Is Afterlife Communication Real? | Daniel Drasin on EVP, Ghosts, and Consciousness EP 428

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Hey there, welcome to Grief to Growth. I'm your host, Brian D Smith. And whether it's your first time joining me, or you're a longtime listener, I'm so glad you're here. On this podcast, we explore life's deepest questions: who we are, why we're here, and what happens when we leave this world behind. It's a journey through grief, through growth, and ultimately through transformation. Today I have the honor of speaking with someone whose work blends science, spirit, and storytelling. His name is Daniel Drayson. And Daniel is an award-winning documentary filmmaker filmmaker, and a seasoned media producer whose career spans over 6 decades. But over the last 30 years, he's taken a deep dive into something far less conventional, but profoundly compelling, and that's afterlife communication. So through his acclaimed documentaries, Calling Earth and Skoll: The Afterlife Experiment, Daniel has explored both traditional and high-tech methods of connecting with the other side. And his latest project, a thought-provoking book titled A New Science of the Afterlife, Daniel invites us to challenge assumptions, to rethink science, and reimagine what it means to be conscious beings in a larger interconnected reality. So during our conversation today, we're going to unpack what led Daniel from filmmaking to afterlife research, how he separates true skepticism from dismissive debunking, and why he believes our very language shapes what we're able to understand about consciousness, about life, and beyond. We'll also touch on a deeply personal question, how he feels about his own mortality, after decades of studying what might be lying beyond it. So you're not going to want to miss this one, especially if you've ever wondered about whether our connections truly end when someone dies, or if they simply change form. And after you've listened, I invite you to keep the conversation going by going to our community at grieftogrowth.com/community. There you can connect with me and with other listeners who are walking this path of discovery and of healing. And with that, I'd like to welcome Daniel to Grief 2 Growth.

Thank you very much, Brian. Thank you for the invitation and look forward to a wonderful discussion with you.

Yeah, I'm, I'm really looking forward to this. I was telling you before we started recording, I have watched Calling Earth, uh, I don't know how many times. I, I put it on my list of recommended resources. It's a great film. I also watched The Skoll, uh, Experiment. That's— I think it's a great film also. But so I want to thank you first of all for putting that out into the world. Um, I'm really curious. I know you've had a long career in filmmaking. What led you to start doing exploration of the afterlife?

Well, it was a natural extension of interests and inklings that I've had all of my life. Um, I've had a number of what you might call paranormal experiences throughout my life, uh, starting in my childhood actually, when I had a number of precognitive dreams. Hmm., and I didn't understand how that worked, but it was enough to, um, to clue me into the fact that in the theater of life, stuff goes on backstage.

I like that.

Yeah, that, um, we don't have the whole picture. And, um, anyway, following that, I became extremely, uh, interested in the UFO question and studied that for years, had a number of my own sightings and experiences. And that reinforced my sense that our world and the preoccupations of our world and the language that we use, no matter what language we use, tends to limit our sense of reality. And I think there's a lot to recommend that in terms of practical functioning in the world, but I think it also can mislead us. When it comes to the larger questions of life, life and death, of course. And your title, Grief to Growth, is meaningful to me because however sophisticated and understanding we may be about the greater reality and the afterlife, on the human level, loss is still loss. And we have to deal with that on the human level. So I think when we look comprehensively at these questions writ large, that both our humanity and the non-physical or spiritual side of our nature have to be seen in a holistic way. Now, with that said, of course, our culture places much more emphasis on the purely physical and on the materialistic in both senses of the word, both technically and culturally. Yeah. And I think that the cultural emphasis on materialism, it, of course, it reflects our beliefs about reality, about what's important. And it's something that we're dealing with politically and the world at large right now. These are big questions. So, but I think understanding the other side of life, the part of us that lives in consciousness at all times. We're there right now. I'm in some of my presentations, my live presentations, I've said to the audience, um, there's nothing to worry about, we're already dead.

I love that. Yeah.

And you see that, you know, the jaws drop and so on. And then people start to think about it and, and realize that if they came to my presentation in the first place, they must have some sense of what that means, that we're We're, we're just looking through these eyes. But who's the we? And if the we that's looking through these eyes is still the we after the eyes go away, then as some people say, there is no death, simply a shift of perspective or a changing of perceived form, however you want to look at it. So you know, on the one hand, you know, here we are in our physical bodies, in our society, in our culture, working from 9 to 5 or whatever we do, raising families. And that's one side of life, but that's only half. It's only one side. And the other half, I think, is coming into the spotlight now for a number of reasons. I think one, one reason is that we are collectively sensing the sort of the emptiness of a materialistically oriented culture. It doesn't really go anywhere. And we see its consequences globally in the news. I don't have to go into too much detail there. I mean, you look at the Middle East, which we call the Holy Land, and a lot of what's going on there is, in my opinion, far from holy.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, a lot of what doesn't work in our cultures, in our society, in our outlook of life is being projected out there for us to see. And I think some of us who are really interested in pushing through that or getting through that, opening up that curtain and going backstage, as it were, and seeing more of how it all works, we're starting to do that. Um, in, in my own— I would say that to answer the question of when I really started to focus on the question of the afterlife, it was around 1990 or so, and it was partly kickstarted by meeting my friend Mark Macy, who had been doing a lot of research and practice in instrumental transcommunication, communication with the other side through modern electronics. And that sort of turned my head around a little bit because it spoke to me because I sort of tend to see myself as at the interface between the material and the spiritual. And the material is what our society recognizes and respects, particularly technology, which works for us. It's amazing that you and I can be here halfway across the country from each other.

Yeah.

And have this wonderful conversation. And we sort of take it for granted. You know, the latest generation just, you know, was born into this environment. It's natural to us now. Right. I take my daily walk along this creek you can see in the background, and there's a wonderful path where parents will be strolling with their kids and bicyclists will come by and lots of dogs. It's a wonderful environment, and everyone's on their phone. Yeah, you know, and, and it's, it's, to me, it's, it's disturbing and also fascinating. This— we are symbiotic with our smartphones. Can you imagine leaving your home and realizing you forgot your phone?

