Where Is My Mind? - Ep. 1: Looking in the Telescope

Episode Date: August 8, 2019

"You're practicing religion, but I'm going to keep practicing science." Featuring interviews with Dr. Eben Alexander, Dr. Dean Radin, Dr. Larry Dossey, Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, Dr. Ed Kelly, Dr. Julia Mossbridge, Dannion Brinkley, Dr. Brian Josephson, Dr. Julie Beischel, Russell Targ, Dr. Arnaud Delorme, Dr. Raymond Moody, Dr. Bruce Greyson, Dr. Alan Hugenot, Brenda Dunne, and Dr. Diane Powell. Listen to all of host Mark Gober's interviews here: https://markgober.com/podcast/ Check out Mark's book, "An End to Upside Down Thinking": https://www.amazon.com/End-Upside-Down-Thinking-Consciousness/dp/1947637851   To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All truth goes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Then, it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident. That's a quote from 19th century German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer. I want to remind you of something. Even though humanity has come a long way in its understanding of life, there is still so much that we do not know. We only know what 4% of the universe

is made out of. 4%. The rest, 96% of the universe, is labeled dark matter and dark energy. 96% of the universe is a huge mystery. There's so much we don't know. And even more than that, we don't even know what we don't know. Okay. Let's do this a little bit. I have no idea what we're about to do. That's Matt Ford. He's my producer. Hey, Mark. You'll be hearing from him throughout the series. Let's start with a little exercise. Hey, Matt, can you do me a favor? Sure thing. Can you please touch your arm? Okay. This is for the listener. Please touch whatever object is in front of you. Maybe it's your cell phone. Maybe it's your treadmill. Maybe it's your steering wheel. If it's your steering wheel, then make sure actually both hands are on your steering wheel.

Okay, Matt, so you touch something else? Yes. Now I want you to touch your mind. This is a trick question, right? Okay. When I say your mind, I mean the mental version of you that is having thoughts. I want you to try to touch that. Did you try to touch your head? Did you try to touch your chest? Have you just been staring confused for the past few seconds? Well, you're not missing anything. you were staring confused. You can't touch your consciousness, but you know it exists. It is simply undeniable that you are here having an experience of being alive, but your consciousness is untouchable. Your consciousness is not a physical thing. When I say that I am listening to this podcast, I, in that sentence, is consciousness. Consciousness, that's the term we're going to be using throughout the show. Consciousness is our subjective inner experience

or awareness. We all have it. It's central to our identity. Okay, so the listener might have the same question here. So if I could physically touch my brain right now without it, you know, affecting my ability to stay alive, wouldn't that be touching my consciousness? No, that's not I. You are not your brain. You would say to me, I have a brain. So I have a brain. The brain is something that you could theoretically touch if you cut open your head. But the consciousness is this awareness and experience that we have. It's not physical. And this is the big question. Is the brain where consciousness comes from? If you had asked me a few years ago where this consciousness thing comes from, I would have said it probably comes from my brain, right? Isn't it just caused by complex chemical reactions

that are happening in my skull right now? Well, this is the issue. How can a physical thing, like the brain, produce something that is not physical? Something that I can't touch, called consciousness. I gotta say, Mark, I don't know. A lot of people don't know. So I'll give you a quote from neuroscience PhD Sam Harris,

who says, there is nothing about a brain studied at any scale that even suggests that it might harbor consciousness. The open secret is that science has no idea how the brain could produce consciousness. Repeat, science has no clue how the brain could create consciousness. Isn't that crazy? So if scientists say that they don't know how a brain could produce consciousness, what's the theory? It's still kind of a mystery. There's no great theory that I've

heard beyond, well, it's complicated and we're going to figure it out at some point in the future. This is such a mystery, actually, that it has a special name. It's called the hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem is we don't know how physical material in a brain can somehow cause a non-physical consciousness. How hard is this problem? Science Magazine, in its 125th anniversary edition, listed this as the number two question remaining in all of science, Matt. Well, then what's the number one question in all of science? The number one question is, what is the universe made out of? I'll tell you what, Matt, on this show, we're going to answer them both. Okay. So, I guess, why does this matter? Okay. We established there's a big question. We don't know how the brain could make consciousness. Maybe the brain doesn't make it at

