 This episode is kept to go a show about rules and lessons when to go against them And when maybe to follow them It's almost like these are lessons that we've already got inside of us And it really synchronized with what I believed even before I had my near-death experience First clip of course was from the Dark Knight and the second was from today's guest Vincent Tolman Who joined me to talk about his remarkable near-death experience and what he learned as a result of it Stick around you'll see that I push Vinnie a little bit, but he is more than up for it And I really appreciate what he's bringing here Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality I'm joined today by Vinnie Tolman the author of the light after death Which let me get this is the stunning true story of Vincent's experience on the other side of death and the 10 Principles he was taught while traveling to heaven and what he saw when he arrived Vinnie welcome. Thanks for joining me. Yeah, thanks so much Alex. I'm really happy to be here. Happy to be a part of us Right well, you know, I am too because we had this rather extensive email exchange, you know I kind of know it was really great very open and I really appreciate that, you know, I kind of told you initially I didn't think this was the right fit because I've been doing this for a long time And I don't really do the near-death experience Story Kind of interviews, you know, because I'm more interested in the science. I'm more interested in the research I'm more interested in how it overlaps with other things in understanding this extended consciousness But you're like I'm down with all that Yeah, I'm I come from that mindset and I've always been kind of the skeptic myself Prior to my experience. I always was I was a bit skeptical of all these experiences and of course I got converted over with my experience That'll do it. Well, that'll do it. Yeah for sure Well, I you know, I'm not I found myself in this whole thing for the last 15 years not being as skeptical per se I didn't come into it being skeptical Just in I came into it as kind of a scientific kind of perspective And I guess like I'm gonna super put you on the spot right off the beginning Because way back in the day when I used to do these, you know, like the first one I think I did was with Dr. Evan Alexander. Remember him proof of heaven. Yeah, absolutely very very Important important book that really broke this thing wide open in 2012 had him on the show I mean, you remember what that guy had to go through in terms of quote unquote proving What he said was true, you know, here's the name of my doctor. Here's the name of My caregiver. Here's the name of the person who saw me here this whole thing I did want to see more of that in your account. I mean What's the name of the paramedic who cuts you out of the body bag? What are the other paramedics? Who are the nurses that saw you jump off the gurney and go running for the Elevator who was your physician that said your cure was a miracle. What's the name the psychiatrist? It said get the fuck out of here, which I thought was a great story. I mean Just in kind of an ebb and Alexander way Have you provided all that stuff? I looked for it. I didn't find it so essentially the The ambulance record is public the hospital records all public and and of course the through Through medical records search. You can get the everything literally everything. But yeah, so When I first started this journey and I was even sharing the initial experience with people I used to carry this little folder And it had the folder had the medical bill the ambulance bill And the details on each one and that was irrefutable and and what I noticed is I showed it for maybe three or four times And after that I stopped needing to show it anywhere just people Kind of accepted it and and I think I'm giving credit to dr. Raymond moody for that he really kind of opened this space up with his experience and then Evan Alexander's experience really helped substantiate it even further to have both of these Highly respected doctors having their experiences substantiated with their own Proving methods It really helped kind of the industry to realize that hey somebody can have a near-death experience It's not all quackery now I did Meet someone once that Said they had an out-of-body experience on a drug. They tried. I don't I don't necessarily Go at one of those experiences the same as I would Somebody who has actually died and been resuscitated or almost died or flatlined for a few minutes To me those are the ones where we're going to get the kind of the golden nuggets The nuggets and and the synchronicities where you're seeing the same things coming through all these different experiences so many so many times I I get on a podcast I get on an interview and I the follow-up is people reaching out saying that's just like my experience I had one too And and to me that's where the proof is there's there's a consistent Almost modality happening to people In their experience. There's consistent things you're seeing on on all of these now. Is it the exact same experience every time? No, not at all But yet you're seeing these same things come up in all of the experiences And it's it's pretty interesting very very interesting Well, let's take a minute since we're just kind of freeform Dialoguing here and we'll drill into that a little bit further Like I think there's two different means of proof If you look at the history of the near-death experience like Raymond moody like you're saying, you know back in what 70s You know and some of these. Yeah, and actually, you know, it's funny. Is he really wrote that book? because uh, Elizabeth Kubler Ross Was really she had found all that information by going to hospice Because when you go to hospice and you see people dying She had all that stuff But she was like I have too much on my plate as it is and she kind of gifted it all to moody and he took it which is awesome But back in the day, right? They were like There's all these near-death experiences and then there was all this pushback because like no that can't possibly happen Because the whole idea is counter to science as we know it Science as we know it denies the existence still to this day of consciousness, right? So neuroscience is still hung up in this idea that you are your brain and nothing more So even though you get to talk and tell your story and Evelyn alexander Dozens of other people who've written books and jeff long has the near-death experience research foundation with Thousands of accounts and we've had him on the show multiple times. He's extremely credible extremely believable Even though all that stuff has happened We sometimes lose side effect that this goes counter to science as we know it But i'm kind of losing the point and i want to bring it back to this the whole shift To looking at this stuff medically was a reaction to the skeptics Saying you can't just take somebody's account You know and do it and then they proved it medically they said, okay Let's take somebody after resuscitation and let's Interview them before resuscitation after let's review. Let's look at two groups Let's look at a group that had a near-death experience And one that didn't and both had cardiac arrest and we see oh the group that had the near-death experience They're able to completely recall Their resuscitation and the other group is it and these are done published in peer-review journals and give us who are scientifically minded overwhelming evidence highly suggestive that this is real the consciousness survives death But and i'm going to push on this one more time What we don't have any Is we don't know what to do with the individual accounts We don't know what to do with the guy who i told you who i interviewed ian mccormack who said I saw jesus, which is nothing wrong. I've interviewed a couple of people David ditchfield another wrote a tremendous book and very impressive near-death experience. He saw jesus The majority people don't see jesus and the majority people certainly don't say like ian mccormack does that unless you see jesus You didn't have a genuine near-death experience So my point is What we're looking for for individual accounts Is different than what we're looking for for the overall science. That's why I want to know What's the name of that psychiatrist who said get the fuck out of my face? Yeah Now did you publish that any did you publish the name of the guy who cut you out of the body bag? I understand that you walked around with the Folder and had it did you publish that anywhere? No, no, I didn't publish that now in fact To I would have to get their written express approval to publish their name and any of my stuff Which we we started to go down that path and it was so hard to track everybody down Everybody had gone in so many different places since