Father Nathan Castle- Unraveling The Mysteries Of Interrupted Death Experiences

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Hey everybody, this is Brian. I'm back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And today I've got me with me a fascinating man, Father Nathan Castle. He's from Groves, Texas. He received an MA and M.Div., or Master's of Divinity degrees, from the Bennington School of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He served in campus ministries at Arizona State University, at Stanford, and at UC Riverside. Father Nathan is chair of the executive board of the Catholic Campus Ministry Association. We're here to talk to him about today is he's actually helped more than 500 stuck and not so stuck souls who died suddenly and traumatically, he's helped them to adjust to the afterlife. Victims of fires, automobile accidents, shootings, stabbings, drownings, and suicide come to him in dreams seeking help to resolve their interrupted death experiences. Excuse me. Father Nathan believes that providing such help is something the Holy Spirit has given him and his prayer partners to do. In his Afterlife Interrupted books, Father Nathan is quick to point out That Not Everyone Who Dies Suddenly Gets Stuck. He's also the author of Entoto 2, The Wizard of Oz is a Spiritual Adventure, and Afterlife Interrupted, as I said earlier, books 1 and 2, Helping Stuck Souls Cross Over.

Nice to be with you.

Thanks for being here, Father. I want to talk to you about— first of all, I'm a little bit concerned about the subject. So I'm always trying to bring peace to people and alleviate fear as much as possible. So when people hear about souls being stuck, what does that actually mean?

Well, when I first— my first of my two books, I use that in the subtitle. I was comparing it to the near-death experience that you're familiar with, because we're both members of IANDS, the International Association for Near-Death Studies, where people talk about you know, being out of body during a heart attack or some other trauma to the body or whatever, and having their consciousness float above, observe things that are inexplicable, except that the consciousness is outside the body. And very often they have a kind of sequence of perhaps going down a tunnel or toward an attractive light, maybe seeing loved ones or religious figures. Having some conversation about staying or going and then often being told to come back or they're asked that they choose to come back. That's pretty common. You know, Raymond Moody made that famous back in 1975 with his book Life After Life. These experiences are people that really died, but they did not have a smooth sequential movement from the body they were in to what happens next. And they— I got rid of the word stuck in the subtitle of the second book, because I found that some of them weren't— some were stuck in the way that people can get stuck in a trauma loop. You and your listeners probably have no— at least one person who's alive on this earth, but who is grinding away at some trauma that happened some time ago that just won't turn loose.. And that could be very painful. And some of the people that I dealt with, especially in the first book, were in a trauma loop about the way they died after they died, kind of kept reliving the automobile accident or something like that. So I thought of them as stuck. And some were, but then others, it just seemed like none of us know what it would be like to die traumatically, be healthy one minute and die and be out of body the next. And for some of them, it is just so abrupt and so much all at once that they really need something like intensive care in the afterlife. They— their needs are greater than the needs of people that died peacefully in their sleep. And so the afterlife provides it.

Okay. And so how did you discover that you had this ability?

Well, I do that in two parts. I, I was taught as a Catholic Christian child very early on that I had the capacity, the ability, and so did everyone else, to pray for the dead and influence their ongoing life. In fact, I try not to even say the dead. I caught myself saying it there, because they're still alive. Everybody is. It's not just about religious belief. Or whether you believe in an afterlife or not, people who didn't believe in it awaken to it and go, oh, it's still me. They might not say I'm still here because they don't know where here is because they're not in the same here where they were earlier, but that they're alive and that they are themselves is self-evident. And then they have to figure out the rest of it. But anyway, I was, as a little Catholic child, I was taught to pray for the souls in purgatory.. And the way that was presented to me as a child is that there were 3 options upon death about where a person went next: heaven, hell, or purgatory. And that most people weren't absolutely horrible, or absolutely perfect, and most people landed in the middle. By the way, we were also told in first grade, I remember, that, that we would only know if someone, if a human person was in a permanent hell if God told us so. And God has not told us so. We don't, we don't know the name of anybody in a permanent hell. No human person. So anyway, I, but it seemed like they were nation states, like you cross the border. If you were in one of them, you weren't in the other or something like that. But we could help people who were in purgatory to go to heaven by praying for them. And so, and then one, both of my aunts were Dominican first grade teachers. I keep a picture of them handy. And I guess some people are listening to this, but I'm showing a picture from about 1937. They're my dad's siblings. And they were both first grade teachers. So I had my mom, my dad, my mother, grandmother next door was a mystic, and I had two aunts that were Dominican first grade teachers. I had lots of input about spiritual practice, very early. So I was— one of them told me that God hears everyone's prayers. But the prayers of children go straight to God's heart. And that you have a superpower as a child to pray for anyone and everything you can think of. Don't waste your short childhood. Pray for everyone and everything you can think of. And I was also told that in purgatory, if yours was the prayer that sprung somebody into heaven, that they'd be eternally grateful to you, you'd have a friend in heaven. And I thought, well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. And so I would— I am— my dad and mom didn't go to college. They grew up during the Depression, and that was just not going to happen. But by the time we— they started having us, I was born in '56. They were— there were 5 of us, and they got started college funds for each one of us in the first week of our life. Each of us had a little passbook savings book with our name in it and numbers that got bigger every time you went to the bank. Because we never made a withdrawal from that. It was always, you know, you were to be conscious that when you got big, there'd be big money that would pay for your college. So anyway, when we went to the bank, it was obvious that the people that ran the bank planned to make you wait in line. There might be 6 teller booths and 3 people working, or those zigzaggy ropes that go around and around in a lobby to make everybody wait their turn. Right. And somehow that became purgatory for me.

Okay.