all. What if consciousness isn't stuck in our head? Just think about it for a second. If your brain doesn't produce your consciousness, could it be that we are actually interconnected at some level? Could our consciousness survive when our body dies? Could it be that we all have psychic or telepathic abilities? What we're going to be discussing on this podcast, it might blow your mind. So that's a bit of a warning. And I think might is the wrong word. This will blow your mind. These topics relate to every living person and it all boils down to this simple question, is your consciousness produced by your brain? And if it isn't, what if consciousness instead exists independently of your body?

Welcome to Where's My Mind. I'm Mark Gober. Hey again, this is Matt, Mark's producer. So, consciousness? Telepathy? Huh? I know, it all feels kind of out there. This is not the kind of show I'd usually be listening to, let alone making. So, I'm a TV and podcast producer in New York. I've mostly worked on sports shows, so I'm kind of surprised I'm here too.

Mark and I went to high school together in Baltimore County, Maryland. I'm friends with Mark's whole family. I know his parents. I've known Mark for two decades, probably. So who is this guy? And why should you believe anything he's saying? I'm going to make two arguments. The first is that he's normal.

The second is that he's credible. So let's start with the normal part, because that's probably going to be the hardest sell. I asked some of Mark's other friends to describe him. I've known Mark 19 years. Is that right? Met Mark freshman year at Princeton. I met Mark in the fall of 2003. I've known Mark since 1990. Did you at any point think like maybe he's like lost it or anything like that?

If we're being honest, yes. But I think that he's convinced me that we're good on that front. Everything I know about Mark is so logical, but everything he was telling me was illogical. It didn't reconcile with the whole history I knew of Mark. So it took me a while to process. What is in it for Mark, right? Mark's already got the job.

Mark is on the fast track at his firm. It's really unheard of how fast he got to be a partner there. So you're not talking about someone who's looking to run something by someone. He's already made it. I think Mark is looking into his own life because that's what smart people do, is they kind of say, let me do my life review. Because it was Mark, I trust Mark. So I wanted to see what it was that he was so passionate about. Mark has spent more time studying this topic than I think any single person has done in a lifetime.

This is what he does. This is his superpower. Nobody can out-research and out-prepare Mark Govery. Would you describe Mark as normal or normal-ish? Not just studying all the time. Like he is kind of fun and cool sometimes, right? And yeah, like I love the guy, man. He's just a great human being.

He's very passionate, intelligent, funny. He's always been the same. Mark has always been helpful to his friends, to his family. He's always there for you and he's so logical. He's a normal guy. He's just there for you and he's so logical. He's a normal guy. He's just very passionate about what he's passionate about. Mark, I think, has always, always been someone to help others. Yeah, he's a good guy.

All right, so I'm going to bring Mark back in here. You're basically a normal person, but I want to touch on your credibility because this is the first question I get asked when I talk about the show. People always ask me like, why should I just listen to your buddy from high school talk about this stuff? I get asked this question all the time and probably for good reason. On the surface, my background has nothing to do with consciousness. I work in business and finance. I started my career on Wall Street. I eventually left in 2010 and now I'm a

partner at a Silicon Valley strategy firm called Sherpa Technology Group. I'll make a long story very short. This was never the plan. In late 2016, I stumbled across a podcast that first exposed me to the topics that we'll discuss on this show. One thing led to another. I got interested. I started reading books. Then I started reading scientific papers.

