 Today, we welcome Dr. Robert Davis to Skeptico. Bob is an internationally recognized expert in the field of sensory neuroscience. I was just browsing his curriculum Vita before we talked here and way beyond my comprehension, but I have to take it for what it's worth. He's a guy who's had a stellar academic career, all the usual stuff, articles and scholarly paper, NIH grants, call the conferences to speak, all this stuff. Even like we like to say on Skeptico, you know, the universe knocked more or less. Bob and his wife had a rather lengthy UFO sighting a few years back that led to his first book, The UFO Phenomenon. Then he had a rather remarkable shared near-death experience or shared death experience, I should say if you know what that is, leading to his second book, Life After Death. And to top it all off, he has this rather remarkable Kundalini experience, a peak experience that more or less leads to his third book and one that we're going to talk a lot about today, Unseen Forces, The Integration of Science, Reality and You. Bob, awesome, awesome work. Thank you so much for joining me. Oh, Alex, it's really a pleasure to be with you. I've been listening to you for quite some time. Great. You know, you were telling me that a little bit beforehand and that's always good to hear, especially because I wanted to try something different here. I'm just started trying it out lately, but I really like the way that it goes because it launches us into these level three kind of discussions. And in the email exchange we had back and forth and because you're a listener to the show, you know what I mean when I say level three. We don't have to go over the basics. We don't have to try and painstakingly deal with all the stupid skeptical nonsense and we can get to some of the real issues that are important to the people like you and I who are deeply into trying to figure this stuff out. So are you ready? Oh, I'm ready. Let's go. Skeptico jeopardy. It's for those who are listening along. Here are my categories for you. Brain, biofield, NDEs versus abductions, different world and we'll explain what that means, but that's one of the key ideas from the book. Time and space, peak experience. Obviously we have to get there. Xanax, I got an interesting spin on how much we should rely on the medical field to save us from the spiritual emergencies. There are no doubt there. Kundalini, we've got to talk about that. And of course I always have God on the list because God seems to be left out of these discussions all too often. So Dr. Robert Davis, please pick your category. We'll stay with Bob, but we'll start with, I guess, the peak experience. I think that's the overarching issue in a sense right here. So let's go with that one. Okay, peak experience and I guess that leads to a really easy question for me. How are you defining peak experience? Well, it is debatable. Stace talked about it quite a while ago. It's a broad range of spiritual, mystical, extraordinary experiences. Perceived generally in terms of an ineffable type of description of reality. People report having an altered sense of time and space, possibly even interacting with non-human entities. That's a distinct possibility, but they sense this interconnectedness, a common sense of oneness with the cosmos, as they say. Do you worry that we're lumping too many things together when we talk about peak experience? We may very well, and that's part of the problem. Weeding things out, trying to more specifically define with precise criteria what we are talking about. And I have lumped the NDEs, OBEs, even the UAPs, meditation, psychoactive reactions. That falls under the heading. Those are all trigger-like experiences of this overarching peak experiences. This extraordinary event that seems to transform people in remarkable, often similar, generally positive ways in terms of psychospiritual changes. And the question here is why? Why are these different types of trigger events? Share similarities, unique differences, no doubt. But why do they have such a remarkable effect on people from that day forward? And that is the critical question here. And why doesn't the medical community, the psychiatric community in particular, give more emphasis, more attention to the millions of individuals who are having difficulty integrating this remarkable peak experience because it's called a spiritual awakening, a transcendent, whatever you want to call it, that goes by many different names. But nevertheless, people are questioning what happened to them. Why me? Did I actually interact with another reality? Am I going insane? They're hesitant to seek professional help or fear of being regarded as psychotic in nature. Because the last thing you want to hear is that you are psychotic. When you question your sanity, that can put you over the edge. And it does. Many people obviously don't want to go there. So they're in silence or confined in just with one person. And people note that they're different. They're having a spiritual emergency. I had a spiritual emergency. That's why I brought that. You know, I just popped that up on the screen. Let's talk about that because that's pretty amazing and it takes us in a bunch of different directions that I think are interesting. First of all, we want to tell people what a Kundalini experience is. You know, it's been documented in the yoga literature for a long time. Culturally, we've kind of maybe not always used it correctly in terms of the definition of what it is in the West, but it still basically comes through. It's a physical biological kind of thing. A lot of times the way people talk about it. And then there's this integration problem that you're talking about. Sometimes people have these Kundalini awakening