but there is always that shadow in that um now you don't realize that i'm sure you didn't realize that at the time you were just the stuff was happening you wanted to know as it happened but you have at this point a long experience many times being invited to these labs around the world and some of them you don't go to because you're not totally comfortable with yeah and then it's there a goat's thing but yeah so when i say it's not so much like you're difficult to talk to no to the contrary it's like you're probably one of the most important people in the world to talk to about this stuff that's the difficult part is we could explore this like in a million different angles and all of them are super relevant super important on uh geopolitical parapolitical scientific spiritual angle so i'm just struggle with what do i ask next so tell us about pk in the lab um well you know sometimes sometimes the pk does not cooperate in the lab i mean sometimes you know um i think one of the experiences i had was at the rin research center and the first day i got there one of the people that i was going to be working with and i'd never met him before and i didn't know him beforehand i mean i went there to work with robert and susanne may and they're lovely people so working with them was great and i think the first time i went to the rin research center it was just with them for the most part and that was really a positive experience the second time i went there were some other people that kind of attached themselves to it and one of which on the very first day i was there told me that all psychics are cheats and it was kind of like you know and that was not not you know and it's like okay well even if you think that do you really want to tell the person who's come here um you know spending her time uh coming to this laboratory to do some work and you're going to tell her that basically everyone like her is a charlison see like even there there's there's so much to to talk about there so first break it down rin research institute is one of the first and most famous parapsychology research institutes in the world it's spun off from duke university and this guy rin what was his first name or i know she'll see always goes back anyway yeah jb right exactly yeah and they did a bunch of these experiments and one one of the experiments they're best known for is the kind of zener cards you know where they have the five you know it i'm explaining it to people you know you've seen they have the five different cards the moon the star this and that and one person holds the card and says see if they can telepathically communicate it to this other person now if you go and look at that research which in a way is kind of related to the work that surely is telling us about psychokinesis is different but it's all in this category of outside time space outside of the mind body limitation that we normally associate with the brain so anyways they did this experiment successfully and it's not a hard experiment to control you know like you'll this is all this stuff has been polluted by the phony skeptical which is an operation kind of thing they say oh my god you know there's so much room for cheating well there's not you just put people in two different floors of two different buildings like they did at the ryan institute way back in the day and there's no opportunity for for cheating and what they did in one of their experiments they had 143 consecutive successful trials so one person was able to say okay i see a moon and then the other person on the other in another room in another building was able to say i think it's a moon and they got it right 143 times in a row so there's a lot of this kind of research that's buried in these walls and then it's interesting that they bring you out there they've done other demonstrations of pk the ones i've seen online other people can find it where they have it more kind of from a technology standpoint they have this machine that people can show that it generates and it moves across the room again pk and then they have you so i think uh ed and susan may are probably better known for near-death experience but they're definitely well qualified in parapsychology research and psi research and that's why they're at ryan and they know all this stuff and then the last thing i can't resist commenting on is there is always this infiltration kind of counterintelligence thing we're in these places that are supposed to be studying one thing you have this person that's i don't know why they're there you know to it like you said it's not even it's not even on a science to say a priori i think you're fake i mean that's not being objective in any way so that's the you know rupert sheldrick richard wiseman like that's not adding to it that's just doing something else that we can't understand inside of that but so tell us specifically what happened at ryan what did they want you to do was it spinning a glass spinning a wheel inside of a glass was it something else how do they set up that experiment how do they control for it how do they do the rest well the first time i was there with robert susan most of what we did was basically spinning the pinwheel inside the little jar and and uh oh should have read up because we did a lot of different experiments with that where they tried different types of sensors to see if they could see something else going on while it was moving you know um well it's just uh again because we've talked about a bunch of times people can find these uh videos on youtube if they look really carefully i think they can find uh one or two your videos are up there are they probably i think if you go to it's robert mace not ed mace i'm sorry yeah different people but robert and susan and uh they've got oh i'm trying to think of the name of if you look at robert's interviews on skeptico i'm sure his website's listed there somewhere okay because they've so we're talking about something that number one people don't know or if they do know they've seen it in kind of a david blaney kind of magic fake way and there's a bunch of fake videos on the entertainment videos on the youtube on youtube saying isn't this cool and you put a little pin and you put a wheel on it and they put a jar but you can't really see the you know there's always to fake it but if you bring it into a lab it's a very very easy experiment to