then just the medic who who ended up Pulling me out of that bag. He's a fireman now and and still a medic but but a fireman and And in fact, he ended up making that switch right after the fact right after he got Got in a bit of trouble with what he did for me Yeah, and and here's the thing with all of this Is people people want to go and take all of these experiences and say let's poke holes in this Let's poke holes in that to me. I'm not taking my experience and saying this is an experience for everybody They've got to follow this it's going to change your life. I've never ever been one to say that to me I I have felt prompted personally to share the experience with people before And those people have come back to me and said thank you for sharing it to me And that's what it's all about to me. But what I really love is if you get into modern day physics Uh physics is proving quantum entanglement It's proving that the consciousness is much larger than what we could have ever comprehended before There's a study of a gentleman that Was was reacting to world war two scenes And they were Anytime he saw anything to do with world war two His his blood would start reacting into this certain way And then there's a a really good public study on this where they took vials of his blood drove it 70 miles away And had him over here 70 miles away Look at images of world war two And his cellular structure reacted the exact same way in the ampule or the vial of blood 70 miles away as it did local right where he was That that it's Through that study and through many many studies since they have been able to glean and and understand that our entanglement to each other is is extremely finite and At the quantum level and quantum physicists themselves are proving consciousness now and has neurology Uh caught on not yet neurology still fights it neurology wants to say there's no such thing as consciousness There's only electricity in the brain and once that electricity goes out it's out But neurology can't explain People like myself. I met a gentleman. He was working for me. I was in construction. This is in wyoming He worked for me for one week And I told him about my experience and he goes. Oh, I was woken up out of a morgue And and legitimately woke up while they were performing an autopsy on him. He woke up And uh, you know, there's a lot of experiences now. Are they are they the norm? No But they you do see him Substantially everywhere every culture Every belief system every religion and what's funny is you do get One or two of these experiences in all the different cultures saying Oh, you must you have to see muhammad if you want to if you want to get to heaven You have to see jesus if you want to get to heaven You have to see buddha if you want to get to heaven It's it's and that's the thing is all of these experiences are plugged into a system That's already there That was there long before us here And it's our perception of that system that we're we're We're bringing back with us and that's really what it is. It's it's a system and That has long been in place and and part of the the progress for all of us really and That I got to to peek a little bit behind the curtain I feel and and I did have a very Distinct recollection of of my experience And even I wanted to see if maybe there was something I had forgotten about at the experience So I've gone under hypnosis a couple of times now To see if there was anything extra And and there wasn't there wasn't anything that I could perceive further than what I already knew from my experience So so to me I feel good in saying I I remember my experience to a t to a very distinct Description I remember my experience and you know over the 20 years it's been since I had my experience The details haven't faded they haven't changed The descriptions haven't changed. It's been the same experience that I've been sharing with people I even had a gentleman that that heard one of the first versions that I had I had shared with people And and he heard the the actual audiobook And he loved it. He loved how all it did was give more detail essentially to him Than what he had heard the first time but it was the exact same experience He had heard the first time when this was back in 2004 when I first met him So, yeah, it it is a beautiful system that we're existing in here in this universe really is and Quantum physics is tipping into it. They're getting into that quantum entanglement improving it And mathematically as well as through their their double-blind strategies and though double-blind studying that they're doing with different Experiments on proving that our consciousness can change matter And so thus the consciousness is larger than the physical matter. It's it's controlling Yeah, right. Yeah, I'm I'm down with all that the one of the things I think is Terrific about the near-death experience science is it kind of jumps way past that because people get mired in the You know quantum entanglement observer effect You know akashic records all all you can go a number of different ways But in particular with quantum physics, you can a lot of people will Acknowledge entanglement or observer effect and then we'll find another explanation for this What we really want to know is Does consciousness survive bodily death and that's the importance of the near-death experience Science is that it directly addresses that and the answer is Presoundingly the evidence is just highly suggested and anyone who wants to Kind of push against that evidence the burden of proof is on them Um, but it does come back to your account because the the account that you lay out in the light after death is amazing It's a super enjoyable Book to read. It's written in a very conversational way In I totally accept that you and your author partner kind of Turned it more into a dialogue versus what you said your experience was more of a direct download Makes it very readable. It's fun to get through and all that But I am going to pick on that that one point because this is what I do It's a skeptical inquiry. Yeah, what you wait down is You can release the name of the psychiatrist. You don't need their approval. You can release the name of the the guy who Cut you out of the body bag. You don't need his approval. This is your story You can tell it. You can release all the names. You can release the names. I don't know you can publish on your website your Who was your attending physician? Who was your uh nurses? I mean again Vinny this is what Evan alexander went through and we did a bunch of interviews with him Oh, yeah And we did interviews with people that had Esquire magazine tried to debunk them and then there was a guy who came on and debunked the debunkers That shit is fucking useful. That is it is. Yeah your account And I don't know where you stand on that. I mean you're like, hey, you know, because some people are like that I hear that you know like hey if you can't accept my account and look at you know, what this is really saying in the message Okay but The other side of me says Why wouldn't we want to go to every length to cut yours is such an important account You were dead for an hour So from a physiological standpoint People should be really interested. This isn't playing around with was he you know a little bit out of it Why don't you publish all that stuff? So so somebody who wants to go pick a part pick it apart wants to try and pick it apart Let him try and pick it apart. You know, it's real Yeah Yeah, actually I could do that. Uh, I would need to go and actually Get the records of myself. I have I have all the bills I the bills don't tell me they tell me the billable parties So I have all that information And so I would have a fish I'd have the physicians names and all of that stuff So, yeah, I I I'm I'm open to that for sure. Definitely open to that Fantastic. That's yeah, that means a lot and that you don't have to bug him You know, you can leave other people to go and do that. Yeah people are a lot. That's That is the positive side of what we are experiencing now with You know the censorship versus freedom of speech kind of thing is like Put it out there and let people let people go So, okay, so if you're gonna if you're willing to do that, that's that's a huge hurdle And I have a ton of respect for you for doing that. Let me ask you this In the book you lay out 10 lessons That you that you took back and I think there there are in so many ways They're awesome. They're where I live on a soul level on a spiritual level Even though I've never had a near-death experience I've gained so much from talking to people like yourself who have and then it resonates with other teachers I've had and I go that feels true and I can go in that direction Were you what was that process like because a lot of people and I said this in the email exchange have Weird after effects