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DJ Kadagian is an author, filmmaker and hedge fund trader with unique insights into the near death experience.

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Alex Tsakiris: On this episode of Skeptiko a show about near death experience.

[00:00:07] D.J. Kadagian: One of the interesting things is that when people are told, it’s not your time, , you have things to do work to do. It’s interesting that they’re not told what it is.

Alex Tsakiris: And a show about. The clarity that can come from making tough decisions.

Clip: [Sound] [Sound] When did you stop being so sorry for yourself? Something. . It’s just money. . It’s not wrong and it’s certainly no different today than it’s ever been.

Alex Tsakiris: Stick around for my interview with near-death experience researcher, author, and hedge fund manager and trader. DJ Canadian.

[00:00:53] Alex Tsakiris: Welcome to skeptical where we explore controversial science

and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Charisse. And today. We welcome DJ Khadija and just kept coat to talk about his new book, the cross over experience, a book he wrote with two very highly regarded, at least in my opinion, near-death experience researchers, Dr. Penn van lamo and Dr. Gregory Shushan, both of whom you’ve heard on this show.

And, uh, they’re really terrific. First let’s give a little bit of a bio for DJ award-winning documentary filmmaker, bestselling author, quantum economist. I think that’s code speak for hedge fund manager and trader

[00:01:44] D.J. Kadagian: you’d say it that way. It’s sort of headstrong that has bad.

[00:01:49] Alex Tsakiris: It does. It does, but it plays so beautifully into this terrific book that you’ve written DJ that I want to push it out there in front hedge fund manager, quantum economist cracking the code of the scientific wrinkle.

There is a lot, there’s a lot to unpack there. Yeah.

[00:02:11] D.J. Kadagian: And it’s scary. Don’t know how it all came together, but as much as it is. Yeah. That’s a little bit of

[00:02:17] Alex Tsakiris: me. So w DJs films have aired on PBS Gaia, TV discovery, channel hallmark as wall, as well as being an over 120 film festivals. He’s a Cornell man and a member of the directors Guild.

And it’s great to have you here, DJ. Thanks

[00:02:35] D.J. Kadagian: for joining. Very to be here. I’ve enjoyed watching, listening to your podcasts as well. And in fact, I stumbled on your podcast with a PIM a boy about a year ago, and I’ve read a lot that’s on your site. And, um, so it’s my very nice to be here.

[00:02:54] Alex Tsakiris: Well, terrific. You just mentioned and Dr.

Gregory, Sean is the other near-death experience researcher that a lot of people will know they’re featured prominently in this book. We’re going to talk about the book it’s really quite unique and I think will be highly useful for a lot of people. The way that you’ve put this together. But first maybe talk about who these guys are.

Let’s introduce them a little bit because they are along for the ride on this book and are in prominent part.

[00:03:27] D.J. Kadagian: Well, uh, Dr. was, uh, is, was a practicing cardiologist, , in the Netherlands. And he was, he kind of stumbled on the near-death experience right around the same time as, uh, Raymond Moody did.

, so there were kind of both in two separate parts of the world, but as often happens, you know, these things kind of kick up at the same time. And, um,

[00:03:51] Alex Tsakiris: , let’s tell the story because it’s such a great story because it’s interesting, you draw the connection with Raymond Moody because they really stumble upon it in a completely different way.

I mean, Raymond Moody, a lot of people don’t know, but . He’s with Elizabeth Kubler. Ross is how he’s numbers on it. She’s really the one who kind of discovers it. And she says, Ray man, you better come over and look at this pin Von lamo stumbles on an in very experienced, indirect experiential way to tell that

[00:04:22] D.J. Kadagian: story.

Well, he just, he had, , a patient that had come out of one of his surgeries and told them, you know, essentially that he saw things that were happening in the, , operating room. And, uh, and PIM was pretty much astonished because it was accurate. And we’ve heard this now. I mean, this has been recorded often, but back then, it wasn’t as common.

And at the time, really, this was when we were first starting to see the, having the ability to bring people back from cardiac arrest prior to, um, the resuscitation techniques. You really couldn’t do that. And, um, and now they’re, we’re starting to bring people back. So this started to happen and he happened to experience one firsthand and he was blown away.

And so he started asking around to other doctors cardiologists if they had had that type of experience with, with some of these. Patients. And they said, yes, we did. But they had all written it off or like a scampi, but so he kept asking around and starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together and see that there was, uh, uh, very, um, there was great consistency in what people were saying.

Um, but most weren’t taking it seriously, but he had started going around and kind of, you know, kicking the tires. And that’s when he really started to say, you know, something is definitely going on here. And that’s really when he started to dive into the work and ultimately leading to what I think is probably why I would consider it the most important study research study done on the subject of prospective study was published in the Lancet journal.

Um, really, really thorough and. Um, just really well-researched and articulated and, and his book consciousness beyond life was when I really got into this for the second time, because I initially, um, kind of came onto the subject of the near death experience, you know? Well, over 20 years ago when I was kind of going through a, uh, You know, a spiritual quest that took me into, uh, you know, deaths and dying and, and these sorts of things.

It depends book of the dead. And somehow I stumbled on Raymond Moody’s book, um, and not to disparage dream of Moody’s book, which is mind blowing. But I really, I connected more with, uh, Dr. Van Lama’s book, um, because he laid it out. Um, when he brought in really his interpretation of quantum mechanics, which helped tie everything together, you know, the testimonials, uh, that he had gathered individually, his research study, and then kind of tying the pieces together with content mechanics.

It was like, you know, it just, you could really see kind of all these patterns. Um, for me, they just started to distill. And so, you know, my background and, uh, quantum mechanics and hedge fund management is to really look at and crunch, you know, massive amounts of data and looking for patterns and rhythms and waves, and really that’s how the markets work.

I mean, ultimately it’s, it’s actually very interesting. And, in a way it’s much simpler than it’s discussed often plans on CNBC and it’s all, it’s all really a reflection of human emotion. And waves and patterns and energy. And so you start to see these things come together and PIM van Lama was seeing them on the ground in real time, you know, these out of body experience.

And I think the way he, uh, really covers, uh, non-local consciousness, um, that that’s really, you know, extremely, I just makes a lot of sense. There’s so much, uh, data that backs this up. And I went through thousands of testimonials and the patterns are incredibly consistent. So anyway, That’s where I kind of really fell in love with Kim’s work and also really listening to his lectures.

Um, the one, the podcasts that you did with him, , and, uh, he’s done, he’s done obviously a lot of, , uh, interviews, , you’ll find on, on YouTube. And, , they weren’t, these things weren’t around when I was, they were happening when I first started looking at the near-death experience, but I really didn’t have access to them other than a few books.

So when you start to watch these, I watch probably as much of these types of, you know, his types of interviews, um, from the research quantum standpoint, um, as I did the actual testimonials, which also blew me away, , But, uh, so anyway, that’s fumes work, which, uh, which really influenced me a lot. So it was just really great to have him as part of the book.

That meant a lot.

[00:08:52] Alex Tsakiris: So let’s pause there for a second because, you know, I don’t know how much you want to go into this, but you do touch on it a couple of times in the book. So I think it’s fair to bring it up. And part of your personal journey is kind of death and dying in kind of a tragic way and, you know, personal way.

And that plays into that. So how is that part of your spiritual journey that you do allude to in the book?

[00:09:20] D.J. Kadagian: , for me personally, , you know, I grew up in, in, I guess you would call it, uh, , Kind of a war zone meant a psychological war zone, , you know, , kind of physical abuse kind of stuff where you, you really feel like, you know, in these situations, when you, you know, when I was very young, like, like you’re going to die, you feel like, you know, you, you, you are in a place where you could die at any time.

So I, you know, I had a lot of fear of death when I was, , you know, I didn’t know that growing up, but as I became older, you know, serious PTSD and, , and you know, I, I sensed this real fear and I think that’s why I was drawn to, you know, initially, , , Joseph Campbell, I stumbled on his, uh, interview with bill Moyers on PBS.

I don’t know how I found it, but. Really, I started to listening to that and it was like my mind exploded and that for me started the whole kind of spiritual quest. , and then, uh, you know, and he deals so much with, you know, mythology, mythic imagery. He was, he was a contemporary and friend with Carl Young and you know, his whole world.

And, , and then I got, uh, stumbled on, uh, Houston Smith’s interview with, uh, he also did a series with bill Moyers called a wisdom of faith. And he spent, um, something like five years in each of the world’s major religions. And that really blew me away. So it kind of pulled everything together. And once that happened, , I had my own investment firm and once that happened, I said, you know, I don’t know that I can do this really any more full-time for sure.

, so it was around that time. Uh, first I said, you know what, I’m going to try and go to divinity school kind of on the side and. So I started going to, um, Yale divinity school, which is not that far from where I was living. And, uh, it was, it was not a good time. It was not the kind of environment I was looking for.

It was not very spiritual, which is, you know, I, I thought it would be, you know, very intellectually stimulating, but also spiritually. And it wasn’t that at all. Um, and I remember I had my, uh, I had a report due and I hadn’t been I’m, I’m not good in school. I was never a good student, but I remember being down in Miami and I’m like, oh my God, I have to do a book report.

And I was so freaked out by that concept that I immediately dropped out, but it was that, so that was my religious career. Um, I always told my hat, my, my wife, I was in it for the hat. You know, I wanted the hat Sceptre or whatever the Polk carries, but of course it was, uh, it was not a Catholic school, so that was never going to happen anyway.