kind of experiences, these all knowing peak experiences, wild energy that runs through the body kind of experience. And sometimes that comes after a very rigorous set of exercises, meditations over a period of years, guided by an experienced guru type who's going to lead you there. But other times as you're going to, I think, tell us about, it comes in a more spontaneous out of control way, out of the blue sometimes. We've had some people on the show who've talked about exactly that and it can be very unsettling when it comes that way. So I've kind of teed it up a little bit, but fill out the missing pieces and tell us about your Kundalini experience. Well said, Alex. A Kundalini experience is just simply another type of trigger event for an overarching peak experience. They're very similar. In my case, it did emerge spontaneously, but let me give a little backdrop to this quickly. I gave a talk in Australia. Following the talk, I was invited to participate in a little party in a hotel room. One of the women there, a physician, actually said, let's do some medical healing. So people sat around about five, six of us and she started to talk. She started to talk about erasing engrams, removing negative energy, energies, genetic dispositions. All of this type of information that kind of was focused on cleaning the person out, removing all those, the negative so-called karma. And she was very descriptive about it. Nevertheless, I started coughing. Couldn't stop for 20 minutes. I started having involuntary movements of my shoulders, my head. And I was conscious. I was fully aware that I was literally out of control. I could not and have not ever experienced that. I could not control myself. And at the same time, while I'm more than curious about what's going on with my body, I felt wonderful. I felt that surge of energy that you talked about, kind of like a foundation in a way of a typical Kundalini. What do people talk about? Maybe something having to do with a chakra and a release of energy from the base of the spine. Maybe that's all that it is. But it's obviously not clear to the medical community what is actually going on other than that it was like a dual awareness. I was here in the moment, but I couldn't control my body although I was very aware of what was going on. And I loved it. It was a very positive energy. Here again, it's impossible to fully explain to another person unless they have it. But I was for a period of time transformed by that. It was extraordinarily positive in many ways, but it did have that spiritual emergency attached to it. Numerous obvious questions are going to be asked by anyone. But I felt that interconnectedness. How does it manifest? Again, ineffable. I can't explain it. I felt more at one with reality. To the point where I started to hug trees every time I walked in the park, I felt that kind of closeness. It's a lifelong... How long did it last? Several months. I was very anxious. I tried to read everything about the Kundalini experience. Eventually found Dr. Graf's book on spiritual emergency. Anybody who is experiencing something like that. Whatever event and people have it for again, a variety of trigger experiences. NDEs, OBEs, psychoactive, etc. The thing is, that book is a critical resource. It does provide sufficient perspective to give you a better sense of what's going on and possibly what to do. You need that kind of comfort. Let's back up and make sure everyone knows who Stan Graf is. Of course you and I do, but absolute pioneer in these fields and has explored these extended states from a number of different kind of venues or paths in as you were kind of talking about. Started out with psychedelics, but also just went to meditation, rhythmic kind of drumming, and all this kind of stuff which then relates to what we see in cultures throughout time that are isolated from a modern society. They still have this way and now we understand that as a way of accessing these peak experiences, these altered states, and that starts to connect. The other thing Stan Graf starts to do is start documenting what it's like to be in these states, how long these states last. As you were alluding to it, maybe you want to speak more of, they can be extremely uncomfortable and also just unsettling in a number of ways. They lead to all sorts of personal problems. The people that are closest to you may not be able to relate to you for that six months or sometimes for a year but people are kind of often doing things. So there's all those things we want to pull apart and maybe I'll stop and do that, but then what I really want to get to is beginning to start to understand or take stabs at what we think that's saying about this larger reality and whether it's a different world or whether it's looking at the world differently as you like to put it. But fill in any gaps I left about Stan Graf's important work and then the general lay of the land for these Kundalini experiences. Go ahead, stop there. Yeah, we need more support from the psychological community and they need to be aware of the unique types of psychological problems these individuals are having trying to wrestle with what happened to them. The fact that mainstream science, of course, doesn't recognize the things that we're talking about as being true reality in the sense of an NDE, Kundalini, et cetera. Maybe that lack of acknowledgement, understanding has led to a paltry, an inadequate inferior management system on the part of the medical community, psychiatric in particular, psychological, to manage people, to help them with the unique experiences. There are some who do that, but they're few and far between. And billions of people have these experiences every year. We know 200,000 people