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Now let's dive into today's episode. I like to welcome
to the show, and Tom Gross spelled with g r
os Z. Just for clarification, how are you, my friend?
Speaker 2: Very fine? Thank you so much for the in right.
I was my pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here. I'm looking forward
to going down the rabbit hole with your with your
your life story and what you've gone through in love
is your very interesting character in that sense because you,
from my understanding, you were you were born into a
very very atheist family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually call them devout atheists. Uh, that's a
new one. They were there, they were amazing. I was
six years old and my grandfather sat me on his
knee and he said, God is the sum total of
man's ignorance. Wow. We used to think the Son was God.
Then we learned how the sun works. Now the Son's
not God anymore. Someday humanity will learn how everything works,
and there'll be no more need for God at all.
And of course when you're six years old, you believe
your grandfather, especially since he is the loudest one in
the family and always wins all the arguments.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you before we go down, before
we go down the path, why you know from this
point of view, this perspective. Now you know you've obviously
been around the block a little bit. If you live
life looking back at your family, what what was the
cause of such a devout atheist situation and not just
one person, but it seemed like a bunch of people
in your family. What do you think caused that?
Speaker 2: Well, I think to a great degree. First off, there
with a lot of science in the family, you have
to be able to improve it. And people say I
believe in God, I believe in a higher power, Well
prove it to me, show me point to God. You
know you can't do that because it's an inner thing,
which I have since learned. But the other thing was
clearly it was a Jewish family. And so my mother,
my grandfather and daughter told me if there were a God,
which there isn't, but if there were, i'd speaking his
eye for what he allowed to have happened to the Jews.
In the second World War. So I had a little
boy was told that not only God didn't exist, but
if he did, he's pretty evil for letting all this
stuff happen. So I think that's maybe the basis for
all the things that happened to their ancestors and to
their family.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting because you know, I've also known and
spoken to many many Jewish people that came from the
Holocaust and have experience in it. And you went one
of two ways. You either went the way your family went,
or you went the complete opposite way of believing more
in God. And God is the one that God us
through it, and God is and so it's really fascinating
to see the perspective of a person with the same
same event creating these two different, very different, wildly different
views on reality.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely absolutely. And of course when you're little, you
do have no idea. I remember I'm, you know, five
years old and arguing with my friend Beverly, and she says,
but if there were no God, how would you know
not to kill other people? And I tell Beverly, I
just know that's wrong. You just don't do it because
it's not the right thing. I don't need God from that,
so I didn't believe in a thing. I personally modified
my views to agnosticism as I got older, because it
wasn't worth arguing about, you know, and you know, so
forth and you know. But then of course, when I
had my you know, epiphany at age thirty seven, everything, So.
Speaker 1: Let's go down that road a bit. So for thirty
first thirty seven years, you start off atheist, and you
went to agnostic essentially, and then at thirty seven you
happen to die. Can you you just died?
Speaker 2: Been there, done that?
Speaker 1: They as they say, so, tell us what happened, What
led up to the day on the day of your death,
what led up to your actual death?
Speaker 2: Okay, it's really an interesting story, and it goes a
little sideways. But there was a death in my family.
My sister's husband, a young man, very lovely fellow, died
early on and my sister, who obviously was raise in
the same family, atheistic family that was, she found solace
and comfort in side yoga meetings of the city of
a group. And my mother was sympathetic with my sister,
but she said to me, what do you find I
want your sister is doing? Why does she need that
religious group. So I can't talk to my sister, and
she sent me a book by Baba Mokdananda, who was
the founder of side Yoga on meditation. Now I'm in
my you know, like thirties. I'm thirty seven years old
at the time, hadn't thought about God at all. But
I got into this meditation. Hey, let me try it.
Let me see what it did. And I read it
and it, Oh, it very creates peace inside. It was very,
very peaceful, and I kind of was a natural. I
felt really really good at it, and so I would meditate.
And one night I was meditating just before going to
bed because it calmed me down. I had a big
day at work tomorth you know. The next day and
I'm meditating and for some reason, when I was sitting
on the can looking at a candle flame, but I
had let all the air out of my body. And
I don't know why I had done that, I just did.