after the near-death experience, you know, it doesn't it isn't easy For everybody after they come back from a near-death experience It is it's not easy. In fact, uh To me, that's the hardest part of the whole thing the easiest part is dying. Honestly, that's the easy part You just free flow into that the hard part is coming back And trying to pick up where you left off on your life because now you're a completely different person After the event then you were before the event. So you're you're almost redefining who you are at that point But you know, it was weird. I didn't even realize there was 10 principles there I'd been sharing the the experience and the way I would share it. I just I I almost like a speech I just have this way of sharing my experience and I I just always shared it that way It's just how how I perceived it, right? And uh, it was in the process of actually writing down the experience that lin taylor my writer That I worked together with him As we were writing it all down. He's like he said, you know, vinny There's a distinct 10 principles here If if you want to look there's 10 distinct things you're teaching with your experience And so until that point I didn't even realize there was 10 principles But but definitely it's very very obvious When you when you hear the experience now even here some of the the record There's a lot of people that recorded me sharing this experience over You know 15 17 almost 18 years. I've been sharing it publicly in large forums And so there's a lot of early recordings and you get to To these early recordings and it's still giving those same 10 principles just sometimes two of them squish together But it's it's pretty amazing that that that framework is there from the experience that I had Here's what I say to all the people that have had You know, some people have these hell experiences. Some people have the heaven experience To me it depends on where they were revived Because if I was revived right after I died I went into this kind of downward spiral where I was feeling and perceiving All the negative influences I'd ever been on other people in my life So kind of all the bad things I'd ever done and if I got stuck there and then I was revived out of that position I would definitely think I went to help Because that's what it felt like for the few seconds that or the few moments that I was in that period of Reflecting on the negative things I'd ever done in my life to me that that was that would be like hell and Thank goodness. I didn't I just shortly right after I experienced that I felt the warmth and love of something from behind me and I and I started embracing this energy That showed me all the good that I'd ever done and and how much more good I'd ever done than anything bad And that's when and if I'd stopped right there I would have just that that perspective through the whole experience. I wouldn't have even seen my guide draped And if I had been brought back right after I saw my guide before he could tell me he wasn't god I would have believed I saw god because he looked what I thought would be What god looked like At least what religion's version of god had taught me that he was probably going to look like And come to find out what he wasn't god. He was there In god's loving energy to help get me to guide me to have my experience. So Yeah, it's uh, it is very weird though You get a lot of people having very different experiences, but then you have Around like 96 97 percent Of your near-death experiencers Meet some type of angelic type guide Uh or family guide someone who's attached to them through their family line And that guide tends to lead them In a direction towards heaven towards this this this home That we all essentially came from and they're going back to So that's that's kind of interesting and there's some new books that are That have come out just recently and are coming out this year even That are a compilation of all these near-death studies And how you can actually tie these all together Tie all these similarities between all these different near-death experiences And and it's from that material itself. You're starting to see a science An actual science grow up around just this this collection of all the near-death experiences Because when you get so many people describing the same thing Just from different point of view Then you know, you're you're coming to something that's real that's happening for them Well, I always felt like Jeff Long who has 4,000 accounts on his NDRS website. Yeah, Dr. Jeff Long He's a radiation oncologist in Louisiana outside of New Orleans And you know, I've done for years and have told other people to do the same. It's searchable So it's a searchable database, you know through your search engine You go search for whatever you want you go search for hell devil alien Yeah, go search for anything light life review and you can read your own account and they're inspirational A lot of times they're incredibly incredibly inspirational, but they're diverse You know, they are very diverse. I wouldn't necessarily agree with your statement about how all this science is kind of growing Together. I think the science As I stated before I think that the science is Bifurcated in a in a good way in that but people just seem to realize that it's two one is Just consciousness survive bodily death and That needs to be done in a hospital where we can kind of control the physiological part of it Like I think the best study on that is Dr. Penny Sartory and also Dr. Jan Holden at University of North Texas You go into a cardiac arrest ward and you say hey bud You're you might die. Do I have your permission to interview you after you if you have a cardiac arrest? Okay, and then a certain certain group of people Come out afterwards and they have a cardiac arrest and they died and are resuscitated And then you have two groups because some of the people say I had a near-death experience And some of the people say I didn't have a near-death experience Which is another question that we have yet to unravel, you know, is this a memory thing? Is it you know, we're calling dream kind of thing? Why do some people have them some people don't all the rest of but from a scientific standpoint you have two groups Now you go ask the group that had their near-death experience to recount their resuscitation And invariably boom boom boom boom boom just like you in your book the late after death You are outside of your body and as other people tell it to you don't know that you're outside of your body You're looking down. Look at that poor fool laying Laying on the floor the Dairy Queen, you know dead that poor guy when people can Count exactly in detail. That's something we can measure scientifically their resuscitation And then they go over to the people who didn't have a near-death experience and they say What was your resuscitation like and I go Dude, what are you talking about? I was dead. I don't remember any of it But to me, that's the science and then the other is jeff long with the accounts You with your account and that's where I think and that's why I said initially Vinny I'm telling you man. I don't do these kind of interviews because I don't know You know be authentic understand your purpose in life love everyone listen to your inner voice And then use technology responsibly. I don't know what to do with this stuff I got geyser coming at me telling me that if I didn't see Jesus, I didn't have a real NDE It's there's so much diversity in these accounts. Why would we say? Oh, you know Vinny luck of the draw Old drake man. He told it to him exactly the way that it is When we got other people saying the other thing, you know Yeah, that famous doctor who came back and said she was given a choice of whether she could come back or not But if she came back her son was going to die in 10 years What's how does that work with free will? Yeah, how does that work along with that? Yeah, I think here here's something here's a cool side of things and and there's an institute out here in las vegas Called the bigelow institute. Are you familiar with the work that they're doing with near-death studies? So they're they're compiling They essentially have a grant or an award for anybody who can prove the consciousness goes beyond Mortality be beyond life and one of the methods that they're working with Is doing brain scans to see if there's areas of the brain that are have action or Or electrical movements electrical usage That are not necessarily active before their experience So they're taking a bunch of non-experiences scanning them compared to experiences and seeing, you know map to map brain to brain Are we seeing areas of the brain that are having activity now that didn't necessarily have activity before? That's one of the the methodologies that they're working But then they're there's a few