I thought there must be people that are one step away from, from getting served, getting into heaven, and there's somebody that just walked in the door and must be discouraged because they're all the way at the back of the line. So I would pray for the one at the front and the one at the back. I'd fall asleep doing this every night. Hmm. And it sounds tiring, but who cares when you're going to sleep anyway? Yeah, I would just fall asleep praying for the souls in purgatory. So years later, in my early 40s, I was a priest then by probably about 15 years. I was on a retreat. I was dreaming in the night about finishing a round of golf, going into the bar, with a friend and finding that we were in a silent auction for a charity. I've run charities most of my life. Fundraising is part of the deal. And so I was standing there in a fundraiser. So it's still kind of my life.

Hmm.

But on the far wall, there was this nasty piece of art in a frame that I just said to my partner, look at that god-awful thing. Who would donate that to a charity? It's horrific. But it was so— it was horrific in a way that was attractive. The way that we maybe are ashamed to admit that we want to drive slow by the wreck on the freeway. Oh yeah. Look at it, you know, it had that appeal to it. And I went toward the painting and it moved towards me or the framed art. And when we kind of met in the middle and suddenly the images inside of it started moving and it was a guy on fire, young man, sitting on the radiator of a car. He had not been in a wreck. But for whatever reason, he was in— he was on fire on the engine of a car. And he was screaming. And I woke up. And I knew the first part was my dreamscape. And the second part was not. So, and it was quite clear, I've had to carry a pager or have a pager on the nightstand to take my turn in case there's a call, hospital call, in the night. Most Catholic priests somewhere along the line have to do that, take a turn in case there's a medical emergency in the middle of the night. This, this felt like that. It felt like being summoned by somebody who had an urgent need. And so I sat up and said a prayer. I, I spoke aloud to the person, said, this is what I just saw. You stay put. In the morning, I'll find a a helper, and we'll see what we can do. And that's the way we got started.

Oh, wow. So you found the helper, and how did that go?

It went very well. I was on a retreat with— most of the people on it were friends of mine. I was their pastor for a lot of them. And one of them had extraordinary spiritual gifts that I knew about because I had been a prayer partner with her previously. And I thought her gifts might be helpful. So I said, would you mind praying with me when we get a break? Something happened in the night, I'd like to tell you about it and have you pray with me and see what we might learn or do. And in the course of it, she said, well, we've got still and we've said our prayers. And what I approach this very carefully when we move into spirit communication. Catholics start in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit anyway. So we're inside the body of Christ. And I think of that as kind of surrounding me. I pray to Michael the Archangel, to Mary, Mother of Jesus, to Saint Dominic, the patron of the order I belong to, different ones. I think of myself sort of like inside a huddle at a football game, surrounded by beings of light who are my friends, who I know love me and would protect me. And then I feel it's safe to open to something unknown. Because I feel like I wouldn't— if I were inviting someone dangerous, my friends wouldn't let them through. That's the way I think of it. Yeah. And we— she said, whoever this guy is, he really wants to talk to you. Would it be okay if I let him? And I knew she had the gift that I think belongs to the— in the Christian language, it would be the gift of prophecy. Actually, Jewish and Christian prophecy, allowing one's voice to be used for God or a godly person to communicate a message. So she did that. And out of her came his voice saying, who the hell does he think he is taking me just when my life is getting good? Hmm. So I said, hello, my name is Nathan. This is my friend through whom you're speaking. You— I think you gave me a message in the night. This is what I saw. Is that what you wanted me to see? And he said, yep, that's how I died. He was from Georgia, he was from rural Georgia, and he, we learned that he died in 1960 when I was 4 years old. He, we said, like, you know, you probably do this in different parts of your life when someone comes into your presence and you say, how can I help you? You know, like when we walk into a store, a lot of time a clerk will say, you know, Brian, what can I do for you?

Right, right.

And so we just said, what is it you want? His name— we learned that his name was Ray, that he died in 1960. He told us that he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant their senior year of high school. They married, the child was about a year and a half old. He went in on a small business. He rented a house that had a detached garage and his best friend, and he went into business repairing cars.

Hmm.

On a Sunday afternoon, they'd had too much to drink. The friend was over for Sunday dinner at their house. Apparently, the friend said something that Ray thought was off-color or insulting toward his wife. And they took it outside. They left the table in anger and went over to the shop. And then some— he doesn't— still doesn't know how he caught fire, but he was wearing greasy clothes and sitting on a radiator. Of a car and how he caught fire, he doesn't know. But he had been taught that the reason people die at all is because God took them. Right?

Right.

Maybe some of your audience has heard that before. Well, the way he interiorized that, it was now God burned him to death. You know, who the hell does he think he is? Yeah, but that's where we started.

Wow. So were you able to help Ray?

We were— it took us a few sessions. It's the only one in all these years, 27 years now, that took more than one. But we were learning our way along. There wasn't a manual to follow. We just did the best we could. He, we just— he, he told us what he wanted was my wife. He had been watching her for like 40 years after his death. And she's in her 60s.

She was—

she's He said she married again, she married up, she married her lawyer, moved to South Carolina. They had no more children. He did a fine job raising my son. I have no beef with that man. But my wife is dying, and I want to greet her when she comes. But I can't the way I am. And somebody asked me once if I was mocking him, but the accent— I'm from Texas, the accent's not hard for me to put on at all. Understand. And, and he had one. And so anyhow, we learned that that's what he wanted. He wanted to greet his wife when she died. And I said, well, okay, but I, he, I said, what have you been doing for the last 40 years? And he said, nothing much. Said, have you met anybody? No. He just, he, he wanted there to be Nothing. Hmm. And so he created in his afterlife, the closest thing to nothing that he could.

Wow. Wow.