in the United States alone have an NDE. Do you think they were the same person having their morning coffee and a bagel the day before? I don't think so. Coming off of something like that is going to more than rock your world and transform you in many ways. And that is a critical question among many others. Why are these individuals, again, transformed? But I always wonder and I always worry if we're not asking the wrong question there. So let me review some of the data that you just glossed over. You go talk to an NDE researcher like PMH Atwater, who's done an awesome job of exploring exactly that topic that is under-reported, if you will, because not a lot of folks want to talk about the fact that you're going to have this NDE, you're going to meet God, you're going to be transformed, and then you're going to come back and you're going to be suicidal and get a divorce. No one wants that to start. And it's not like that always happens, but it doesn't solve all the problems. And then interestingly enough, you are super well-versed in the UFO contact, ET contact experience stuff, and you're well tied into the free organization and know the data set as well as know the stuff around that. And so there, the story is the same, right, Bob? These people, even if they have spiritually transformative experiences as part of their contact experiences, or if they don't, if they have more traumatic experiences, same thing, they come back, divorce rate goes way up, feelings of isolation goes way up. All these things are kind of the hidden message. And then I go talk to a guy, I really appreciate him like his work is Dr. Jeffrey Martin, a guy who studied the Awakening Enlightenment experience scientifically, Harvard trained social scientist, right up the alley of what we're talking about here. So go talk to Christian mystics as well as Buddhist Zen, the best practitioners, you go to a community and you say, okay, who's really got the goods? Who's really enlightened? And then you go talk to those people and you find out their experience, their phenomenology, what that's all about. And you go study that and you look the best you can at what it means to become awakened or enlightened. Again, same thing. Yes, it's a great transformation, wouldn't change it for anything in the world, also leads to increased divorce, higher rates of major upheaval in your interpersonal relationships and stuff like that. So here we're talking about people who are just going through a different kind of awakening, but we're saying the same thing. So let's tackle that for a minute, particularly with... Well, I understand what you're saying about turning on the medical community to this. The flip side is, is that really a viable path? Because they are so ingrained with the thinking, and that was really the point of what I had up on the screen of the Xanax thing. You know, I mean, this is a Xanax world where Xanax is like the most popular party drug at college, right? And kids are doing Xani all the time, right? And we have a pharmaceutical industrial complex that cranks that stuff out. They know they're selling 100 times more Xanax than anyone in the world would need unless they're using for recreational purposes, and they don't care. And the whole system is built around that model, and I don't want to get super conspiratorial other than to say, is that really where we want to turn for help? And I guess we could argue that where else are we going to go because people need help, and they're going to go see their doctor, but boy, it's just a tough road. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much there. That's one critical aspect to this whole phenomenon. We don't even understand the essence of the different types of phenomena we are addressing, let alone consciousness in order to try to make sense of what is reality, or people actually having these experiencing, and is consciousness a significant difference in the brain? It all ties into these bigger issues that we all bring to the table on a daily basis. Is this all there is, what my senses tell me? And if I pierce a veil, if I have an extraordinary experience, if I have an altered state of consciousness that is so distinctly different, joyous, positive as so I feel, why then, however, do I have so many conflicts in my life thereafter, like you mentioned, a high divorce rate, that is quite true. Three quarters of those have NDE heaven divorce with the first five or 10 years after the experience. It does result in interpersonal relationship problems. So here again, big deal, if they say they're spiritually awakened, why all the crises on the home front? There is a disparity here, maybe NDE regards to these individuals for the most part as having a form of psychosis, another issue. So not only do we need to manage it, we have to understand what we are managing to have symptoms that were facilitated by some type of perceptual, experiential interaction with something, which includes all of the things that we're talking about, which includes the silvery disc in the sky, and the grays and the reptilians in people's rooms that people have NDEs and they say they're interacting with deceased relatives and only deceased relatives, or a supreme being. What people are saying, I knew my friend had died, even though I didn't know he or she was sick, more common than twins, but nevertheless a shared death experience that I had, this overwhelming sense of knowingness that someone had died, ESP, which in my mind is real, I don't want to hear otherwise, subtle effects, very subtle, but it is real, and then the psychoactive drugs, the DMT, psilocybin. Look, they just did an online survey at John Hopkins University, over 3,000 individuals, a quarter of them were