Yeah, it's a weird feeling, right? You feel naked.

Exactly. Naked and powerless. So, um, you know, we've kind of, you know, maybe we haven't reached the pinnacle because AI hasn't matured yet. But we are so interwoven with this, the technical side of our society and our culture, that I think that this opening up of a greater awareness is almost like we're being squeezed into it by the by the— excuse me— by the, uh, the coldness and the soullessness of this increasingly artificial environment. So does that, does that make sense to you?

It does. Yeah, it makes 100% sense to me. And I love the way you use both, both, uh, forms of the word materialist, um, because when we say, you know, materialist society, it can mean either or, or both. And there is— and I would— right before we got on, I was watching your short film, uh, Science Versus Skepticism, And I think that's really interesting in our society, because people will say that they're skeptics when they're really— the term you use is debunkers, and I would call they are just people who are cynics, who say this isn't possible. So, but like, they wouldn't even explore the areas that we're talking about, because they have this materialistic mindset.

Right. And in doing so, they've basically betrayed the science that they they purport to be defending.

Exactly.

If you, if you presuppose that something doesn't exist without actually inquiring into it, why practice any science at all? 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 a 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, 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 to Growth. I hope to see you there. Yeah, I completely agree with you. It's, it's not a scientific approach to say this, to say that something is not possible. And, you know, we can, we can point out, like, if we, if a couple hundred years ago we were talking to someone and said it's possible to speak to someone from Cincinnati and San Francisco and see their face and hear their voice instantaneously, you would say no, that's impossible, that could not possibly be done.

They might have locked you up.

Yeah, yeah.

As, as some people still do to those who report near-death experiences. Unfortunately, that still happens. Um, I know one, one, um, woman from the San Francisco Bay Area who had had a profound near-death experience, and she reported it to the— at the local IANDS meeting a few years ago. It's an amazing story. And she said that she had to separate from her family because they, according to their religion, uh, this was, um, the work of the devil or whatever, whatever it was. And they almost wanted to have her locked up.

Yeah, and that's, that's another really good point. You know, it's interesting how sometimes it'll be religion, who's supposedly spiritual, who will say that this is impossible, and other times it's the exact opposite, right? It's the materialists that say it's impossible.

Um, I think this is— it's the difference between ideology and science.

Exactly.

Uh, ideology requires no, um, no procedure, no practice, right? Because you already know everything you need to know, right? Done.

Yeah.

Science is in its essence the exact opposite. I mean, to me, science is organized curiosity.. And, you know, when something shows up that, that doesn't fit our pictures, we can say we're not interested. That's fine, right? But if we are interested, the Science 101 compels us to ask, start asking questions. You know, is this a hallucination? Is it something that we don't understand yet? Let's find out. Yeah, not be afraid of it. And I think even more importantly Let's not be afraid of our peers. Yeah, that I think is probably the greatest challenge. Um, a few years ago I met some women who were nurses in a children's cancer ward, and I, I had at that time proposed doing a little documentary about them. It didn't get— it didn't get made, but I learned a few things about the, the sociology of, of sociology of the medical profession. Um, the film was going to be called Don't Tell the Doctor because these women had incredible experiences working with these dying children.

Yeah.

And they could, they could speak about it among themselves, but the doctors— and that was for the doctor's own protection too. I don't know if you're familiar with the Pam Reynolds case. She was a country singer in Atlanta, and she had an aneurysm in the brain, and it was inoperable at first, but she discovered that a doctor in Atlanta— excuse me, in Phoenix— had developed a procedure that could— they could safely do surgery on the aneurysm., and this procedure was called a standstill operation because what they do is they drain all the fluids out of the body, all the blood. They cool the body down to like 55 degrees, so it's essentially dead. It's totally flatlined in all respects. At that point, they can safely operate on the brain. So as Pam was in the recovery room, she started describing the operation. And she, she was a musician, and she's with perfect pitch. So she said, and the bone saw made a C-sharp tone. And she went on and on about this.

Yeah.

So, um, the case became rather well known at the time, and, um, my co-producer Tim and I went and actually interviewed her at her home. And, um, you know, she was, she was the genuine article. She was conscious during this, during this operation, spoke in detail about it. Um, there are many accounts of this sort of thing where the, where the person on the operating table will tell you what conversations were going on in the hallway outside the operating room, right? And where people were sitting and what they were talking about. So you, when you really look into it, you can't, you can't explain this away. Um, and, you know, some, some scientists are still trying to do that, but the, the evidence is out there, and if you look into it, it's, it's a slam dunk.

I, I can agree with you. I was just speaking with someone the other day, and I said, you know, I, you know, there are different levels of proof, and I, I like to use the courtroom analogy, right? It, you know, a criminal case, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. And I believe that the afterlife has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. When you look for the simplest explanation, which is what Occam's razor tells us we should go with, and you'll find some of these, quote, skeptics who will start just to really make up all kinds of crazy stuff to explain things, anything other than, you know, what's, what's staring you in the face. So let's— I like to talk to people who are not familiar with the afterlife experiments. About what are, um, Calling Earth— I mean, Calling Earth, what, what is that? What are they going to find in that film?

Okay, well, just to go back a little into history, back in the, in the 1950s when tape recorders became commercially available, um, to anyone, um, people bought these machines and they recorded their kids' voices and their preacher's Sunday preaching and their home music and so on. And that was all well and good, except now and then people would hear voices on these tapes that didn't belong there. And in the United States, these voices were generally dismissed as, well, maybe the machine was picking up a radio broadcast or something like that. And it never went any further than that. But in Europe, things were different., a number of experimenters became interested. One was a very prominent filmmaker and actor and artist by the name of Fredrik Jürgensen, Swedish man. And he went out one night to record nocturnal bird sounds for a documentary he was producing. And when he played the tape back, between the nocturnal bird sounds, he heard faint voices discussing nocturnal birds. So he said, well, this is strange. This must be some radio station where they were discussing nocturnal bird sounds. Anyway, shortly thereafter, on one of his tapes, he heard the voice of his deceased mother calling him by his childhood nickname.