control right it really is oh yeah because it's like well if it's if it's inside a closed container i'm not blowing on it and you can check to see if it can like you can take a oh a hair dryer and blow air at it and you can see well it's a closed container you you can you can rub it with static reducers to get the static electricity gone um you know the second time i went back i actually brought an ugly wheel and they had they had actually purchased their own ugly wheel because they wanted me to use the device what's an ugly wheel and why did dean rayden tell you to use it okay well dean told me to use it because he said that they had one in their lab and no one had ever been able to get it to spin when it was in a covered container and what is an ugly wheel it's basically a very fancy pin it's basically it is supposed to be controlled for for things like static electricity and and um oh what do you call it convection currents things like that but but basically if it's underneath underneath that like you know a glass or whatever if it's under if it's in a sealed container that kind of makes it different uh dean says they'd never had anyone who could move it under a container so which is which is going to be interesting as we as we go into this four and a half hour interview i'm so sorry no no no it's i'm i'm i'm apologizing because i'm not going to be able to stop but here's the reason that that i would add to everything that you said it's maybe obvious for some people but not for others the other thing i can do is i can take the edley wheel i can put it down on the table i can put it or i can put it inside of a sealed glass container and i can videotape it for a week and nothing ever changes during the sunrise sunset there are lights going on all it never moves and now i bring in this person charlie who has said that she can do this and she makes it happen i said oh that's interesting now i remove her from the from the room and i can let it go for another week and it never moves and i bring her back in and i can do it this would be a way of having a very controlled experiment and it's kind of along the lines of what dean raiden has done and then you'd say okay i have my control time when nothing is happening and nothing does happen and then i have my effect time when this person who claims to be able to introduce this effect is doing it and it's measurable that's very simple science and it's very powerful science and that's what they did right well yeah and i mean they did other controls as well i mean actually the real the skeptical guy at one point he put the edley wheel um basically on tinfoil that was grounded because he was convinced that it was just electricity no no but this is funny this part is really funny so what he did was he was randomly um connecting like connecting the little thingy so that it was grounded and then unconnecting it and asking me to say if it's easier or harder to move the little wheel around and i could tell him every single time he unconnected it because it worked the opposite of the way he decided it should he said that when when it was grounded it should it should be you know harder to move and it was actually easier like way easier and which really annoyed him and his and because he was so convinced of his take on the science his explanation was is that i psychically knew when he was connecting and unconnecting the grounding device and so that it was just me being an evil psychic and telling him the opposite of what was actually happening just because i wanted to piss him off which was so so he said i was a hundred percent on it so i was like the best psychic ever that's that's just an amazing story because it really gets to the issue if you want confirmation of that he even talks about that in a video that the ryan research center put up so so it's not just me saying it he actually does admit to it in a video i want to see that video because yeah this this kind of does kind of jump us into the conversation that we're going to have about the interview that i had with dean raiden because this is point one is the i wouldn't believe it even if it was true phenomenon and you can hear it i first heard it from rupert cheldrick he tells the story beautifully where he's doing a presentation to the royal society in england about his amazing science and a guy one of the royal society guys in england oxford cambridge actually where rupert got his education stands up turns his back to the presentation to the data that's being presented and says i wouldn't believe it even if it was true and this is something that we're familiar with on a kind of personal level in terms of just friends and family who have any sort of beliefs about all sorts of political or religious beliefs or anything like that it's paradigm it's dogma doesn't change and we look for science i look and this is my upset with the dean raiden interview is i always felt that science was a chance that we had to kind of go past that to kind of say well wait a minute we all know that we have prejudices we have biases but we can control for them a little bit with the science thing but what your experience tells us and i think in a way the interview with dean raiden tells us is that doesn't always work exactly the way that it the way that it should because these guys in the pk lab i mean in the sci lab if anyone in the world should be willing to have their paradigm shattered they should they're setting themselves up say come shatter my paradigm and then you shatter their paradigm and they're like i wouldn't believe it even if it was true and this is where we're we're going to consistently be stuck with science yeah oh i know well and you know one of the things that the pk it can be really a total jerk but it acts sometimes is because like the one researcher who who first off said all you know all psychics are cheats and and was very uncomfortable every time that wheel spun you could see it made him uncomfortable and what was even funnier was that there were times when i'd be across the room and he'd go close to the wheel on the table and and it would start spinning and he'd jump back and it was like it's like yeah it's just going to do that every time you're going to do that because that's just funny you know you you also tell the story and this is just kind of anecdotally fun and true in a in a way that is kind of unexplainable