And in it, well, we said, well, you know that there's not nothing, you're talking to me. You're you and I'm me. And there's, you know, that you did that to yourself. And now you want out of there. So we need to figure out how to get that, how to have that happen. I said, it seems like we ought to at least get you in circulation. Could we get you moving? We— I said, how did you get to know about God at all? And he said, my mom. And I said, well, tell me about that. And she said, well, she used to make me kneel next to my bed and she beat me while I prayed. Wow. So I said, why she do that? And he said, I don't know, she just did. And I said, well, you didn't get to raise your son very much. He was only a year and a half when he died. But if you'd gotten to raise him, do you think you would have beat him while he prayed? And he said, of course not. I said, well, Then would you hold a thought that maybe the mother that taught you about God by beating you while you prayed might have given you a kind of an odd idea? You know, and I asked him, has anybody— did anybody ever decide how you were in a way that was wrong? Did any— did anybody ever say something about you that wasn't true? I said, well, do the math. You're small, God's huge. That happens to all of us. And it happens to God every day, every minute of every day. People are always saying things about God that aren't true. That's just, that's just the way it is. Would you be willing to change an idea or two? Well, he didn't like that, because mostly we like being right. You know, most of us don't want to change our mind. Sometimes I'm a preacher, and I'll ask people, when's the last time you changed your mind about something important? And people often have to think about it.

It's not easy to do.

Yeah. No, it's one thing when you're ordering off a menu and you decide, oh, you know, on second thought, I'm going to have the other thing. But we don't do that very much in the way that we form our opinions in adulthood. Even kids can be stubborn that way.

Right.

So I said, well, you know, your cancer's got its own schedule and it's not going to wait on you. You've just told me that you had— you've had 40 years and not very much. And now you want to go fast. So I'll help you go fast, but you're probably not going to like it because people don't like being pushed. And I'm going to push you not because I'm pushy, because you've asked me to help you hurry up. So I said, well, what, what about— I wanted— I said, don't you think we ought to get you in circulation somehow? To go from isolation to communion with your wife when she passes? Maybe we ought to practice. Is there— could we invite somebody to come and be with you that might take you for a walk or something? And I said, I almost mentioned the mother. And then I thought, no, not the woman that beat him while he prayed. What about your dad? He said, well, I didn't know him very well. He died when I was 10. He died in the war. And I said, Vietnam? He said, no, Korea. Well, Vietnam hadn't happened in 1960. I just had my wars mixed up.

Right, right.

For a second. But he— I said, well, what if we— what if we asked him to come and be near you, but not too near, so you could size him up? Could you kind of draw a line somewhere? He can come this far and no, no further. I want you to feel safe. And so he said, I could do that. I told him, sometimes, if I'm, if I'm in a circumstance where I'm not, I don't feel completely safe, I stand near the door. You know, or maybe I limit the amount of time I'll be with somebody. Yes, I'll give you 5 minutes. Could you do something like that? And he agreed. So I said, well, God, let's, Ray would like to see if his dad's available. And within 10 seconds, he said, oh my God, look over there. And I said, well, I can't see what you're seeing. Well, it's my dad. Well, I said, do you, do you feel, do you think you're being tricked? Does he, or do you feel scared? No, it's just my dad. I said, okay, well, then we're gonna leave you guys alone. You, he'll take it from here, and we'll meet up with you in a few days. So when we did meet up with him, I asked him, you know, as a counseling technique, you do some counseling, don't you, in life coaching?

Yes, I do.

You know, when people go dark, one of the techniques is to change the subject, right? Like, you know, oh, okay, well, what's your favorite color? Get them thinking about anything happy. Right. So I said, well, you know, did you and your dad— you were kind of scared of your dad and you didn't know him very well. He was away at the war. And then he died. Did you guys ever have a good time together? Just as a father and a son? And he thought about it. He said, yeah, one time we went and looked at cars. And of course, he had an auto repair business. So he kind of had a thing for cars. So I said, well, well, that's good. Well, anyway, I'm going to ask for him to come. And he did. And we'll leave you guys alone. When we met up with him the next time, we asked, how did it go? And he said, went great. We went and looked at cars.

Oh wow.

And I said, well, how did you do it? He died in 1952 and you died 1960, and it was now almost 2000. Uh, I said, did you have to time travel? He said, no, no, we went and looked at the new ones.

Interesting.

I didn't go into any detail. I didn't need to know, you know, what town or what corner or what car lot or anything. Uh, somewhere they were looking at cars, just two guys, uh, using that as a way to get together. So anyway, we worked on him a little bit. And then I said, you know, I think I know what it is that, that you're going to need to change. And I don't think you're going to like it. And he said, what? And I said, well, I think you're a caveman. Every time you talk about your wife, you act like you own the rights to her. And that if you had your way, you'd grab her by the hair and pull her into your cave. He didn't like that either, because I was being pretty blunt. I said, you were only married a short time. Now, she only had 2 husbands, and you're the only one who's died. So you're the only one over there. She only had 1 child, and that was with you. You're very important, but you're not the whole show. She's, she's in her 60s. She might have parents that have died who loved her, siblings, people that you never even met that she loved. I think there's probably going to be at least a small group and that you'll be a part of it. But I think if you just calm down, and accepted your place without being a caveman about it, I think it probably work. And so we had to go. It's funny, because you'd think that when you have this kind of thing going on, that time stops. And you just, you know, you go on and on. But I don't know what you're doing after this podcast. But I bet I'm not the only thing you're doing today.

A few things to do.

Yeah.