Hmm.

And at that point, he sort of threw up his hands and said, look, we got to go after this scientifically. What's actually going on here? So he experimented over many years, and he recorded thousands of these voices. He was then joined by a Latvian professor, Konstantin Raudova, who did his own experiments. And by the time he died in 1974, he'd recorded between 60,000 and 70,000 of these voices. He published a phonograph record with quite a number of these voices where he was actually in dialogue asking questions and then answers would come back. So that's sort of jump-started the practice. It has then been taken on by a lot of ordinary folks around the world who at first used things like cassette recorders, reel-to-reel recorders, cassette recorders, and so on. And now, excuse me, they're using their smartphones and receiving messages to one degree of clarity or another. Some are kind of crude, but they shouldn't be happening at all. So even if you can't understand the words, something's going on that's not otherwise explicable.

Right.

And in the best cases, where people practice it regularly and are really tuned into particularly loved ones on the other side, they tend to get more consistent results. We don't understand how it works from our from our technical perspective. We don't understand the, the conditions that either impede it or, um, or, or make it more likely to happen at a given point in time. Um, I've— I have this metaphor of imagining two railroad trains traveling on squiggly tracks like this at different speeds, and there's only one open window in each train. And you got to throw a spitball between the trains when those— at the moment when those windows line up. So that's obviously just a metaphor, but it's that kind of a situation where the forces involved are— we don't understand them, right? But the, the, the results happen often enough and consistently enough for people who are seriously practicing these things, um, that the, the phenomenon can't be denied. There are other possibly more frequent forms of electronic communication or electrical communication, you might say, in the form of lights getting switched on and off. That's evidently much easier for those on the other side to do than transmitting the complexities of language. It's a simple on-off condition. But I've experienced it, friends have experienced it, I was at an event a few years ago. It was held at a church that was partly a memorial for someone who had been a lighting expert, by the way. And as soon as the memorial for this man started, the lights in the church started to blink on and off.

Wow.

And then when the memorial was concluded, the lights stayed on. So, and you wonder how often these things happen and they're simply dismissed or forgotten. Or, or suppressed. Yeah, that's one of my, one of my chief concerns is this, again, the sociological aspect where people are afraid to talk about these things. In my book, I ask, how do we know that our next-door neighbors don't have rollicking conversations with their dead uncles every Wednesday at 9 PM? We don't, because who would admit to it, right?

You know, that is a really good point, because after my, my daughter passed away and we started having phenomena and I would discuss it with my neighbors. And these are people I'd known for 20-plus years. Then suddenly the stories came out. Oh yeah, when my father passed away, then this happened. When my, my mother has precognitive dreams, um, you know, I had— I've had this phenomenon happen. And so to your point, you know, these are people I'd known for, for decades and never had that conversation until I, I brought it up first, right?

That— I've had that experience many times. Years ago when I was, um, really interested—

still am—

but when I was first really interested in the whole UFO question, I would ask people, you know, have you ever had a sighting or an experience? And they say, oh no, it's nonsense. And they'd say, oh wait a minute, there's something that happened when I was 14 years old. And then the whole story comes tumbling out. So I think when people, uh, feel that they're in a safe space they're much more likely to remember these things in the first place and then to share them. And, you know, it's like any of these other ideological struggles that we have in our world. It's hard for truth to come out. And by the way, I very rarely use the word truth. I'll explain that in a minute. But it's hard for it to come out when, when you're in an atmosphere of disapproval or judgment. So what's paranormal and how do we know, right? You know, um, the more I— more questions I ask, the more I tend to believe that these things are perfectly normal in, in many people's lives, and that they either— they've just simply dismissed them or forgotten about them, or they have been reluctant to to share them?

Yeah, really good question. What's paranormal? And I say it's anything that we can't explain yet. Anything we can't explain yet, we, we call paranormal, uh, and some of us even go far enough to say, well, then we're going to dismiss it. Because as, as I'm a scientist myself, my background is, is engineering, chemical engineering, right? And so, um, I— when I'm looking at things, I'm like, what's natural? What's supernatural? I've come to the conclusion there's nothing that's supernatural. There's just things that we can't explain yet, right?

Well, that, that's like the first law of science, you know, don't dismiss anything until you've investigated it, right? You know, don't, don't predefine things. Um, and, you know, like when anything, whether it's religion or science or anything else, becomes institutionalized and ossified, that's the sort of thing that's going to happen, especially if, if, if, if there's a profit, if there's profit motive involved or political power involved. Human beings will tend to do what human beings do all too often. Um, you mentioned your daughter. When did she pass away?

Uh, 2015.

Oh, how old was she?

She was 15.

Oh, well, is that a picture of her behind you there?

Yeah, that's my daughter Shayna.

Okay, I'm sorry.

Thank you. Well, uh, and speaking of, you know, lights coming on and off, now when Shayna first passed, we got a lot of signs around the house, lights coming on and off, things like that. Particularly the, the light in our bedroom. Um, we have a, a ceiling fan that operates by remote, and the fan would be on and the light would come on, you know, we would go upstairs for bed at night. Hasn't happened much recently, but Sunday, as we're recording this, this last Sunday was Mother's Day, and my wife was hoping to get a sign from Shayna. And as we were going upstairs to go to bed, my wife walks in the bedroom first, and the light was on and the fan was going. And, uh, she goes, that's That's my sign from Shayna today. So that's my, that's my, uh, ITC for, for this week, right?

And it is a form of ITC. It's one of the, one of the most frequent and, and easiest to pull off, as far as I can tell. Um, yeah. And, uh, you know, it's, it's not a highly detailed communication, but just, just to know that they're still there.