So that was that, um, But so that kind of drove me, uh, you know, of course then I, I, I found, I became very interested in Buddhism, four noble truths, um, the whole concept of, you know, dying, you know, the ego death and so on. And just, you know, it really, um, resonated with me in a, in a way, because that had always been floating that concept.

But for me, it was much more literal death, not knowing that, you know, it’s all spiritual and it’s, it’s all kind of in a, in a sense all the same. We just maybe, um, experience it a little differently if depending on where we are on our journey or, you know, how open we are to these kinds of things. , and.

And that will surround that time. That I also stumbled on the work of Raymond Moody. I’m not sure how that got mixed up in all of it. I found it fascinating, but at the time there wasn’t a lot of research, um, where I could, you know, to me, it was like, wow, this is really amazing, but, and it sounds too good to be true in a way.

And so I’m, I’m a skeptic skeptical. And, uh, so I’m, you know, I said fine, but I need to see, you know, more research and it just didn’t exist in a, in a way that I could find it. And there was, there was no real YouTube at that point. This is like 25 years ago. Um, so I, I moved off and on from that and, uh, started getting into film work where I just said, you know what?

Instead of going to divinity school and reading books, I’m not really interested in. I said, I’m going to start interviewing people. I’m I’ve read their books and I’m very interested in, I want to go to the source and ask them questions, you know? So something like this where it’s interactive and, you know, you just, I learned much more that way, having conversations and building things like building a film building program, it’s having something at the end of the day that forces you to form an opinion.

And, uh, so I started interviewing, , well, uh, Houston Smith was in my first film, which was, which was a real treat and, uh, anyway, a number of, of these people. Um, but I, I, you know, and then I had, , somehow I stumbled on the work of Terence McKenna, uh, that led me into the whole psychedelic kind of movement.

And, uh, so I kind of traveled a whole lot of, you know, maybe on the fringe crossing over all different types of, you know, um, realms and realities and. And along the way I just kind of started, I became, I articulated them, I guess, in some of the film work I did where my films are very experiential, uh, where I had a lot of music and imagery to what I’m doing.

, I have a very non-linear way of thinking, um, massive dyslexia. And, um, and I think one of the reasons I had success in finances, especially tray creating programs, it’s very nonlinear and that’s. So my brain works like, like I was late on getting on this call. I can’t remember what zip code on. And I feel like I have troubles, you know, you know, I lose my, I, it’s just, it’s crazy the way my life works, but, uh, I do have.

Uh, ability to do kind of out of the box things just because my brain is somewhat shattered, maybe in a good way. ,

[00:15:26] Alex Tsakiris: , DJ, again, you don’t have to answer this, but, and, uh, you and your wife lost your son?

[00:15:33] D.J. Kadagian: Yeah. Yeah. That’s um, that was almost two years ago. About a year and a half ago. ,

[00:15:38] Alex Tsakiris: And I think, you know, the, like, , I’d like to know how that, well, I’d like to know to the extent that you feel it’s a relevant or interesting to, uh, to play into this because this is this larger stream of consciousness that we’re all tapping into in different ways.

And one of my friends at the show and friend mark Ireland lost a son and that’s what kind of propelled him into looking into the near death experience stuff. But then he found in his background that he had kind of been primed for it in a way, in some major ways, in terms of his father was like super psychic.

His uncle was super psychic and all the rest of this, and they were immediately connecting with the other side. And so I think it’s kind of interesting in a way that you were primed, you know, you were primed for. Uh, you know, and then all the things we have to deal with that in terms of, I mean, that’s so personal, you know, that’s so personal, but at the same time, it is the essence of this thing that we’re talking about with the near death experience and the scientific wrinkle and the look behind the curtain and all this other stuff that we might think about in a much, much deeper way than most people are talking about.

So I don’t want you to share any more than, uh, than we need to, or you need to. And if you want, we can take all that out, but you know, how does this all fit together in terms of when you look at life and death and the people who are closest to us and the people, you know, your kids, I got four kids. It’s like, I tell my kids, you know, I said, look, you don’t get this, but you have a piece of my heart.

You

got it. I mean, I can’t do anything with it other than sit back and go, oh my God. Be really careful with it because there’s nothing I can do you own it? I, I D I don’t have it, you know, so I don’t know.

[00:17:42] D.J. Kadagian: Yeah, it was, um, it was, uh, it’s been interesting. , it ha my son passed about two years ago. It was when COVID hit.

And my, he, he came to the area, Sarasota. I live on Longboat key, which is right off Sarasota. And he, um, he’d been struggling with addiction for boy about 10 years. And, um, he’d been going back and, you know, back and forth, going down to like Peru. And, um, he was getting, you know, treatments for, you know, using which, which now we’re seeing this happen all around, all around the world now where they’re using, , psychedelics in therapy.

, it’s becoming more prevalent, whether it’s siliciden, uh, well MGMA, which is not really psychedelic, but, , ibogaine, uh, which, uh, which he, he, we did once that’s pretty brutal stuff. And, , that had major impact on them. It really helped him for a long time. , so he was down there. He’d been, he’d studied to become a shaman for awhile, really interesting kid.

, you know, he’s really, he was really talented poet, you know, the whole thing. So he got here, he didn’t really know anybody and then COVID hit and, , you know, he couldn’t get work. , he isolated. A little bit too much. And, um, and it just bang, it just happened. And, you know, we had been living with that fear for so long.

So, , I had a sense always that it was going to happen. , there were two times where he probably should have, uh, well, he should have passed and twice he had, you know, somebody saw they got a Narcan kit there and brought him back. , so he’s been, he’s been on both sides a few times. , But so yeah, that happened and it just blew my mind.

I mean, it just blew me out of the water and there was so much going on at the same time between, you know, COVID and, you know, my world of, you know, the way I trade and trying to hold everything together at once and not, you know, I just had a, you know, I had kind of a bit of a meltdown. , so I was, uh, again also, because the way I grew up something, you know, for whatever reason, it hit me, you know, maybe everybody process it differently, but it hit me insanely hard.

And I was, you know, pretty much bedridden for a long time and a despondent. And, and one day my wife came up to me and she gave me this workbook. And, uh, you know, I was, my whole philosophy was if I woke up, I would say, I forget I’m pretty healthy person, but she, I would take, , Zeke well, and it would like knock me out.

And if I woke up just to distract my brain, I would watch Liverpool soccer. And so, but, but at the time they weren’t playing any live games. So I watched the same three games for like three or four months. And it was, I knew every shot I knew the good thing is they always won in these games. And my team’s on the New York sports fan.

They always lose. So in that sense, it was fantastic. So, , we’ll sidetrack there, but, uh, no,

[00:20:40] Alex Tsakiris: not, not, not, not really, you know, for some, for someone who still watches, I’ve YouTube, LSU, uh, 2019 Joe burrow, you know, can’t tell you. Yeah. But, uh, you know, it’s, it’s in a way, that’s, it’s going to link up with what we’re talking about here.

In a very strange way. And I think you and I link up in some interesting ways in terms of the perspective we bring to this, and it will come back into play folks. I guarantee you, but we won’t go down that too much further. Let’s switch back and talk about your other, a contributing author to this. Dr.

Gregory Sushant. Give us a little bit of a background on who he is.

[00:21:24] D.J. Kadagian: Sure. , elbow Gregory is, uh, he is, uh, an academic, uh, PhD and his, uh, his background really is, , his, some of his lectures, , and, , the interview you did with hymns, I mean, kind of most free stuff. It can get pretty heady. His books are pretty difficult to read sometimes when he, when he speaks, , and, and the way he wrote in this book, it’s a little more hands-on.

, but he looks at the near death experience over time and through different culture, uh, and, and, you know, the similarities, how they’re interpreted differently, but in a sense, they’re all the same. Um, you know, based on, you know, where a person comes from the, uh, the stories they were told, uh, the, the myths that they learned, whether it was, um, you know, parse fall or star wars kinds of things, and how ultimately there’s so similar.

[00:22:21] Alex Tsakiris: And let me just interject DJ cause your book does a great job of that. Again, the book is the crossover experience. You want to check it out? It’s it’s worth the price. And if you have Kindle unlimited, the price is zero. But even if you don’t, it’s very, very affordable book just to read the thought process of Dr.

Gregory Sushant. And as you said, academic researcher, we already know that if you want to, if you observe a phenomenon like their death experience and you have any sort of broader. Mind, and it goes towards anthropology and sociology. One of the things you want to do is start looking at cross culture cross time, because then a lot of things fall away and you go, oh, that’s just something that we cooked up in our culture.

When you start seeing it across time across culture, then you go, aha, there’s something more to this, his aha. It goes one step further, which you were just alluding to. He said, you know what? I can definitely trace how these different cultures with different religious traditions shifted after. The near-death experience entered into their culture.

So, you know, you’re this Polynesian village and you got your gods and you got this and suddenly Bobo over there has a near death experience and he comes back and now your religious traditions about death and dying, they change. And the only thing that as an anthropologists, sociologists, the only thing you could say is something about that guy’s experience was so compelling that it changed.

And then when you find that over and over and over again, around the world, across hundreds of different years, he just does the solid scientific work and say, well, We can only conclude that these near-death experiences were extremely profound, informing their beliefs about the afterlife. And I think that’s phenomenal.