We always do. And the person that I was with was my partner and I were both very busy people. But we'd make an appointment, but time would run out. And so we would say, okay, right, we got to go, but we'll see you soon. And it worked just fine. And anyway, to end the story, he had the next time that we met up with him, he said, well, what's new, right? He said, big news, my wife passed. And I said, oh, well, tell us about that. And he said, well, it was kind of like you said, there was, there were just a few of us. And you'd have been proud of me. I was a perfect gentleman. Wow, he got to be there. But he was a perfect gentleman. And I said, well, I knew you had it in you. That's all you needed to do is chill a little bit. Yeah. And then I said, I guess our work here is finished. You know, we helped you do the thing that you need to do, and you don't need to hang around here and and we've got other things to do. So I guess we're gonna say goodbye, huh? And he said, yes, sir, I think so. I said, well, it was like saying goodbye to the friend you'd never met. You know, I'd never seen it, laid eyes on him, really. But I just said, well, tell you what, right? You know how to watch people for a long time and keep an eye on them. And now you know how to help them cross. And so I wonder if you would just keep an eye on me. And when it's time, for me to leave my body, would you be there to greet me?

Hmm.

And he said, why, sir, I'd be most honored. Just look for the perfect gentleman. And so he's the first story in the first of my two afterlife books. And I call that chapter Ray, the Perfect Gentleman.

That's awesome.

That's how it all got started.

So, so he came to you in a dream. And you have, you have this partner. And I don't I hope this word doesn't offend you, but someone that can speak to people that are, that are dead, for lack of a better word, we call in common vernacular, we call them a medium. You said this person has a gift of prophecy. Do you see this as being similar? Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up. So you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it. The community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing. Listening, learning, morning trying to find their footing, readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become, a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for grief Master Growth. I hope to see you there.

I have the same gift. And in my Catholic Church, the words medium and channeler are both negative, like radioactive. And so I don't use them because they offend. Right. But I'm a preacher and words is the media of— and, and medium is from media.

It's exactly— it's a medium.

Yes, it's, it's— there's in and of itself, both of those words are innocuous. It's just that ideas of the demonic or, or spooky or forbidden or whatnot get attached to them. And I understand that. And I believe that the letters of St. Paul in the Christian New Testament list a lot of extraordinary charisms. And this one is that. And so I just think it belongs to the gift of prophecy in the list that, that St. Paul created.

Sure, sure. And, you know, I think it's, it's, for me, it's sad, the division between what we call spirituality or New Age or whatever, and, and the traditional religions, because a lot of it is the same thing with different language. And I know that, I know that some people teach that it's forbidden to, quote, speak with the dead. But that's just what you're doing. You're speaking with people who have crossed over and you're assisting them.

Well, we don't all get to remake the world when we wake up in the morning. You don't get to make the whole world conform to your way of thinking. We just have to live in it and do the best we can. And I, I've been public about this work now for about 5 years, and I encounter a little bit of, of critique around it. On the other hand, anybody who has ever said a prayer to Jesus is talking to somebody who died.

Exactly.

It was in all the papers. It was— he died very famously.

Yeah, exactly.

And then inside the Christian New Testament, he also on the Mount of Transfiguration talks to Moses and Elijah.

Absolutely.

Each of whom had been— had died centuries previously. So there's some context needed. And I don't entertain at a party by bringing through dead people or such thing. I don't ask for tomorrow's lottery numbers. I do nothing like that. All I'm doing is something I believe that the Holy Spirit's given me to do.

Right. So how many people would you estimate you've helped cross at this point?

Well, there have been— I didn't write them down early on, so I don't have an exact number, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 500. You mentioned it in the intro. Well, although some of them are in a group, they're not always one by one by one as the Ray story was. Sometimes they're groups of people that died in a similar way, or in the same event. And they're— when those happen, they're not— there'll be an opportunity for people who are kind of gathered in the same place I have a podcast also. And right now in my podcast, I'm telling a story of Buddy that— who, who now is the conductor or something like that. He, he didn't want to be the conductor. He, he was in a place where everyone there had died in the collisions of cars and trains. So that's what these people had in common. They had died suddenly, abruptly, because they were in a collision involving a car and a train. A vehicle, in a train.

Okay.

And in that story, he explained to us that there, that there were all these people that were together. But they weren't really interacting in a happy way. They were like people waiting at a bus stop or something. It wasn't punishment. And it wasn't painful. It was just kind of bland or boring. And, and they, but they were all in a place where they couldn't move, because there was a train track running through it. But a boulder was on the train track. So that was what he showed me in a dream, right? And in his case, my older— both of my sisters have the same gift that I do, of allowing speech through.

Oh, wow.

That prophetic gift. And my, my elder sister Mimi was— lives in suburban Houston. We were in her backyard, and I I asked her, would you mind helping with one of these? And she said, sure. And so when we're both there, and the person that we're trying to help could come through either one of us, we had to wait and see who it would be. And he chose her and spoke through her to me. And he was, he was angry and had an attitude and said, I'm not the conductor. I never said I was the conductor. These people want me to be the conductor. I'm not the conductor. And what we learned that he was, he had been out with a buddy drinking and having just having some fun, he said, but he meant drinking. And that's when the accident occurred. And he said, I was like locked out of my own body. I couldn't get back in and said, I've been here with these people and none of us can move because there's this boulder on the train track. And, and I said, well, I suppose you'd like me to help you with that if I can. And he said, yeah, I said, what, what, what should we call you? And he just said, just call me Buddy. He didn't really want to disclose his name. He just wanted to keep it, you know, more, a little more distant. Just call me Buddy, the way you might say, hey, buddy, you over there. Yeah. And in the, in that one, well, we learned that. I said, well, the problem is there's this, this rock, a big rock on a train track. What, how, how would you get How would you get it off? I said, is there a stick or something like you could do a fulcrum? Maybe you get everybody to push their weight against it and you pry it off the track. And he said, it'd be a lot easier if we just had some heavy equipment. And I said, well, that's a good idea. Have you asked for it? He said, no. I said, well, that's where— let's try that. And he said, well, if you're gonna ask for equipment, make sure you ask for the key to it. I said, well, that's a good idea. It wouldn't do any good if we couldn't even turn over the ignition. So I said, okay, well, and I didn't make a great big deal of it because these people aren't necessarily religious or Catholic. Ray was annoyed when he learned that I was Catholic, was because he had been taught that we were, I don't know, of the devil or something. I grew up in the South. Being a Catholic there is not always right. Welcome. Anyway, In that story, he said, yeah, make sure you ask for the key. And I said, okay, I will. I just said, God, would you please send Buddy a piece of heavy equipment that could help him get this rock off the train track? And would you make sure we have— it has the key in it? And while we're at it, could we have an operator just in case it's more complicated than he knows how to use? Could you send somebody that already knows how to use it just in case?. And so within 10 seconds, he said, my golly, look over there. And I said, well, what are you seeing? Well, it's, it's a front-end loader. And I said, well, is it yellow? Lots of times they're yellow. And he said, yeah, it's yellow. And there's a guy up and there's a cab, and the guy was waving up at me to come up into the cab. So he climbed up there and the guy stood over his shoulder while he operated it. And he said, oh my God, there's this big ball of light and it's coming right toward us. And I said, oh crap, you know, you guys all got hit by something moving? Do you feel safe?