Yeah.

And that's, that in and of itself is a lovely thing.

So in Calling Earth, we, we talked about one form, which is EVP, or electronic voice phenomena. There's, there's some other types of ITC that are documented in the film as well. So could you share what some of those are?

Well, sure. Uh, some of them are, um, images seen on television sets and on computers. Um, Klaus Schreiber was a German fellow who had, um, quite a number of deaths in his family. Over a short period of time, and he was grieving. But he decided he would try electronic voice phenomenon. So he got a cassette recorder and he, he made, made contact. And he was— the, the voices on the other side suggested to him that he try working with video. And at that time, um, This was in the, the 1970s, um, where videotape equipment had just really was just then available to the public and was fairly primitive technology, but it worked. And so he started to experiment, didn't get very far, and then he teamed up with a, with an electronic engineer who made some suggestions. And that the main one was to set up a video feedback loop, and that is where a camera set up the monitor and you set up the camera, and the camera is looking at its own feed, its own image on the monitor. And the result is a very kind of, um, often very kind of flowing abstract pattern. And he was told that those on the other side could most easily manipulate this sort of thing into a coherent image. And that's what happened. He received images of, family, deceased family members, and, um, also of noted individuals who had recently passed, a couple of German actresses, um, a nobleman, so on and so on. And, um, he, he had, he had no way of, of editing his tape, so he re-re-videotaped off the, the screen, and the results were kind of fuzzy. But quite recognizable. I mean, they weren't, they weren't awful. Um, and so he, um, he had maybe dozens, at least several dozen that I know of, of these images that are quite, quite outstanding and recognizable. Um, other experimenters, uh, there's a couple in, in the, uh, small European country of Luxembourg who were receiving images just on a computer screen. The computer was not connected to any network. It was just standing alone on their desk, and images from the other side would appear, and they would photograph them. Um, those on the other side claimed that they were— they had constructed a communication station from which these images were sent. Um, also, um, text would appear on the— on this computer. And in one instance, one instance, they sent this text to my friend Mark Macy in Colorado, and it was a communication from a deceased journalist. He died in 1912, same day that the Titanic sank., and he, in this communication, he taught, he talked about his childhood in England. He got married in Jamaica, moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he worked for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper. He, he listed all of the addresses where he lived. Mark did a whole bunch of research in the Brooklyn Public Library, in the Library of Congress. He had a detective over in the UK work on this, and he found that all of the details that this man had presented in this communication were 100% accurate. Wow. And this is text.

Yeah.

So we, we don't have a, uh, a useful picture yet of how this is accomplished on the other side, but my sense of it, for what it's worth, is that just as our physical environment is made out of matter The environment on the other side is made out of consciousness, and we, we ourselves, particularly in the experience of dreaming, are all aware of how we can, or parts of our psyche can create whole environments, perfectly solid and perfectly physical to us when we're in that experience. Yeah, I think that should give us a clue of how our awareness itself is not just a passive receiver, but that we are, we are creating our own impression of reality even as we are in our physical bodies, in our physical environment. Like, I— if you and I were sitting together in the same physical place, I would have no idea how you perceive that, right?

Right.

You just don't know. I think that if, if more people realize that, there'd be fewer There'd be less strife in the world.

Yeah, well, you know, I think we're starting to get to some of that. There's a concept now, well, it's not new, but it's new to me in several, last several years called idealism, which is the idea that the consciousness is the precursor to matter and that in fact, that matter is just another form of consciousness, that there really is no physical as per se. And some of the scientists back in the late, early 1900s were saying the same thing. That, um, that consciousness is fundamental. And we kind of— we've kind of forgotten that. And I think if we had that idea— and I love your— when you talked about dreaming, because that's one that really occurs to me all the time, because I sometimes I'll become lucid in my dreams and I'll say, I'm creating this. But it's very real when you're in it. Like, you can feel everything that's going on. It feels just as real as me sitting in this chair now.

Well, thanks for mentioning that. Because I think lucid dreaming is the kindergarten of the afterlife.

Yeah, yeah.

That you get to experience that, that how your consciousness creates what you, what you take to be real. Now, this doesn't preclude consensus realities in the afterlife.

Exactly.

Um, but as in our physical life, there's no way to know how one perceives even a collective afterlife as opposed to someone else's experience of that same situation. Um, we, we, we say that— well, we've heard that, um, in the afterlife you may meet, um, relatives of yours, um, and that they will present to you in at the age they were when they passed, or at the age where you would recognize them, right? And that as we, as we get settled in the afterlife, our own self-image reverts to our prime of life. This is sort of like the blueprint for that lifetime. And but we have how we perceive ourselves, if there are mirrors in the afterlife, how it would look to us in a certain way. Um, I believe that, that we can present ourselves to others in the afterlife however we choose to.

Yeah.

And that what's going on is in that we are modulating their perception. We're not, we're not wearing a different suit, as it were.

Yeah. Yeah.

And it's, that may sound strange, but it's what we do right now when we talk to each other. Trying to communicate impressions that we feel the other will understand, right? It's the same general idea. So I think that in, in, in certain respects, our physical life and the, the so-called afterlife rest on some of the same principles. It's not, it's not all that strange.

Yeah.

The more conscious we are of how we perceive our own environment and lives and experiences now, um, the easier is our both intellectual and conceptual and then finally physical transition. Yes, to the other side.

Yeah.

And, uh, of course, different— some people are in tune with the so-called other side quite often, some full-time. And, um, and then the other side of the spectrum would be the, you know, the sort of rigidly materialistic sense of reality. So it's a spectrum like so many other things.

Yeah.

And I think what's happening now in, in our culture at large— I can't speak for other cultures in the world, but all I know is in, in our culture there is a shift going on. And you, you go to Amazon and you search on the word afterlife and 20,000 results come up.