other than there's something in the extended consciousness realm that is that trickster but you related to me the story that you know as you do this it opens up this ability in other people in some way that i say that not knowing what that really means but you do pk and suddenly people around you say let me give it a try and then they can do it too and then you go out to dinner with the guys from uva and everyone's passing the jar around and everyone's like hey i did it i did it give me another drink this is great and then the second part of that story you tell is a few weeks later they're like no i can't do it anymore you know what i wonder if i really ever could do it you know it's yeah yeah that was actually not uva that was people from the ryan research center it was uh jim carpenter who wrote the book first site um he basically kind of organized this thing where we all went to this really good mexican restaurant and you know he just wanted to show people this effect because he thought it was really interesting and so yeah we had the pinwheel in the jar on the table at the restaurant and i got it to spin and then we were passing it around and everyone was getting it to spin inside the jar and you know people were coming over and looking at what was going on at the table like it was you know um and it was kind of this fun thing that everybody was doing and apparently even like the ugly wheel like because the ryan bought their own ugly wheel and so they had it after i was gone and they said that for a while people could come into the lab and get that ugly wheel to spin under the container and that worked for maybe six months or so and then it doesn't seem to work anymore you know like it worked for a while and you know everybody was kind of believing in it for a while and then they just kind of stopped believing in it so one of the things i want to draw out and i'm not doing a great job with this because i i i don't know i just don't know i that's like two two complicated but one of the things i thought was interesting in my talk with dean was one of the really brilliant things that dean has done with these experiments which again are fundamental to science because the fundamental assumption of science is that you're a soulless biologic robot in a meaningless universe and nothing you could do could possibly matter because everything that i gotta say in saying this dean totally stumbles on the second part of this because i'm the one who brought you into the conversation with dean raiden because i said hey i got a friend charlie block most amazing pk person in the world has done all this stuff in all these laboratories and she'll tell you she's had these kind of abilities her life and they are connected to near-death experience and she's had three near-death experiences and by the way her near-death experiences are not substantially different from thousands and thousands of other near-death experiences of course they're unique but they have a lot of these similarities the kind of things that scientists would generally think are important when we measure those things when we go out and talk to people about their experiences like we do if they're depressed or if they're anxious or if they're grieving we rely on their reporting their self-reporting of their experiences in order to find commonalities in order to treat in order to develop an understanding of that so this idea that we would collect these accounts across the spectrum and analyze it is pure science is very mainstream science so when i bring that up to dean and say so this has been reported that there is this connection between the extended consciousness realm and he goes no haven't you heard the latest study on near-death experience says that it's just the eeg extending beyond death and i'm like dean how can you be saying how can you be not following the science that is a ridiculous explanation it's been proven over and over again and then i talked to my friend mark irland who just had an interview with penn valamo the cardiologist famous cardiologist from the netherlands who's published some of the most scientifically rigorous work on near-death experience and he's written up the whole thing saying well that's bullshit that doesn't really explain the eeg that they're finding doesn't really wouldn't really correlate with what we found in other medical conditions the eeg of people under near-death experience it doesn't fit with the overall phenomenon as we understood it it just doesn't fit doesn't fit doesn't fit so here i have dr dean raiden who i have so much admiration for doing really really really sloppy science because he's stating something as if he knows it and it's just not supported by the best science he's doing what everyone else is doing with his stuff which is to say i wouldn't believe it if even if it was true i don't want to believe it because it contradicts my worldview it contradicts what how i want to see my place in the world i want to believe in this kind of luciferian transhumanism kind of do what thou wilt create better than the creator gods and i don't want any data that would kind of push me off that and if i get that data i'm going to have some really creative ways about spinning it in some other way that's what i see happening in the interview with dean raiden but that's what i see happening in a broader sense in your experience with both pk in the lab and nde in the broader sense of how it fits so i don't know what part of that we're going to tackle and how you want to tackle it because i don't want to pull you into my kind of issues with this stuff but we do have to talk about we do have to swing this thing back into talking about love and we have to understand that we can't talk about love until we nail this down otherwise we're just talking about love as a construct as a social construct as a you know it's not real it's just a biological bullshit kind of thing yeah yeah well yeah what isn't a social construct these days but you know i mean essentially you're looking at when did parapsychology go from looking at being part of the human potential movement which i mean the human potential movement was you know be your best self be loving connect with you know like let's connect and be loving and it went from that to being more of the transhumanist you know humanity is done let's transfer our consciousness into robots now and