Yeah.

And he said, yeah, it's okay. It's just a big ball of light. And there's people inside of it. And he said, one of them's my Papa.

Oh, wow.

So I said, well, what's he saying? What's he doing? And he said, he's telling me to get them— get any of these people who want to, to join hands, and he'll pull us all through at once.

Oh, wow. Okay.

And so I said, well, that sounds kind of like a game we played when I was a child on the lawn. We would pretend that we were a train and we'd all hold hands and we'd, and we'd start running around and the train was going too fast and it'd fall off the track and we'd all fall down on the lawn. I said, did you ever play a game like that? And he said, well, I suppose. And I said, well, he said, anyway, it's going to be a long line because there's a lot of people here and they don't have to do it if they don't want, but if they want to, they can join hands and he'll pull us through. So I said, okay, well, you guys do what you need to do. And that was a real quick one, because his papá pulled them through. And we all— we know, we don't tell these stories publicly unless we get their permission. And when we're in the middle of one of them, it doesn't seem like the right time to butt in, you know, Brian, before you leave, we want to use your story in a book. Right, right. So we go back one more time, because I believe that's holy. It's, it's respectful and polite. And we're not idly curious, we have an important reason. So we go back into protected prayer and ask, is it okay? Could we use your story? And when we do, sometimes they give us updates on what they've been doing since, the way that you might do with a friend you haven't seen in a while.

Hmm, like what kind of updates? I'm curious.

Well, I'm thinking of a young woman who died She was in a car crash when she was 24. And we— I said, was that must have been how you died? And she said, only half of me, the bottom half. She was paralyzed. And then she had 12 years of physical therapy, but was never able to walk. And she said, I got better and stronger, but I was never able to walk. But in that one, she had a physical therapist friend that came for— what happened to her was she was She had that accident at 24. And then at 36, a dial-a-ride van came to pick her up to take her somewhere. And in the course of loading her into the back of it, the operator dropped her on her head and killed her. So she was disgusted that, that there was an afterlife. At first she, she thought, life, I'm sick of life, you know. And, but she, but when they don't come to us until they've been vetted. I don't have to arm twist anybody. They have other helpers that, that, that move them along through some healing. And we're kind of like the discharge staff at a medical center. When you don't need to be there anymore, somebody's in charge of seeing that you leave in an orderly way. You know, your medications, you know, your next therapy appointment, or who's going to come for you? And are you going to be well fed? All of those kinds of things. Anyway, that's kind of what we do. But in her case, when we did follow up with her, and she, and we, she said yes to using the story. And she told us that all she's been doing since is doing cartwheels on the lawn like she's a 10-year-old. And she said, I'm sure I'll get sick of it at some point, but I haven't yet. And nobody's hollering, come in here and do these dishes, or stop that nonsense. I'm just allowed to do what I want. And just all I wanted to do was cartwheels. I haven't talked to her ever since, but I'm pretty sure she's gone on to something besides cartwheels. But at the moment we talked to her, she said, that's all I wanted to do for a while.

Yeah. So your understanding of, you know, we talked earlier, the traditional view is we were given that there's heaven, there's hell, there's purgatory, and God sends you to one of these three places. So what's your understanding now of these, these afterlife realms that people are in?

Well, I don't know for sure, Brian, but I can give you an opinion. My undergraduate degree was in sociology and social sciences. So that's, that was kind of a formative training for me at the beginning of my higher ed. And in the social sciences, you're supposed to observe phenomena behavior, record what you saw, and present that data. If you have an opinion about the data, you're supposed to do that separately.

Sure, sure.

Label it and say, having done this research, here's what I think about it, which is the question you're asking me. Yes. Now, I made a, I made a point in my books to say I'm not writing doctrinal books.

Right?

I'm just recording phenomenon. And by the way, all of these are recorded on an app on my phone, and then transcribed. And my books are mostly the cleaned up transcriptions, getting rid of stammers and incomplete sentences and stuff, trying to stay as true as we can to what it would— what it felt like to be in the conversation.

Awesome.

But it— I was taught, well, when you look around at the universe, and if you believe it's created, that it didn't make itself, it never made sense to me to believe that, that everything around me just sprung into being all by itself. Houses don't build themselves. A creator creates, and that, that made sense to me. You know, in kindergarten. I believe that the creation is so varied, like how many kinds of fruit flies are there? How many kinds of ants? How many kinds of human beings? There's just such breadth and variety and creativity. And some of it is just one that makes you laugh, you know, you see nature films about, you know, my sister and brother-in-law are both underwater photographers, and they'll go into places and come up with animals you never knew existed. And anyway, there's just such variety that I see that variety played out in the, in the stories that I assist with. There isn't just one template of how everybody— how it happens when everybody dies, that everybody gets funneled through the same process. And, and the Christian imagination about the afterlife is in the, in the most people have what to me seems like a pretty, I don't know, limited idea of streets of gold or angels with harps or church services that go on forever or clouds or whatever. Although when you go to funerals, sometimes you'll have some eulogist or somebody at the reception saying, well, I bet he's up there with all his poker buddies now, you know, or I bet he's on the first tee in heaven or something like that. We hope that something that we know gave our deceased loved one joy is present for them. You know?