atheists. After ingesting psilocybin, about half of them became believers in some supreme being. The point is, it has to be a profound event to alter one's religious profile in a sense, spirituality to that magnitude. You know, let me just put an exclamation point on that. I love that you brought that up, because I heard that in one of your interviews, and I didn't have it in the notes. It's a phenomenal point, because I would just relate it to, like Dr. Jeffrey Martin's finding on the Awakening Enlightenment thing. In case people don't know, the point you just made is like rock solid in terms of evidential in the psychology community. People do not change those beliefs. The number of people who just don't have any kind of peak experience and yet fundamentally change their beliefs in that way is really, really, really low. So the fact that it would be that high is super significant and is a major pointer that something is going on along the lines of what you're talking about. So I'm really glad you brought that up. Right, thank you. And I'm glad you're aware of that, as many of your listeners are. Then that's only the effects of psilocybin. Similar outcomes occur from the NDE, NDE is, as we mentioned, among others. So why? What does trigger it? Is it obviously just a brain event? Or is it an aspect of view? So you can't help but not consider that possibility. And I don't have an answer. I don't know if people are actually interacting with another reality, another dimension, that is in our time and space with a different phase and are interacting with beings. But again, we have millions of stories. This is all anecdotal primarily. It doesn't match with current scientific laws, as we all know. We have to be careful who we talk to about this, right? It doesn't get enough attention in terms of research on the part of the scientific community with grasping up straws. Very few studies have done in this arena. One critical study that I just became familiar with, Alex, was looking at the semantic content of individuals who have an NDE and contrasted with those who had a psychoactive effect from DMT, dimethyl tryptamine, ayahuasca. The similarities were astonishing. I pointed to the fact that obviously these two kinds of PD triggers are similar in terms of the experiential perspective. Hold on, Bob. That's fascinating. And I'd like to hear more about that. Do you kind of remember off the top of your head the methodology, how they did the language kind of parsing? You were obviously pretty impressed by it and how that kind of played out. I'd love to hear more about that. I'm vaguely familiar with it. I don't have all the details at hand. Look, Alex, invite me back. That alone, among a few other studies, is another show I'll tell you the truth. But that study was comparable to only a few other studies, like meditators who achieved that non-dual state of awareness. Their, again, semantic content of the essence of the experience was comparable to those who have NDEs, comparable to those who have the DMT experience. The point is, there is overlap. And even those with the UAP experience, they seem to have some altered state of consciousness that parallels to some extent. Unique differences, no doubt, among all of these. But there are sufficient similarities in terms of altered state of consciousness and transformative aspects of behavior going forward that can't be ignored. The point is, is it a brain event? Somebody accessing, hijacking our consciousness? Does it prove that we are interacting with some alternative reality? And the profound magnitude of that event, emotional and physical and non-physical, is beyond belief to the point where it does have a transformant effect. It seems to result in that ego dissolution and an inability and an individual's ability to distinguish internal from external reality. So they have an absence of time and space, in other words. They have ineffable emotion, joy and peace. They feel love, unconditional. We know it. We've heard it before. There are more critical questions at hand that must be asked. You know, what is true reality? And if you ask the materialist's mindset now, we know that what you see is what you get. It's sensory information, photon bouncing off physical objects after coming here from 14 billion years ago when that's from the Big Bang. Okay, it simulates my retina to convert it to electromagnetic energy. I perceive it. It's real. It's all or none. Yes or no. That's reality. That's true reality. Or, how about millions of people who are saying similar things, saying that they are interacting with the disease, saying that they experience the beauty of that camping put into words, unconditional love that cannot be expressed to capture the moment. They don't even want to return to their body in the E-case. What about all the other aspects, details of their perceptual experience when they have these events in their lives that change them? The point is this. Is that another aspect of reality? Should that be regarded, in other words, by materialists as another reality? Well, you can make a case for realism, a time shift to now start to consider this objective experience a heck of a lot more than it is on the part of the scientific community. It has to be quantified. It has to follow the scientific method. It has to be statistically analyzed. Well, maybe not. Maybe not everything should be. Maybe this phenomenon, this altered state of consciousness, it's an extraordinary thing. We don't understand a bit of it. I can sit here and tell you some neurologic stuff that goes on in the brain. The network is now operational, and that's the foundation to all of this. I don't know. It's a good guess at best. You know, you said something. Either I read it in