I got interested. I started reading books. Then I started reading scientific papers. Before I knew it, I realized that everything I thought I knew about life and reality had to be reconsidered. That is not an exaggeration. My world was turned upside down and it was so disorienting. But I kept researching just because I wanted to know. So after researching a ton on my own for about a year, and when I say researching, I mean I had an obsessive drive. I've never done so much reading in my life. I've seen your apartment. There's got to be, I don't know, over a thousand books in there. As a result of all that

research, I wrote a book called An End to Upside Down Thinking, which was published in October of 2018. And I wrote the book to expose people to what I think is life-changing information. And this podcast is another way to do that. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a philosopher. I'm just a regular guy who got really interested in the data and the research and wished more people could access it because for me, it was really transformational. And that's what this show is about. It's taking my years of research and condenses it in eight easy podcast episodes. Okay, so you mentioned this research. How much real evidence is there to support all this? One of the things that shocked me in my research is how many smart people actually study these topics. And many of them endorsed my book,

PhDs and MDs with affiliations at Harvard, Princeton, the University of Virginia, even a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. And I'm saying this because they're supporting the science that I'm citing. These are not my ideas. So on this show, you will hear from the scientists themselves. Scientists like who? Professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. Child psychiatrist at UVA.

PhD at Northwestern. Cambridge where I did a PhD. Teaching psychiatry at the University of Virginia. PhD in pharmacology and toxicology with a minor in microbiology and immunology. Well, I'm a physicist. I was a pioneer in the development of the laser. I worked for NASA, CIA, all sorts of people. I was the only person who could understand superconductivity theories,

and this led me to Nobel Prize winning work. Just to make sure you heard, that last voice, he said he won a Nobel Prize in physics. So Matt, to go back to your original question, why should people listen to me? Well, they shouldn't really listen to me. They should listen to them. Can you explain to me why these scientists would even answer your emails or pick up the phone from you in the first place? Number one, I think they understand the goal of this podcast, which is to expose the general public to this really important information, which I think has not been disseminated so widely. So they understand what I'm trying to do.

And number two, I think I was able to get a foot in the door because I had many credible endorsements for my book. I was fortunate to interview some of the smartest people in the world on this exact topic. And what you're going to be hearing on the show is some of the highlights from those conversations. All of my interviews are available at my website in their entirety at markgober.com slash podcast. Okay, so the way this show is going to work, we're going to treat this a little bit like a court case. What we're going to do is we're going to put all these different witnesses on the stand, so to speak, to make their arguments for why consciousness is independent of the brain.

Even though these are different kinds of witnesses, even though they seem to study different stuff or have different stories, it all comes back to the same basic hypothesis. All right, so for our listeners, my role from here on out is to be your ally, to be skeptical, to push back, to make Mark prove all of the claims that he's making. But keep in mind, I'm no scientist either.

I'm just trying to make your commute or workout a little more interesting. But what's always drawn me to this show and this idea is that there's this beautifully positive message at the end. So on my end, I ask only that you keep an open mind. That's it. After all, what you really believe about reality, it might surprise you. The central question of this whole show is, what if consciousness doesn't come from our brain? To explain how I now think about consciousness, I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, a philosopher in this area. He says we should think of our consciousness in terms of water. Picture a big stream of water where water represents consciousness. In this stream,

there are lots of little whirlpools. They're all made of the same water. So the analogy is that each of us is like a whirlpool. We're all made of the same consciousness because we're part of the same stream of water. So just for the record, we're going to be playing this analogy throughout the whole show.

So every time you hear it, I'm going to play this. analogy throughout the whole show. So every time you hear it, I'm going to play this. So that's how you know the whirlpool analogy is coming. So really pay attention. I promise it's going to come up again. Here's Dr. Kastrup to explain it. All reality ultimately is just one universal consciousness. That's all there is. So my analogy to explain this is to say, okay, imagine that universal consciousness is a river or a stream. You can point at a whirlpool and say, there is a whirlpool. It's a clearly identifiable pattern of activity, of localized activity. We can delineate its boundaries and determine precisely where the whirlpool ends,

where it begins, where it ends. Yet there is nothing to the whirlpool but the water in the stream. So you're a whirlpool. I'm a whirlpool. I'm over here. You're over there. But we're in the same water. We're made of the same stuff. Am I getting this right? Exactly. That's exactly right. But think about what this means. If I'm a whirlpool, you're a whirlpool, each listener is another whirlpool. The whirlpool isn't creating the water. The whirlpool is made of water. And if that's true, think about the implications. When a whirlpool dissipates, the water just flows back into the stream. It's still water. It just changes form. It transitions. Likewise, when our physical body and brain die, maybe our consciousness doesn't die. Maybe it just changes form