Yeah, that, that has definitely been a shift, uh, and it's really interesting to me, um, because in, in Calling Earth, um, you know, this— the electronic phenomenon you mentioned earlier, we're a technology— technological society. We like the— we like the technology, right? So we're really impressed with the fact that, you know, spirit can speak through a tape machine or put images on the screen or put images onto film, you know, stuff like that, that seems to really impress us, as opposed to someone saying, well, I had a, I had an afterlife visit, a dream visit, or I had a near-death experience even. We seem to place more value in that, in that physical aspect.

Right. Well, that's natural. And, and I think it's, it's good that we can do that and that we can share these, you know, these— we can share the proof, as it were. Yeah, the word proof is another kind of one of my favorite whipping boys, um, because technically proof is nothing but a consensus.

Yeah, great point.

The evidence— yeah, the evidence may be physical or anecdotal or whatever it is. But, but when we say something has been proven, that's a social definition.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely is.

So you can't bring proof to a situation. You can bring evidence, and then whatever the consensus there will say, either it's we consider it proof or, or not. You need more proof now. Yeah. Um, so, um, where was I?

Well, I, I would like to talk about— we talked about the, um, we talked about calling Earth. I'd like to talk about also the skull experiment, which was actually— I am you and I connected, we set up this interview, you mentioned that film to me. And so that was, that was relatively new to me. So explain to people what the Skull Experiment is and, and what your documentary covers.

Hey, um, the Skull Experiment was an experiment in what's called physical mediumship. Now, mental mediumship involves connecting with the other side and bringing messages through.

Mhm.

Um, or in some cases, a medium will, will— they'll sort of step aside and someone on the other side will kind of take over their body and they'll be there be present with you. But that's considered mental mediumship. In physical mediumship, physical phenomena occur that can be recorded, preserved, so on, as, as evidence of the other side, evidence of the other side, evidence of paranormal, factual paranormal phenomena. The Scole experiment was undertaken around 1994, '95. In the tiny English village of Skole, S-C-O-L-E. It's about a half hour northeast of Cambridge, and it was undertaken by two couples. One of the couples were accomplished mental mediums. The other couple were— couple was— they were— had been researchers of physical mediumship for many years. And over a period of 5 years, they had 500 sessions sitting around a table in a darkened cellar, with just enough illumination from like luminous tabs on the tables and luminous wristbands on their wrists, just so that no hanky-panky could go on. Over these 500 sessions, they were able to produce an amazing variety of phenomena, um, including physical objects appearing, bang, on their table, right? Uh, materialization of objects. Voices in the room just coming out of the air, not just out of the mediums' mouths. Through the mediums, they connected with a team on the other side, and with this team, they worked together to, to work out experiments to see what they could do. This, this wasn't all written in stone. It was an ongoing experiment. In one experiment, they were asked to put a conventional film camera on their table. Which they did. And in the dark, they heard the camera levitating and floating around the room and the shutter clicking repeatedly. Camera went back down on the table, and they were asked to develop the film. And this was color film, I believe, but what they found on the film were 11 black and white photographs, which they were told were copies of pictures that existed somewhere in the world. They were actually able to track down some of these images. Um, then they were asked to just put the roll of film on their table, and if the spirit team on the other side felt that they had produced something, the experimenters were asked to develop the film, which they did. And the— what they found on these films was a marvelous variety of writing, images, signatures of known people. It was a, a complete poem by the British poet William Wordsworth. It was a variation on one of his famous poems, and it was signed W.W. Wordsworth. Um, they had— they were also— they had also been doing some experiments with a recorder. And, um, by the way, this, this experiment was witnessed by hundreds of visitors, uh, including scientists, engineers, a stage magician, Nobody could find any fault with it. For a period of, um, of 3 years or 2, 2 or 3 years, they were monitored. Every session was monitored by a team from the British Society for Psychical Research, which is skeptical organization, right? And these 3 investigators, um, could find no way in which these phenomena could have been faked. And there were several books published about this. You can see this in, in the film. Um, so, oh, and then at a certain point, they, they were allowed to take this show on the road. They, they did sessions in several European countries. They did it at a home in Los Angeles. I went and interviewed the participants there 10 years after this happened, and they were still blown away by the experiences they'd had. So, um, It— you have to see the films, all I can say. And the film really scratches— it's a 90-minute film and it just scratches the surface of the SKULL experiment. One of the most, uh, interesting, I think, claims there was by Robin Foy, who was one of the— he was one of the two chief experimenters and, um, researchers. And he claimed that his parents physically materialized in the room. That he could embrace them physically. Now, I've, I've heard stories about materializations, um, and I'm, I'm fascinated with it, have been fascinated with it for a long time, especially since I once met someone who was apparently had been dead for 2 years. Um, it's a friend of a friend's, back when I lived in New York City.

Hmm.

Went to visit a friend one evening and an old friend of his had shown up out of nowhere. Uh, this guy was named Joe. He was a big guy. I'm over 6 feet. He was taller than I am. Mustache, strong handshake. Great, glad to meet you, Joe. Then Joe and John went out to dinner. I went back home. After that, Joe disappeared. John couldn't find him. Guy's phone had been disconnected. And in fact, he hadn't seen Joe in years previously, and he had no contact with him. And then Joe just showed up at his door that night. Anyway, not long after that, my friend John is going into Macy's department store. Excuse me. Joe's wife was working there, so he said, hi, you know, how, how you doing? How's Joe? And the wife said, I'm sorry, John, Joe died 5 years ago. And John said, but I just saw him 2 years ago. Oh wow. And so I said, no, don't mess with me, John. You know, I was with him when he died. I went to the funeral and so on. So figure that one out.

Wow. Wow.

It makes me wonder. And like, I've heard stories about materialization, but yeah. You told me at the time when I was in the room with Joe, um, that, that he had— who's just visiting from the other side— I would have said that's BS.

Wow.

Like, totally physical, totally real. No, couldn't, couldn't tell. So it makes me wonder, you know, you see people walking down, walking along the street, how many, how many of them are just visiting?