let's get rid of love because love is what makes us do all the bad things you know love is what makes us like they they transhumanism has no room for love it absolutely you know like their basic idea seems to be that that humans are just really really horrible creatures and that it's our our desire to have children and form communities and you know that that all leads to having wars with other communities and it leads to all the bad stuff in the world and that humans are just so bad that we have to give up all the good stuff to get rid of the bad stuff so we have to give up so we have to give up the love like that's what they're saying is is that you have to give up the love to to get a world that's peaceful see and i think that that both of those missed the point i think the human potential movement missed the point and i think the transhumanism movement misses the point because the point to me is really at the root of dean radin's work and at the root of your work and that is what is love because and another way of stating the what is love thing is the way that i put it to dean and dean immediately got very kind of was pulling back on the issue i can actually i'm going to pull it up and play it here yeah you're talking about issues of morality and ethics and it's it might be related to all this but i'm i'm not sure i would go there except for with one proviso and that is if you completely adopt materialism as the your way that you'll understand reality then that leads to a picture of the world was which is nihilism which means there there is no ultimate purpose to anything when when your body dies your dad that's the end of it and it is collected into this whip of he who dies with the most toys wins that's that gives rise to the modern world that we see today where essentially business is extractive it is it's taking things out of the natural world turning into something else and then selling it to you well that's not sustainable okay so this is really the issue right there and that in that i would say it's like so many things most people are going to listen to that and they're going to be nodding their head like yeah yeah yeah all the way i would suggest that it is logically inconsistent and incoherent in that you know the morality question is at the center of this and that the big morality question is is there good and bad is there good and bad outside of the moral construct because you just said something you know you said hey everything's a moral construct these days ha ha well that's always been true right we understand that is is it okay to kill somebody no well what about in war what about in self-defense oh well then maybe so everything has that element of moral construct the philosophical question that we're supposed to be answering in science that dean i always thought was at the core of his thing is of course we get that part what we want to know is there ever any time when there is some aspect of it even the smallest part of it that is more than a social construct is there ever anything more and he's saying he's contradicting himself because he's saying well i think that we would want to do these good things why would we want to do if it's purely a moral construct then all that environmentally sound stuff that people get all excited about doesn't really make any sense it's just a moral construct it's just people agreeing well shouldn't we save the planet why well because of our kids why why why why anything if there isn't at the core of it some kind of moral sense of this is good this is bad and i can't believe that he kind of has conflated those two in a way but then again i can because i just see everybody doing it over and over again you have to be kind of a purest radical philosopher to see that this is the core question is there a moral imperative of course there's a moral imperative that's what the near-death experience tells us and it tells us as clearly as it could be it's the number one thing that people go back and say there is love there is good there is light it changed me you can't have all that data like at 90% and then turn around and go well i wouldn't believe it even if they even if they told me so yeah no i i would totally agree that love is is a real thing and you know it's funny when i was when i did my first university degree it was fine arts degree and the the fellow who supervised my thesis there he he kind of he told me the secret to the universe when i was just a teenager and basically he said that there is no art without love and and he said that really you know good art and bad art he said that you know drawings on on on a piece of paper what what makes one drawing um have an effect on others is love is is the you know like you have to do if you're going to be an artist you have to put your love into your work or it's crap that's i mean that was how you described it and i didn't really understand that until i was a lot older that really it's it's the love you put into things is what makes it meaningful and and gives it an impact in the world and love is a real thing you know you keep saying that how do we know that that's true how do we know that because we have to consider the the alternative to that is that love is merely a biological function of your brain it's this soup of chemicals that you're swimming in being released inside your body and we can there's there's correlation there right we can see that we can shoot people full of these chemicals or measure when they're full of these chemicals and we can measure we can ask them their feelings and they feel more quote unquote love how do we know there isn't anything more to it than that well i mean i'll give you i'll give you a hint you give me a hint you'll give me well i mean it's a near-death experience or i guess i just don't doubt it so it's not like i've had to look for it nope but uh it's in your lab it's in your pk lab well let me play another clip here and you'll see you know you don't have to agree with me no one else does all of the experiments involving mind and matter are essentially asking the question is mind is it causal or put it in broader sense is consciousness causal in the physical world does it play a role other than within the body and so one way of thinking whether it is that i can use my intention and make something happen with 100 reliability so i should now demonstrate that right arm move