Ray Catania: My metaphysics

You're one of the few creatures that's aware that you're having a thought or you're having an emotion. And if you're aware, guess what you can do? Change it. So if you know about it, you can change it. I don't like this feeling that's tied to this. I want to separate from that. And you can consciously retrain yourself not to be reactive, not to associate this with this. X plus Y equals Z. So now let's change it. And that's something that you can do. And it takes a very long time to do it, but it's simple to do. And as I was going through the. The writing of the second book, it was really. It was near the end of the book. So where I lost my negative emotions, I say. Now, when I say lost, it doesn't mean that I don't experience them, but I do for short period of time. Unlike where. Let's go back to the car example. If a car had cut me off in the old days, I would have, you know, cursed them out or whatever and then rude about it for. For two days. You know, it would just go. I would replay it in my mind and. And just think, you know, I'll see him one day, blah, blah, blah, you know, and it. All I'm doing is torturing myself. That guy doesn't give a. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to use a.

No, no, no. No problem.

Okay. I want to make sure God knows there's plenty of curse words in these books. But so you. You know, it's unnecessary to get to that heightened state. But when we were primitive man, we needed that. We also needed that theta state because we needed to know what to do when a lion shows up. Ron, you know, get out of there. So these are the things that we as primitives learned, but we still have that portion of the brain now, and our mind still works similarly now, and we don't need those things. So back to our awareness. Our awareness is at the height of our consciousness, and it is the direct link between you and your higher self, which is your link to the collective consciousness or God or the creator, whatever terminology you wish to use. And the. The beautiful thing about this, in my work, when I work with people, I explain to them, you're not your ego. And the reason you're not your ego is because that's made up of other people's thoughts, beliefs, expressions that were given to you, some without your consent. You were too young to say, no, I don't believe that. Right. So you were given this information and other things that you watched, you internalized, and you built this platform for yourself. And it's almost complete by the age of seven, believe it or not, we react the way we would react as a seven year old. Now, you wouldn't cry, but you're still reactive. Now maybe you get angry instead of crying, you may react to differently, but you're still reactive. So the point is, is we want to lose being reactive. We don't want to get angry, we don't want to be sad. We don't want to experience those emotions anymore. So there's. When I explain to one of my clients, you're not your ego, you are your awareness. And you haven't even met yourself yet because your awareness is connected to this network, this entity of limitless information, limitless things that you can accomplish, acquire, manifest. It's the most beautiful place. And yet we go to our subconscious where all the trash is and we pull that stuff out to make decisions with. And when we do that, we're living tomorrow in yesterday and we expect a different result. Not going to happen. But when I learned that to go this way, to get my information, metaphorically speaking, above, and get it from a higher source, I actually liked myself. I was like, I am not this person. I don't have to be angry, I don't have to be aggressive. I don't have to be any of these things because the real me doesn't care. But it took this long process of things that I had to see for myself and learn and put into practice. It took years, but every time that I would feel a certain way that I didn't want to feel, or I acted a certain way I didn't want to act, I would take myself out of the situation, put myself in a third party like I was a director of my own movie starring me, and tell myself what I wanted myself to do. Direct. Now action. What would you have done had you done this correctly? Play it over again. What would you have said if you said it correctly? Change it. And always try to say it in a positive tense and try to stay, you know, in a. In a place where there's no, no anger. Because I'm bringing that anger by being reactive. So.

Hey, guys, I'm here with Ray Catania. Ray is an acclaimed author, metaphysical teacher, theorist and coach. He's the visionary behind Limitless Publications, Limitless Coaching and Scientific spirituality for the modern human. Catania has written two captivating books in his Awakening series, the Atheist and the Afterlife and you are still alive. Now act like it. His profound insights and intuitive abilities have made him a sought after practitioner in scientific spiritualism and the practical applications of metaphysics. With a thriving private practice, he guides individuals on their transformative journeys. A survivor of a near death experience, Ray Catania is also an ordained minister with master certifications in life coaching, reiki and meditation. Currently pursuing his doctorate degree in metaphysical parapsychology. Combines his extensive formal education with wisdom gained from studying under some of the most brilliant minds in the world, including intuitives, mediums, shamans and energy healers. Sorry. First of all, welcome to the show. Now, the second book. I've been reading your second book, you are still alive. Now act like a good book. I've nearly finished it actually, and I'd highly recommend it. It's a very, it's a very good book and you go into a lot of stuff in that book. But I'm interested in why you wrote a letter to yourself. And you've got that in the preface of the book.

Sure, yeah. Wrote a letter to self. I really didn't know what I was going to write when I, when I started to write that. But it was a reminder of why I'm doing what I'm doing. It's, it's, it's an uphill, you know, challenge to learn the things that, that I've learned and, and have the life that I've had which has led me to this path. And the, the book was, I mean the, the letter rather was an introduction to give you a feel for what's transpired a little bit and some of the struggles in the beginning to give you a better perspective. And it was a wake up call. It was like, hey, let's go. You know, you, you, you've written the first book and it's done well and, and been well received and it's helped people and now it's time to do it again. It's not time to sit back and relax, you know, it, it's, there's new information that you have now and you have to put it out there. You're obligated to do so. And the way I feel, I really feel called to express the message and bring this forth for people. So it was kind of like I kicked myself in the butt kind of thing to get going.

You've got in the beginning of the book. I like you how you category you, you casual catalog. Excuse me, a few terms like the mind, the unconscious mind. I found that very helpful, Very, very instructive for the reading of the rest of the book. I haven't really read that before in any other book where at the very beginning you give the term and the terminology is excellent. I wonder, could you go through some of that terminology? Like, for example, when we're talking about the mind, what's the difference between the unconscious, the subconscious, and the conscious mind? What. What are the differences?