different experiences that are experiments that they're doing And i'm i'm interested to see how all that goes because I know that this is just you know science and and religion to me Are two sides of one bridge? That eventually We're able to fill in in between and it's through studies like this. It's through understanding the science of the actual experience what's going on In the neurology when it turns off because there's got to be chemical processes continuing to happen Inside that brain even when the lights are out and Because to me there's there's no explanation how I could be dead for an hour and still be alive I was told I was my my brother was given a stack of palliative care pamphlets Because all the doctors had convinced him that I was never going to come out of this in any normal way But yet I just woke up. I woke up. There was no explanation of how I could go from From hey shop a good hospice to take care of your brother To oh, where's your brother? He's jogging That's literally the step of 24 hours for my brother. So so There's got to be an explanation to that It's just something we don't fully understand. I think Well, I would definitely agree with that. I just what I'm resistant to is see now. I'm going to jump over on the other side God's in charge of this stuff. You know what I mean? It's like it doesn't have to make sense in our puny little Understanding and when guys get into this, you know, well cellular these cells must still know about all we have From that says that this should not happen what the neuros I guess you're Your primary physician or the neurosurgeon you're a miracle man. This should not happen. It defies our understanding Well, shit. We've got a ton of stuff that defies explanation. We don't want to do the back door materialism and say that's true One day. We'll we'll explain it. I I still feel I still feel there's an explanation even to the god influence. I really do I feel there's a physics a scientific Mathematic explanation to life and all of it and I and I think that's just an equation We've yet to understand I really do I think that the the power that god has just to Allow some to come back and some not for whatever reason that that's that's an understanding We we've just yet to understand Perhaps and maybe that brings us to some of the lessons that you did right in which Really really Nicely done you cannot help but feel uplifted and inspired by this book. It's a read that kind of Hits you with a lot of information. You probably knew but there's an authenticity to it, which is Number one, right? That's right there That's the most important principle for me. It was authenticity. Yep. Do you want to speak to that a little bit? Yeah, I think the That these are all lessons that are it's almost like these are lessons that we've already got inside of us and And when they're put in front of us and we read them I mean, even when I first read the 10 lessons in the book itself as it was published It really synchronized with what I believed even before I had my dear near-death experience And and I actually call my experience an after-death experience because I would I did truly get clinically pronounced dead and So, you know my ade I after this and before this they the the 10 principles completely made sense But it was almost as if I wasn't getting the 10 principles correctly through my religions through my Ideologies through my psychologies that that's of you know university that I had lived and worked before But yet here it was put so plainly and so simply It's almost like someone giving you the instructions on how to operate a machine or a tool that you've been using your whole life And you didn't realize you were kind of using it a little wrong And that now that you have the instructions You're like, oh, I I could fix this really easy for and because you know One of the the principles in there is is, you know exercising The power of creation and avoiding negative influences One of the the fundamental things I learned from that was honoring what I call the hour of power Which is the first 30 minutes as soon as we wake up the last 30 minutes before we go to bed And this time it's a sacred precious time That what we allow in this time we end up framing our night and framing our day With these two two little windows of time But yet we tend to just let anything get in there sometimes but if we're if we're Very succinct with what we allow inside our hour of power We can very much control the Energy of how we're feeling about our day about our life if we can really put something strong in a good way In our hour of power We can actually start feeling a lot better about our lives But if we put something very negative in our hour of power We're going to be waking up depressed without energy feeling like we don't want to get up and deal with our day And if that's how we're feeling Put something good in your hour of power. It's something so simple but yet Nobody really teaches us that not Not in a general way, you know I mean, I think that's that's cool. I mean that didn't that didn't hit me where I live as much because Man, I've been doing self-development for a long time and I've tried a lot of different things and yogic things Not that it's not great and the Gratitude thing and the journaling first thing in the morning and waking up and you know I'm doing ice bath and I'm doing breathing and I'm doing yoga and I'm doing meditation. I'm doing all this stuff Uh, I'm not against it. But some of that advice did come through as not being like Like useful for you on a very kind of ordinary level. It didn't seem to be Extraordinary in the way that it's kind of framed as you know, this is what The creator god Kind of told me kind of thing because I can go listen to Eckhart Toley and be incredibly inspired by some very simple things He says about or mickey singer is another guy. I really admire the untethered soul I think he he speaks about You know these things coming to more from a yogic standpoint and again It's like we don't need to think we don't need to do we don't need You know, we need to just get in touch with that flow of love and energy That's always there. You are a christian. You were a christian before you're a christian after I want you to speak to that because the book As I think I was just saying there where I was really getting is there's a certain christian sensibility to it Not not bad. I mean it's but it's not It's funny that you were a christian. You are a christian and some of these things come across as churchy Yeah, and that that's gotta be that's part of of who I am I mean I was a an avid church goer before my experience and And I I took a few years away from church in the party life And then when I worked tv and entertainment and working in and in movies But I'll tell you the the big thing for me was after the experience Oh, I was I was so about church I wanted to be I wanted it was like I couldn't get enough church some Sundays Like I wanted to go to different churches all the time see different churches see how they they worship but You know different monasteries and different Temples and churches. I just really wanted to get I wanted to see god I wanted to see that that god energy that I saw and experienced in heaven I wanted to see if I could find it in all these different places here And it's funny the places I found it the most is In the people around me and the eyes of the people around me that's where I've seen That heaven energy that god energy the most is in the people not the places but the people and um Yeah, you know in it. I'm sure it does come across as churchy because I was raised in a very church centered home or god centered home But you know, for instance one of the principles I actually really struggled with at the time was uh understanding how to have a a A good relationship with technology because I had my experience back 2003 In 2003 there wasn't a lot of technology to me that was like Okay, so you turn off the satellite tv I mean I mean back then we some of us were diving into email every day and I was about the The some of us may be a my space page But most of that was all pc centered, you know at home on your pc Not on the cell phones yet And so I didn't really understand the threat Of how technology is a threat now Because I see it now. I see people completely addicted to technology I see that I go around and I'll I'll see a family at a restaurant that every single person in that family Stares out a phone including the baby Uh and nobody's having any interactions And and what's funny is a laughter will start at one end of the table and then they'll message each other Whatever joke or thing that they're laughing about and they're all laughing one at a time as they see it and open it and it's like that's that to me is Missing the human experience is missing the beauty of of this life and