up well i did that well if this is a mind-matter interaction my intention has made something happen the question here though is what else can it do is it purely something within the body or does it act at a distance so the non-local aspect of it is saying that at a distance my thoughts can influence something else and we can measure that it actually happened uh what makes it and that's that's uh non-local in space so stay with me here there's a leap of logic but it really isn't a big one just a lot of people don't want to go down it and that's that so what you proved in the lab directly is what he's saying right and he proved it one way and he did it that way for a particular reason because he he framed up his experiments inside of the double slit experiment because that's what science was ready to take they said okay we've seen that thing done a thousand times you've seen that trick done on stage a thousand times and he said ah but you haven't seen it done this way and then he does the double slit experiment he does the does the entanglement thing and the coherence thing he shows the eye dilation thing and all that and everyone goes wow now if he really wanted to get ooh oh is he'd have Cherilee spin the wheel up dead serious spin the wheel is a thousand times more powerful in terms of its power to convince someone than anything that dean has done but that's okay and that's why the experimenters that you do it then gotta go don't don't stop it i know i asked you to do it but now stop doing it because i can't handle it anymore right i mean it's a more powerful experiment well dean said other people in his lab that could move stuff in like do the pk stuff like i i wouldn't have been even the first but he didn't he explained to me that it was just incredibly expensive to do that kind of experimentation to a standard in which he would be willing to put his name behind kind of thing but certainly certainly i would not have been this first person going to california to do that and i mean and and you know and i mean and i'm certainly not the only one out there who could and you know and i've talked to other people it's funny because after i did that ions video there was another fellow um Sean McNamara who saw the video and thought gee i wonder if i could do that and he found it he could and so he's actually teaching classes now because he thinks it's a cool thing and he's like you know been to some labs too and you know i think that he's had some frustrations in terms of dealing with researchers that it's almost like the better your results the less they want to do with you okay let me try and continue to stitch this together here is my friend of me michael schermer talking to jill rogan about life after death and a book i interviewed him on the show about and he completely failed i mean he misquoted all the researchers that he was quoting in his book and i pointed that out to him and michael in his typical way just handled it with the greatest ease and uh side stepping no just the the kind of panache you know kind of like a wow well that's an interesting thought you're having there but uh here's what's really kind of the thing so this is uh michael schermer on jill rogan two luciferian guys talking about do with thou wilt and uh yeah i see you laugh no one else you get the joke know what else gets the joke but it's not really a joke because if you're looking at the world this way there's only a couple ways to divide the world and that's the gnostic luciferian ways one way to divide it the light and love is the other way to divide it and it really isn't a lot more complicated than that it really is that simple okay take it away michael but if you think about it from a simple perspective the entire universe is in your brain and when you cease to exist the universe ceases to exist it's just sort of true by definition no it's he goes a little bit further and says you know that consciousness is everything and that we bring into existence material stuff by thinking about or observing into whatever and here's some quantum physics experiments that are really spooky it's like okay time out you know no quantum physics is weird and spooky consciousness is weird and spooky that doesn't mean they're connected what that is a classic classic michael schermer because of course he gets it wrong and that's why i played the first clip with uh our friend dean raiden because experimentally dean raiden has falsified what michael schermer is saying and michael schermer isn't michael schermer michael schermer is the stand in here for science for neuroscience for the paradigm that they're propping up right so the important part is that experimentally every which way dean has falsified that that this quantum physics mumbo jumbo that schermer that schermer keeps alluding to is the foundation of our modern technology it's how cell phones work it's how ilan musk shoots his satellite internet to everybody it's at the core of all that it's not woo-woo and then when you take it and you apply it like dean raiden did you can show that there is the kind of connection between consciousness and this quantum effect of the observer effect and entanglement that's exactly what he proved in his lab let's let let's let joe take it away one step further into a pure luciferian nonsense why don't we just say we don't know why don't we speculate on the possibility of consciousness being some sort of ethereal thing or something that exists outside of the bible we don't know okay the reason that we don't is we're fine to do that but what we want is something more than that we want to know in the way that you are speculating because we are forced to speculate in our life our life demands that we speculate is there good and bad or is there not good and bad is is it a moral is there a moral imperative or is there not a moral imperative joe can talk about speculating but he's again is misunderstanding he's conflating the real issue you choose with your life whether you believe there's a moral imperative or whether you don't think there's a moral imperative joe rogan michael schermer and unfortunately dr dean raiden are choosing to not believe that there is a moral imperative by default then they are living their life as if there is not a moral imperative there's oh it's a binary thing you can't have it in the middle what do you get do you get what i'm saying well