Yeah, so, you know, like we were talking, speaking earlier, and we were saying how different people have different perspectives on things. I think people also have different perspectives on terminology and what it may mean. So I think it's, it's not right or wrong. It's just that I think it was important to understand where the author's coming from so that when I use a term, you kind of, you know, you know what I'm trying to express to you. So, yeah, our mind is broken up into multiple parts. And this is one of the things that I found most fascinating as I was learning metaphysics and working with my mentors, and I was also studying Freud and Jung at the same time that I was doing this. So this is a package of information that's really grown together over time. So our unconscious mind, what sits in our unconscious mind is our core emotions, right. And our bodily functions. You don't have to tell yourself to breathe, you just naturally do so and you know your core beliefs and, and those are very unlikely to change, and nor should they. It's okay, that's, that's, that is stationary, and that's the foundation. The next step up is our subconscious mind. Now, our subconscious mind I would compare to a hard drive in a computer. And, you know, when you take it out of the box, the computer, there's nothing on the hard drive. And what, it's whatever you put in there makes the computer react to the program, right? Now, when you were born, you came into this world with a clean slate, nothing in your subconscious. And then you were given things. And, you know, during the first seven years of life, we spend our childhood in what's called a theta state, and that's the brainwave state that we spend the majority of the day. It's also where a hypnotist is going to place you if he or she wants to speak directly to your subconscious mind. Now why are our brains wired that way? Because when we're very young, we need to pick up everything around us. You notice that you have a young child yourself. You notice they, they're like a sponge, right? They just take everything in. And, and it's fascinating to watch because they can remember things that we can't even Remember Brown? Well, you said this on, you know, and I'll be like, did I? Okay, you know, he's probably right. So we absorb every single thing as a child. Now this can be what good and bad at the same time. Because, you know, if you come from a home like mine, it was chaotic. There was a lot of trauma, there was drama, a lot of fighting and people trying to, you know, hurt one another. And so it was not a good place for me to absorb what was going around, going on around me. But now you also have to take into consideration, you know, we have television, we have social media nowadays, right? So our kids are, are taking in things and they don't know what's real and what's not. And so if this has an impact, whenever an experience meets an emotion, it's locked together like this and it becomes your personal truth, your perception of truth. And, you know, I can give you a quick example, but first let me give you the other parts of the mind. The egoic mind draws its information from the subconscious mind. So it's basically the egoic mind is the little voice in your head that says, don't say this, don't do that, you look silly when you did this yesterday. Don't wear that, you look fat. You can't go for that job, you're not good enough. And it just brings to the surface all these don't, don't, don't, do's. And the reason it does that is because it's there to protect you. That's what the ego's purpose is. But what it does is it's taking information that you acquired subconsciously from your environment. So if your environment was troubled, then you have these, these ideals in your mind that this is the way the world works. I came from a place of chaos. Chaos was my comfort zone. So now, you know, if I'm in my late teens and twenties, I'm bringing the chaos. If there's no chaos there, right, Or I'm looking for it so I can be a part of it because that's my norm. So I, if I, if, if things are pleasant, I don't know what to do with that, you know, because I was never, I didn't have it that way.

So just, sorry, just when you say that the chaos was the norm, that was exactly me in my 20s and my, in my, in my 20s right up, I guess, to my early 30s. I didn't know any other way. Chaos was just normal for me. I, I couldn't accept, how can I say, to be, to be Content within myself. I. I didn't feel comfortable with being content with myself. And if there was. Wasn't some kind of, like, interference or disturbance going on in my life, I felt that there was something wrong. Paradoxically enough.

Yeah, exactly the way I felt. Exactly. So you're going through life and you know how to deal with the chaos, but we don't know how to deal with what is normal and natural because that actually makes us feel uncomfortable. We're more comfortable in the chaos. So going back to the mind, we have the egoic mind, then we have. We have. So we have the unconscious, we have the subconscious, we have the egoic. Right, or ego for short. And then we have the conscious mind. And what's interesting about the conscious mind is it's much smaller in terms of what it can process. And don't quote me on the numbers, but I believe that the. It is said the subconscious can process something like 40 billion bits of information per second, whereas your conscious mind can process about 40 and literally 40. So it's got this really different as far as what it can process and how fast it can process it. So your subconscious, that's why your ego clings to the subconscious. So I'll give you an example. If you're in a scary movie, why do you get scared? You're just in a movie, you know you're not going to get killed. And yet when the guy comes out with the ax, you're like. And that's because your subconscious reacts before your conscious mind. And then later, your conscious mind catches up a couple seconds later and says, relax. You're just in a movie theater. Everything is fine. You're amongst friends, right? Tells you to chill out. So we do this with everything in life. If we don't acknowledge that the subconscious is going to react first and we don't pause to let our conscious mind catch up, well, you know, that's a recipe for disaster. That's road rage, right? Somebody cuts you off and you're like, but nothing happened. You weren't hit, the cars didn't collide, everybody's fine. And yet you're yelling and screaming and you don't even know why. And then your conscious mind catches up and you say, okay, that's enough of that. You know, there's no reason for this. And at the very top of your consciousness, and I love this, this is, according to Eckhart Tolle, is your awareness. And we call it your awareness because you're one of the few creatures that's aware that you're having a Thought or you're having an emotion, and if you're aware, guess what you can do? Change it. So if you know about it, you can change it. I don't like this feeling that's tied to this. I want to separate from that. And you can consciously retrain yourself not to be reactive, not to associate this with this. X plus Y equals Z. So now let's change it. And that's something that you can do. And it takes a very long time to do it, but it's simple to do. And as I was going through the writing of the second book, it was really. It was near the end of the book. So where I lost my negative emotions, I say now, when I say lost, it doesn't mean that I don't experience them, but I do for a short period of time. Unlike where. Let's go back to the car. Example, if a car had cut me off in the old days, I would have, you know, cursed them out or whatever and then rude about it for. For two days. You know, it would just go. I would replay it in my mind and. And just think, you know, I'll see him one day on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and it. All I'm doing is torturing myself. That guy doesn't give a. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to use a.

No, no, no. No problem.