And I would also maybe tie it back to this book that you’ve, uh, that you’ve written and compiled, because one of the things I really think is great about the book and it ties back to the skeptic part that you’re saying, and also the hate to say it, the hedge fund trader part, because you mentioned a minute ago that you’re a skeptic and like I’m a skeptic, but like I’m not really a skeptic, you know?

And I would suspect that Dr. , he he’s a skeptic, but in a good way, he’s not really a skeptic because everyone else, again, like the story you tell, I mean, that guy dies on the table and he’s experienced death over and over again. He’s a cardiologist, like people die every day in front of Penn, Bon Lama. So when this guy comes back and says, Hey, PIM, Uh, what’s going on?

Why are you making that joke? He goes, what do you mean? You’re a dead. I know what bed means. Your heart stopped. Your brain had stopped. It was two minutes after they were flat line. We were monitoring everything. Oh no. I was there. The, the skeptic in the bad sense that we’re used to is all his colleagues who talks to him and go, no, don’t, don’t process that in that way, that ain’t going to be good for everything that I want.

The person who is ready either because of 10 past lives or just because they’re open-minded or whatever says, no, this is something I need to look into. And so when you say you’re a skeptic, you know, I guess I’d say like, the thing I think is interesting about the hedge fund manager. Oh, come on DJ. You know, that doesn’t work.

You can’t write a trading program that beats the market, the market. It’s a random walk that doesn’t work. , what would you tell somebody who, who had that belief about the market and about trading programs and about hedge fund craziness?

[00:26:15] D.J. Kadagian: You know, there’s more going on and,

[00:26:17] Alex Tsakiris: uh, well let me check. Cause it was the lead up because I’d say, look at my fricking house pal, look at my bank account. It kind of tells a different story, but if that’s what you want to believe, Hey, I wish you the best of luck

[00:26:30] D.J. Kadagian: Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s interesting. And, and I think that. Was so helpful for me when I really started really going into the near-death experience was having the experience I had, uh, in the markets because it’s not random, even though people think it is, they see volatility and, , it looks random.

But if you look at a chart, , you know, a graph of what the markets have done. Uh, it’s fascinating patterns that you’ll see, uh, within a day, uh, within an hour, but within a day, you’ll see a similar pattern over a period of a week and over a month and over 10 years and over a hundred years, these are, these are very consistent patterns.

So you can’t always capitalize on them because they are somewhat random when people try to trade the patterns that are obvious. But then if you dig a little bit deeper, then there are things that start to happen that are not as random. They’re harder to find, but ultimately they’re going to be there because all of this, these charts and, you know, lines, and what have you that start to form these patterns visually you can, I can show somebody this and they’ll say, wow, , it’s really there.

, it doesn’t go away and

[00:27:40] Alex Tsakiris: More than visually, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve read this and your thing. Not only can you show it to them visually, but you can show that to them. Statistically, you can say there is a correlation

[00:27:50] D.J. Kadagian: here. Here it is. Yeah, well, you know, I just say, you know, I track my numbers.

And so if, if I’m going to talk to somebody in perhaps, you know, manage, uh, funds for them, you know, here’s, here’s my account. I show my literal account and, , you know, I’m not taking new assets, so I’m not trying to brag, but, but I’ve been doing over 40% a year in my most recent program over the last, uh, since 2011.

And I trade. I’m a true hedge fund. Most hedge funds. Don’t hedge positions. They’re long, they’re all along the same thing. He such funds are so large right now, but I, I trade, , more commodities than stocks. And so a barrel of oil, a bar, a gold, and a bond treasury bond. And these things are, are much more.

You know, a barrel of oil has been a bearable a hundred years. Nobody can tell you it’s going to earn this much more. You know, here there, same with gold. It just is what it is. , and so they have even more pure motion than stocks. Stocks have so many things going on, , under the surface and so much misdirection, whether it’s by the CEO or the analysts or the sell side, that’s, you know, floating a new IPO for them.

When you start to get into something like, like gold, for example, uh, and oil, the, the patterns, you can start to see other types of, uh, more consistent patterns, not over the short term, but, , but it’s all emotion. It’s all human emotion. I may end up price over 20 years might go up, but all the stuff that’s going on to get you there, these patterns, you don’t go straight.

Those patterns are all based on emotion. So it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating and that can be applied. I found that, uh, so applicable to what I started to see in the near death experience when I started crunching those numbers. And that really blew me away, uh, that blew me away because it’s clear when you go through them.

And if you have an eye for looking at those types of things, and I’m not talking about crunching statistics in the way that, like, in my opinion, the guys like PIM that lamo, um, you know, Peter Fenwick early on Raymond Moody, , you know, they, they did the numbers. And one of the things I say in the book, which people could take offense to, is that everything we’ve learned about the near-death experience, we really learned it, you know, 40 years ago, you know, the major, uh, themes within a near-death experience, you know, the out of body experience, the tunnel going into the light, , the light for review, et cetera, nothing has changed in those stories.

The last 40 plus years, and we’re getting so many of them, obviously since the sixties with ever since, , we saw resuscitation techniques because now you’re talking about thousands of people that have had these near-death experiences. ,

[00:30:35] Alex Tsakiris: Which in and of itself though, I mean, there’s, there’s so much to deconstruct there that I don’t want to go too far down that, because that raises the whole question of the scientific wrinkle thing, you know, like is science somehow driving this, you know, is God driving this, what are the patterns and all the rest of it, what we’re really highlighting.

And I think you did an awesome job of explaining is you are bringing a different perspective to this. It comes through in the book , let me dip into this, into the book a little bit and talk about it so that people get, I keep saying it’s different.

It’s unique and it’s very cool. What you’ve done here is you’ve again, as this hedge fund trader, who’s looking for patterns, you. It look through thousands of near-death experiences and you pulled out these patterns and some of them are, will be very familiar to us, you know, out of body experience, tunnel into the light.

Hella shall love that you have hellish in there. Cause that’s something that people immediately are drawn to. And we’ll talk about that. Um, life review, all these things. And then for each one of those, what people can do is they can go in there and you’ve called out little snippets of these experiences because when it comes to near-death experiences, we all want to hear the stories and you do that.

You provide kind of some of the most meaningful parts of these different stories, but then what you do is two really cool things you summarize for us, some of the most, I guess, bullet points of. You know, the life review, what you’ll hear consistently, you give us some statistics with even some nice graphics that says, this is what you’ll find there.

And then you have this wonderful commentary where you Dr. and Dr. Gregory, Sean are each offering their perspective. And it turns out to be quite a unique in a lot of cases perspective about the tunnel, about the life review, about all these things. So this is something I think people, you know, even people who are familiar or think they’re familiar with the near-death experience, they’ll really find a fresh kind of way of pulling this apart and looking at it.

So you’re really to be credited with, uh, with this unique approach that you’ve taken. What. What are people saying? Are people getting this? Are people responding to this kind of thing?

[00:33:08] D.J. Kadagian: Um, what’s interesting is the people that have read it that I’ve, , that I’ve spoken to, or the reviews that I’ve read. Um, they’re, they’re looking at it.

Well, so many of them have never have not read anything about the near death experience. So it’s, it’s kind of their introduction into it and they like the format. , it is different, but. I ha you know, I’m, I’m just starting to hear, I’m trying to, you know, I’m interested in the contrast because I did want to create something.

I wanted to create something that I would want it to read. That’s what I always do with a film. So, and it, doesn’t always, isn’t always the best seller because I pick topics that are sometimes, , you know, difficult, especially I’ve done the monk, capitalism, greed, racism, things like that. , and I do them in a style that’s so I don’t want to say in your face, but as somewhat provocative.

, and I, I feel like, uh, I feel like that. With a certain, uh, NDE crowd may not like it because some of the things that I found nursed in, in what I was looking at are hard to explain and haven’t been express before, and aren’t very, , comforting in a way, although I think there’s more to it. , there’s something behind it, but I was very surprised after reading so many of these, that there are just a few things where it’s like, wow, happen.

How come I’ve never heard that because there are big things. And one example would be. How I never heard of any of an eye in this book. I was very careful cause I read a lot of books where they say that the person was dead. But, , I really stayed with people that were clinically dead and that it happened either in a hospital setting or if it were outside of a hospital, it was somebody that either had a medical experience or it was an EMT.

So I really only wanted that because that’s where, you know, I’m not discounting any other kind of near-death experience. But as a scholar, as a massive skeptic, I really wanted to stick with, I really wanted to skew the odds in my favor in the sense that this is, um, very hard to, to, um, you know, to knock down.

You know, the kind of research and statistics I was able to come out with, which is as an interesting example, , in reading so many of these, I, I never heard of anyone say they saw their wife on the other side, they saw relatives. And now a lot of these people obviously are older, so they’ve had a spouse predecease them.

And so how is that possible? , I’m not talking, I saw one or two. Or I saw, you know, 3% had them, I’m talking, going through thousands of these and I never saw one. How is that possible? I didn’t see anybody that had pets. I’ve heard of them, but I went through thousands of these and I never saw them. , I think that there’s something, you know, more obviously, um, a lot of these people spoke of kind of traveling in the spiritual pack that they go through these lifetimes with.

So obviously if we’re, , you know, living with, if we’re married to it for that connected, we have a spouse that’s, you know, and, and we’re part of this group that’s still going to happen because in a lot of cases, they say, if you go beyond this point, you can’t come back. Well, obviously they never went beyond that winter.