i don't think anyone would have kind of connected the dots that you do to get there but how else how else do you connect them i don't i mean that honestly i don't understand the i don't understand the other connection what would it be what to understand that there's a moral imperative well so the thing is you know are you luciferian gnostic do what thou wilt create better than the creator gods or are you well god is really somehow driving this or or is it all I have to do is look to the light and do the right thing all I have to do is do the right thing and to tell the truth all I have to do is treat other people the way that I know is the right thing not the social construct of what it is to treat people the right way not what Trudeau says is to treat or biden is to just know in my heart what the right thing is to do I mean this is not complicated why are these guys making you complicated yeah well I mean you know with Trudeau if he uh he'll say one thing do another uh oh are you frozen oh you're back you're back I'm trying to give you a chance to talk I get excited and I steal the mic that's okay that's okay I don't I don't we're at that we're at the core part of this thing is because you're you're not seeing it exactly the way that I do you're making it to me I don't I don't understand how this is at all complicated I don't think it's complicated for me because because I've experienced the big love so I guess at you know and I just I see it and like everything so it's just like it's there so what's the problem you know and I know that that's not how it is for everybody else or or or at least you know for a lot of people it's not that way and I don't know and I think people used to have an easier time connecting with that and you know it's like we're setting up our society to take us away from it so much you know with the computers and everything you know I agree with that part of it but like the interesting thing in our conversation here is like I can see it in your body language and in your eyes is that it's an experiential thing for you it is and it just and it just dominates what what you're about you know yeah and it's hard and your experience and you're approaching it from uh let's connect the dots and look for evidence which and I mean there's a scientist part of me that's like yeah but and and you're right if the pinwheel spins in the jar then there's something more to us you know exactly there there is something more to us that's that's it and if there's something more to us then I would suggest that the burden of proof is on those who were always fooled into thinking that there wasn't more to us to put forth the best evidence that some of that more isn't love because I think some of that more is love is real love is not the social construct love but a real undescribable love yeah yeah no like I said it was like my art teacher told me all those years ago it's it's love is what makes things great you know you know love is what transforms things and and makes real art possible and you know it's it it's one of those things that I mean I found in the laboratories like I know because it's you're right they try and subtract love when they look at it in the laboratories and perhaps that's the reason why I found that when I go to a laboratory and get good results that that they don't want to see me again like I think that's part of it is that is that you're right it on some level you kind of have to acknowledge that because the because the wheel's spinning in the jar that that love is a thing it's funny how all these guys ultimately come back to death because that is what it's all about that is the ultimate fear that they're trying to escape that's what they're intellectually trying to wrestle to the ground that people like you there's no issue there's no issue with with death there's no barrier and for me from a logical philosophical non-expiritual there's no barrier to death I have zero fear of death zero fear of what comes after and I do feel compelled to try and be a better person because I do see it as a continuous journey and something that I will be accountable for again this is obvious stuff how is Dean missing this how has he done this brilliant science and is failing at the big questions that is the only I'll stop there how how does that happen how does that happen with the other scientists you've seen you know I I think right now people are just like with everything that's going on in the world that I think people are just starting to give up on humanity like that's I mean to me that's what transhumanism is really about it's it's giving up on the love it's giving up on humanity because you just think that it's better to be the Borg you know I completely disagree and I think that comes from the perspective of someone who is in the love I think the driving motivation is fear and control fear of their experience with the ultimate annihilation of who they are which we are all facing and a need to somehow in some way take control of that to create better than the creator gods to find a way out on the back end okay so you think it's kind of like an arrogance I think it's no well I think it's an arrogance based on fear and my supporting data for that would be this is going on through the ages it's really not anything particularly unique about us they've always all these guys in that camp have always said the same thing all the magicians have always said the same thing all the esoteric people all the uh allister crowley types you know do what thou wilt take you know make you into you create better keep saying it create better than the creator gods I don't think that I see like just when I say that to you there's just like this blank stare on your face like it's like why would they want that why how does that make any sense what what would I what would I possibly create that would be better than the light than god than love what could I possibly I don't you know it yeah there's a blank look on your face right yeah well I mean that's why this conversation is difficult for me because I don't I don't get like why they would want that but but you're right I think a lot of them are certainly going there you know like I mean you even see it in pop culture like I just want not not that I'm a fan of the latest Star Trek because it kind of sucks but but you know like the the last episode of Discovery this season