Okay. I want to make sure God knows there's plenty of curse words in these books. But so you. You know, it's unnecessary to get to that heightened state. But when we were primitive man, we needed that. We also needed that theta state because we needed to know what to do when a lion shows up. Ron, you know, get out of there. So these are the things that we as primitives learned, but we still have that portion of the brain now, and our mind still works similarly now, and we don't need those things. So back to our awareness. Our awareness is at the height of our consciousness, and it is the direct link between you and your higher self, which is your link to the collective consciousness or God or the creator, whatever terminology you wish to use. And the. The beautiful thing about this, in my work, when I work with people, I explain to them, you're not your ego. And the reason you're not your ego is because that's made up of other people's thoughts, beliefs, expressions that were given to you, some without your consent. You were too young to say, no, I don't believe that. Right. So you were given this information and other things that you watched, you internalized and you built this platform for yourself and it's almost complete by the age of seven, believe it or not, we react the way we would react as a seven year old. Now, you wouldn't cry, but you're still reactive. Now maybe you get angry instead of crying. You may react to differently, but you're still reactive. So the point is, is we want to lose being reactive. We don't want to get angry, we don't want to be sad, we don't want to experience those emotions anymore. So there's. When I explain to one of my clients, you're not your ego, you are your awareness. And you haven't even met yourself yet. Because your awareness is connected to this network, this entity of limitless information, limitless things that you can accomplish, acquire, manifest. It's the most beautiful place. And yet we go to our subconscious where all the trash is and we pull that stuff out to make decisions with. And when we do that, we're living tomorrow in yesterday and we expect a different result. Not going to happen. But when I learned that to go this way, to get my information, metaphorically speaking, above, and get it from a higher source, I actually liked myself. I was like, I am not this person. I don't have to be angry, I don't have to be aggressive. I don't have to be any of these things because the real me doesn't care. But it took this long process of things that I had to see for myself and learn and put into practice. It took years, but every time that I would feel a certain way that I didn't want to feel, or I acted a certain way I didn't want to act, I would take myself out of the situation, put myself in a third party like I was a director of my own movie starring me, and tell myself what I wanted myself to do. Direct. Now action. What would you have done had you done this correctly? Play it over again. What would you have said if you said it correctly, Change it. And always try to say it in a positive tense and try to stay, you know, in a place where there's no, no anger. Because I'm bringing that anger by being reactive. So what do you do if somebody reacts to you? Okay here? One day I was driving and I went through a stop sign a little bit too far. I slammed on the brakes and this guy's, you know, mother effing me up and down, calling me every name in the book, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And don't, you know, I smiled and I was like, I used to be just like You. Here's my business card. Boy, did that piss him off. And I was like. But I was being sincere, like, I'll help you. I was there. You look ridiculous. Let me explain how this works. And when you understand it and you don't let your ego draw direct your world and you get your direction from a higher place and a higher source, you're living a different life. I mean, really a limitless life. So.

So if you're in. If you're. Sorry, Ray. If you're in that situation and going back to that, if somebody you know starts effing and blinding you and you. Do you. Do you feel that urge, that little mini second or millisecond of a nurse to react and then you catch yourself and then you bring your awareness to that situation. Or is it completely gone? Do you not feel anything now?

It's gone, but it took a while to be gone. So in the beginning I had to acknowledge it, like you just said, and let it go. And you have to do that for a very long time. Acknowledge it. I'm experiencing anger right now. And allow it to dissipate. Tell you it's unnecessary anger, unless you're in actual jeopardy, like somebody's really going to hurt you, okay, then you may have to defend yourself and you're justified to do so. Listen, we're spiritual, we're not doormats, okay? We're not going to let people harm us or people we love. But 99.9 of the time, I mean, how often do you really have to defend yourself? It's not that often unless you're, you know, like we were as kids and putting ourselves in those situations. Right, but that. That's different. Really. It rarely happens. But if it does, that's when you have to bring out your anger and you have to do what you have to do. But more often than not, we're getting upset about some really silly things and we allow it to affect us. Let's go back to the guy that was yelling at me and cursing, right? He probably drove to work and he told everybody at work what an idiot I am. And then he went home to his wife and he told his wife what an idiot driver I am. And then maybe he saw some friends at night and he's telling everybody about what an idiot I am. I've ruined this guy's entire day, maybe two. Don't give me that kind of control. That's crazy. So, you know, when you look at it from that perspective, you are giving me way too much control over you by being Upset by something that I did that didn't hurt you in the first place. And even if we did collide, what are you going to do? You can't go back in time and change it. We have to just deal with it rationally. You know, an accident is just that. It's an accident. So here's when I knew. This is when I broke through. So I had been doing that where, like you said, I get. I feel it, and then I push it away and just let it go. And if I said something or did something I didn't like, I'd say, nope, say it again. Say it the correct way. And I would. I'm retraining my brain. That's one of. That's one of the processes that I teach. And eventually, what happened as I was writing the. I got to the end of the book, I was driving from my wife's house to my house because we weren't married yet at that time, and we still had separate houses. And it was going to be a blizzard was coming, and I wanted to beat the snow and get home because I had about an hour drive. So I get in my car, and at that point in time, I'm at the height of my career. I'm driving a beautiful car because I think that's a big deal now. I think it's ridiculous, but I used to think that was a thing. And I was driving and the snow just started coming down and I really couldn't see. And I drove into a deer. And this is what I call. This is the deer moment. But this is also the moment I knew that I had awakened because I hit that deer with my car, the expensive car that I thought I cared about. And I did not feel that surge of adrenaline at all. I felt compassion. There was no anger. There was no anxiety. There was nothing. It was compassion for the deer. Oh, my God. I think I killed a deer. And I got out of the car and I tried to pick it up, and it got up. Like, miraculously got up uninjured, walked away. And I looked at myself, and I wasn't injured in any way. Okay, so that's the important stuff. I looked at the car. It was trashed, but that's just a piece of tin. And I don't even recognize myself in this moment yet because that would not be my reaction ever. And I pulled the car to the side of the road, and I started to call my wife. And then I said to myself, well, why am I calling her to tell her about this? She'll get all worked Up. There's no point in that. She's taking care of two little kids. I hung up the phone. I don't need her help. I'm a grown man. I can get myself home. So the car was drivable, actually, and I just drove it really, really slow. And it took me a long time to get home. I put it in the body shop, and then I took an Uber to my house and I went to sleep. I didn't lose any sleep. The insurance company will buy me a new car. There's nothing I can do. I can't go back in time. I can't change anything. So if I get angry and upset, who am I hurting? Just me.