They wouldn’t have come back. But my guess is that that’s in the beyond. You can’t can’t convince me otherwise, but the fact of the matter is no one even broaches that subject and. Nah, I think it’s it’s. I think the explanation is beyond, you know, if you, if you go beyond that, it’s on the other side of that bridge, which people often run into, but how come we haven’t discussed that?

, that’s interesting to me and that’s, these are the little things that I really love going through because I looked at the little things help you to flesh out something I believe is, is, is more, you know, it’s, it’s more organic, earthy, rich, uh, confusing confounding. Interesting. Mind-blowing you know, that’s the kind of stuff I like to do.

[00:37:26] Alex Tsakiris: Totally. And I think that, you know, there’s a couple points too, and I can go all skeptical and yet here in a minute as well. But I think again, to me, that’s the hedge fund trader, you know, cause people, I haven’t traded a lot, but I trade enough and I manage enough assets enough that there’s a certain clarity that comes with money, especially large amounts of money that you just can’t get anywhere else because everyone in the world is so consumed with that.

And when you master that to some degree, there is a great feeling of control about that. And I think it, it comes through to me in that you can be matter of fact, in, in a way that a lot of people just can’t handle. You’re like, no, I did my work. I’m making the trade, you know, that’s the guy. Cause that’s the guy, like, I’m sure you could tell a million stories and it’s off topic, but you know, guys who can’t pull the trigger, they do all the analysis and then they’re like, yeah, but

[00:38:23] D.J. Kadagian: can you apply the way?

That’s why? Uh, cause I couldn’t I’m too. And so I knew that the, uh, and I w what happened is, and this is another story I was saying. I was going to tell you, which I, I can explain when my son died. She put a book in front of me, my wife, and that opened me back up to the NDE. And that just where it started blowing my mind.

Well, when I was younger and I was already in the business, um, but I was, you know, taking, uh, research from the analyst and so forth. My wife put in front of me, a book called the market wizards, and it was interviews with top traders in the world. And these guys, when you read it all were insanely discipline and they could pull the trigger.

And I knew I couldn’t, but I could do the research and I could create a program that forced me to pull the trigger. So that removed, even though I’ll sit there, like with white knuckles, please don’t do this trade now. But it’s when it’s so painful that that’s the time to do it. And so I have taken that out of the equation and so that, which is what I also try to bring to the near-death experience.

Cause you could get so excited about the whole thing blows your mind and then it’s like, yeah, but like, let’s just look at these little, little gems here that I’m interested in. That stuff that’s really.

[00:39:37] Alex Tsakiris: Well, and the way that plays out. And if we have time, we’ll talk about it is so you, you bring a great perspective to the near death experience.

As you talk about at the end of the book, in terms of how this stuff has changed you. And it includes some great stories. And I’m going to read a couple of clips, a couple of those stories because they also link back to this thing of kind of in your face hard reality. But this is just the truth.

I got to tell it kind of thing. Some of these stories, aren’t going to be super comforting to people, but they are the stories as they exist. You talk about how a near death experience can change you, even if you haven’t had a near death experience because you haven’t had a near death experience, interestingly enough, neither.

Your other two coauthors, Dr. Penn, Don llama, or Dr. Gregory neither one has had a near death experience, all have been deeply affected by the experience. That’s fantastic. That’s that’s like, in some ways that’s more important because most of us have not had a near death experience, but we can gain so much, but we have to be careful.

We have to be careful how we do it. And I think you’re providing us some ways to do it. And I would suggest also that you, you are making the trade, you know, you are making the trade. The program is guiding you. And the reason I relate that back is like Dr. Gregory . I love for every shot. I think his work is great, but he’s this like strident agnostic.

You know, it reminds me of that south park episode. If anyone’s ever seen it, you know, the agnostic, it it’s this militant agnostic, foster dad and Kenny somehow minds up. And he goes over to the frigerator goes, this is a refrigerator You will only drink agnostic soda. That means Dr.

Pepper or diet Dr. Pepper. We do not know the flavor of Dr. Pepper. Is it a root beer? Is it a Cola? No one knows it. Can’t be known. It’s hilarious how much he said, do you know? And so Gregory Sushant to me goes through this tortured explanation of why he has to remain agnostic about near-death experience.

And you want to go Gregory. First of all, when it comes to the fundamental questions in life, no one is agnostic because your life is not agnostic. You get up every day and you live your life. You’ve already made the decision so much, just has to look at your life, go, oh, that’s what you choose. You choose to understand that there is more to life where you look at someone else you go, no, you’re definitely choosing that.

There is nothing more to life. There is no. Agnosticism when it comes, when it comes to, uh, some of these big questions.

[00:42:22] D.J. Kadagian: What’s that saying? There, there are no something in foxholes. I forget that saying, right. There’s no atheists

[00:42:28] Alex Tsakiris: in Fox,

[00:42:31] D.J. Kadagian: but the other thing is, and here’s my take on things like that is Gregory has put so much work into this topic.

I mean, the research is mindblowing, look at one of his books and you know, it would take you weeks to read through the, uh, the bibliography. And it’s incredible how, and part of that tips the hand for him in this. You know, he’s done a number of these books. Now you could not put that kind of time into a book unless you were passionate about it.

And, , you know, you can’t get up in the morning every day and do that kind of work that hard. If, if inside of you, you know, you didn’t think, Hey man, this is, you know, this is happening. You know, I may not say it because I’m a massive skeptic, but you can’t get up. It’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of work to do, even, you know, any book, but, but he’s done how many in the lectures he’s given.

So. At some level, man, you can’t tell me, you know, and he’s too nice and calm and mellow too, and happy. And you, right? I mean, the people that I’ve, uh, well that I watched, you know, the interviews you did with people, I mean, you saw it with him, that Lama, I mean, this guy is just, you know, he’s so he’s, you can’t tell him otherwise just like people that have had it, you’ll never convince them otherwise, once you feel that, and as someone who had a massive fear death, it’s wild, how it’s just, you know, and I’m not sure.

I mean, I, everybody knows I’m an open book it’s changed. It’s just totally changed because, you know, I saw it happen with my trading programs. There’s much more going on it’s energy, it’s emotion, it’s that. And then you see these kinds of things. When you discuss, you know, back in prehistoric days, when, , Joe, the, you know, who discovered the wheel comes out of this cave and had a near-death experience.

And all of a sudden, now they have. This thing. Well, this wasn’t, you know, in most cases, I’m sure this is not the medicine man that had it. It’s somebody random. Now who’s going to believe somebody random because they have such a conviction. You can see it in their face. You can hear it, , in the inflection, in their voice, you know, uh, they tell the it’s you can’t, you know, you’re like, dude, okay, man.

I meant, you know, I believe it. And then boom,

[00:44:47] Alex Tsakiris: But tricky GJ. Cause that’s, that’s partially where you’re coming from. Not all the way where you’re coming from. Cause you’re still looking through the data. You’re still combing through the data. And in that sense you are a skeptic.

You know, my ethos motto on skeptical is inquiry to perpetuate doubt. You know, whenever we settle on something, then the true spirituality is in the doubt in the quest. So I’m going to give you a little hack here. That kind of contradicts what you said earlier, but I’ve shared it on the show before, but I did it right real time while you did that.

If you go to N D E R f.org, which is

[00:45:29] D.J. Kadagian: Jeff Jeffrey Long.

[00:45:30] Alex Tsakiris: So just do the Google search. Do the Google search in D E a N D R f.org, wife, husband. And you’ll find a bunch of. Near-death experiences where they go. My wife was there. My wife pulled me over here and my wife did this, my first wife, some will say my first wife and this and that.

So I do think that is out there. If you might be on to something in terms of how prominent is, and, and we can do that, go down that whole path. But if I can, I want to kind of swing back because I love the stories in the book, the snippets. And I want to share a couple, especially this one, because it highlights this point again, back to this soulful hedge fund trader.

Everyone thinks a hedge fund traders are soulless. We have a soulful hedge fund trader, and I was mentioning that the near the end of the book, they have a chapter great chapter, how this has changed me. And here’s one of the story. From one of the contributors, people, someone has had a near-death experience.

I lost connection with all my friends. I was unable to do the social interactions that I used to do. Communication dropped off completely. I was in my own little world trying to put the pieces of the puzzle back together. I resigned from my career as a, in financial technology.

I dropped all communication with my coworkers. I read books all day long. I learned about crystals and how to create pyramids today. I’m an artist. My relationship with my wife is on thin ice. That part has been sad. I hope it works out. She sees a totally different person.

She’s right. Let me read one more, even more. Kind of startling in a way during my first year, I tried to forget what I had seen. Sometimes I tried to drink it away, but that just seemed to make it worse and more vivid. I stopped drinking or taking anything stronger than aspirin. And then I started to feel peace again with my memory of it.

I didn’t pull it in there, but, , in that one, she goes, I immediately divorced my husband.

[00:47:32] D.J. Kadagian: It’s not a lot of that.

[00:47:34] Alex Tsakiris: this relates to a couple points. One is the integration problem that, you know, we, we are sometimes uncomfortable talking about when we really get into, and that’s what this book is, is fearless about, is like saying, Hey, we don’t know exactly what this means, but I’m going to put it all on the table from a different bunch of different perspectives, medical, anthropological, , and just kind of a hard-ass.

You know, analyze this quantum economists kind of way. I’m going to look at it all these ways, but it still isn’t exactly gonna make sense. And moreover, it might scare the crap out of you because if someone offers you today, okay, can lose everything. You can lose all your friends, you can lose your relationship with your spouse.