where they're you know the aliens are a collective and they don't understand that there's you know many many people as opposed to just one you know one collective person and you know they're and they're a good alien that that you know because they're just one consciousness type of thing and it's like individuality is okay too you know because that's part of it like I didn't you know I didn't come back for my NDE thinking that I wasn't an individual I mean I'm part of something bigger but you know I can also be me and I think all the different expressions of me are good well this is one of the things that came up in the interview with Dean you know that I think is going to throw a lot of people for a huge loop and it should because again the art aspect of it is kind of interesting when people start talking about their art then they're freed up to talk more freely and that's what Dean does and he says hey this hive mind thing this is the way to go you know we figured out how to jab you in the arm and change your DNA and wouldn't be cool if we could change your DNA so that you were a hive mind rather than this individualistic kind of thing and you can't kind of a priori say that's that's crazy Dean no one would ever want that you can't be a Luddite and say that somebody isn't going to try and do that because as soon as we get the technical capability to do it which we already have by the way someone will try and do it the that's what drives the moral imperative the only thing we can really ask is is that what I should do right now is that the best thing for my soul right now that is the only question and Dean doesn't seem to be tied in tuned into that question is that if it happens or not you can't control that but do you want to be the kind of do it yeah I don't know I don't know I mean maybe someday we'll you know you ever watched that oh that black mirror where you know there was an episode where there were kind of two societies one that had had gone for technology and one that had kind of rejected the technology and and they showed how just you know addictive the technology was the teenage girl coming to the society with technology suddenly she wanted it all and they used it to turn it her against her mother and it's just such a horrible like horrible sad episode but it's very true like is the technology around us you know turning us against family and turning us into something else and I mean you know and like you know maybe that's why I'm so weird is because I don't have a cell phone well didn't you say there was some folks in your family were what uh Mennonite uh what weren't they kind of uh turned their back on technology to kind of like the Amish yeah not not quite as much like Mennonites in Manitoba certainly use technology but you know they're members of my family who are not vaccinated and for anything like of any kind and and has you know I mean everyone my personal belief is everyone should have the choice that to make their own decisions I mean my government doesn't share that opinion right now but you know but yeah you know and that's kind of a scary thing in the world is that that people are having their choices taken away and do you think that it all relates to the conversation we're having here I think I think it's part of it I don't you know I think all of these things are connected but but certainly this idea that you know the government doesn't want there to be individual choices and that they're making choices see here's the connection for me and again it gets back to the blank stare in your in your face is that for people who are completely grounded in the idea that there is more and that there's a way to connect with that more and that way is just to access the light and to continually access the light at any time whenever you want they don't want to control other people they just don't it's just a different mindset they're like well why that person is doing wrong well why would I want to control that maybe that's part of their journey you know it's like when you talk to people in different wisdom traditions who are truly wise because a lot of people in different wisdom traditions that aren't that wise but like there's some Buddhists who are pretty wise and when they talk about the worst crimes that they see whether it's you know pedophilia or murder or whatever they talk about it as a way of just well they're confused not they're bad they're evil they need to be thrown on the fires of hell they say they're confused and to me that's such a subtle and important shift it's the of course there's a light of course there's a moral imperative of course we have the ability to choose it anyone who doesn't choose it is just a little bit confused on their journey so when to me all these questions are so easily resolvable is it okay to force people to take a jab no I mean never ever ever is it okay to decide that you know our species is over and the next species needs to come and I need to be a part of it by reprogramming everyone's DNA no that thought never even enters your mind if you're open to the light you just don't the the equation doesn't add up that way do you uh do you agree with that or do you think that oh yeah no I agree with that and it's like you know many of the truckers who went to downtown Ottawa are coming back because it was such a loving experience like the first three weeks they were there it was like this giant NDE was enveloping that community I mean they were feeding the homeless they were they were cleaning up the downtown the crime rate dropped like you know like it was just this huge sense of community and love and people who are coming across Canada one radio producer came in because she wanted to see what was really going on because she didn't believe the news because obviously being in media she understands how much fake news there is and and you know particularly in Canada because it's all state-sponsored news now other than a few independence and she went there and she posted this video and she says there's just love here this is the most love I have ever felt this is just it's just everything here is love and it was like that's why the government had to you know bring in the Calvary and trample people with horses and and kick veterans who are wearing their medals in the ribs and and breaking bones and and arresting people like it was so horrible that they would do