your latest book, Unseen Forces, or I heard it on one of the excellent interviews you've done. You've done some great interviews, and people can check those out. Maybe we'll provide some links to the other interviews in the notes, because we are kind of jumping in the middle of things here. But you said peak experiences relate to meeting an entity, right? So I wanted to explore that, because I thought that was kind of a cool idea is that these people invariably are talking about having an experience with an entity. And I love where that takes us, because it takes us in a couple different ways. You know, we all understand the abduction thing, oh, the entity is a gray on a ship. But in the NDE, entity is different. Sometimes it's just a spirit light. Sometimes it's God. Sometimes it's Jesus. And Jesus tells you to come up and feel his hand where he was nailed to the cross kind of thing. So, but then we can also again jump over to the shamanic experience or the DMT experience. And there's another entity, but yours was the first case, and it made me think differently of peak experiences equals meeting an entity. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? I like that. A plus B equals C then A. Yeah. You know, you can make a case not only for entities being one similarity among this, sure. The grays with the OAP, the deceased relatives in the NDE and elementals, little putions for the psychedelic. There is this interaction based on which you're thinking, so does it come from the unconscious in terms of... Oh, forget it. Let's get way past that. Let's get way past that. Because here is part two of that question that's really interesting to me, because I'm going to definitely drive you past that stuff. And that is, are we at a point where we can start making some educated guesses of the structure and the architecture that those entities are in? I mean, here's the question I always kind of cut to the chase. Does ET have an NDE? Who does ET pray to? And I'd say that just to be provocative. That wasn't a question I would really ask you, Bob, but it just kind of sets people spinning. Could we say at this point that oh, the reptilians are bad, so on this spiritual development scale, if we put it at 1 to 10, reptilians are... They can be anywhere from a 5 to an 8, or a 2 to an 8. Human beings can be like a 3 to a 9. You know, and that up at the top is the Godhead kind of thing. I mean, this is eventually, I think, where people are wanting to go in terms of mapping the extended realm and mapping the entities that are in that realm and how close are we to start being able to say those kind of things. They do add a little bit more meaning to this. You know, if we had the answer to that question and many people consider that they do, and all I have to say is that their egoism is showing when they do say, with fear determination that they do. As far as I'm concerned no one knows the answer. I doubt we're even close to the answer. We probably aren't even asking the right questions and if we weren't given the answer we couldn't even understand it. So it's almost like consciousness talking about consciousness and trying to define consciousness with your consciousness. That's the greatest paradox of all. We're trying to define this issue of non-human entities in all their various shapes, sizes and bizarre types of interactions that people have been reported for eons. The dwarfs and the elves of folklore in the Bible are now possibly the grays or pterons of today. You can't ignore the archetype structure as Young would refer to it as possibly. And the evolution of these entities over time that's consistent with the psychological, sociological norms, anthropological norms and papers written on that I don't have the answer. I'm just throwing it out there. I don't have the answer to anything here. Let me say that up front. I'm trying to synthesize and integrate a massive overwhelming amount of information as best as I possibly can. It may be completely up-based and it just brings me to the peak experience as a foundation. And you have all these little spokes going off and then more spokes. And the various things that give rise to all the status of consciousness and the associated semantic perceptual of the experience, the interactions of beings as they say, in both shapes and sizes, etc. It boggles the mind how many varying types of experiences we're talking about. They share common themes and there's a long list of things and why the medical scientific and non-scientific community doesn't allocate much more attention to this critical issue. It's something that has troubled me, but I always wrestle not only with the issues that I've had that led to writing these three books to the linear experience I had that led to the unseen forces recently. I question it daily. I question reality daily. Not from a psychotic perspective. At least I hope not. I totally know what you mean. We're all truth seekers. You are, obviously. Look at you and you're listening. We're all truth seekers. Maybe innate spirituality? You know this probably. Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance can make a case for how we are spiritual in nature like our ancestors were. They have to be much more so, I think, to try to provide some comfort in terms of a crazy chaotic world of lightning strikes and thunder that had no meaning explanation. They were always looking to gods. I think we got some of that genetic stuff and we're still having questions in an appropriate way. Many going into religion. Many going into nothing. Atheism. Many going into maybe the genre that we address. And you can make a case for it being a religion in and of itself. But it's turned into a circus. It's turned into a business. And that's okay. That's okay. It draws specific subsets of people. That's okay. Maybe that however is another reality that we're missing the boat on. And I think that's being given to more consideration by mainstream science. I agree. I just want to emphasize that last point in terms of that's okay. I like the way you laid that out because it is true. And people get into, for example, the UFO community and then people freak out. You go tell your wife, you go tell your friend and they're like, oh my god, you know, tin foil hat and stuff like that. And that still exists. That's still hard to do. And there are some people who are seeking it for other reasons. And like you said, that's okay. All these different tribes are okay. And we can try and bring the tribes together in different ways and we probably should. But it's natural given how they've been ostracized and systematically made to feel alone, afraid, isolated, disinformation. Of course that's how it's going to be. So that's a great point. I want to try something else out. I'm really interested in bouncing this idea off of you because you keep going in a slightly different direction and you may be right. So I'm not saying this in terms of saying, I know this is the answer or I'm not even sure how I lean but I guess I have to put it out there before I say. When I look at the yogis and I say yogi in the general term it could be a Christian mystic, it could be a Zen Buddhist, whatever. When I look at those guys they seem to be saying something different about these extended realms than other people are saying. They say things like capture the castle. Don't worry about the entities that you'll experience along the way, the witches and the demons and all that. Just let all that go. Go deeper, go deeper. Capture the castle. Saying there's something beyond all that and this is a middle ground. You go talk to Yogananda, the road for me. Find the river of love and jump in and drown yourself. So they're saying that all this stuff that we're talking about is still in the middle. You know what I mean? It's still this middle ground and there's something else beyond it. And I see threads of that in the NDE as well. I see some people who go to the NDE space and that's all they can handle. They're in the middle, hey, you didn't do so good. Here's the fire, if you'll let go. You're gonna wind up here. But then there's other people who just transcend that and go way, way further. So I don't know if that's really a valid map or not but what concerns me and what I think you and I, Bob, could have an interesting talk about is if there's some truth to that map that paints this whole thing we're talking about quite differently. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean. It's a profound question. It requires a heck of a lot more time to explain and it could be how we are evolving in terms of human potential with the yogis, the people you refer to. They seem to have a bit of grasp on that expanded consciousness on spiritual awakening, on interacting with these beings, going beyond capturing the castle, finding the river, et cetera, et cetera, of love. We have it today from some event in NDE and OBE, the Kundalini, and it's triggered just like that. It's an all in non-spontaneous event which is impossible to study obviously for that reason alone in part. But these individuals have been practicing some form of yoga of mind, body stuff for what, many years, obviously decades, they get good at it. We can learn from them possibly. They are demonstrating to us an aspect of human potential that anybody can have on the right cultivating kind of conditions. Instead of trying to remember the year America was discovered, let's focus a little bit more on really maybe enhancing our potential abilities. Maybe the brain is impeding these abilities. Maybe it's now in full blown and we're kind of hostage to it. We've encased that. It was kind of symbiotic with the brain and they win. I'm in my 60s. I can't do very much of the brain now. Maybe we all could have as children. I think I see where you're going and there's many ways to address that. That was expressed beautifully, Alex. But that is what we need to look at. The little nuance within the phenomena. We have these people but we have these people that we learn from it. Bob, when I was first coming across your story which is just remarkable and it has elements of it that you hear over and over again and as I introduced it, I said the universe knocked. Have you given any thought to that from this spiritual path, soul path kind of thing? Do you have any inkling as to why you said in this way and in particular in this order the UFOs, then the near death, it's like a Hollywood script. Obviously, I'm going to use a word for the term evolving process that goes without saying am I evolving in the right way or am I de-evolving? That's for everybody else on the side but I'm having fun along the way. It's that if anyone looks at these three books and the three extraordinary experiences I mean let's face it from a statistical standpoint you're a scientist, the odds of you having an extended UFO experience five to seven minutes that's pretty long and to share that with your wife and to have it that vivid, pretty rare not a lot of people do that. Then also to have this rare death experience again kind of rare then to have the Kundalini experience and the way that you describe it everyone else is in the room no one else has the Kundalini experience Bob does and Bob's writing books and Bob is a scientist with super well respected credentials I mean why is the universe knocking at Bob's door? I can't help but ask that but it's my gut feeling I asked for it, I had this strong intention and maybe it's all about