You can lose all this stuff, but it’s going to be the greatest thing in your life. You’ll say that, you know, a lot of us would pull up and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Tell me why I would want to do that. So talk about your decision to kind of just lay it on the line. And I don’t want to skew things because the book for the most part, you know, 90% is extremely, extremely.

Positive and uplifting. And it’s because near-death experience is about our ultimate connection with the light, with love, with God, about making life more meaningful. But also let’s talk about this part because you’re willing to go there in terms of it’s not perfect. And we don’t really understand what it means, and it still presents a huge challenge, which I think you shared so beautifully at the beginning.

This doesn’t mean that your life is solved, that all your problems, what you perceive as your problems are over. Talk about some of that stuff you do.

[00:49:26] D.J. Kadagian: Well, I think one of the interesting things is that when people are told, um, you are, it’s not your time, you know, you have, you have things to do work to do.

It’s interesting that they. , that they’re not told what it is. And a lot of people come back and they’re confused. They know that they have, they have a purpose they’re incredibly fired up. Um, but they don’t know what that purpose is. And I think that’s important, , because it’s in that struggle, uh, to figure it out that it’s, whatever it is, it’s very, very important.

There’s a reason you came back, but what is it? You know? And so there’s, you know, a lot of people come back and, and, you know, they’re, they don’t tell others. , they may not tell them for 10, 20 years, they have some that don’t even tell their, their spouse, their friends. I mean, I know that, you know, writing this book, I really don’t discuss it with friends.

Cause I’m, I mean, I’ve been involved in so many out there projects, so, you know, they kind of rolled their eyes with most things that I do so I can get away with some of this stuff. , but a lot of people, you know, they’re, they’re extremely uncomfortable and. You know, they come back with many, many more questions than, than answers, but the answers that they experienced there were so profound that, you know, you, you can’t, you know, it’s once you’ve, once you’ve seen once you’ve seen something like that, you know, how can, how can you go back to what you were, where you were?

, so that’s, um, I’m not sure if I’m answering your question. , but in, in terms of, you know, what I was trying to do for the, for the reader is what I’ve always tried to do for myself, because I tried. Build things that I’m inspired by that challenge me. And so, so in this book, just like in the films I’ve been doing for 20 years now, it’s all about challenging, provoking and inspiring.

So kind of the three where you say, Hey, you know, what is this? And then provoke like, well, it’s not maybe what you think. The point isn’t like Joseph Campbell says is not in learning the answers to the questions it’s in learning how to ask the right questions. And so this whole thing is, look, this is my interpretation.

But my interpretation. Okay. I I’m in with a tunnel tunnel. Makes sense to me, they don’t, you know, different people describe it differently. Nobody touches things most of the time. These are like the things that I find fascinating, the little, little details, but in Japan, you’re going to see more of a cave.

, the American Indian, it was more of a river in a canoe. So they’re there, you know, it’s uh, is it, and that’s the thing, how much of what we’re seeing is metaphor, but you know, a lot of people hear that word and it’s a little bit charged and I say, well, metaphor. It’s not real. It’s mythic it’s, whatever it is, it’s misinterpreted.

I mean, a metaphor is much, much more, it’s much more true than the truth that we understand. It can talk to people at different levels and it can express the same thing to people of different cultures. And so the thing is I’m in no position to tell somebody what this means. I think there’s a theme that doesn’t change in these.

You know, just like the great teachers. I mean, with the Buddha or with Jesus, for example, they speak in metaphor , so that whoever was in front of them, whether it was the fishermen or the, you know, the Pharisees, they’re going to hear something very, very different. But once they get connected, it becomes a reality that they’ll never shake.

And so at some point they’re going to experience each other’s reality because that’s just the nature of it. And whether it’s in this lifetime or the next

[00:53:05] Alex Tsakiris: quick pause there. you covered so many points there that really need to be pulled apart.

W w what I want to do here is let’s pause for a minute. I want to play an extended clip from this YouTube video that you have up. It’s been very successful where we will receive hundreds of thousands of views, and it’s really, really well done. And I think it’ll bring us back to those points that you just raised.

 

[00:53:28] Clip: what if the question of the existence of life after life could now be answered with certainty? What if we now know what it looks like, what it feels like a closer look into what is known as the near death experience is now giving us just this opportunity.

Advances in medicine, particularly more effective resuscitation techniques introduced in the 1960s has enabled doctors, nurses, and EMT is to bring millions of clinically dead people back to life. Something that was not possible before this time in a state of clinical death, most frequently brought on by cardiac arrest, the respiratory center near the brain stem stops functioning evidenced by the cessation of breathing blood flow to the brain stops altogether.

There is a complete loss of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex, which results in a flat EEG, all brain functioning, ceases, and it becomes impossible to be conscious or to form memories. And yet it is in just this state of clinical death. When people are reporting, having the most profound experiences of their lives.

With survivors reporting these experiences in such high numbers and with such clarity and consistency, they’re opening a window into another realm of existence. We can no longer ignore.

[00:55:03] Alex Tsakiris: Okay, I’ll stop it right there on a break up some points. People are going to love or hate that video. What I love about it. And that’s why I’ve been kind of pounding on this theme is I love when you say certainty and, uh, I would maybe say it back to the hedge fund. It’s a tradable event, you know, it’s like,

[00:55:25] D.J. Kadagian: it’s like, God, I

[00:55:27] Alex Tsakiris: got to make that trade.

That’s a slam dunk because so much of the, well, so many of the interviews that I do and I love and respect, you know, so many people that have different perspectives. I just interviewed Dr. Dean Raiden. I love Dean Raden, you know, he’s the one who is falsified. The, the crazy soulless. You’re a biologic robot consciousness.

Isn’t real kind of thing, but he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t, he can’t cross the Rubicon. He can’t say, well, yeah, it’s obvious now, just like you’re doing and just say, well, look. This is what we know. And we know that when the heart stops, the brain goes flat line pit bull, wait a minute, wait a minute. Did you see the Michigan study with the rats where there was this burst and you go, yeah, I saw it’s still I’m trading on this, this thing over here, because we got 60 years of EEG data with bright rats that have died and people that have died and dogs that have died.

And we know there’s no EEG activity, you know, when this, and this happens physiologically, but wait a minute. What are you, what do you mean? What about my, the new study that just came out to just see that with the gamble. And it’s like, bro, what are you trying to do? You’re just trying to develop something to support your existing belief system.

I get that. That’s fine. Remember Walmart called? They want you back for the night shift. Uh, by the way, you can see me, I’ll be out on Longboat key, you know, drinking a martini, you know, it’s like. It’s a worldview kind of thing that just won’t allow people to do that. I appreciate that. And I may be being a little bit too flippant, but you lay down in very concrete terms.

What this is about in terms of, we kind of had an inkling that this was real because it’s been repeated over and over to us by all these different wisdom traditions. And now we have a love how you put the scientific wrinkle thing. You know, it’s, it’s a wrinkle. We don’t know exactly why it’s coming through back to your metaphor thing.

I don’t know if I, I don’t know if it’s a metaphor. I don’t know if these experiences are being relayed back to us metaphorically. I don’t know, but I know that the patterns that you’re seeing are undeniable, the data just speaks clearly of them and we have to process them. However, we process them into our world and decide whether to get up in the morning and live as if.

The data says, make the trade and there is more, or to decide not to.

[00:58:00] D.J. Kadagian: , , the trade metaphor.

I was gonna say if I had the kind of data that I, I spent, oh my God. I dunno, six months, seven months going through these things. , if I had that kind of data, I, and I could create a trading program that would be infallible.

Like the data was that strong. And so yeah, you have that confidence of, you know, this is what it is, you know, statistical significance, you run these kinds of numbers, you know, it’s way beyond, , statistically, you know, it is what it is. I mean, you know, when you get that kind of data that strong, you know, it’s now much, much more on, on the person who doesn’t believe it to come up with something.

And I don’t like to spend so much time on the people that knock it down because. I don’t, I wouldn’t give them air so much airtime just because they haven’t done their research. They essentially say, Hey, you know, this, this isn’t true, but it’s like, but the hands on their own prospective or retrospective studies, they haven’t, they don’t, they don’t have, um, they don’t have, I don’t want to say they don’t have a leg to stand on, but it’s, it’s somewhat intellectually lazy.

The what they’ve done and very simple thing. Well, first of all, And I won’t spend too much time on it because I don’t like to, you know, knock it down because to me it’s not really a conversation, but, , you won’t find, , these skeptics and I mean, skeptics in a negative way where they’re not open-minded skeptics.

Um, they haven’t had an NDE. So, I mean, maybe there are those that exist, but I haven’t heard one that has had a verified, you know, clinical desk that it’s verified the other, you know, simple things like the DMT example that they speak of. , I went to a Peru a couple of few years ago, and I spent some time with the shaman there and, , you know, went through seven Iowasca ceremonies, which is all about DMT.

And I took it at all different types of doses. And, uh, I can tell you with great certainty that, that, , at whatever level you want to talk about is nothing not. I mean, you can say there are bits and pieces, just like you can say, dreams can be interpreted in certain bits and pieces, but, but this is not DMT.

, and, and as far as dreams go, it’s very interesting. Cause Carl Young, , had a very profound near death experience and in his autobiography says, you know, these, these, the near-death experience is not, this is nothing like a dream. This is more real than real. Um, you know, these are things you don’t forget, , when they describe things like time past present, and future time kind of bends a little bit in, in, uh, an Iowasca ceremony, but you can’t describe it in the same way.