That's it.

Just myself. So I'm not going to beat myself up over it. It's done. My son woke up in the morning and he said, somebody stole your car. Somebody stole your car. And I was like, no, no, relax. I got home late. I just had an accident. What? You had an accident? You didn't call me? What happened? Tell me what happened. I'm like, I didn't want to tell you because you're acting like that. And he's like, what have you done with my father? Who are you? So, you know, all of a sudden, my kids are like, you're not upset? And I'm like, no, I'm not upset. It's just a car. I don't care. And they were like, wow, you know, they didn't. They didn't. They're in their 20s, so they, they. They didn't grow up with this Ray, unfortunately. And I said, guys, if I. If I messed you up, I'm sorry. You get free therapy for life. You know, I. What can I tell you? I didn't know this until I was 50 years old. I apologize. You know, now my wife and I, we have two younger ones, and, you know, they're getting it much better. Much better situation. So, yeah, I mean, that was the. When I lost those negative emotions, it was life changing for me. And, and, and, and. And I'm a person who had an NDE back in the day, and, and that's the only other thing that I can compare to this mo. That moment right there, the deer moment, it was that relevant. Those two things were major catalysts in my life.

Before I ask you about your NDA, I just want to go back to something you said there. You said retraining your brain. Okay. Yeah. So is the brain something different to the awareness?

Let me apologize. You know, it's retraining your mind. The Brain creates the mind, but the mind controls the brain, and the mind controls everything. But it didn't rhyme. So I called and retrained the brain so people would remember it, and I put it in a book that way. But it's. You're retraining your mind then, and. And you're retraining in particular. You're going to your conscious mind instead of allowing your ego to shoot out ahead of time and make the decision as to what you're going to do. Because let's face it, you can be in a moment when your boss is in your face and yelling at you, right? And you shoot back and you just lost your job and who knows, you know, how much money or whatever, when all you had to do was just say, all right, let him. You know, let him be what he is, and I'll be the bigger person and I'll come back tomorrow and I'm going to do my job, make my money, and I don't really care about him, and I'll go look for a new job behind his back. But the thing you don't want to do is engage it and heighten it, because if he's foolish enough to go there, you don't want to change the direction of your life because you reacted to something, because that's real regret now, right? And nobody wants to feel regret. Remorse, guilt, shame. Those are the worst, the lowest emotions anyone can feel.

So the brain is really just a biological container or. Biological. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, just an organ.

Ray, can you tell us about your nde? I was. I was. With the thing that. What I wanted to ask you about was you had an NDE quite young in life when you were a child, and yet from that nde, from that. That profound experience of going through that, which was. It was a profound experience that you had, you progressed instead of progressing to a more spiritual teenage life, to a young adult, you went into atheism. How did you. How did you go from that, that experience that most people don't have, that profound spiritual experience to atheism?

So we have to go all the way back to childhood. And I told you a little bit about it and how it was a troubled one. And my parents were Catholic, and when I chose atheism, I was very young. I didn't really understand what that even meant. I was just rebelling against them. And. And Catholicism didn't really add up to me anyway. It didn't really make enough sense for me to accept all of it. Some of it short, but some of it was just a Little too much. So I, I would have rebelled against whatever religion they were. Wouldn't have made any difference. The point was, is I was a rebellious person because, you know, I was experiencing that chaos. So as I approach my 20s, I am experienced. I'm in a place where I'm very troubled, I'm very confused, you know, and, and, and a lot of. But the atheism came before the NDE, because the NDE comes when I'm 20. And I was at home and I was sleeping in the upstairs bedroom, which is directly over the kitchen. And the stove. And the stove had a gas leak. And the gas was rising all night long. And it was going up because it was natural gas. It went up into my room where I inhaled it. I didn't know that I was inhaling it. I was asleep. So in the morning, my mother came down and must have turned the stove on. And it was a ball of flames that came out. And then it caught the wall on fire and there was some smoke. But the way I understand it, my father was able to put it out with a fire extinguisher. And the fire wasn't that bad. But it's not the fire or the smoke, it's the gas. So I hear the police cars and the fire trucks pulling up. And I go to get out of bed to see what's happening downstairs. And I find that certain parts of my body are not moving. Like paralyzed almost. They weigh a thousand pounds. My legs, my head, my face. I couldn't yell. Very strange feeling. My arms worked and I pulled myself to the side of the bed in the hopes of getting out of it. Not thinking of what I was going to do next. But I knew if I didn't get out of that bed that I was dead. That much I knew. And I'm pulling myself and pulling myself and eventually I get to the edge and I tumble out and I landed face first on the floor. And you know how if you've ever been hit in the face or anywhere for that matter, you get hit and then you're waiting for the pain, right? The pain's going to set in soon. You know it's coming. It never came. That was the first inkling I had that something was very different. And in that moment, not feeling any pain, I'm not in that body anymore. And it's because I'm above it and I'm looking down on my lifeless body. The room was a square. I was in the upper left hand corner. My body is down there on the side of the bed. And I'm looking at it and I'm not scared. And I don't know why I'm not scared. I'm just not. In fact, I feel incredible. I feel energy flowing through me like I've never felt in my entire life. This euphoria just filled my being. Well, I don't have a being. I'm just energy. And actually across the diagonal, right, the other corner diagonally for me was where the white light was coming through and it was coming onto me. So my energy and that white lights. Energy became one. And that light is everything. It's painlessness, it's euphoric, it is beauty, it's just. It's everything. To call it a white light is just diminishing its beautifulness. And that light at the. Was made like a tunnel. At the end of that tunnel was a being who said it, Ray, it's okay to come into the light. And I. And I trusted the being. And I wasn't very trusting at 20 years old, but I just naturally went into the light. And as I went in, the euphoria would increase and I was. I really wanted to keep going and go to the other side, but that's when my father kicks in. The door, comes to pick me up, and he's screaming and crying and calling for the paramedics. And he's holding me like I've never really seen him hold me. And I'm a little stunned because, you know, this guy hugged me through maybe five times my whole life, and one of them I was dead. So I was like, wow, you know, maybe, you know, maybe I got him all wrong. You know, I start. I wanted that. I wanted that relationship that everybody wants to have with their father, but I didn't have it. So in that moment when I saw the actual tears, the actual love, I never saw him cry. I asked the being at the end of the light if I could go back. And I don't know if that's what allowed me to go back. I'm not saying that it was or wasn't, but I did wake up after that. And I was on the living room now, downstairs on the living room floor, flat on my back, and the paramedics are working on me doing their stuff. And, and. And I still have the residual of the euphoria, right? So that's still flowing through me. And I'm like, guys, guys, I. I'm great. I feel fantastic. And. And they're like, son, you're a lot of things, but fantastic is not one of them. So just stay put and Let us do what we got to do. And I'm watching them, and I'm like, but, but, but. Did you see the light? Did you hear the voice? I mean, come on, you saw that, right? And now they're looking at each other like I'm completely crazy, and I'm worried that I'm going to go to the wrong hospital, one that I can't check out of if I don't shut up fast. So I do, and I just let them do their thing. They bring me to the hospital, check me out, and I'm just, like, stunned. I was released the next day, and I don't know what I saw or what I felt. I mean, I know, but I don't know. And I'm going to show my age here, but I didn't have a computer that I could just type in, you know, I died and I saw something. I had nothing. There was nowhere to go. So I told my mother, and she was like, that didn't happen. And I was like, come on, that didn't happen. Don't ever say that to anybody. They'll think you're crazy.