and that's where I think the That that principle of understanding a responsible relationship with technology comes in and you know that again I learned that back in 2003 long before this was any type of threat to me or to to The humanity, you know technology was very in its infant stages. I think Compared to where it is now and where it's going next It's hard to disagree with that on one hand and I you know, we all get that. Yeah I don't get it from an NDE perspective because I don't get it from a god perspective I mean god is asleep at the switch. This is 2003. Why do we have AI? Why do we have artificial intelligence with robots who are you know, like Doing your doing your trading shooting drone bombs, you know, probably going to be in the next war Why do we have genetic engineering? Why do we have transhumanism? Why is it being jammed down our throat not to mention the tic-tac dopamine as I go through my real, you know Like one of the things you say in the book is hey, it's the timeline. Forget the timeline the past the present the future It's all one. Well, then I don't get the advice. This is back to the Commandments chiseled on the stone that does never work out. What does it mean? You know I think from you know, and and it goes back to my experience itself I've never never ever professed that this experience was anybody for anybody but for me Really and it's just I've had a lot of people say they've wanted to hear it They've wanted me to share it with their friends share it with their church group share it with their group of of people whatever group this is And and so that's why I published it. I don't profess that it's it's an answer to anybody's problems But what I do profess it to be Is something that really helped me You know to have that experience and to have it the way that it did happen for me And I think that those 10 principles aren't necessarily 10 principles for the world Those are where the 10 principles for me because that's what I needed to hear And not only did I need to hear I needed to get some of those principles Really deeply planted in me who I am so that later as technology developed And as it became it becomes a true psychological threat where every single day the more you allow yourself to pour your consciousness into technology This sadder you feel The less happiness you feel Because you are so addicted to those dopamine hits and you'd rather have the little tiny hit of dopamine than Then the good injection of serotonin of going on a walk or going on a run or being you know moving moving your body And and I think that's why those those 10 principles really connect for me. I don't I again I don't profess it's for anybody else. I I appreciate that they do speak to other people But to me all it was about was sharing my experience And how it had an impact on me the the biggest aha for me though Was these certain things that would come through spirits That were undeniable to the skeptic inside of me I mean just like with that psychotherapist where I I bring through some personal information about him and his childhood that That was irrefutable that he had even forgotten had happened to him tell that story So I'm I I really think that I'm I'm crazy at this time I had my experience and I had a neurologist who was telling me that That it was my imagination making things up And so I I really did I'm sitting there. I have a very strong sense of science in my brain I always have And so I'm sitting there thinking wow This is dangerous to have this guy who thinks he perceives spirit He thinks he hears spirit everywhere. He goes And and yet that guy is me just to clarify in case it wasn't clear use you have this Incredible near-death experience like you said after you're dead. I mean you were completely dead cold rigamortis is setting Literally, yeah in a locked bathroom of a dairy queen because you drank some Some supplement then you took the wrong dose accidentally understandable. Anyways Now you recover and your recovery is unbelievable because no one can get over it's instantaneous You come out and like you said you're ready to jog and do this stuff And the first guy comes in the first doc comes in and says Yeah, you know what it is I can tell you Vinny, you know all those things you're telling me oxygen deprivation to the brain, you know And then you go nice now you're hearing stuff and you're like Man, I don't know what's going on here and stuff. I better go see a real Psychiatrist to get because psychiatrists can give me meds and maybe that's what I need is meds to stop hallucinating and having these delusions and you go see the psychiatrist, right? Well, actually I saw a psychologist and he referred me to the psychiatrist So he he's like, you know what you're beyond my skill level and my capability you need to go see this guy So I went to his friend who was the the the real good, you know professional and as I'm seeing him He I have a guide. I have a spirit guide and he's sitting there telling me Don't you take these medicines. He's going to try to give you and I'm like that sounds crazy To have a voice sitting here say don't take these medicines, but yet I'm like, okay if that's a real voice Then then what am I supposed to tell him to make him believe he shouldn't give him to me? And that's when all of a sudden this grant this like grandmother type figure shows up for him And literally shows up for him not from me came from his his side of things And she says you need to tell remind him about this that this happened to him This is why he went into the medical Field into the mental and psychologist and the the actual chemistry side of things This is why he went into this you need to remind him of this because he's forgotten about it And so it was going to be a dual purpose thing for him. It was going to Be kind of a a ruler of oh, here's a guy who was bringing forth truth He's not so crazy But also it was going to be a nice reminder. Oh, yeah, that's why you've gotten this whole field to begin with Now I take it that this is a not so nice reminder I mean this triggers something very Deep and potentially dark with this guy. I don't know because you don't reveal it But it's not like a nice reminder because the way it was it was definitely early life trauma But what I was bringing forth was how this grandmother figure had stopped the trauma for him And that that's why she was the one bringing it forward saying hey I was the one to nip that in the butt And and help you realize you didn't need to be a victim anymore And that's why she was coming for and then she was using so much love to share that with me And then I'm I'm sitting there this 25 year old Everyone calls the miracle boy who I think I'm mentally crazy And and I'm supposed to now tell him somehow. So I just told him the best way possible, which I'm I guarantee I didn't sugarcoat it I just I almost I just slammed it out there on the desk And and I I wasn't going to say anything But my own guide told me That I had to share that with him before I picked up the prescription Before I actually picked up the paper Because he was done writing he wrote too and he was writing a third one And he was writing that third one when I just kind of casually brought this up And I do remember saying So there's an older woman here. She's related to you and she's saying this And I just laid it out there That's when he dropped his prescription pad because this is back when you know, at least in his field he was handwriting prescriptions He drops the prescription pad He dropped the pen and he pointed his finger about an inch away from my nose and said you get the f out of here And I didn't know what to do and his his little secretary heard that And when I was on my way out the door, she was like, what happened? What did you say to him? And and I go, I don't know. I don't know. I just I just said what came to me He caused you after that Vinny to tell that part of the story So I left in a little bit of a tough. I was pretty pissed to him like how unprofessional of him to act like that But I didn't know that what I just told him was 100 true Obviously later I figured it out, but he called me about 15 minutes down the road And I was on my cell phone picked up And he and he said, you know, this is this is your doctor I want you to know that whatever happened to you must have happened to you Because the fact that you brought up something that I had completely forgotten Even happened to me that somehow he had actually blocked it himself But me bringing it up actually it was such a truth bomb for him that there was no way for him to believe he needed to give me any prescriptions and and mainly that's what it was for And so I did go away without taking any prescriptions for that So Vinny one other lesson from the light after death that I thought was particularly Well done on your part and and I love