You’ll remember very profound experiences, but small pieces. And if you look at, um, what’s really interesting in these near-death experiences. Came across, which I’ve heard about is I never heard of anyone that ran into, um, someone that was living. It was always somebody that had passed away there that’s completely consistent.

I mean, across the board, whereas in a, in an Iowa ISCA ceremony, probably more than half the people you experienced are in that realm are people that are living in part of your life. And the mythic imagery is very, very different. So there’s, there’s all that kind of stuff going on.

[01:01:29] Alex Tsakiris: I hear you on one hand, on the other hand, I think I pull up on that a little bit.

, you know, just had a terrific interview with a guy named William Peters and he’s probably one of the most well known. Researchers have shared death experience along with Raymond Moody. Raymond Moody was really the first guy to write about this and talk about it again. Kudos, Raymond Mitty. Great, great work that he’s done, but the shared death experience is truly, truly unique from a scientific or kind of hedge fund trader scientific perspective.

It’s, it’s even more convincing or compelling data because you have living people who didn’t even know each other and were in the room and saw the same thing happens. The light come down, saw the, the being saw the person, you know, like go through a terminal lucidity event, you know, where they were bad, you know, and now they come alive at their dead.

So there are different ways to look at this. The, the, the, the tricky thing about it, though, is that. The best that I can tell from this, what we’re consistently being confronted with is something you mentioned, just kind of in passing. And you definitely mentioned not in passing in the book, you talk about it, quite a great, quite a bit.

The crossover experience is the book again, realer than real. And if you take realer than real, which is what this experience in the extended consciousness is consistently reported, it kind of offers a tricky catch 22. We’re talking about something in this lesser reality. So in a way we have to be kind of on guard that everything we’re saying is less real than the reality.

And I think that’s a cautionary tale. The, the other thing that I think really comes through in the shared death experience that is also throughout your book, is that. We don’t know what that term metaphorical means. We don’t know if this experience is being served up uniquely for us, or if it’s, as you alluded to metaphorical across culture, if it’s for everyone in our tribe, everyone in our family, everyone in the world, everyone in all the other worlds, we don’t know what that necessarily means.

And there’s to a certain extent. And this is what I really appreciate. What you’re helping us break through is those to a certain extent are unanswerable questions. And what you do so beautifully in the book is you allow those questions to remain and to come through in the story, but then you also just kind of pull back and go, okay.

Let’s check this. We do know this, right? We do know that survival is just the reality. We have to accept that, or we’re just completely kind of whipping on the data that’s right in our face. And that’s a very valuable, valuable place to be. Because as we know, and as you talked about in your life experience, lot of people can’t get there.

I mean, you got there, but a lot of people spend their whole life and never get, there are still afraid of death are still deeply in grief because they’re there, they can’t fundamentally understand this, or as we see, and I’m much more conspiratorial probably than you are, but people are, you know, driven to kind of very, very unhealthy control and domination things on a massive scale because they don’t want to deal with.

Death or they are into some kind of transhumanism kind of thing, just as an escape from death. So there’s the metaphor thing is tricky and the greater reality thing is tricky. What do you think about those two things?

[01:05:35] D.J. Kadagian: Well, the, yeah, the metaphor is tricky. , and it’s really the first thing I stumbled on, uh, whatever 25, 30 years ago when I started to hear Joseph Campbell speak.

But when he started speaking, I would say that it was more real than real. It was more real than anything I had heard before, because when he started speaking of metaphor and speaking metaphor, it, it, it hit me. It’s such a deep level. And it was that powerful that it changed my whole, the whole course of my life.

So, uh, That’s metaphor. That’s the power of metaphor, the great teachers, the great religious figures of OD and say, we’re not traditional institutionalized religion, but the people that have had the most sway over time are the ones that are able to communicate at that level. Because to the receiver, it is more real than real as, as much as we can experience that in this realm, because it speaks to them and exactly where they are.

, but metaphor is tricky because I think we, we don’t really well. I don’t think we know how to fully, um, articulate it in the west. Like what is a metaphor? How do you even, how do you even know to look for one? You know, when you’re watching star wars, I mean, star wars. , George Lucas was friends with, , Joseph Campbell.

In fact, one of the bill Moyers episodes in that series was filmed at Skywalker ranch, which, , he was a huge fan and, and that really informed and, and, um, inspired a lot of the whole series star wars. Now, when the average person is sitting there watching star wars, I remember when I was a kid, the first one came out.

I mean, it blew my mind. That was the first film like that, but it was also the story. And, um, but the average person is like, they don’t understand that this is, you know, there’s, it’s mythic. Okay. Now it’s a spaceship instead of the horse, like parse the fall and, , you know, quest for the grail, but

[01:07:36] Alex Tsakiris: hero’s journey.

[01:07:37] D.J. Kadagian: Exactly. We don’t appreciate it. We don’t, we don’t know how to tell story there. You know, we don’t, um, we don’t, you look at these cultures that have been able to hold together and it’s because they have community. And oftentimes it’s also that they respect the elders who have seen it.

You know, it’s like when you look at the markets, if you try and create a program, based on what happens, you know, over the last six months, you’re in trouble, you have to go through. 50 years, a hundred years then see these patterns. And then it’s like, ah, I S you know, you look at things from 60,000 feet and they looked very, very different than when you’re in the weeds.

And I think that’s what, in one sense, also, a metaphor allows you to do is to, to experience. Uh, you know, a concept, a story that, you know, it, it, it hits you at your core. It sneaks past your defenses. You don’t know how to stop it. That’s what happens also with humorous, what I love about satire, you know, some of these shows like the daily show, the, the I’m going to go off on a tangent, but that, that the average person watching the daily show back in the day with John Stewart were more informed than people that were watching CNN, MSNBC, Fox news.

And it’s because that humor, it like opens people up and the truth can get in and they feel it, they get it, they sense it. And the same thing happens, , obviously with metaphor. So I think it’s massively important, but. You know, we’re in a culture that it’s just noise everywhere. It’s noise, and everything has been broken down into such little bites, you know, and the spitting, the phone and small images and everything’s getting shattered and broken.

So then

[01:09:20] Alex Tsakiris: twas ever, thus what I mean, bill Moyers, I’m able, let’s jump right back into my other world. Bill Moyers. What was his job? , press secretary for LBJ. What role did he play in JFK thing? Hmm, interesting. Why is he on his hero’s journey maybe to make amends for some of the stuff that he did out?

Oh, no, just speculating, but this is, this is all over the place and I think it’s particularly. Important because that’s what I was one embracing about what you’re saying, but also pushing back on what you’re saying. I think there’s a bunch of people that want to exploit the metaphorical reality of everything and shape it into their narrative.

Like, oh, you know, if this is the metaphor for what’s going on right now. And we’re, we’re in the other thing, I guess, and that’s how I get excited. So, and I think that also relates to this whole question of how much is our narrative being controlled and served up to us in a way that we can look back at history and go, oh my gosh.

Yeah, we really were told a story. We were really sold a narrative. We were sold a myth. Our, one of our great myths in our country is. Life Liberty and pursuit of happiness. That’s an awesome, awesome myth. But those guys that sign, that document were enslaving in the most unbelievably inhumane way, millions and millions of people.

And they found a way to make that kind of fit inside their world. And then they enslaved him and killed him and murdered him and raped him and did all this stuff for a couple of hundred years. Then they gave him a couple years off and then they did it for another hundred years.

And that is our reality. I’m not saying I hold any guilt or I’m just kind of stepping back and saying, look at that pattern. That is, but is it not true that our story, our metaphor, our narrative is still a powerful, powerful narrative because. Our unalienable rights are truly our rights.

They always were. And whether they’re written on a piece of paper or whether they’re not written on a piece of paper, that’s what makes them what they are. So. I think this thing about narrative is super tricky and we’re certainly living in a time that a lot of people are trying to control that narrative.

But the one question I have for you, and I guess it would also be kind of a skeptical moment with the book is do you think we’re living in a special time? Because when we talk about the medical link with near-death experience and how there seemed to be so many more reported now, and maybe that’s because we’ve learned to bring people back through resuscitation, it all points to this.

We are living in a special time. I’m not my tone suggests that I’m totally dismissing that I don’t want to be totally dismissive of it, but I don’t want to , treat it as a fundamental unquestionable truth. What do you think about, what do you think about that DJ?

[01:12:37] D.J. Kadagian: You know, I, I’m also extremely skeptical.

I know that so often people think they’re living, you know, in the most interesting inflection moment something’s going to happen. I, I believe it because certain things have happened, especially recently, literally last year, which, which I’ll mention in a minute, but also because when I look at again, the markets markets go in patterns and some of them are macro patterns that take about 70 years and they continue to happen every 70 years.

You can go back in time to the Renaissance and these types of things. But now with the markets, we can actually, , quantify this. We never had a, how do you quantify this, you know, hundreds of years ago, but over the last 150 plus years, we have. These patterns that are, um, that measure human emotion and you find them in the charts.

And one of these patterns, these super patterns that you see in the markets is coming to a head. And I will say, as somebody who’s watched every tick of the market for 36 years, , that I’ve never seen anything like what I’ve seen in the markets that’s happening right now. And, you know, there’s, there’s good and bad to that one is that I think we’re going to see an epic collapse in, in the economic system globally.