and goes back into the broader stream in another form. Hold on, hold on. God interrupts here. It feels like we just went pretty far from we're all in a stream and we're all little whirlpools to maybe our consciousness doesn't die. How did you get there? Okay. This show is going to be about the evidence for these things. We're talking about the general theory, and then we're going to look

at data that aligns with it. So short version, try to wrap your head around this. We'll explain the evidence in a bit, but first we even need to just explain what the hell we're talking about. Is that about right? This is just the concept and the evidence comes a bit, but first we even need to just explain what the hell we're talking about. Is that about right? This is just the concept and the evidence comes later. I know it sounds like a stretch. It does, but I'm willing to hear you out. Hopefully the listeners are too. So what are some more implications from all this?

First implication is that when your body dies, when your brain turns off, your consciousness actually does not die. Another implication is that, let's just say I pour a drop of green dye into the stream and we can trace that a tiny bit of the dye goes from my whirlpool and sneaks into yours. Okay. That's like saying some of my consciousness is getting into your consciousness. You following me? I think. In other words, this implies that psychic abilities, like telepathic abilities, are real.

Some of my consciousness gets into your consciousness. And you're saying that you have actual evidence for this. That's what this whole show's about. Here's a really important point. We should expect psychic abilities to occur. We would expect that our consciousness would survive after our body dies. Those things wouldn't be paranormal. They wouldn't be weird.

They would be predicted by this model. With me? Okay. Okay. And even more than that, even more than the psychic stuff and surviving death stuff, this show isn't just about the paranormal. Things that seem paranormal are relevant because they have to do with this theory of consciousness.

But ultimately, they're pointing to this stream. The ultimate message of the show is really positive and empowering. Okay, so you've been saying that consciousness doesn't come from our brain. Are you arguing that the brain doesn't matter at all? To be clear, I'm been saying that consciousness doesn't come from our brain. Are you arguing that the brain doesn't matter at all? To be clear, I'm not saying that consciousness is unrelated to the brain. Of course, it's related to the brain.

No one would dispute that. There's an entire field of neuroscience which looks at this stuff. The big question, though, is whether the brain actually produces consciousness. So consider this for a second. Let's say we stimulate a part of the brain actually produces consciousness. So consider this for a second. Let's say we stimulate a part of the brain, the part of the brain that's responsible for your eyesight. Maybe then your vision is affected. Or another example, let's say someone gets in a car accident and they damage their brain. That person might end up with memory problems. The list could go on and on. The bottom line here is that there is a massively strong relationship between the brain and the type of conscious experience you have. This has been tested over and over, and we're not disputing that.

Those correlations are solid, have been experimentally demonstrated, but the correlation is not an explanation. That was Dr. Kastrup again. And what he's saying is we've proven that the brain is impacting our consciousness. We just haven't proven that the brain creates consciousness. And that's why this is still the number two question remaining in all of science. Okay, so Dr. Kastrup has used an analogy to explain this to me. And in California, where I live, there have been massive fires over the past few years. When there's a fire, lots of firefighters show up. It's simple. There's a strong correlation between the size of the fire and the number of firefighters that show up. There are correlations between big fires and high numbers of firefighters, but that doesn't mean that firefighters cause big fires. Right. The firefighters aren't causing the fire.

Would you agree, Matt? Of course. But the firefighters are related to the fire. Right. There is a fire, so the firefighters arrive. In statistics, there's a saying. They say correlation does not imply causation. Okay, let's go back to the brain.

The brain's related to consciousness. Does that mean the brain has to produce it? Let brain. The brain's related to consciousness. Does that mean the brain has to produce it? Let's say the brain is not producing consciousness. Then what is the brain doing with it? On this show, we'll discuss the evidence that the brain is like an antenna that receives consciousness. Another analogy is to say the brain is a processor or filter of consciousness. You could even say that the brain is like a blindfold that shields us from a much broader reality. Our brain only shows us a tiny sliver. This is a reversal of conventional

thinking. Much more on this in episode two. So Mark, if I were listening, this would be the part where I assume that there must be some sort of scientific reason, something that you're ignoring that throws a wrench into your logic that I just can't debunk yet because I'm new to this and I'm not a scientist. Trust me, Matt, I used to feel the same way. But again, don't take it from me. Take it from these scientists. Here's Larry Dossey, MD, a New York Times bestselling author and former chief of staff at Medical City Dallas Hospital.