Yeah, I had— wow, that's, that's wild. I hadn't heard a story like that before.

Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm, I accept— I don't accept everyone's stories about everything, right? I believe in checking things out, but I know, I know what my own experiences have been, right? And, um, and that includes some, you know, pretty far out stuff. Um, but it's— I think it's only far out from the perspective of our sort of ordinary lives.

Yeah.

It's, it's no further out than the idea that the, the Earth is round, you know.

Well, you know, it's interesting you say that because I, I like to believe I— that I'm, I'm still a skeptic even though I, I believe there's definitely something going on. I have no doubt that there is something going on. But as you said, I don't believe everybody's story. And the nice thing about these two documentaries we're talking about is they're documentaries, they're documented. We can, we can examine the evidence as close as we can with our own eyes. We can see And in the case of the Skull Experiment, you said it's well documented. The skeptics that went there, they had a magician come and say, okay, if I were setting this up, this is what I would do. And so these, these are people that were, that were subject to scrutiny. And, you know, so, and there's also, uh, it's just, there's just, to me, there's so much there. And I, that's why I refer people to especially the Calling Earth documentary all the time when people say I'm like, here, go, go check this out, you know. Um, I, I— because if people are truly skeptical, we've already touched about this, the difference between a skeptic, skepticism, scientific method, and a debunker or just a cynic. Um, they're not the same thing, you know. You could be skeptical, uh, but if you're skeptical, you're going to check it out.

Yeah, well, it's the original etymology of skeptic is one who looks into things.

Yeah, yeah.

So you don't, you don't accept things, you know, at face value. You look into them as best you can and you make up your own mind. And if there's a collective, just consensus about something, fine, you can work with that. Um, it's difficult in our world for this shift to take place, I think partly because our world is so complex.

Hmm.

People have challenges and problems and on so many levels at the same time. But I think in spite of that, that this shift is underway. And I think it's a healthy thing. I think it helps to take the edge off some of what we take to be our own human problems. Particularly the notion or fear of death, which can be a very powerful influence in a number of ways, including, uh, in nefarious ways.

Yeah. Um, well, I, I think the fear of death is, is at the core of all the fears that we have. I mean, I think when you really boil it down to every— all the fears we have, they're basically come down to the fear of, the fear of death. And the reason why we fear death is because us, it's unknown. I was speaking with someone recently who has a big fear of death. And I said, you know, it's like you're walking towards this door at the end of a hallway, and you, you're inevitably going to go through that door at some point. If you have no idea what's on the other side of that door, of course you're going to be scared. You know, that's just a natural human response. And I find for myself, the more I find out about what's on the other side of that door, the less I fear it.

Yeah, well, it, in a way, it should work the other round— if the other way around. If we don't know what's on the other side of the door, why fear it? Automatically, right? Either, either way, you're right that, that, um, that, that fear— and I think that, you know, there's a— that's interesting. Can you see my, my image flickering right now?

It is.

Yeah, that's never happened before.

Is that— yeah, it looks like— yeah, almost like a light's coming on and off.

Yeah, it's not. My room, my room lighting is consistent. Hasn't been blinking, but the video image is. Yeah, let me cover the camera for just a moment. And it's continuing.

Yeah, that's pretty wild.

Isn't that wild?

Well, you know, I was recording one of these a couple weeks ago and I had a couple people on. They were both mediums. And I was— as I was talking to one of them, I just saw this orb shoot across the room. And I'm like, okay, it wasn't dust because it wasn't going down. It went up and like to the right. And I was asking the other person, I said, did you see that? And she said, yeah. And then the medium goes, this happens to me all the time. People tell me we're on Zooms, you know, they see orbs. So, right.

Well, I just, I just did a presentation on orbs to a group that I meet with every Sunday. Um, it's a Zoom group based in Australia called the Global Gathering, and it's, uh, currently at, um, it's on Sundays, currently at 2 PM Pacific time. And it's run by Wendy Zammit, who was—

yeah, the Zammit.

Yeah, yeah, you know the Zammit.

Yeah.

Um, and so I sort of— how interesting that I think that the flickering has stopped now.

It has. Yeah.

Um, that's proof of something. I don't know, it could be a, a hello from certain friends of mine on the other side. Um, anyway, just back to orbs for a moment. So I just did a kind of a slideshow last week on orbs and explaining that there are 3 or 4 discrete classes of orbs, one of which is ones that people see with their naked eye. Um, then there are those that are only seen by cameras, um, and are legitimately paranormal. Then there are those that are only seen by cameras which are an artifact of— it's mainly how small modern digital cameras.

Exactly.

They have extremely wide-angle lenses, which means they're in focus almost up to the lens. They have lighting and flash units that are right next to the lens, and they're illuminating. You know about the inverse square law? If the light is intended to be illuminating something 10 feet away, if it's an inch away, it's thousands of times as bright. So it turns your cell phone camera or small digital camera essentially into a microscope. Dust particles that are just a fraction of an inch from them, right? So that's, that's a very common form of what we call orbs. And not only are they mistaken for actual objects, but people project their idea of how distant they are from the camera.

Oh, good point.

Yeah, you never see these orbs peeking out from behind objects. They're that close to the camera. But because they're different sizes people will, will instinctively feel that the smaller ones are more distant from the camera. Yeah, 10, 15 feet away when they're actually only an inch. Yeah, there's a lot of confusion about that. And for me, the gold standard is the ones that are, that are visible. Yeah. And if you, if you saw one on video that the, your, the person on the other end confirmed that they could see it visually Well, that's, you know, yeah, that's the real deal.

Yeah.

Whether these are images of spirits or whether they're images created by spirits, uh, as a form of communication, uh, I can't judge. People kind of assume that they are the spirits themselves. I'm not sure about that. And again, on one level, it hardly matters because these are things that happen that shouldn't happen, and that's enough in a sense for us to get at least a basic message. Yeah, that, um, there's just— in the theater of life, stuff goes on backstage.