Yeah, I think we've— I think most of us have moved beyond those, those images of streets of gold and, and flames of sulfur and all that. But from what I understand, what I always say to people is, I think that why would we think the afterlife is any less varied than here? As you mentioned earlier, the earth is complex and, and interesting and detailed and varied. So why would we think that most, you know, a lot of our views of heaven, what we're— children sound very boring to me.

Yes.

But what I'm really curious about is this, I guess, the inability or the unwillingness of some people to move on. Like you mentioned, we started talking about Ray, and it sounds like Ray was angry about being in the afterlife and and in a way, I guess, stuck. Also, 40 years sounds like a long time. Have you ever spoke with anybody about what time is like for them versus for us?

Yes. And I thought I would— I fell into that same way of thinking that it must be the same for everybody. Well, it isn't. Some people— but you must know people that hardly ever know what time it is. Don't you have some people that, you know, if you make a dinner reservation, they're not going to be there?

Oh, absolutely.

And then there are other people that are just— punctuality is everything to them. But we have different attitudes towards time. And in the afterlife, I've seen people— Ray wasn't really bothered by— it's not like he felt like he'd been in jail for 40 years. Exactly. He wasn't being punished. He was just waiting for his wife. And that's what— that's the way he decided to frame his moment.

He could—

he had other choices. But sometimes, maybe some of your listeners have done this in their life. Have you ever painted yourself into a corner with your own thoughts? Yeah, just decided, well, that's the way things are, and they're never going to be any different.

Right?

Especially persons who are prone to depression. Can really allow that to take over and decide that the rest of their life is gonna suck because the present moment does. It's never going to change. And anyway, people can do that after they leave here too. And, but they're— one of the things that I've seen is that truth is very important. And in Christian language, Jesus speaks of himself as the way, the truth, and the life. And sometimes in my own relationship with him, I'll call him truth. Especially if I'm confused about a thing. I'll say, hey, Truth, come sit over here by me. I need to get to the truth of this conundrum that I'm in or this problem that I'm struggling with. I've seen that people have to come to truth, and when they do that, they free up. The truth will set you free. Right, right. You see it in like 12-step programs where people, they quit denying their addiction, you know, whatever, blaming everybody else for their troubles or whatever, they come to truth. And as they do, they move into freedom. I've seen the same pattern in this afterlife.

Right?

Whether it has religious language around it or not.

So would you— some people are going to ask, why doesn't God send angels to them? Or where are their spirit guides? Why do they need So their angels are, their angels are always with them.

But just as a lot of people right now are not aware of the presence of their guardian, I call them a guardian angel, others might call them a spirit guide or some something else. But a lot of people aren't aware that they have a guardian or that, or if they do, they really don't have an active imagination involving them. They don't ask them for anything or— anyway, they can— their guardians are always with them. And over time, remember, we've been doing this about 27 years. And I've gotten used to, after doing protected prayer with a prayer partner, and these work just fine over Zoom like we're doing today, a remote video. But you know, during the pandemic, it was impossible to, to travel to be with one another or to be safely in the same room. It works just fine on Zoom. I very often after I've read, done the protective prayer and read the dream story to my part— my prayer partners, after we're still, I'll say, we could we please have the assistance of the guardian of the person who brought this story to give a little clarity that might help us today. For example, a person might show me their death in a car accident, but not let me know whether they were male or female.

Okay.

It's helpful to know that. Sometimes I have an inkling that I'm not in the United States, that I'm in some other country. Kind of helpful to know that. There might be some— or there might be a crowd scene. And I'm not sure exactly if I'm helping one person in the crowd or everybody or what. So the guardians will come on the line and they'll talk a little bit about— give us some clarity. And then they'll say, now I'm going to slide aside so that the one that I love and assist can tell their story.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's interesting talking about this, because I've heard some people say that, you know, once we, once we die, that we're suddenly just where we're going to be, we're going to where we're in heaven or whatever. And I've heard some other people say that we never die alone. But it sounds— I'm hearing a lot more free will in what you're talking about.

People, they don't die alone. But they can think that they did.

Right?

Right. Yeah. And there are people living that way who feel like they're all alone. But when I'm— when I counsel people who are all alone, I push back against that idea. And say, who loves you? Or who could you call right now if you wanted some companionship or you wanted a listening ear? You're talking to me at least, and we're— that's not— I'm not nothing. Exactly. Anyway, nobody dies alone, but sometimes they can think they do. But on the other hand, I have lots of stories, really beautiful stories of people who didn't pay any attention to their guardian and found at the moment that they were dying in a violent way, their guardian snatched them out of it before the flames could overtake them. Or, you know, they, they know that their body went through the windshield during the crash, but they weren't in it at the time.

Right?