that to such a loving group but from their perspective they had to stop the love because that's they didn't want people thinking that that they could you know be free to live in that light you know that that's how I really see what happened here and and they've made sure that people are afraid like you know by by closing bank accounts and and or freezing bank accounts I mean they can't do that to organize crime here but they did it to you know hairdressers who gave 20 bucks to the to the truckers convoy and and clearly it was about they had to destroy that love and make people afraid to express that kind of love that's quite uh quite a leap no it is just in the sense of you know I hear you on one level on another on another level the collective always breaks down for me because there's all kinds of contradictions and counter evidence of you know how do you run a country you know how do you run a province we do want safety we don't want marauding gangs driving through the streets shooting people right so there is a role for for control so that's why to me the collective slips through my fingers what I focus on is from an individual basis it's so clear but the point that I guess I was trying to make all along is that my conclusion from all the things I've learned is number one we're all leading rich spiritual lives yeah yeah and and that's like that's like controversial or counter intuitive to the Luciferian uh to the scientist to the Michael Shermer uh I don't know if it's counter to what Dean Raiden thinks but we are all leading rich spiritual lives and when you fully process that it's like you know the guy who was on that horse who trampled that oh he's leading he is leading he is leading a rich spiritual life no different no different than the rich spiritual life than that you and I are leading but can you imagine the amount of pain that would have caused you know like to come back from doing that to someone else oh my gosh like no I you know I'm not saying that they're that that they don't have souls and spiritual lives either I'm just saying that it's just it's so sad that they that you know they're gonna have to work to come back from that now and and but what I was going to say about the truckers is they they keep coming back to Ottawa now like they keep having these little secret reunions because they want to experience that love again you know like it's like has an end of the year I I still like going back to the scene in my car accident like I'm drawn back there and those truckers are drawn back here you know I get that I just that's where the the scientist in me pulls up short and says I can have my no I I I totally appreciate what you're saying and I value my personal beliefs about that but I'm very I kind of draw a line in terms of uh speculating about what that might might mean for the collective what I will go to is to say the cop lives a rich spiritual life and if I just leave it there it opens up a lot of possibilities for me to judge in a different way I won't say not judge but judge in a different way in terms of what that experience might mean for him in his spiritual life but if we don't allow for the fact that everyone is in that spiritual life then we're not having that conversation well yeah no and I agree with you and you know and you're right people will do like you know what's more soul killing than cancel culture you know like going on the internet and canceling somebody who for what I mean who knows what reasons they're going to cancel somebody for I'm probably cancelled now I'm sure you know but but you know um like that experience of going on the internet and anonymous anonymously attacking somebody um just because you can like like those people have souls too and at soul experiences and you know like you know that they're probably in some way causing themselves pain by doing that later on that they don't realize yet you know and yeah these are all like we all do bad things we all do bad things and I'm certainly no saint and you you have to kind of that that's part of the journey too is how do you come back from that so how do how do you go forward so you said how do you come back from that how do you go forward if you if you have this expanded understanding of things like you do what does that mean in terms of how you go forward and your life I mean what are what is driving you in terms of that understanding that deeper spiritual truth as it and that intersection with that deeper spiritual truth and the connections of being the stranger things gal well I guess the reason I said come back is that you know when you're in that NDE you you kind of see who you are and and when you hear it's like you kind of move away from that and and it's like you know some things will take you away from it and some things will bring you back to it so that when I'm saying you know how do we come back from it it's like you know you want to get back to yourself like that that love at the core of yourself that you're trying to find yourself again um so really I mean it's not you know like when you say moving forward you're like going forward in time but again as an NDE or you kind of have to say well yeah time is kind of a social construct time time is a social construct yes so are we gonna are we gonna get that book published or not no probably yeah well you've been you've been so awesome and super and I'd so appreciate you know all the conversations I've had with you and all the email exchanges I've had with you and again I don't know if you know how people will process some of this stuff and with your permission I'll edit it into uh yeah I don't envy your editing we're good thanks again to Shirley Black for joining me today on Skeptica the one question I'd tee up from this interview is the so what question so you didn't know psychokinesis was real but now you do you weren't convinced that near-death experiences were really all that but now you are so what let's say you're a military intelligence guy and you're tasked with defending my life liberty and pursuit of happiness well I kind of do want you to do that so let's say you come to me and you say hey I made a little leeway with this MK ultra stuff if I'm really going to do my job what do I say am I okay with that are you okay with that let me know let me hear your thoughts lots lots more to come stay with me until next time take care and bye for now