intention a long, long time ago since I was a child knowing that there's something far greater far more to what we regard as true reality I was always asking for it always interested in UFOs consciousness, the brain obviously What were some of your first experiences because obviously you went down a very very different path you must have been a super smart guy to be as successful as you were academically so then that probably drove you away from some of that stuff what were some of those early experiences and what did you do with them? I didn't have early experiences my first one was UFO the experience, that was back in only 2012 it was almost like getting ready for retirement, let's get this guy going I do this to my wife I act as if there's puppet strings over my head not unique, right? so nothing before that because in variable when I talk to people and they think back and they think long and hard and they go well, you know, my grandmother was my grandmother was a psychic but none of that stuff at all nothing that really piqued my interest or memory but if you ask a room full of people have you ever had XYZ kind of experiences you're going to see hands go up this is not that uncommon maybe that these things are occurring within a relatively short time period makes for it to be unique but I can't help but feel that something's going on here something's at play, it could be me maybe I'm creating it some people say UFOs are a form of psychokinesis it's a mind generating it through some process we don't need to address but it may be an aspect of PK here I may be creating this because they wanted so much it manifests in varying ways, who knows or there is simply another form of energy that one day be part of Einstein's unified field theory along with electromagnetism gravitational and two new forces maybe that's so tiny emissions from the body maybe it's torsion waves that some people claim biologically generated in DNA you can go down that path but the right are completely wrong it may account for invisible pathways in terms of communication with people who have shared ESP and it's clear tele-semanic events between twins and Faraday cages that results in a remarkable exchange of energy and outcomes in these two individuals that certainly defy current laws of science we see manifestations of this don't war, what is mediating that process and whatever that process mediating that process is I think we can get some insight into terms of what may be mediating many of the things that we're talking about in terms of one's perceptions of another reality along the lines of the peak experiences that we're talking about because in the business of peak experience it's claimed to be able to have telepathy people claim that they can communicate with beings from a ship telepathically we hear that all the time now is that again I'm not going to say I don't give that much thought I should say as a rationale for this if I leaned in one direction it would be in a non-materialistic sense we need that, we need materialism but it's overemphasized we need realism this objective experience and to take people who have these experiences much more seriously because it may hold a key to what actually is maybe not maybe what true reality is but an alternate reality and it's more internal reality that is real because it changes us it's an experience beyond comprehension, expression and it changes me from that day forward why can't that be reality that sure as heck is more than than my reality watching TV you know 10 hours a day and it may not be a completely positive one either so the point is there's an aspect of human performance potential functioning that exists in so many manifestations let's give up the controversy all of this is real because it's in here, it's real a certain percentage of people are indeed psychotic let's weed them out as best as possible who claim to have these kinds of experiences but we know well balanced individuals are having these remarkable events from gray sitting on their bed to seeing their great great grandmother to etc etc and we have to understand that maybe that can be a brain event possibly governed by quantum processes if you get to address and may very well provide us with some understanding about how the brain itself operates but it interacts with the brain and the central nervous system the brain matter and the central nervous system and the question is is there a potential for that kind of activity to give rise to the perception of another reality it goes back to the mind brain filter of the brain's influence and Peter's influence and you're going to be exposed to an advanced state of awareness advanced consciousness what William James the founders of psychology made that claim over a hundred years ago and the things that we're seeing now in my mind some of them are ascribed to what he was saying not that he's right but I see a parallel meditators when people meditate, when people have an NDE their brain is understandably quieted and they have these kinds of experiences it's not always psychoactivations the point is trigger events often result when the brain is in a default mode network it's kind of self-referential mental activity and that may lead to this ego dissolution this extraordinary profound joy of feeling fluid not solid at one with the universe so to speak the interconnectedness thing maybe that's maybe that's the core cells the default mode network that is another reality and it's another aspect of brain and the brain may be more remarkable than we think maybe it's capable of removing consciousness from itself or an aspect of awareness and interacting maybe it has that potential I don't know but people claim it doesn't mean they're right but maybe the