the way that you just Reference this before and let me just kind of put an exclamation point on this This was your experience and what I hear you saying and tell me if I'm wrong But you kind of feeling this is tailored for you For your Journey and what you need absolutely absolutely. Yeah, I've never I've had people even say hey Can I use these 10 principles to build like a a religious group or build this or build that and and I've always said no This is this is for all religions. This is for this is primarily for me But if someone can help themselves get more connected to their god through these 10 principles awesome But I'm not going to go and put these 10 principles up anywhere and say they're anybody's gospel because they're not they're They're just uh 10 principles that were given to me in my experience And and man have they helped me since And and what's weird is they're getting more and more important as my own life is progressing further and further On my my journey of life, you know as a father these 10 principles are Just invaluable and and I've taught it to my 13 year olds and I'm now teaching it to my my two year old That he'll he'll have a good embodiment of the 10 principles four kids Good luck. So, you know Your children are your children. Yeah, they are They come through you but not from you Exactly So, uh, I liked listen to your inner voice because there was some subtlety and nuance to that That really resonated with me Talk to folks about what it means to listen to your inner voice so, you know, sometimes we'll be Going about our day and and one of our friends one of our relatives They'll they'll get stuck in our consciousness. We can't get them out of our mind And the reason that's happening is that's part of that quantum entanglement That they need us or we need to hear from them somehow And if we would follow That uh that perception that intuition We would actually see our our own life Be blessed and their life be blessed by whatever takes place um, one of the the coolest exercises I like to give people is is Ask yourself who needs me today and ask yourself that every single morning And if you can have a piece of paper there so you can write down the name that comes to you and you'd be very impressed that how often When you ask who needs me today How often a name actually comes to you or a face of someone comes to you And you might not even recognize the face and then later in your day You recognize the face as one of the faces you've seen And and and this is the beautiful part Some people are seeing someone's face someone they've never seen in their life before And then two hours later they see that person at the gas station And they're like, oh, that's the person that needs me today And I know exactly what what god's talking about when when god says they need me is because now the scene has played itself out They recognize the player And it's it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful beautiful thing. You can watch your life come alive with this single exercise You know that that's awesome And it's it's so wonderful because I kind of took it in a completely different direction And that you know one of the things that I kind of focus on is I've created The mess that is that inner voice that kind of goes all over for all of us and this is scattered and isn't always as Compassionate and connected to my wife and my children and everyone else. I should be and the first thing I need to do is seek Calm and to the first thing I need to do is do no harm today. You know, do no harm. Don't let my mouth Or my actions make things worse if you will and just Release into not trying to pass not trying to get ahead and stuff like that So what I really took away from your chapter on listen to your inner voice was That it's there And we can train ourselves to become more in touch with it So it's funny. I I kind of stopped there My life experience tells me that I don't want to get into that game of Trying to be god soldier and god needs my help. I think god's god everything, you know If I can get the hell out of the way That's probably what god wants me to do But it's cool. It's cool that that you take it You take it one way and you shared it with me and I found it important and took it a different way Well, I love I love that way that you take it too because that adds a whole another Dynamic to that that principle alone. I mean The other this is about a year ago My wife was driving down the street and she she hears me telling these 10 principles constantly So she's always trying to embody her own 10 principles her own version And she feels this feeling you need to pull over right now And she's right in front of a vfw of veterans of foreign wares lodge or foreign wars lodge And she's like, I've never been there. Why would I pull in there her ego? Her brain is saying, why would you pull in there? She did it anyway And just seconds later A car running from the police Came and rammed through all the cars that she was next to in traffic Rammed through all of them and then made its way through that intersection and took off But they you know, how many countless cars? There's at least six or seven that she saw that they're now going to have to Claim something on their insurance of a hit and run as a guy runs from the police So as simple simple little thing, it wasn't going to kill anybody But it would be extra hardship for her to go through And and so she followed that simple prompting. It was an awesome opportunity for her Um another time where I was You know me me and her we we we tend to try to do good things that we come to us And we were on one of these little um escapades of trying to help somebody out We got finally got done with it and We're going to this gas station and there's these two nicely dressed, uh boys. They're they're Early to early 20s They're they're dressed real nice driving a brand new car And my wife says They need help And here's the weird thing. Here's the the craziest thing alex My own intuition said yes, they need help, but my ego was so strong My ego is seeing that brand new car and seeing uh one of them was wearing brand new jordans And i'm like that these guys don't need help They look financially. I think in finances is the only help that you would need for someone at a gas station But yet here they were they didn't look like they needed help And my ego was so strong to say nope, they're fine. I went in I paid for my gas I was leaving the gas station And my wife says to me don't you dare not honor the principles you've been teaching me and i'm like I had to be authentic and I'd say you know what you're right I'm I'm not honoring that because I do I am feeling something there, but I'm I'm disregarding it So I I reversed out of the exit Reversed all the way back to to where their car and where they were standing And I go this is good. I roll down the window and I go This is gonna sound weird guys, but my wife thinks you guys need help I laid later right under the bus And and one of them said oh, thank god, we've been praying for some help And what it was is they they had this special atm card that once they went to go get groceries They now couldn't use it for 24 hours And they had both used that their own atm card now they had no cash for gas And so they only needed, you know 20 30 bucks worth of gas Gas was a lot cheaper back then And so we were able to fill them up for about 30 bucks worth of gas and move them on their way But they had called somebody this was up in the renal sparks area They called somebody an elco Which is four hours away and someone was coming from four hours away to help them and they didn't need that They had somebody right there that was listening to to their intuition And so I've learned for many many times like this That follow that intuition I'm only out of out of pocket 30 bucks to help these guys, but man. I was I amplified for days I was just so on on top of life for days And I felt like I was honoring my wife too because I I did what she told asked me to do And and I also learned that a lot of times when I'm not listening to my intuition She's going to listen to it better And when she's not listening I listen to it better And so even as a couple we help each other through these experiences And we can we can be there for people when they need us. It's it's a cool thing. I love it I really really love it. It helps you live at a At a a completely different experience than most people are experiencing in their daily lives in a beautiful way And so if we can if we can get that intuition going And follow it it gets stronger and stronger and stronger the more we follow it That's awesome. Absolutely awesome and inspiring. That's not me You know, I know it's not everybody. It's not everybody. It's not me in the sense that I want to get this out there, you know because I'm open You know, like