Larry Dassey, MD, New York Times Bestselling Author, Medical City Dallas Hospital Well, I used to believe that consciousness came from the brain. That's the model that I was educated with in undergraduate school and in medical school. I no longer believe that. I think that there is no evidence whatsoever that the brain manufactures consciousness. And here's former Harvard neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander. If someone tells you the brain creates consciousness, if you ask them, tell me more, you don't get a word.

Computational neuroscientist Arnaud Delorme. My hypothesis is that consciousness doesn't emerge from the brain. Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Julia Mossbridge. So it's great to start with a hypothesis that the brain creates consciousness. And I'll never forget the moment when I realized that that couldn't be true. And finally, near-death experience survivor, Danian Brinkley. The brain does not create consciousness. Consciousness creates and operates through the brain.

The point is, there are a lot of people that have studied this who are saying, no, the brain's not producing consciousness. Think about that, Matt. What's your reaction to that? You're suggesting that our entire understanding of the world is built on backwards assumptions. Right. Now you can understand why my book's called An End to Upside-Down Thinking. We're not saying that consciousness comes at the end of the picture, meaning like from the body.

We're saying it's the other way around. Here's Dr. Dean Radin from the Institute of Noetic Sciences, who spent over 40 years studying this stuff. Yeah, it's actually a complete reversal of the brain producing consciousness. I'm suggesting instead that consciousness produces the brain. of the brain producing consciousness. I'm suggesting instead that consciousness produces the brain. Nobel prize winning physicist, Max Planck, even said in 1931, "'I regard consciousness as fundamental.'"

He was ahead of his time. Quantum physics might actually help us explain a lot of this, but more on that later. You look like you need a break. I think I do. Okay. We'll be back after this. Welcome back. Okay, Mark. So this is pretty intense to hear for the first time. So my question is why is this potentially good news and not scary news? It's even more than that. It leads to a really bleak outlook on life. And it used to be my outlook. I used to think that life had no meaning at all. And actually that was a rational position because if you think that consciousness comes from the brain, when your brain dies, it's over.

Your memories, your feelings, your emotions, they're all gone when your brain turns off. So to me, finding meaning in life was just a rationalization. And that's actually what modern science is teaching us, whether people want to acknowledge it that way or not. You can argue that's what science is teaching us, but I would argue that many other fields of study and theology argue that there's tons of other ways to get meaning out of life. And you're not disputing that. All you're saying is science says all that stuff's kind of baloney because as soon as you actually die, you're done.

Am I getting this right? Yeah, that's what the mainstream scientific community would say. And it was subtly there in the back of my mind. And then sometimes it would come out where I'd say, wait a second, why do I care about anything? I'm just making it up.

Because once we're dead, it's over. Like, what are we doing here? It doesn't really matter. And I know it sounds really like, wow, that's super pessimistic, but I wasn't judging it. I'm like, this is just what science is implying. Science leads us in that direction. So I think the implication is inescapable. If you think the brain produces consciousness, the implication ultimately is life has no real meaning. I will say that's an inference, not a declaration from science, but I think you're probably right. I think it's the logical extrapolation.

But anyway, that's not where this show is headed. I'm just explaining to you my old worldview, and I think the worldview implied by much of science today. Let's rethink all of that. If we say that consciousness is the basis of everything, and we're all just whirlpools in a stream, then death as we conceive it isn't a thing. It's just a transition of consciousness. So the picture of reality that we're going to be painting actually is really comforting. Is it too comforting? A few years ago, before I started this,

Matt, I would have agreed with you. I probably would have few years ago, before I started this, Matt, I would have agreed with you. I probably would have said, look, that sounds really nice, man. That sounds so comforting, but you're probably making it up because you need to rationalize meaning in your life. And it's like just too heavy for you to think that life has no meaning.