Shut up.

All right? And you know it. And I understand. Both my parents, I understand. I forgive. They came from different places, much worse than mine. They did give me and my brother a better life than they had. They had a horrendous. They both had horrendous childhoods, so this was considered an upgrade. And I. And I get that it took. My mother was 82 years old and read the first book when she said. She. We talked about the nde, and she said, bob, you must really hate me. And I said, I don't hate you at all. In fact, I completely understand you, and I love you. And we have a better relationship today than we've ever had, because now I understand how the mind works, and I understand all the things that she did. And I understand that she went through denial, because if my kid died on my watch, I go through denial, too, so. But anytime I expressed any of this, I was told I was crazy. So I didn't have any place to take it, so I had to put it away. I had to make it not real. So how do I make this not real? This is what I do. I justify it in my mind. When I fell, I probably fell in front of a window, and it was a sunny day, and there's the white light, and I inhaled so much gas that I was high out of my mind. And I hallucinated the voice and the light and everything else. And there you Go. And I put it away in a box. I didn't have to deal with it. I just went right back to my atheism and held on to that. But here's what happens. It's about maybe a year later, I move out and I get my own apartment for the first time. It's. It's my bachelor pad. And I'm like, this is going to be great. You know, we're going to parties all the time and it's going to be awesome. And none of that happens because from the moment I move into this apartment and I am completely alone, it feels like it's filled with people, like I'm being looked at. It is the weirdest, strangest feeling that begins to occur. And then I start seeing lines shoot across the white walls because I never painted the walls. So I'm seeing these black lines just shooting around. And then I see little swirlies out of the corner of my eyes. I'm seeing energy and I'm feeling energy. And I had a pretty good sense of energy as a child because I used to hide from what was happening in my home. And it would be like a six hour meditation if I was hiding under my bed or if I was hiding in the closet because I didn't want to come out and be part of what was going on. So I'm just staring at a wall and eventually you can start to see the energy that makes up the wall. So now I cross over at the age of 20. I cross over, I die. I come back. I can see energy pretty clearly and I feel the effects of it now. Later I'll learn that this energy are people that have died. It's what's left over. And I. I try not to use the word soul or spirit. And I try to kind of stay with something more scientific. I call them energy beings throughout the whole book and. But I don't know this yet. All I know is I'm in this apartment, strange things are happening. And I keep calling the maintenance guy because all the electricity goes on. It goes off, the lights flicker. This happens. The TV changes. Something goes on in the kitchen. I'm petrified. I am scared out of my mind. I cannot sleep. And you know what the maintenance guy says to me? I called him like 30 times. He said, there's nothing wrong with your apartment. Don't ever call me again. You're effing crazy. Everybody's telling me I'm crazy. So I accept that as my truth. I'm crazy. But here's the thing. I had the worst case of insomnia living in that apartment than I ever had. So I started using massive amounts of drugs and alcohol to just to go to sleep, to make this stuff stop. And this goes on. I moved out. I had a one year lease, but I moved out two months early and moved out in the 10th month. I just left. I couldn't take it anymore. Moved into another apartment, went in, thought I was going to have a clean slate. Maybe that house was haunted or whatever. No, no, no. I moved in the same thing. It's not the house, it's Ray. Ray's haunted. That's, that's the end of that. So I started thinking, okay, I'm crazy. More alcohol, more drugs. I'm in my young twenties. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that that NDE was real. I just, I know I put it in the box and I'm not dealing with it and I'm not addressing it, but I know it's real. So I don't fear death. A young 20 year old high on drugs who does not fear death is a recipe for disaster. And I start working for shady people who, you know, now I'm in situations where I can live or die. And I'm okay with that because I welcomed the chaos and I even tried to up the ante, see how close I could get to death again, because frankly, it was a beautiful experience and I had no reason to live. So that went on for a long time, many, many years. More drugs, more alcohol, putting myself in bad situations.

Can you give us an examp an example of one bad situation where you were in and that you, that you came out the other side of?