They were already out of it because their guardian saw to it. And yes, their guardian takes them and sets them aside the wreck or the event, whatever it was, and says, do you understand? You're safe. You're over here. Your body's over there. You're safe right here. So, and sometimes they adjust really well to that. They'll say, oh, okay, this, this one lady was— she died in her own home in a home invasion. And she was elderly, and she'd fallen and cracked some ribs. She was mostly on her couch and She lived in the woods, but neighbors brought her vegetables or, you know, some little cooked thing. She quit going to church because it was just too difficult physically to get there. But she was Christian. And some people showed up at the door. She thought they looked like they were on drugs. And she knew that in the woods, there were people that were doing, you know, cultivating marijuana, or I don't know, a lot of our drug problems have moved into rural places. And— that's not so uncommon. Anyways, a couple showed up at her door and walked right in, and she said, I tried to muster myself. She was, I think, in her 70s and frail, but she said, I tried to muster myself and defend my home. Maybe I shouldn't have, because the man gave me one shove, knocked me over, and that was all it took. And but she said, but before I could hit the floor, I was above my roof between the roof and the trees above it. And my guardian was there. And she said, I would never have thought that being killed in your home could be so easy. And her guardian said, what I want you to do is pretend that you are a dog that just went swimming. And I want you to shake really hard and shake off everything that just happened.

Wow.

So she did that. And then he said, 'Now, if you would, I think we should leave. It's unpleasant here.' The place where you were just murdered, right? It's unpleasant. Let's get out of here. And she said, 'It reminded me of tandem skydiving that I'd seen on TV. He wanted me to get on his back and fly away.' And she thought of tandem skydiving. And she said, 'I would never in my life have jumped out of a plane, even if it was with somebody that knew what he was doing.' Wow. But she said, 'I didn't have a better offer in the moment.' and, and he seemed so kind. So I got on his back and we flew away. And so anyway, she— and that one was real sweet, because when we— she said, well, you know, the reason that we're here right now is because it's time for you to move yet again. And it's time to make another move. And we usually ask people, can you think of anybody that you loved, that you— that died before you, that you know, loves you? Okay, in other words, do you have somebody on the other side who you'd be happy to see and who could show you around? Because you go in someplace you haven't been before, you need to know, you need a guide. And, and that woman said, oh, it'd be my sister Celie. She died a young woman, and I've been talking to her photograph for 40 years. She said, I'd love— I'd love it to be her. So we said, well, let's say, let's be still. And we'll say a little prayer. And we asked for Celie. Cecilia was her name, but she went by Celie. And then the lady said, it was Claire was her name. She said, oh my God, look at that. She looks like a little tart.

Oh, wow.

Well, what are you seeing? And she said, well, you remember when, when the airlines were young, they, they made all of the stewardesses be thin. And they gave them these little uniforms that look like they were in the military or something. They had little— she struggled with the word epaulettes, those, those fancy braid that's on the shoulder. And she said she's, she's on one of those planes and she's dressed like that. She always wanted to be a stewardess and she never got to do it. But she's showing she's on one of those planes that you have to walk upstairs to get into it, like they were in the early '50s. And she's in the little uniform. And she's got a tray with an umbrella drink in it. And she's going to take me in first class.

Awesome.

Wow. And so she said, it's just girls having a little fun.

Yeah.

And so that's, that's the way she crossed.

So it's interesting. It sounds like her guide took her out of her body, which is going to be a comfort to people, because I know I just talked to someone earlier today that was saying that, you know, a lot of times we worry about people dying in trauma. Yeah, from my understanding is people very often, if not always, they're taken out of their body, even if it looks like their body is suffering. Yeah, her guide took her, it sounds like, to like another, like almost a waystation somewhere between there at her final destination?

For her, it was the space between her roof and the canopy of trees above it.

Okay, so she had been there.

Yeah. And then, well, she didn't— she wasn't exact about— he did fly her somewhere. The somewhere was probably— what I've seen a lot, Brian, is something like a healthcare continuum. You know, if, if you or I did encounter, like if we were in a big accident on a freeway, somebody in an ambulance would show up. And then people with all kinds of different skill sets show up to do what they do, right? They do it in an orderly way, right? In the emergency room, and then maybe somebody in surgery, or maybe somebody in ICU, all the way to the end where people like me are at the discharge point.

Yeah.

So it's very like, very much like that. And, and they, they comment upon it that like, there was one guy that was from a South American country where he lived in poverty, it might have been Bolivia or Peru, can't remember. But he had been poor, and he would never ever have been in a clean hospital. It just was nothing that would have ever happened. And he said, I woke up here and I thought I must be rich. The sheets are clean, and the food is good. There's, there's people that, that are always kind, and they always do the right thing. They know what I need, and they provide it. So there's something like a healthcare continuum where people get what they need. And they move through something analogous to the way that we heal here. And when they reach a level of health, they move along.

It's really interesting you say that, because there's a guy I interviewed who had a near-death experience. And one of the things he said in the interview was he talked about someone being a nurse in, in the afterlife. Yeah, I get so much pushback. People are like, how could anybody be a nurse in the afterlife? Everybody's healthy. There's no need for healthcare. Because we've got this projection that we're just immediately you know, we go from here to there. And what I've heard a lot is there is some sort of a healing process that some people do need to go through.

Well, and when I was a child being taught about heaven, hell, and purgatory, we were told that there would be some who didn't need purgatory, who would just go right into heaven. And then from growing around evangelical Christians, and in my childhood, there are a lot like hymns that, that assume that Jesus sweeps up a person in his arms, and all is well, and so on. And perhaps that's true for some, but then others don't even know him. And would that really be the most appropriate thing? He might— a lot of people are scared of him. A lot of people are told that Jesus is the judge who's going to throw the book at them.

Or have you encountered people that are like that, that are scared to go to judgment? They're scared that if they move on, that they'll be judged?