So you want to comfort yourself. I used to think implicitly that comforting ideas were most likely to be wrong because they were rationalizations. Now, when I look back, I realized that there was a pretty serious logical error. I overly discounted the possibility that something could be both comforting and true at the same time. Okay, so the ideas on the show are extremely comforting. And to me, the accumulated science suggests that this comforting picture just so happens to be true at the same time.

So when our parents and teachers told us, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. That doesn't apply in this case. The picture is comforting. We've covered a lot of ground already. Can you just remind me what we've covered so far? We established that there's a major question in terms of the relationship between our brain and our consciousness. In other words, we don't know where consciousness comes from. Two, the evidence leads to some comforting ideas, including the idea that our consciousness can

exist beyond death. And number three, we shouldn't dismiss these theories simply because what we're saying is really comforting. Okay, so why aren't people in the scientific community talking about this? Or are they? Why I disagree with Stephen all of mainstream science? And why fight an uphill battle? Well, what I've found is that this idea is extremely controversial. Many physicists, for example, only like to focus on the material world because to them, consciousness is something for psychologists or philosophers. Stephen Hawking, for example, said, I get uneasy when people, especially theoretical physicists, talk about consciousness. Whoa. And here's Neil deGrasse Tyson. What I wonder is whether there really is no such thing as consciousness at all.

Okay, so Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the smartest people alive. And Stephen Hawking is one of the smartest people to ever live. So I guess with all due respect to these amazing geniuses, how can they be arguing that there's no consciousness? First of all, I agree with you. These are brilliant people, just like a lot of scientists, but not every brilliant person is right about everything. When Neil deGrasse Tyson says, I wonder,

you have to ask what the I is in that statement. It seems to me like his own statement indicates that he is the consciousness asking the question in the first place. I'm not equipped to debate Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I have to say, Mark, that makes sense to me. It could be a situation where historians look back at this point in time and they say, oh my gosh, what were these people thinking? Think about the quote at the top of the episode. The truth is ridiculed, then violently opposed, then accepted as self-evident. Scientists today are being

ridiculed or even facing losing their jobs just for attempting to even study this stuff. Sometimes scientists are presented with real data and they still reject it because it goes against their beliefs. I think it's just part of human nature to resist things that challenge what we think to be true. Consciousness researcher Dr. Julia Mossbridge has faced this her whole career. This is how she explained it. I've had scientists finally come and just say, look, I don't care what data you actually give me. You can give me all the data in the world.

I'm just not going to believe it. And then that's when I've got them. And I just say, oh, it's OK. So you're practicing religion, but I'm going to keep practicing science. Brenda Dunn, who you'll hear from next, has also been dealing with this during her career. She ran the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab for nearly 30 years. I've had, on more than one occasion, a conversation with somebody who might say in a disturbed kind of way, you know, don't you realize that if what you're doing is right,

then everything I've done in my career is wrong? And I'd say, no, it's not wrong. It's just, perhaps it's just incomplete. And they'd get very upset and say, no, you don't understand. I'd be wrong. Well, if you're a scientist and you can't accept the possibility of being wrong, then you're not a very good scientist. Can you imagine how all those people who ignored the evidence will be viewed by human civilization in the future? It's like crazy to think about. It's going to be one of

those cases where people say, wow, those people back in 2019, can you believe how little they knew and they thought they knew so much? Chuck Klosterman wrote a whole book about this called What If We're Wrong? And he even talked about consciousness a little. He wrote, it's impossible to understand the world of today until today has become tomorrow. I got to say, it is really hard to believe that all of these smart scientists all around the world, that they're all missing something this big. To be clear, what we're talking about here is a revolution in human thinking. Again, don't take it from me. Here's former Harvard neurosurgeon, Dr. Eben Alexander.