And you know, that’s a whole show in itself, but it’s, you know, you can’t convince me otherwise because. I just know this stuff from, in my bones, because I’ve lived it for so long, but there’s so many things that are happening right now. Crosscurrents and, you know, with currencies and, and, uh, you know, what the fed has done with interest rates and how, I mean, we’ve bought, we’ve basically painted ourselves into a corner and we’ve kicked the can down the road too far.

It’s over. So it’s, we’re, we’re like the coyote that’s now going over the edge. He doesn’t realize there’s nothing there anymore. There’s no legs under this market. It’s, uh, it’s over. So I think that’s happening. , if you want to talk about, , Assign that it’s changed now. And I’m not, I’ve always felt, I mean, you’d have against statistically.

You want to tell me that there’s no intelligent life in the universe. Good luck convincing me that. Well, you know, there have been signs for a very long time and I was, you know, I’ve always been interested in, I always believed it, but the government, the defense department came out. What was it? Seven months ago and laid out, you know, there was a, it was a very in-depth article by a very reputable woman who, um, who got ahold of footage from the, uh, from, from people that were on the, you know, the Navy carriers, fighter pilots, et cetera.

I’m sure everybody’s kind of seen this or heard about it, whether they it’s really registered as hard to say, but, okay. So there are literally, UFO’s flying around on the planet here now and, and I think to myself, yeah, There are two stories that are mindblowing that could be happening. One would be the near-death experience.

I will see the other is, is, is life from another planet or dimension or wherever they’re coming from, but they’re here right now. And what blows my mind is nobody really made much of it. It came in, it was. And so I see some of the signs and, you know, just the way things are feeling mean, people probably feel things now that this, something is not right.

Something is not working in this whole COVID thing and how that’s, you know, changing so much of, you know, how we interact with each other and, and the surveillance society and all this kind of stuff. Yeah.

[01:16:15] Alex Tsakiris: But DJ, I mean, we just don’t know how much of that is engineered and impending economic collapse. We don’t know a lot of people would point to that being one of the goals of the current project.

Right. And you could even tie it if you really wanted to go there to this larger. World global thing, you know, from a interplanetary perspective, does it really make sense to have 146 different actors on the stage doing that? Or do you somehow want to bring all those together? That’s kind of putting a positive spin on the new world order globalization, but even take the UFO thing.

It is extremely, extremely , complicated. And when you talk about controlling the narrative, I mean, like I take what you just say and go, yeah, but DJ. But the real story here is they’ve been lying their fricking ass off for 70 years. And not only that, but they’ve been threatening, killing, probably.

We can’t totally prove it, but definitely threatening, terrorizing, driving people, crazy, getting people to sign, you know, you, death, death wish non-disclosure agreements. And only some of these guys have come out. These long-time 30 year air force guys have come out and said, yeah, I was at the nuclear silo.

This is what happened. The ETE came UFO turned on to 10, turned on all 10 of the missiles. Each one are independent because they have to be independent. That’s like they have their own power source, their independent control mechanism. There’s supposed to be no way cause otherwise, you know, anyone could fly over with.

EMA or a cosmic rays from the sun could shut them up. No, we’ve we thought about that to start, but they turn them all on. Then you go over to the Ukraine and back when Ukraine was part of the Soviet union and the whores. So we don’t know any of this, but the wall comes down. We get that. Oh yeah, that happened over here too.

But when T UFO flew over, he turned them all on and we were like 15 seconds before launch and then turned them off. But then when you talk to the real top dog, like Robert Hastings, who I did an email interview with, who’s studied this more thoroughly than anyone else and completely puts to rest. Any people who are uncomfortable UFO’s oh, it’s government or it’s isn’t it?

No, it’s been like this, this UFO connection is the. Overwhelming evidence that this is real along with the cross culture cross time thing, you know, I’m like I interviewed already, Sixkiller Clark, but here’s the point. And I’ve never made this point on the show I want to. And here’s an opportunity when you listen really carefully to what Robert Hasting says, he has changed his interpretation.

The narrative of that, what he used to say is E T was doing a shot across the bow. ITI was saying, look, these nuclear weapons, you’re playing with. Be careful. You could destroy this planet, but you know what he says now he says, yeah, that maybe, but maybe it’s in it’s of a mutual interest. Maybe it isn’t this big brother, God, in the sky he T wants to protect us.

Maybe. Bro, you know, I’ve got a stake in this game that you don’t quite understand. So keep those things under rep, there are so many different ways to interpret this, but the one way we cannot interpret it is the narrative where we’re being given by the people who released. And I’ve had both Amanda and the people who wrote the article in the New York times.

Uh, Leslie Kane and Ralph Blumenthal have both been on the show, have both done interviews and I’m like, come on, you gotta be kidding. This professional counter-intelligence agent, Lou Elizondo translate as professional liar for the government of what? Not that we, we need, you know, professional liars in the government.

That’s what spies do. But we’re supposed to believe him. After 70 years of completely lying about this, we’re supposed to believe him in that these, none of this was classified. That’s why he’s not behind jail. Cause everyone else even takes a photo of inside the submarine and the kid, you know, inadvertently there’s something in the background, he’s in jail, he’s in the brig, you know, but Lou Elizondo is out doing interviews and you know, what is his message is protect our airspace.

This is an issue of national security. I mean, this is such a concocted crafted kind of spin of ETS here. And you know, what you need to worry about is protecting our airspace. How does that make any sense to people? So

[01:21:15] D.J. Kadagian: on that actually. You know, , when, when you look at things like, , , I’ll draw a parallel here.

If you look at, , the way now, , we’re, we’re seeing the introduction of psychedelics for psychological hero, healing, particular PTSD, these types of things. They, they started using for, , veterans of the Iraq war who were coming back, you know, basket cases. And they started to show unbelievable results, , using that in therapy and talk therapy, integration, et cetera, once that happened.

And they were able to essentially prove it, that it helped the veterans, they had to start getting into the veterans and then these people, , I forget his name, , And I forget his name, but they’ve been trying to get, , essentially what the government is doing now with the veterans. They were trying, they’ve been trying for 20 years to be able to do this.

And as soon as it became viable for them to do it for the veterans, all of a sudden, we’re starting to hear it. You know, that, that this is coming now. It started everywhere. And it’s because of that. So when you start, in my opinion, when you start, I think Lou Elizondo knows that. There is no way that, that these people can continue to say in government, Hey man, this thing, you know, we can’t tell you or it doesn’t exist or whatever, but the minute you say it, this is a matter of national security that these things could blow up our shifts.

Now, all these senators can’t be, they can’t piss it away and say, wow, you know, now it’s like, dude, do you understand? They’re flying over our ships. We have it on our radar. They’re they’re flying circles around us. They’re a danger in our airspace. They’re worse. There were some, the Russians now the senators that always have to act like Hawks.

They they’re like, Hey, you know what? We’re going to have to put some money. That’s my, my feeling is he’s using that whole military system against itself to be able to put it on the map and say, if you don’t do this, you’re putting our troops at risk because, but he’s an

[01:23:10] Alex Tsakiris: agent. He’s an agent. He’s an Intel agent.

The only thing that matters is the truth. It’s back to the middle of tent agnostic.

[01:23:18] D.J. Kadagian: Alexa,

that alerts me as a potential trading signal.

[01:23:27] Alex Tsakiris: oh, okay. Okay. So, You know, I had, uh, Richard Dolan on the show and I, I really respect Richard Dolan a lot. He’s probably one of the, one of the most reliable UFO researchers we’ve had.

He he’s published amazing books and he kind of takes us a long-term historical perspective on it. He wrote a book a few years ago called , after disclosure and his point. And it was brilliant at the time it turned out to be totally not true was, Hey, there will never be disclosure because the questions will never stop.

Well, we’ve had disclosure and the questions never even started. We just, we just took exactly what they said. Oh, what is Lou? What did, what did you say. Oh, it’s protect act. Okay. What about Richard Doty intelligence officer that tortured Paul Benowitz into. Going crazy with this orchestrated misinformation disinformation campaign that was so diabolical that, you know, you can’t, when I had Colonel John Alexander on the show, he said, if that’s true, then that guy should be in Leavenworth.

Yeah. He should be in Leavenworth. We shouldn’t allow our military intelligence officers to run operations on American citizens unknowingly because they’re trying to protect and try to do, uh, the only thing that, uh, Paul Benowitz did is he said, Hey guys, I see the lights out on a Kirkland. And I just want you to be aware of it, you know?

Yeah. And then they have this whole cover story, which is totally fake. Like this is so deep into the UFO thing. Like two people are gonna understand this, the cover story that they do, the Mirage man, a video movie that they make says, oh, well, you know, what, what they were really trying to do is high the laser and the advanced stealth bomber bullshit.

What they were doing is UFO shit, either theirs or ours. But the other thing that they never reveal is that Kirkland has nukes, which they didn’t tell anybody. But now we know after the fact Kirkland ed nukes there. So this story of deceit of lie of misinformation, disinformation has always been in play.

So the only way to understand Lou Elizondo is through that lens and the way to that, no one asks those questions. Like, you’re a part of that organization. What do you think of. Richard Dodi, should he be in jail? Should he have gone to jail? You know, or he says like, Lou Elizondo says, you know, it’s not my fault.

Uh, my superiors told me to do that. Who are your superiors? Let’s bring them out, you know, to whatever extent the, who you said, you fought to make these dishcloth declassified who classified them when, you know, I mean, it’s just.