Yeah, I love that. It's the first time I've heard that, but I'm gonna have to remember that. In theater life, stuff goes on backstage. So we're coming— we've got just a few minutes left. I want to talk about your book, um, because I know you, you— we talked about the films that I want to recommend to people. Definitely go And I saw, at least the last time I saw, Calling Earth was available on YouTube. So I appreciate you making it available there.

It's on YouTube and Vimeo.

Okay.

Both films are on YouTube and Vimeo.

Yeah.

As is the I'm a Skeptic video. The latest, latest version is on Vimeo. If you go to my website, DanDrazen.com, and go to the films page, you can— all the links are there.

Okay, cool, cool. So we'll definitely put that in the show notes. But let's talk about your book. What does your book cover?

Uh, the book is called A New Science of the Afterlife: Space, Time, and the Consciousness Code. Uh, it's my first book. It's, um, I sometimes say I wrote it for wives to put under their skeptical husband's pillows.

I love that.

Um, and it's an attempt to, to, to bring this whole question of the afterlife down to relatively simple, basic terms. To recognize how— the longest chapter in the book is about language and how language determines what our sense of reality. We— I can't speak for how other languages— I mean, French is my second language, but I'm not fluent enough to understand what happens with French. With English, we say things like somebody, nobody, everybody. And when we do that, don't we reinforce the idea that we're nothing but our bodies? You said someone, everyone, no one. It's a little different feeling there, less materialistic, if you will. Let me just— I have notes here, just the chapters, just briefly. First one's called Materialism 101. It shines the light on our sort of unconscious relationship with The physical. It points out that science is a method of inquiry. Materialism is an assumption about reality.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm reading off the— each chapter has a summary. So let me just read some of the chapter summaries and they'll give you a sense of the scope of the book. Okay. Materialism 101. We live in a world dominated by a belief in materialism. Science is a method of inquiry. Materialism is an assumption about reality. Social pressures and militant skepticism tend to inhibit post-materialist thinking and research. A paradigm shift into post-materialism is underway. Chapter 2 is The Landscape of Afterlife Research: near-death experience research, reincarnation research, instrumental transcommunication research and practice, mental mediumship, Physical mediumship, out-of-body experience research and practice, and then diverse avenues of research represented by the 29 winning Bigelow Institute essays. I don't know if you're— they had this contest a few years ago, um, and people wrote amazing material in, in response to this. Okay, back to my book. Um, supportive studies in related phenomena. The Abilities of Autistic Savants. Oh yeah, you probably be aware of the, the, um, Telepathy Tapes.

Yeah, that's— I love the fact that that podcast is blowing up the way that it is, right?

Uh, and this is, you know, it's this long-denied phenomenon is finally getting the attention that it needs. Um, Terminal Lucidity, um, which, which tends to, um, override our, our notion that, um, an afflicted brain— uh, here, see that flashing again?

Going again. Yeah.

Wow, thank you, whoever it is shining a light on it. Um, um, terminal lucidity, where if someone who with an afflicted brain just before they pass will have a period of time where they're totally lucid and totally normal Yeah. And this goes completely against the notion of, of the, of the brain being the foundation of, of consciousness. Mm-hmm. Um, the shared death experience. This is something that's also been only recently recognized, but it's very common where, um, caregivers, uh, relatives and so on at a deathbed will have their own experience of either perceiving the, the the person's departure into the afterlife, and in some cases accompanying them into the first stage of the afterlife.

Yeah.

This is another, another don't tell the doctor situation, but it's now beginning to be recognized. Then there are, of course, psychedelics, which are now understood, I think much better understood in terms of their function and in what they can illuminate about the nature of consciousness. Um, the placebo effect. Well, there's nothing new there, right? It's basically the placebo effect has been understood for years, but science overlooks it as an example of the power of the mind to influence the physical. Um, and there's lucid dreaming, which we've mentioned, precognition and presentiment. These have been tested and confirmed in laboratories. Clairvoyance and remote viewing— this has been confirmed by the CIA and the United States military over and over and over again. No question there. Then there's map dowsing, and that's where a psychic can— I'll give you an example which I mentioned in the book, that a friend of mine, was performing— a harpist was performing at a theater and left her harp in the storeroom overnight. When she came back in the morning, it was gone. So her mother, who fortunately is tuned into this sort of thing, consulted a man who was a map dowser. Hmm. She's— this was in Oakland, California. Uh, so she sent this— sent the information to the map dowser who lived in I think it was in Ohio. And the, and the map dowser looked at the map of Oakland and he drew a line around a little four-square block area, and he said, uh, put up posters offering a reward in that four-square block area. So she did, and the harp came right back.

Oh wow.

So that's an example of map dowsing. It's been used to find minerals and so on. Um, then, uh, What Is the Consciousness Code? That's the subtitle of the book. Um, and the, the idea is that codes— I can actually— it's the shortest chapter in the book. Is there time for me to read it?

Sure.

Okay, let me, let me get to it here. Okay, it's chapter 4, What Is the Consciousness Code? It's trendy to call things codes these days, but broadly speaking, a code can be anything whose meaning or very existence is wholly or partly hidden or obscure. This may be deliberate, as with encrypted information, or it may be a natural code such as a DNA code, the shape of a plant's leaves, or the language of a particular bird species. Some things may be hidden by possessing qualities that our senses are not physically equipped to perceive. Examples include radio waves, ultraviolet light, the air on a clear day, deep seismic rumbles, and ultrasonic dog whistles. Other things in perfectly plain sight may be effectively invisible to us because our culture has no particular interest in them or is motivated to ignore or deny them. These can be difficult or impossible to recognize, and what we can't recognize, we obviously can have no motivation to decode. Consciousness is an excellent example of a code hiding in plain sight. On the one hand, nothing should be more immediate or obvious than our own consciousness. On the other, our materialistic culture puts enormous unspoken pressure on us to ignore it or to explain it away as an illusory byproduct of neurological functioning. As a result, our chances of decoding it, laying bare its remarkable nature, properties, and potentials have tended to be slim. So we end up like moviegoers absorbed in a captivating adventure or love story while being oblivious to the screen, the projector, and the vast community of talented professionals behind the scenes. They don't exist in our reality unless we happen to be filmmakers or students of filmmaking who know what to look for and why to bother looking in the first place. Perhaps to make better movies? As we have now seen, where honest science has stepped up to the plate and begun to decode and demystify consciousness, better movies, a richer appreciation of reality, more profound and beautiful experiences, and a healthy and more insightful relationship to life and death appear to be an inevitable result. Coming soon to a realm near you.