To me, there's no question there's a gigantic revolution coming to this world. And I believe it's a revolution that's really been about 5,000 years in the making. Dr. Ed Kelly from the University of Virginia, a professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences. But this represents a revolution. I think we're very close to a tipping point where the culturally shared view of the nature of reality is about to flip over. Here's Larry Dossi, the medical doctor we heard from earlier. I think a century or so from now, we're going to be looking back at this time and asking ourselves, well, why on earth did we struggle with this? Take it from them, not from me. Throughout history, there have been so many examples where science thought it was right

and then found out it was dead wrong. Way back in 1894, Nobel Prize winning physicist Albert Michelson proclaimed, The fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Matt, have we discovered anything since 1894? Yeah, I think we have. Another example, germ theory. It used to be totally ludicrous to believe that microscopic organisms like a bacteria or a virus that you can't even see could make you sick or even kill you. That was blasphemy. Guess what? With the advent of the microscope, we could all

of a sudden see them. And now it's common knowledge. But at one point, that was a crazy idea. Hard to believe that. Now, my favorite example of all, Galileo. A few hundred years ago, Galileo had all his evidence in his telescope showing that the Earth is not at the center of the solar system. This idea was considered ridiculous. People thought the Earth was at the center because we could see the Sun moving across the sky. Galileo was able to show that we actually revolve around the Sun. This idea was threatening to people. He was challenging the mainstream. So certain influential members of the clergy wouldn't even look in his telescope.

I think that's what's happening now. Mainstream science has concluded that the brain has something to do with consciousness, and I 1000% agree. But again, correlation does not mean causation. And I think the evidence we're going to be discussing points to the idea that we're all whirlpools in a stream, made of the same water, and we're not as separate as we think. So, we've kind of hinted at this, but what are the implications of these ideas? If consciousness is the basic foundation of everything, how might we rethink life and death? How might we rethink all of science and all of medicine? What if we are

reincarnated because that consciousness floats elsewhere in the stream? What if telepathy is possible because my whirlpool and your whirlpool are made of the same water? What if we're all a little bit psychic, even your dog? What if we can communicate with dead people? Their consciousness would still be in the stream of water. And why would you view anyone as different from you if you're all part of the same experience? Why would you go to war? Why would you not try to help as many people as possible?

How would you live your life on a day-to-day basis? And how could the world benefit from having a more accurate picture of reality? Maybe we're not so separate. If this situation turns out to be like Galileo versus the church, can you imagine how important this very moment in history is? Do you remember the quote that I used to start the show? All truth goes through three stages.

First, it is ridiculed. Then, it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident. The topics on this show are similarly controversial. We're going to see ridicule. We're going to see violent opposition. But if you can take the ride with us, you'll see that there's so much evidence in independent areas that it's really hard to ignore. We are giving people a peek into the telescope, so to speak. Is every single thing that we'll discuss on this show 100% guaranteed fact? I can't fully guarantee that. There are only so many people studying these topics, and we definitely need more independent replications.

But is some of it real? I think the odds are strong. And this is the key point. If any of this stuff is real, then we need to rethink reality. It's time for us to look in the telescope. Are you ready? Buckle up. We're probably all innately telepathic. We really were the X-Files.

So I started looking at telepathy in animals. We're looking at these cases of young children who report memories of a past life. You will not die. It will not happen. So we're left with this paradox that at a time when the brain isn't functioning, the mind is functioning better than ever. He could recite word for word, forwards and backwards, over 12,000 books. And I kept trying to tell you, I'm not dead, I'm not dead, but you wouldn't hear me. And the next thing I know, I wake up on the other side with the light.

This has been Where Is My Mind. Thank you for listening to Where Is My Mind. The show was written by me, Mark Gober, and the show was produced at Blue Duck Media by Matt Ford and Gabe Goodwin, with help from Antonio Enriquez, Zuri Irvin, and Ben Redmond. Special thanks to Cadence 13,

particularly John McDermott and Patrick Antonetti. Also thanks to Bill Gladstone and Waterside Publishing. All of my full-length interviews are available at markgober.com slash podcast. We'd like to thank our sponsors, and if you'd like to support the show, please consider supporting them on our behalf. Please rate and review the podcast on iTunes,

and if you'd like, tell a friend to subscribe and spread the word. See you next time.