one of my spiritual practices every day is before I go in the ice bath. I knock Let me in let me in, you know Let me in god to what you need to teach me today what I need to be aware of today But if it doesn't come I'm okay with that and I understand myself as being Spiritually dense not intentionally, but I don't experience these things the way some other people do and I Need to be okay with that and I think I've run across other people, you know in doing this work Who are the same way? They're just like, you know, and they sometimes feel left out of the party You know, why isn't this happening to me? Well, because it's not supposed to happen to you Yeah, what you're supposed to do because that's what I think is is is if I was gonna kind of take what you're saying the beauty of it is These are Vinnie's lessons Exactly chose this life to develop in the along his spiritual path Alex chose his life to develop along his spiritual path Again back to listen to the inner voice says, okay, I get it. I'm on a path. I'm on a journey Tell me what's next, but if it doesn't come through Exactly I think that for you too a lot of your intuition is Is getting guests how to get them when to get them where to get them onto your show and And and which one's not to have and that's where your intuition is really And yours is probably told you like three times. Why the hell do you have this crazy guy Vinnie on my show now? Let's get it No, I mean one I I don't I don't process it quite that way but what I do Lean into more is that I need to do this just the way that I did it and I need to At the beginning say I don't need to believe your story and you need to hear that somebody doesn't need to Hear this churchy crap and just kind of roll over and do it somebody needs to be able to come at it In a different perspective and your message still needs to be able to penetrate that and yes You're saying it can and you're saying you're willing to do that. You're willing to listen to somebody who's saying I want to I want to But come come a little bit this way and I think it's awesome that at least at this point in this interview You're authentic. You're like, oh, you want me to step a little bit in that direction. I can do that But let's go on to uh the purpose another point from the 10 lessons from the light after death And again folks you get this book. You'll not be disappointed. It's uh, very inspirational The story is like I say Got that amazing not to be Literally I mean the guy dies for an hour, you know, you need to understand this nde and and the paramedic Is a rookie paramedic that goes outside of total protocol and literally cuts him out of the body bag to resuscitate him But here's the the the last point on your things that I'm gonna understand the purpose of evil So I wrote a book a couple years ago called why evil matters And the premise of the book was We live in this kind of schizophrenic culture in terms of dealing with evil and we watch the super bowl halftime show and You do it with a group of people and you're like Everyone's jaws dropping and they don't know how to say it and I go you're seeing what I'm it's satanic It's completely satanic Which we got to be careful That's a very bible-y kind of thing that doesn't translate well when you really look at the history of the bible But we get the darkness thing, right? Yeah, there's darkness there. Yeah, the grammy's the same The grammy's oh, yeah, crazy bad So the schizophrenia is on one hand They're so pulling it in one direction that it's just drop jaw Obvious and at the same time the whole underpinning of our culture is we're atheistic. We're secular We're like there's no such thing as evil. He was a social construct. You know, it's not Really? We can't point to anyone say that's evil So we have that on one hand and then on the other hand we have people who are religious and say Oh evil. I got that. I'll tell you right here. Let me pull out my book and I'll tell you Chapter inverse what evil is I I think for most thinking people and I think My interpretation of your book will fall in this category of with here I think you'd be aligned with me is that's an inadequate starting point You know is to say there's no such thing as evil. It's just a social construct There's nothing real to it and saying it can all it can be nailed down in this very very specific way And I agree that the evil is real that for us to say That there is no evil then we're on evil side. I really believe that It's almost like I'm on the side of the thread. I don't want you to think that this thread exists That that to me is what evil wants evil wants us to believe it doesn't exist But I also want to you know I used to study about world war two in germany and the weimar republic and what what happened to germany to put Hitler and to put the nazis in power and I thought never in my life will I ever see that much freedom being given away to one fascist leader and and yet I watched so many freedoms disappear under gov it under the guise of fear I watched everybody winding up to give away their freedoms because they they they were so afraid of the outcome And it was almost like the bogeyman syndrome Where as long as you could keep in control of the new bogeyman you were in control of the people And and that's what I saw in in That cycle repeating of what I saw happen in In studying what happened in germany because that's exactly what happened with germany that that once they decided the bogeyman was this They could go and start taking that out And and that happened to be a whole class of and culture and religion of people And and that's not the reality. That's not any type of reality. But but where evil is real is To have life and not have evil would be like having a gym with no equipment See that slightly differently and let me tie it back to the point we just talked about and that is listen to your inner voice what I think Is my experience and so many people I've talked to is You think I don't know evil I know evil every day multiple times a day when that thought comes in my head to be to be angry To be vengeful to be it it's there every day. All I have to do is scratch that itch You know, you go listen to serial killers and their true confessions. A lot of them will say Hey, it started out when I was a little kid and I you know went down this path If I had this kind of sexual thing that I wasn't cut and I did it and then I did this and then the next thing I did this and then it becomes an obsession which we all can relate to go look at You know people who are obsessed with eating or porn or all its drugs, you know I get it. You don't think we get it. We all get it. That's why we're that's why you're meditating That's why you're doing all this other stuff. I think it's so common That we we lose sight of it and that feeling of needing control want like you're just saying wanting control from that crazy voice I I totally think that that is The road to the to the whole thing. What what do you think about that? I think that that definitely that where all of us every single one of us are are a yin and yang In ourselves that we we have the propensity for good and bad every single one of us do For evil and for good, you know, I'm going to call evil and love To me those are the two opposite forces love force and evil or fear voice Fear force that that's what causes us typically to To lash out and do evil things. Is it some type of fear some type of reaction? It's definitely not a love thing but sometimes what will happen is people will get addicted to the Adrenaline they feel when they're in that fearful state And that's what causes them to take these crazy steps of becoming serial killers But you know the the hard part for us to understand is we are living in a microcosm of of existence in our world And in the macrocosm of life stepping back and realizing That our entire existence here is very finite and very very minuscule compared to our real existence of eternity and you know Understanding that and understanding we can put a theme on what we spend our time with here We can choose that theme Of love or fear. It's totally up to us And we can do good and bad out of both energies But but you can only get so much good out of the fear energy Then it ends up lapsing into a very bad dark energy And and the love energy you can do a lot of good and as long as you stay love centered you can continue to do a lot of good And and bring forth a lot of energy in a good way Now the whole thing is why are we here as we're here so that we can learn how to choose between the two But to to have the two choices you have to have the evil You have to it has to be the other the option But to to take evil off the table And to only have good options Is again like walking into a gym where there's no equipment. There's no resistance There's nothing exercising that agency