Yeah, I love it, I love it. That is great. Thank you for sharing that.

Sure. And the book was fun to write. It was a slog like most writing is, but I feel like I was able to express the basics that I wanted to get across. There are other chapters too, which I won't go into now, but I hope it's a good— people find it a good primer and a good sort of safe way to get into these.

Yeah. And I loved you covered such a broad body of evidence. And as we've had this conversation, we've talked about words like skeptic and, and, uh, denier. And we talked about words like proof, you know. There is, you know, what you said earlier, I think it's, it's spot on. Proof is only what we come to when we come to a consensus, so that then we call it proof. There's, there's really no— there's really not much that's provable, you know. There's— we can just look at and say, yeah, we've got enough evidence to say, yeah, this is probably the— this is the way it works. Um, so if, if someone does have someone in their, in their a loved one who's a skeptic and is open-minded, something like this can help them to kind of say, okay, I— this gives you more evidence. I have a really good friend who was a straight-up materialist, atheistic, and, and came to me and said, you know, I know you believe this stuff, tell me why. And so I, I gave her— she went to a medium actually, and the medium blew her away. And she came back, she said, give me more. So I gave her, you know, some books by, you know, uh, Bruce Grayson, and I think Penny, uh, Satori, and, you know, uh, Bernardo Kastrup and some other different people. And she came back, she goes, wow, you know, I'm— she's convinced now. She's totally convinced. So your book is going to add to that body that we can hand to somebody and say— or if you're, if you're listening to this right now and you're like, I'm not quite convinced, you know, but if you're open, there's a lot of evidence out there. And I appreciate you, you sharing that and making it so accessible to people.

Well, thanks. Uh, it's been a, um, a joy and a privilege to be doing this work. I should also mention that for about the past 5, 6 years, I've been working with a particular team of mediums.

Oh, okay.

Quite amazing. They're best known for having channeled the, um, astronauts, the crews of the NASA space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Hmm., and their work is quite spectacular. We have created a website called cosmicvoices.network. Okay, it's not dot net, it's dot net. Cosmic Voices, one word, dot network. Okay, and it's, um, it's partly a repository of channeling that these two mediums have done over the years. One of them lives in Los Angeles, and, and she was told when she was a child, you're going to be a medium to the stars. And Jean says, what she didn't tell me was they'd all be dead. And so the people who are— she and she herself is a, is a, is a trained singer, so she relates to the arts community, and she is evidently known on the other side in that community. And when someone in that professional sphere passes over, um, they sometimes will show up I mean, Gene and Regina, the other medium, and I often have Zoom meetings, and sometimes these folks will show up in the middle of a Zoom meeting. Oh wow. One of the other of the mediums, um, one of them is, believe it or not, Robin Williams.

Oh, okay.

Who has chosen to stick close to the earth plane, as he puts it, because he feels that he can be helpful in, in healing people when they pass over. It's healthy for people to know that we don't die. And, and he feels that humor is such a healing and important aspect of, of our lives. And he can't— he tries to keep that alive as best he can from where he is. Wow. Like, we can be having a conversation on Zoom and all of a sudden he'll come in and he'll have us in stitches. Wow. So it's a wonderful experience. Um, there's a joke that, um, so many people want to come through these mediums that they're having to give out numbered tickets on the other side. And, um, last year we were, we were having our, our Zoom meeting, and do you remember Liberace?

Yes.

It was this flamboyant, very wonderful pianist, flamboyant style. So he comes through And he's talking to us, he says, you know, I had— I lived a series of very kind of dour and repressed lifetimes. Oh, I told myself this time I'm going to cut loose and have fun.

Oh wow.

And you have to read his exact words, it's on this, it's on our website. But that was a wonderful experience. And he said, I finally got my ticket in. So it has another one that, that I was really moved by was Neil Armstrong, and he was the first man to walk on the moon, and he died in a strange way. He was, he was hospitalized, and I don't remember whether it was a medical error or a part of the condition that they didn't catch, but he died in the hospital with his family around him, including his deceased daughter who appeared to him. It's an extremely touching account of his experience of being helped over to the other side by his—

wow, wow.

You know, whether, whether you, whether you accept these communications as real or not, they're wonderful reads.

Yeah, it sounds awesome. Well, I've included that in the show notes.

Yeah, on the messages page there's two columns. One is names you'd recognize, and the others are names that you would not recognize. These include the, um, New York Fire Department captain at 9/11, who was the captain at 9/11.

Okay.

And that's an amazing, an amazing story. And there's one woman who was the first American civil engineer who was involved in the creation of the Hoover Dam. Um, anyway, just check it out. Yeah, it's, it's a good read. Again, whether you believe any of it or not, I think it's fascinating and, and informative.

Absolutely. Well, you're, you're a wealth of information. Thank you for sharing that. So, um, it was, it was great to meet you today, great to have you here. As I said, I've been, I've been a fan of, of your work for quite a while, so I'm glad we were able to sit down and do this, and I'm happy to help people discover the book as well. But check out, check out the films. They're on YouTube and Vimeo. And Daniel, have a great rest of your afternoon.

You too, Brian. Thanks. It's great to meet you. I wish we could shake hands. Yeah. Okay, take care, and hopefully we'll be in touch.

Yeah, have a good afternoon.

You too.

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