There's one situation where we were in a bar after hours and there was two groups of people, the owners of the bar and some other associates I had never seen before. And you know, they were basically having a conversation or a sit down or whatever the hell they call it. And I was buying the bar and somebody grabbed me and said, hey, can you force drinks? And I looked at the boss and he gave me the head nod. And so I started pouring drinks for the guys. I don't know how to bartend, but I'm, you know, I'm just doing it. I was about to walk out and somebody says, ask for something that's not. I had to go and unlock the cabinet for. And so I bent down and as I bent down to get the bottle out, I hear pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I know what that is and I know what bullets sound like. They're not. It sounds like firecrackers. It's not firecrackers. I know exactly what that is. And now I'm not getting up because I don't know if they remember I'm down there or not. And I need to get the hell out of there fast. So that being that was at the end of the light is the same one that tells me to go out the side door. Side door, side door. That's all I hear. Side door, side door. And I'm froze because if I go to the side door, they're going to see me. If I get up. Once I get up, the shooter or shooters can see me, but I have no other alternative. So I make a break for that side door and I get out the side door, but then you have to go through another door, go down this long corridor about 40ft, and then go out the next side door, which is actually a fire exit. And got me to the outside and I made it. Obviously, I get out there and my car was parked right outside that door. I never ever once parked there. I had my own spot and it was on the other side of the building. But for some reason I put it in front of that door or next to that door that night and I. And I got out of there. And every time I found myself in that situation, it was the same being who would get me out of it. How do you know how to get out?

How do you know it was the same being?

No idea.

You could you just feel the same. You feel his presence the same?

Yes. It's like it's you're feeling or it's an energetic feeling. And. Yeah, it comes with something that I can't explain. I don't know how to put it into words. It's a feeling that I know it's him or her. Well, I did. I didn't know if it was a him or her back then. I got some clarity on that later on. But at this point I don't. I don't really know and nor do I care because he's always there for me. And I don't even know why. I mean, like, I don't feel particularly deserving of that. But he was there and I was grateful. So this goes on for a good, I don't know, eight years, nine years or so. And then I get married and have two kids. And that's the moment. Now I have something to live for. I always said I was going to have two sons, so I know I willed them into the world and now they are my responsibility. And I cannot live this lifestyle. I cannot do alcohol and drugs anymore. I've just got to be, you know, I got to do everything right. So I check myself into rehab, then I go back to college and I get my degree, I get a great job, I work my way up, I get another job, I work my way up again. And I am changing every single thing about myself. The old Ray is dead, I think. But the problem is, is I haven't fixed this yet. But we'll get to that. I'm fixing everything on the outside, but I'm not fixing everything on the inside. So my kids, I'm gonna give them a different. I'm saying this myself. I'm going to give them a better life. I'm going to tell them I love them every day. I'm going to hug them every day. And I do. To this day, I still do. They didn't want for anything. They had enough money. So in that regard, I think I did a pretty good job. Now the marriage falls apart pretty quickly with their mother, just a couple of years, in fact. So I was single for a very long time. I was hesitant to bring another woman into their life. So I waited until, I think I was mid-40s, maybe something like that, until I actually went on a dating site to find someone. And when you're on a dating site, there's. They give you some examples of women in your area to try to entice a guy to take out his credit card and join, right? So I went on one of these sites, and the woman who was the third one down on the right, I looked at her like I've never looked at anybody before in my life. It was like I knew her. And I said, that's my wife. And I couldn't get over it. So I took out my card, I joined the site, I sent one email only to her, and explained to her, you know, here's the deal. You're my wife. You don't know this yet. By the way, my name's Ray. Would you like to have dinner? I can explain the whole thing. And she back to me like, you're out of your mind. You're crazy. And I said, I know. Everybody tells me that, you know, so, you know, luckily she found it funny. And I actually copied and pasted that email in the first book, and it's pretty funny. Anyway, so we do have that dinner, and things are about to change significantly when I meet her, because here's what happens. We're dating. And my first birthday with her as My girlfriend comes up, and just before it, the conversation comes up of, so, what are your spiritual beliefs? And I was like, I don't know. What are yours? I was just going to say yes to whatever she said. And she was smarter than that. She pushed it back on me. She goes, why don't you think about it? I said, I've actually been meaning to get to that, really try to figure that out, because I don't know what I am. I don't think I'm an atheist. I'm probably agnostic. I don't know what I am anymore. So she says, I'm going to get you a spiritual clearing for your birthday. I don't know what this is. I was like, is it like a massage? And she's like, no, no, no. And I was like, oh, okay. So we'll have cake. Yeah, yeah, we'll have cake. So turns out I don't even have to be there for the spiritual clearing. The woman calls me on the phone and tells me what she's going to do. And it's distant healing, and she does it. And she says, if you feel strange afterwards, just call me back. And sure enough, I feel strange afterwards. But I don't call her back. And I remember I was in my office, and I came out of my office, and I was walking across the hallway to go to the bathroom. And all of a sudden, out. Like, my equilibrium was off. I was like, just, like, shaking out the cotton web. So that's strange. And then I started to feel the room fill up again like it used to. And things are starting to go back to that apartment. It's going to be like that again, I think. And it's coming, and I'm seeing it, and I'm feeling it. I'm like, oh, God, no, not that. Anything but that. So the portal, or whatever that I had managed to ignore or. Or close even, maybe it was opened wide up again. And now here it comes. The first time I see an energy being in a human form, I feel vibrations. The vibrations. I see the lines. I see the swirlies. I close my eyes, and what happens is what appears to be a movie screen opens up in my mind. It's just black. And then on the movie screen is this man. And he says the same thing all the time. I effed up. I made a mistake. You can help her. I cannot. I've never seen this man before in my life. I don't know who he is. I'm not seeing him with my eyes. So I'm closing my eyes and I See him in this movie screen, I call it. And he comes back later and he says it again. I effed up. I made a mistake. You can help her. I cannot. I don't know what's happening to me right now. Like, I just don't know. I'm still in the realm of thinking I'm crazy because no one's ever clarified any of this for me. And now I'm seeing people. So the man is stocky. He's got a beard and a mustache. He's got thick black hair. I can't. I don't recognize him at all. That was a Friday, and I was at work. Like I said. I left work early and went home. I figured, I'll just sleep this off. I don't know what this is, but this will go away. Saturday morning. As soon as I wake up, there he is again. Same thing. It's like an eight second video loop. And it plays over and over and over all day Saturday. By Sunday, it felt like it was every five minutes. And I couldn't function anymore. Like I couldn't drive. I couldn't focus on a conversation with anyone. I could no longer. It was taking me over. And I remember the breaking point. I was at a store and I'm paying for my. My stuff that was on the counter. And the lady says, are you okay, sir? I don't know what I did or said, but she asked me if I'm okay. And I said, no, no, I'm not okay. I really would have just jumped into her arms if she said, you know, let me get you help. I would have been okay. And I took my credit card back and I went back to the car and I put my head down and I was like, come on, man. I went to rehab. I got my college degree. I got my act together. I did everything I was supposed to do. And now this stuff again. I was so frustrated. I'm insane and I don't know what to do. So I start making sure my will, my DNR, and all my paperwork is in order while I'm still sane, quote, unquote. I start to plan for my own demise. I'm going to be put away. I'm not going to be saying I want to make sure my kids are taken care of. There's no, you know, battles about money or anything. And I call my brother, make sure he's got that paperwork, and he's like, is everything okay? And I was like, yeah, yeah, it's fine. I just want to make sure you have it. Which wasn't the truth, but I didn't want to get into it with him. And I now have to tell this woman I. I fell in love with the truth because she has a right to know so she can move on with her life. She's going to be stuck with a crazy person. I got to tell her. So if this story isn't crazy enough, she is a doctor of psychology and neuropsychology by trade. Can't make this stuff up. So I'm about to tell my girlfriend, who's a doctor of psychology, that I see people that aren't really there. This is going to go over great. And I'm expecting that she's just going to give me, like a referral to a psychiatrist and say, never call me again. Just call this person right here. But that's not what she does. Remember, this is the same woman that got me a spiritual clearing and my soulmate. And here's why. She's like, tell me what's going on. I said, well, this guy, you know, appears what looks like a movie screen, and he's, you know, very overbearing, and he's right here. And he says, I effed up. I made a mistake. You can help her. I cannot. I don't know who he is, what it means. He's got a facial hair, thick black hair, stocky guy. And she goes, oh, that sounds like my dad. And now I'm thinking she's crazy. I said, your dad's dead, honey. I. You think I see dead people? And she's like, yeah, you might be a psychic medium and you don't know it yet. I was like, what the hell's a medium? I don't even know what that means. And she says, don't worry about it. It's fine. And I'm like, it's not fine. You don't understand. It's not fine. He keeps coming back. It's not fine. And she's like, here's what we'll do. I will take you to see a medium, and you can sit with her and you guys can talk shop, and you can find out everything that you see, how you see it, and blah, blah, blah. And then you can decide if you're crazy. What have I got to lose? I said, sure, sounds great. Meanwhile, after I had told her the guy was gone, never came back. There's a. There's a reason for that. I'll get to that in a moment. So I sit with the medium, and she's like. I introduced myself. Hi, I'm Ray. And she goes, oh, you're that Ray. I don't know what that means yet, but I sat down and she's like, why are you here? And I said, I'm crazy. I think I'm losing my mind. I see people that aren't there. And she chuckles and goes, me too. Me too. Yeah. And that doesn't make me feel better. And moment. And so she says, tell me what happens. I said, well, I get the vibrations, and then sometimes they're up here and sometimes they're down here. This is going to be something bad. I just know. And then something good. I know. And I see the lines and the swirlies. And then the movie screen opens up and she goes, stop. I said, what? She goes, that's exactly what I see and how I see it. And I was like, you're shitting me, right? She's like, no. And it was like this weight was lifted off my shoulder. And I'm close to 50 years old and I'm finally talking to one person who doesn't say I'm crazy. I can't even explain to you that feeling. The first time in my life, I was not judged as crazy. And I could actually talk to her. And she said. She even confided in me that when she was a young kid, her parents had her institutionalized for being schizophrenic. She was never schizophrenic. So we kind of bonded in that moment. And she helped me out for the first year, and she taught me things that I really needed to know, like how to address this, how to turn it on, turn it off, how it. So it's not, you know, overly overbearing. And she also taught me. She said, well, when you gave the message to your wife, what did the guy do? And I said, he was gone. She goes, exactly. That message was for her. It was her dad. You gave her the message, and he's gone now. I was like, okay, I get it. So he just wouldn't wanted my attention to give that message. That's all it was.