muscle That ability to make the choice And that's what this is. We're here at earth school. I have what I call it earth school We're here at earth school so we can learn how to to make choices make decisions And and choose between the the love and the fear And the more we choose the love it the easier it is to love The more we choose the fear the easy it is for easier it is for us to hate To ostracize push away and damage others So it's it's important for us. It's important for us to choose Choose what we feel is is our best path and that's what we're here to do It's just it is sad when some people and this is no judgment But some people they will they will continue down that fear path and never leave They love the power of fear they really do And whether it's an outward power inward power doesn't matter They really love that power and and I think those are the real evil people because on you know, they go out in public and they live this you know Normal looking life But yet behind drawn curtains and behind closed doors. They're a very different person But I think in the authentic moment of today We're starting to see these dark people come out From their closets come out from their dark rooms come out from their They're drawn curtains and be their evil self in front of everyone And we're in a in a more authentic nature now. Maybe it might be an artistic nature It's still authentic it is For them to show that With you to a certain extent one of the things I like to kind of Hope people with is slavery in the united states Frederick Douglass tells a story about Being in slavery and all those good church people coming back on sunday and sitting down why the Slaves come in serve them and you know, then taking that woman out in the back and doing what they do All that stuff and it's like that's not satanic Slavery for hundreds of years or on our recent Abu Ghraib. Are those images? Chiseled in your brain. How many babies did we kill in? Iraq in afghanistan Really, this is what we're going to focus on is our little gripe with uh, hollywood or whatever No, that's a little gripe. I just think it's at a different It's at a whole different level and when we kind of want to chunk it down and say this is it or this is happening now it's like I think as our as our culture the specifically the american west culture itself the westernized culture on on the surface We've been doing quote-unquote good things But we've also been getting in good wars. There's no such thing There's no such thing as a good war. That's a that's a dark check That's an evil check being cashed out the front door to to go to war over Over objects over oil over whatever And and we're going to call it freedom defending freedom somehow. I'm saying no, that's not the case Yeah, but you know what those commies? I mean, that's why I use the matzaitang example because a lot of leftist people They want to forget about that that kind of atheist stuff That does not work on so many. No, in fact, you have fascism. You have socialism both to me Either one is evil because you've got mankind Choosing who eats and who survives And and that's where you have problems Because we're we're susceptible to fear all of us are All of us are if you study, you know Stalin what he did he He essentially didn't like an entire part of his own country and decided I'm going to not even allow these potato farmers to eat Their own potatoes They starved with with bags of potatoes in their own possession But it was illegal for them to eat one And they knew that not only would they be killed but their entire family be killed if they were caught eating one potato So whole entire segment Of the russian population died While holding food but was not allowed to cook it or eat it Is it okay to do whatever we have to to stop that? It's tricky. Is it okay to do a project paperclip? It really so it's okay to be verner von bran over here You know to the united states verner von bran who you know, by the way Hung the jewish workers who didn't work fast enough in front of the factory He was a nazi's nazi friend with Hitler, you know early on in the game. So it's okay You know, hey, we have to fight yeah guys, you know I don't see how we how we sort that out on any kind of Logical level those are god problems. That's what I say, you know, but yeah I'm always leery of the god is on our side god wants us, you know to fight just this one time You know god needs our help just this once, you know, just needs a little push Yeah, and you look even back to the holy inquisition when when supposedly that was god's army taking out all the All the heretics and the witches and and all sorts of non-believers because they were saying the earth was round. Oh heaven forbid You know, so uh, there there is there's a lot of time where people are Misinterpreting god really misinterpreting god because I I fully don't believe that god would be out there wanting us in wars The the god that I experienced That I experienced on the other side is not a god of war It's not the only god of war is fear 100 and if we keep ourselves in a state of fear, we'll always be at war We'll always be at war I don't know. I I do believe I do believe that we have to we have to stop wrong doing when we know what's going on Absolutely, we have to do our best But but to me there's also stuff that is is handled beyond this life A lot of things that are handled beyond this life and that's where the justice comes in with god Um because to to start creating justice here You're removing people's agency and that's the whole reason we're here We're here to have the agencies to grow to learn how to use it Because when we're near god when we're near god We are in such synchronicity with each other as far as anything god wants. We want Because that's so much that love that is there between us that anything god wants. We want we love god so much And we even to come here we have to forget that love because it's so strong that if we could remember how much we love each other We would start doing everything we would we're supposed to do without any agency would just do it Because we love god so much. We love our creator so much That's the whole reason we're here our school is is to forget how much we love our father Love our our our creator come here and make decisions learn how to make decisions and go back at least that's one man's perspective my perspective I got you This stuff has been hashed around for hundreds of years. Oh, yeah Thousands of years. Yeah. So so Vinny if people visit the light after death dot com Or living gods light dot com What are they going to find and what should they do over there? So if they go to the light after death dot com, they'll see the book they can actually purchase it there They can also purchase an amazon audible But the light the light after death is just the book A movement that i've started with my author buddy who we've written this together As we've started a nonprofit called living gods light and what it is it's an organization to help people of all faiths It is mostly christian, but but it is all faiths to help them Better embody the 10 principles that I learned and help them Start building that their own inner intuition And get it to be stronger if they want it stronger And how to get it stronger so that they can build a stronger relationship with their creator No matter what name they're giving that creator Well, it's been absolutely terrific having you on the show and really appreciate it You you're bringing the light man. We can feel it all the way over here in california Hey, I appreciate it that you can feel it through the people's republic over there just California right on I love all of my california family. I love my united states family and thanks for having me on alex I really appreciate you man and and and thanks for coming and and being open to just chat You know a lot of people some people are open for some people aren't I I love that We got to have this chat today as cool cool Next time we'll talk about et Okay, that would be fun See you man. All right. Thanks alex. Bye. Thanks again to vince and tollman for joining me today on skeptical I'd like to tee up this question And I'd like to ask you to come and talk to me about it come over to the skeptical forum Write me an email connect. I don't know why more people don't do that I would love that opportunity to connect with all the people I listen to when I listen to podcast But I don't know whatever there's a barrier there that a lot of people don't want to step past So that's fine, too But the question is How do we figure out whether those lessons those rules we're getting Are meant for us or they're meant for us and everybody else too I think we're all tempted to interpret them Both ways and I know I do a lot of times. So how do you do it? Let me know and until next time take care and bye for now