Well, yes and no. By the time that I encounter them, they're ready for what, what my prayer partners and I do. So if they had that kind of fear earlier, they got through it somehow. And though, you know how, I don't know if you're familiar with the Christian scriptures, we, I don't know your background very much. Yeah, there, there are places where Jesus will say to his disciples, others have sown the seed and done the cultivating, and you're coming into the harvest, that you're harvesting what you didn't sow. Well, I feel like that a lot of the time, that I just happen to live in a chain where I provide a service, but it's been preceded by services provided by lots of other people. And they'll sometimes remark about that. And they'll say, well, they helped me get out, especially the ones that had a trauma loop. Okay, if they were looping about how they died, they really do need to leave that behind. And it can be left behind. It just— they just need help learning how to step out of that. Sometimes gradually. Yeah, I've seen how one, one guy died in a fall from a building. And he, he kept falling and falling and falling in his afterlife. He, he just couldn't, he couldn't let himself hit the ground. Even though his body actually had done that in his afterlife imagination. He— right, right. And his guardian got frustrated with him and said, all we ever do is fall. Would you just— what, could we just take a break and go up instead of down? Would you just get on my back and we'll go up for a little bit. And as soon as As soon as you say the word, we'll start falling again, if that's what you want. But he was trying to just give him— to show him that he had some autonomy, some authority over his thoughts. And sometimes a person that's in a trauma loop, PTSD sufferers, for example, sometimes that's the way out of that. Sometimes they need to be shown, here are some techniques when, when you're sick and tired of that. Here are some techniques to take a break from it, even if it feels like you have to go back to it in a kind of compulsive way, you can at least take a break. And here's how to do that. And then after a while, maybe they can do that for longer and longer periods until the problem is resolved.

Yeah, absolutely. I think, well, I work with people in grief and trauma, and you're spot on about, about trauma and about getting in those loops. And we know it's not good for us. We know it's just causing us pain. We— but we still torment ourselves by going back to that, to that event. And so, do you have any, any suggestions that we can do that people can do now to prepare themselves for when it's our time to cross?

Yeah, several. One of them is do your best to live in the present moment. Every kind of spiritual teacher of any kind has some way of talking about the present moment being the most important moment. That even in the C.S. Lewis— did you ever read any C.S. Lewis? I have this in The Screwtape Letters. He talks about, about that. The Screwtape Letters is my favorite book of all time. And it's, it's this allegory of a senior demon and a junior demon, and the senior one's trying to teach the junior one how to ruin a human soul. And he teaches them, get them, get them to focus on the, on the past. It's, it's, it's, it's frozen. It no longer moves. We've had great success with widows in this regard.

Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah.

People to muse about what used to be and will never be again. And you can ruin the present moment that way. Or, or if you can't do that, try going into the future, which is always the most uncertain part of time because it hasn't happened yet. So it always has a falseness about it, because anything that they think about the future might not be so., and then you can ruin their prayers, which is great fun. You can get them, you can get them thinking that they're in charge of the future, but because they imagine it and they want it. And so get them praying for the thing they want, and they'll think that the, uh, that the enemy, which is, which is what Lewis calls God, uh, has even taught them to do that. They're to, they're to pray about their future and ask for future things. So get them thinking that, that they are in charge of the future that they're imagining. And but then if they're at all advanced, they'll know that they don't always get what they want. So they're going to have to have a Plan B, and then a Plan C. Get them praying for all three at once, they'll exhaust themselves. And it's great fun to watch. But anyway, he says, just get them not to get— don't let them get on the present moment, because it's the moment most like God. In fact, the present moment is lit up with those resplendent rays that cast their ghastly luminosity into the pit of hell. Yeah, present moment is to be avoided at all costs. So conversely, stay in the present moment the best you can, be grateful for the present gift, the ask for the present strength to deal with the present challenge. That's real important. Yeah. So is forgiveness, forgiving oneself and forgiving others even before they ask.

Right? Yeah.

So the Christian tradition, Jesus He didn't wait till anybody said they were sorry. On the cross, he says, Father, forgive them all, they know not what they do. And so the bet— and that's easier said than done. But it's even if you don't feel like you can do it yourself, go to your higher power and say, I can't get this done myself, but would you give me the help I need to, to forgive? And then if you have to do it, you know, over a long period of time, well, then Be patient with yourself. Forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive until you don't need to anymore.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Father Castle, it has been wonderful speaking with you this afternoon. Could you remind people again of the titles of your books? And if you're willing for people to reach out to you, if they have questions or they want to connect with you, let me know, let people know how they can do that.

Okay, the first one, you— I don't know if you can see it all the way in the back on the wall, there's a a print of the COVID of my first book. That's Ann Toto to The Wizard of Oz as a spiritual favorite movie. I've written— many people have written books about it, but I have my own spin on it.

Yeah.

And then in this series, we've been talking about Afterlife Interrupted. In the first one, I subtitled it Helping Stuck Souls Cross Over. We kept the same graphics in the second book, but got rid of the word stuck. We just crossed through it. Okay, wow. And all of the— all three of those can be gotten on Amazon. They're in, in paperback, e-reader book form and audiobook. And I and my prayer partners do the audio of the sessions that we took part in. My website is nathan-castle.com, N-A-T-H-A-N-C-A-S-T-L-E.com. Brian D Smith, MD. If people want to communicate with me, please don't use Facebook Messenger or ask me a question underneath a YouTube. If you want a response from me, go to the website. And it has a form on there where you— it's real simple. You give me a little bit of information, and it shows up in my email, and I try to do the best I can to reply.

All right. Well, thank you for being here. And thank you for the very important work that you're doing.

Let me add one more thing. I also have a podcast that launched back in October. It's called the Joyful Friar Podcast. I'm a friar, and our founder, St. Dominic, was called the Joyful Friar. So that's the reason I joined the order. I wanted to be in a joyful place.

Awesome. And I will put a link to all that in the show notes. So if you didn't catch any of that, that's fine. Just look at the show notes and it'll be there.

Okay, well, thanks for the great work you're doing, Brian.

All right, thank you for being here. Have a great afternoon.

Okay, God bless you.

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