Okay. Wow. Wow.

Yeah.

When you see you. When you said you see these swirlies and these, like, breaks in your vision, how often do you see these beings? How often do you see these?

Every day. Really?

How many times a day?

Oh, I can't even put a count on it. My God. Sometimes it's like seven in an hour. But I don't have to address them. I don't have to welcome them in and allow them to communicate. See, it's my theory, and it's just my. My own Theory. Let me preface this. I was trying to figure out from a physics perspective because the thing about me, I was the biggest skeptic in the world, right? So I needed some scientific data that would back up these phenomena. So what I figured out, or what I think I figured out, is where we go when we die physically, not whether it's heaven or hell or etc. Etc. Where, where that is physically within our universe. And when the first law of thermodynamics says no new energy can come into the universe, no energy can leave, the universe can't cease to exist, it just recycles. It goes from thing to thing. And like Einstein taught us, energy can become matter, matter can become energy, okay? So I started to think, well, there's this life energy that lives within us. It's consciousness or spirit or soul. I call it consciousness. And when we die, that energy, according to the first law of thermodynamics, cannot cease to exist. So atheism is wrong right there. It cannot be. We have to go somewhere. That energy has to go somewhere. So where does it go? I didn't know right away, but then I started, I heard something about dark matter and dark energy and I was like, wait a minute, the universe is expanding due to dark energy? We have no idea where that energy comes from. And here's an energy that's escaping our bodies and we don't know where it's going. It just seemed like a perfect match. Dark energy is pushing the universe, keeping it growing in size faster than the speed of light. Einstein theorized it. Hubble proved that to be true. That part's true. And so, and, and the, the density of space never changes. So more dark energy goes in. It's expansive. And that's why the stars that you see at night don't. That light never makes it to Earth to burn us to a crisp. Otherwise we, we all these suns would, would burn us, right? So practically it seemed to make sense to me that when we die, that's where we go physically. We're still in the here and now. There's dark energy between you and I right now, between me and Pluto right now. You know, it's everywhere. So just being able to see little lines in the matrix, so to speak, is not that hard. You can do it if you want to. I'm not saying the full on communication and I'm not recommending that necessarily, but you can do a lot of this.