yogis are some other people we should be studying and I get the sense we need to be studying them those that claim to have dual awareness are able to voluntarily achieve that state many of us go into that without preparation nobody gives us a scorecard of prerequisite conditions this is what you're going to experience it's hold on to your hat man go forward, raise your hand over here you're having knee and death you've got to go on a slow scale a slow trend, a slowly evolving process and not my socks off because no one told me the day before they were going to have a Kundalini it's got to be done the right way but the point is so we're suffering a consequence I think we're born at the wrong time and serves I think we're seeing where potential can be in terms of human performance consciousness exerting a positive effect of mind on body another area that's gotten certainly attention the effects of meditation on the body we know all the good stuff of course but up here again placebo effect, no placebo effect it's telling us a great deal about the mind's power intentionality again we do not address this sufficiently especially from childhood on in an appropriate manner in what divides the maximum benefit in a positive way potentially from intention, from meditating from all the stuff that these people who claim to be able to leave their body and they're so called well balanced they're not psychotic, we test it for that what are they talking about? go with the flow just go past the entities interact with whatever it's like a walk in the park kind of thing, it's not new to them so they know how to manage it they've been there before if it was me in their shoes I'd be close to a psychotic break many of these individuals are many of them know, I'm serious I know for a fact that's one of the things I think is interesting is when you talk to some of those folks or you listen to the Dalai Lama and they go, oh yeah well we have a whole school of thought devoted to what to do when you have those kind of experiences kind of a different kind of psychology and I agree with you that's where we're heading and we have something to bring to that the West has something to bring to that so tell me this Dr. Bob Davis as we wrap things up here the natural follow up question the last one is what's coming down the pike for you or maybe just what are you working on now and tell folks about your website are you doing new stuff there how can folks connect my website is I just don't give it enough attention as I should it's bobdavispeaks.com that's one word and information on the books it's provided there sufficient enough to I think and contact me with any questions of course but what's next I wrestle with that every day what is reality and what the heck am I going to do tomorrow in terms of writing I wonder if I should get off this all together because it's my enjoyment my stimulation is in this direction in all the varying ways as you can see from the few books I wrote but at the same time it creates a great deal of frustration during this task I was part of free I'm no longer associated with free by the way the doctor at the Mitchell Foundation at the terrestrial and extraordinary experiences for variety of reasons but it allowed me to have an article published with Ray Hernandez, Dr. Rudy Shield, Dr. Russell Chopin, the journal of scientific exploration last year I believe it was volume three number three people can access that online I'm very proud of that paper it doesn't mean people are actually interacting with these grades etc but it's only a minute from a ship it is profoundly important to however and taken in context for the article that it is I'm sorry for getting you off of that topic I'm pledging an inch into it because I was just looking at it the other day and people need to understand I always emphasize on this show how hard it is to get published in the journal of scientific exploration and that I've had several people come on and say you know I've published a number of places that was the hardest that was the most rigorous review of that kind of stuff that you're talking about and they know how to scrutinize it yeah and however Alex it's not given enough attention and I'm not saying this from an egoist testicle perspective not giving enough attention by ufology I mean everybody's focus is on a tip and everything else along those lines and it's all well it's important on some level it generates business for you know who all that sort of stuff but it doesn't get at us anywhere and I think this is simply the way to go nice Bob I think you hinted at a follow up discussion we will definitely have to have one down the road because there's a lot of stuff going on with you that we definitely want to talk more about and I love the fact that you have the ability and the desire to dig into some of this research and people will find that in the book too so it's backed up and they can understand it and verify it themselves which is the only way to ever understand that so thanks again so much for joining me and we finally get to connect it was awesome it's really a pleasure speaking with you you have an excellent show and I've always listened to it so I know you keep doing it we need more people like you to help educate more people on these important matters but thank you so thanks for watching this video and if it wasn't really a video but just an audio start as a video I apologize but there's more videos out there as well but please check out the skeptico website you can see it here we cover a lot of different stuff you might be interested in relating to controversial science and spirituality a lot of shows up there over 350 of them are so all free all available for download so do check it out