[01:26:22] D.J. Kadagian: Yeah, it’s a dark. I think that, you know, I think one of the reasons why there’s changes, you know, we’re at that inflection point, is that in, in so many areas, they’re, they’re losing control of the narrative.

And, you know, I think a lot of that, I think that the, the PA the positive thing in social media is, you know, like if you look at what’s going on with the people in Russia, they’re getting enough information through that. Some of the people, you know, really do understand what’s happening because they’re the mist, the misinformation is insane, but they, they really now run the risk of, uh, You know, of, of some type of internal uprising.

I mean, they’ll knock it down and we’ll get ugly, but it’s same, thing’s happening in China. So while at the same time, there’s so much noise and they’re putting so much distance information inside of all of that information that people are confused. And so nobody feels what the hell is going on, but they’re losing control of the narrative.

But the best thing they can do is just to confuse the shit out of everybody. And I think that’s so much of what’s going on. I think they just don’t want people to know what the hell is going on, whether right or wrong, it’s just noise. It’s become noise. And so, you know,

[01:27:34] Alex Tsakiris: and that’s super interesting to me in a way it’s, it’s really, really relevant to this conversation in the way that a lot of people don’t see, or of course they don’t because I’m unique interpretation of it.

But that is that what the near-death experience is really about is bringing us to. The edge of the chasm. And then we have to choose to jump over or not jump over. And the chasm turns out to be just barely a footstep. It’s like so easy to jump over, but a lot of people look down and to them, it looks like the grand canyon and they can’t jump over it.

And the jump over point is, are you moving? Are you more, are you more than a biologic robot, meaningless universe? Are you connected to the light? Is there a hierarchy of consciousness? Is there right and wrong? You knew that when you were five years old and you put that piece of candy in your pocket, that the drug at the corner store, of course, you know that to be true, anything that makes you question that?

Anything that makes you question? Oh, no, I don’t have to worry about that because I’m at a special time or the narrative is this way. That way now it’s really pretty easy. Just choose the light, keep choosing the light over and over again. What your book, the crossover experience does is. Give us more and more reasons to be confident in that, to make that a highly actionable event to say, is this science actionable and for you to hold it and go, yep.

I can step over. I am more, I am greater. And I feel confident in making that decision. That’s what I think it’s all about to me.

[01:29:18] D.J. Kadagian: Yeah. Yeah. I could, I could imagine if somebody handed me that book after, you know, my son had passed, like right after it, man, that would have helped me a lot. And that’s why I created this.

It’s you know, the, the things that I’ve done, like when I was, I did the film on racism was something I was struggling with. And it helped me to kind of crystallize what I really believed. And then it’s like, I want to give it out there. There, the answer is I don’t like giving the answers and that’s not what’s being done in crossover.

I think it’s in learning to ask the right questions or not necessarily that are there any right questions, but ask questions and to give them some context within which to ask them, because the answers are going to be different for everybody. No, you know, not that one’s right and one’s wrong, but how we perceive things, how we understand things, how things, uh, penetrate, um, you know, at whatever level they’re going to penetrate at us based on, you know, where we are and how open we are.

, so. That’s what I think is important about something like this, um, to, you know, that’s the whole thing I’ve been trying to do is challenge provoke and inspire, but you really got to push somebody into an uncomfortable place. I think, to get them to be like, you know, Hey, but, but never push on them and answer, just say eman, just take a look.

You’ve got to ask questions, especially in. I mean, how the hell do you know you? If you watch Fox news and MSNBC, you’re living on two different planets, you know, it’s just like in the markets, the financial markets, you’ve got the guy from Goldman saying, this is the greatest buying opportunity of all time.

And then you’ve got a guy over at JP Morgan saying that, you know, these markets are, are going to crash. These are both, you know, NBA, PhDs, top of their field. How, what are they looking at? They’re looking at the same numbers for the most part. You know? So that’s it. You’ve got to ask questions. You can’t follow this guy or that guy.

Cause you know, because one of these guys is going over the Le you know, but he’s incredibly confident. You have to be open. You have to be flexible pliable. You got to ask a lot of questions and then just be willing to be, I think you have to be willing to look stupid sometimes. You know, that’s not easy to do when you have to learn how to be okay.

Getting your head handed to you, whether it’s in the markets. I started up a jazz club once and I got my head handed to me. It was a really cool jazz club and the whole thing. And I won, but I didn’t realize I didn’t, I couldn’t handle being around that many people that wanted to like talk to me crowds.

So the place collapsed and it was like embarrassing. Cause I had always had success in business, but it’s like, man, I learned more from that. You know, we learn more from our failures, from our successes. There’s no question. So the whole thing is just ask questions, be willing to take risks, mess, stupid risks.

But you know what? You might consider a risk. You know, the downside is, is can be, will be pure upside, whatever happens one way or the other, but you gotta, you know, you got to put, throw yourself into the deep end. You know, you cannot, if you sit in the, in the surf, you’re going to get the shit kicked out of you.

You got to go into the deep end and just, you know, Richard Ward had a great saying. I actually just finished, uh, another book. I had to do the book at the same time as this one, because the research. Was driving me insane. It was so dry. It was so, um, it just got monotonous because you just going not. So I started writing a book and, and my son, Sean had asked me that I’d written something and he’s like, man, you’ve got to turn this into the book.

But at the end of the book, there’s this great saying it’s from Richard Ward. He was in one of my films and was based on a poem. Um, but he said that, um, basically the metaphor was you have to learn to breathe under water. And that’s why you have to jump into the deep end. You have to just let go and just give your body as a coral castle and learn how to breathe under water.

I think that’s kind of what it is cause. You know, you gotta ask questions. You just gotta let go. I have a hard time, a little bit easier now, but man, that’s not easy for a scout, a skeptics, it’s your best and worst enemy, you know, but I think it’s, you have to have that the yin and the yang, you know, it’s the struggle.

If you don’t struggle with your own self, you know, you’re, you’re asleep, you know, and you can’t be asleep anymore in this day and age, you know, you can’t. So anyway, that’s my theory. Awesome,

[01:33:43] Alex Tsakiris: man. That’s a great way to end it. , so DJ, where do you plan on going with this, uh, the crossover experience?

You have a new book out where your project’s taking you in the future?

[01:33:55] D.J. Kadagian: , I don’t know that I can do another book. These, these are really hard, you know, I found Fillmore easier. Uh, But I don’t feel like film right now. And, and I, I think one of the things I need to do, because it’s been a really difficult kind of two years, and just now as I’ve launched it, I started to listen to jazz again, you know, my wife comes home.

She goes, oh my God, I’m so happy to hear you now. She doesn’t love my music, but she’s like, you know, and it, it something about music, but especially jazz. I grew up on jazz, um, which none of my friends listen to her. Like, I don’t know anything like rock and roll, but so I’m, I’m looking at opening another jazz clubs.

So that puts, you know, that’s a typical DJ move, you know? I mean, I, I don’t know. I also. I want, I’m going to go down to Peru again, I think, and, and kind of do that scene. And years ago, I went out to the desert to kind of sit on a rock for, you know, I was going to do 40 days and 40 nights and I got physically got the shit kicked out of me.

It was like, like a crazy desert in the United States. So I’ve always got something. But, you know, I think I might go into where I, where I, my greatest Waterloo I call it was what’s my jazz club. It was an amazing club, but I couldn’t handle being there. I always say I love building it, but I never, um, I never accounted for the fact that human beings were going to come in in, in large numbers as soon as they did.

I literally, my friends said, dude, you’re crazy. They’ll think you’re crazy. Close it right now. And I almost did like literally the week it opened. So I just like, can’t do this man, but I did. And that was a mistake. So now I’m thinking, going back to my water alone, you know, giving it another shot, I missed the music, you know, I really miss that.

So, but I don’t know about another book. I’ll send you the one that I’m finishing. It’s actually, it’s called punching waves. Um, cause you know, if you read it, you know, the life has been kind of crazy, but that was good, very cathartic. But I think now it’s time to listen to some jazz and relax a little bit.

.

[01:35:57] Alex Tsakiris: DJ. I really hope people check out the book again, the crossover experience. It’s been great having you on skeptical. Thanks for joining me. Thank

[01:36:05] D.J. Kadagian: you so much. And one thing I want to do, uh, is really thank Jeffrey Long at N Derf. anybody that wants to really learn about, you know, really go through these.

You don’t have to go through thousands of them, but you can really search through them and get such a great sense of what’s happening there. And, and if they want to. , the crossover website, I’ve created that as kind of a hub where you’ll find research reports, scientific reports. , I have playlists of what I would consider some of the top testimonials, uh, links to Ian D S all of the different NDRF sites.

So it really focuses on just MDs. , but that’s at Crow crossover, experience.com and for whoever buys the book, which is also interesting if it’s the ebook at the back where the, where the notes are, the bibliography, those are all live links directly to the testimonials that what I pulled out of the testimonials came from.

So you can go directly to all the testimonials I worked with. So that’s just, you know, something that might help people.

(—–)

[01:37:09] Alex Tsakiris: Thanks again to DJ Kadesia and for joining me today on Skepta co. The one question I tee up from this interview is.

How do you find clarity?

In these, biggest, most important questions about how to live your life. , how do you choose.

Let me know. Love to hear from you. Lots more to come on. Skeptiko, stick around. Until next time. Take care. Bye for now.

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