So would you say that Jessica's dad, he was trying to pass on that message so he could progress further And I guess in the universe or no.

That message saved somebody's life. Actually, that was a really serious message and we didn't figure it out from that first message. He had several more that he brought forth eventually, and we wound up saving someone in his family's life as a result. And I don't want to say too much without, you know, it's their personal information, so I want to respect that privacy. But that led to us trying to save somebody's life. And we did it. We did it. And we couldn't do it by saying, you know, we saw so and so who's dead, because who would believe that? So we had to devise a way to get this person to the doctor so that it could be uncovered.

Ray, is there a difference between energy beings and, and guides? Like for your guide, is that the same as, as somebody who died? Like, is there a difference?

There's a difference. A guide, I believe, is at a higher level of a higher realm or higher plane of living, if you will. So if we'll say that, for lack of a better terminology, this has been referred to as the third realm because it's a three dimensional state. So we'll use this as three immediately upon death. That would be four. That's your dark energy, and then there's a fifth. And the fifth is where, I believe, when you're an enlightened being on Earth, or when you're enlightened being wherever you are, because I don't think Earth is the only place there's intelligent life when you pass on, if you're an enlightened being, like say the Buddha who, who told us this, he said to his disciples, right on his deathbed, I'm not coming back. I've done what I have to do here. He became enlightened and he goes to that level if you're not enlightened. And this is just my theory again, this is all just me thinking, which is dangerous, apparently, that you go to that higher level and if you don't, then you're probably going to come back and do a repeat and you're going to be wiped clean and you're going to have to get from zero to enlightenment, and you do it in like one shot, and then you get to get to that level. Because the difference is that at that level there's no human form anymore. There's nothing. It's just lines. That's it. There's a different feeling and presence that comes with it. There's often very clear advice. And, you know, when you're Talking to someone in the fourth realm, it's just. It's like you're just talking to them when they were alive. It's not. They don't. They don't really. Nothing really changes too much except they know what they did wrong. They see that. They know what they did right. They see that. So there's a lot of remorse and regret and stuff like that that I take in and give to other people, which is why I stopped practicing mediumship, was because it was too taxing for me to do it. It was too emotionally challenging. And I just reached this level where I had gotten rid of these emotions, so to speak, and I didn't want to experience them on a regular basis. My mentor does three readings or four readings a day. I don't know how he does it, because that's just. I couldn't do that.

Is that Psychic Joe who you talk about in your book?

Yeah.

Yeah. Is there time? Is there time in the afterlife? Does time exist?

Not at all. Absolutely not. No. We made that up. We made up time. That's our thing. We decided the earth's going to go around the sun. That's going to be one year. We just made that up.

So if. How. If you were to theorize, what is the state of the afterlife? What is it? What is it? Just a timeless state of bliss. Is it happiness? What is even happiness?

I don't know. I wouldn't say it's happiness necessarily. I've spoken to plenty of people who. All they want to do is get through and apologize to somebody or to, you know, get a. Get a message across. The ones that usually come through, I don't. I mean, they. They express love. Right. But there's always a. A problematic message that's coming through, like saving somebody's life. And that's happened to me more than once. And I've had suicides and drug overdoses and all kinds of. Of regret and remorse, and it. It just takes its toll. And no one ever comes through. That's. For me, that's just pure love. I maybe had that once, you know, but for the most part, you know, there's a lot. That's why I hug my kids every day. That's why I tell them I love them every day. That's why the title of the book is, you're still alive now act like it. So that we don't overlook that because we don't want to be on the other side, one of those people with regret and remorse. I should have done this. I should have done that. Now I got to find a medium. I don't want to be that person.

Nowadays, suicide is an epidemic where, especially with men, young men, what would you say to anybody out there who is thinking about ending it, who's thinking about, you know, leaving this? Like, what would you say to that person?

You know, if you're in that. If you're in that place, you look at it as. You can do anything, okay? You're. I. If you're. If you're that low, it's usually guilt and shame that drives you there, right? And you get to that point, you.

You.

First of all, you got to reach out for help. You gotta tell somebody. You gotta talk to everybody that will listen to you, okay? Because there's plenty of time to get to the light. And, you know, we don't need to rush that. It's always going to be there, right? But if you're at that point now, think about it. You can do anything. You can do anything you want. Take chances. Do whatever you want. You know, the things that hold us back from. From progressing sometimes is the fact that we have obligations, right? So if you're in a zone where you're, you know, there's plenty of time to get to that light, come on back in, jump back in the water, get some help, right? Call somebody, anybody, and start to play the game of life less seriously. And I don't mean get. Get dangerous. Don't risk your life. I mean, now. Take risks. Build a business. Take chances. Do things like that. People that were given six months to live or three months to live, were studied or one year to live, two years to live, they change their perception of reality completely in a way that we should all do it. Tell people we love them every day. Take chances, go to places they've never gone before. Live the life they've always wanted to live. It's just. That's the way we all should be living our lives. Reach out for help. That's the way you feel fast. Reach out fast. There's two. You're missing out on too much.

Sorry, last question. I'm going to ask you, Ray, what's it like being out of the body? What's. What's. What's that. What's that feeling like?

Euphoric, ineffable, undescribable. Amazing. But like I said, there's plenty of time to get there. I don't want to romanticize it to the point where, you know, everybody like, oh, this is great. I'll just do this. No, you have purpose here. You have a mission to carry out. We all do. And we have to carry that out. Otherwise you're just going to come back and repeat anyway. So focus on what needs to be done. But yes, when the time comes, don't fear it because it is definitely beautiful. It's beautiful.

Ray, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed listening to you. Thank where can, where can people find you? Where can people check your stuff out?

You can find me@ray catania.com and you there's more about the books there, my coaching and other things that are coming up. So Ray Catania.com thank you. Thank you for allowing me to say that and thank you for having me.

My pleasure. And guys, check out the description of this video. He will be links to his website. Guys, thank you so much. And Ray, thank you so much.