And I met it and suddenly I was below the
ceiling looking down at my head and I thought myself,
Oh my god, if this is me up here, who's
that down there? Or if that's me down there, who
is this up here? And I took in a breath
and I went back in my body, and I thought, wow,
that's cool. Yeah, I wasn't afraid at all. And I
being a scientist, right, you know, the having to prove everything,
I realized, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if I
let my body because I didn't have any air inside.
I wonder if that bust the meditation is what made me,
you know, go, you know, on top of my head.
I gotta do this again, and I have to do it,
and I'll keep my breath out longer because I'll bet
if I stayed out longer, I could have looked around
more and seen more from outside, so there was no
fear at all. The next weekend, I decided to try
it again. My wife is downtown shopping with our daughter.
My nine year old son is playing in his room.
I decide, hey, it's a good day to do it,
to beat my body. So I read out and I
ride on my bed with my hands folded like this.
I'm on my my stomach, leaning on my elbows. Enough
three times let all the air out, and I say,
I'm not going to breathe again until I'm unconscious.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: Because I knew that the body will normally bring things. Now,
I didn't do anything stupid like put tape on my
nose or mouth. I mean, you know, you know I'm
not that off the wall, right, But I said, I'm
not going to breathe in until I leave my body again,
like I did, you know, las week And the clock
goes around once, and the second hand goes around again,
and I'm beginning to get whoa some pain in the body.
I begin shaking like I'm in an earthquake, and then
I feel like I am drowning. I get a flood,
and then I feel like I'm burning up in a fire.
And I later learned that according to the Tibetans in
the writing of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, that
these are the first three steps in leaving your body
and dying. You lose the earth element, the water element,
and then the fire element. The next thing is the
air element, which i'd already left and didn't have inside
my lungs. The only thing holding me to my body
was something called the ether element, which sounds pretty nebulous
to me. Anyway, there I am, and I'm asking myself.
You know, am I conscious? Am I know? If I
were unconscious, i'd be breathing. And I'm not breathing now,
so I won't. And I held it out and I
held it out, and the pain got worse, and I
thought to myself, I suddenly realized I was dying. And
I said to myself, no, God won't let me die
while I'm looking for him. And I what, you know,
what did I just say? But and then I saw
a little light on the top of my head and
it got bigger and bigger, and I thought, oh, my gosh,
that must be the tunnel of going through into the
light that Raymond Moody wrote about in his book Life
After Life. I had read that book. And there was
another sad thing. My wife's sister's husband, a young man,
died from childhood diabetes at the young at a young age,
and so she had read Life After Life and gave
that to me. And I had compared Mukdnanda and Raymond
Moody the spiritual and you know, the the near death experience,
and thook it was the only, by the way, the
only leap of faith I ever took. It was, Gee,
what if body and mind really are separate. That would
you know, the only in any event there I am
this tunnel, this right, you know, gets bigger and bigger, bigger,
and I suddenly went through. I have not breathed because
it's been over three minutes and no air in the lungs,
and I was in a space of brightness, unbelievable, greater, brighter,
more incredible than anything I could ever believe existed. And further,
there were a feeling of greater number of dimensions how
do you describe but three dimensions perah that was nothing.
There are so many more, and it was, you know, incredible.
At this point, my body is in such pain I
can't I took a breath in I fall off the bed.
I start moving, my body going around rockets in an
epileptic fit, which made sense because my mother and uncle
both had epileptic fits at age thirty nine and I
was thirty seven. But inside I was at such peace
has I can't tell you the peace, the comfort, the joy,
one of the feel inside well, my body has going
crazy on the floor. At this point, my wife comes
in the room. She is driven home from shopping. Our son,
who had looked in the room, has gone out to
meet her at the driveway and to put her mind
that he says, Daddy's not dead. Daddy's not dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that puts you to lady.
Speaker 2: Foots her mind, didies. I'm rolling around and while I'm
rolling on the floor, you know, in this peaceful thing,
all right, I I can't move. I feel wires pulled
out of my head like the old telephone switchboard, and
then at some point they get put back in, but
I feel them being put back in in a different place.
I can't understand any of it at the time. And
then when I can finally control my body, the first
thing that happens is I am on my knees on
the ground. My hands are fullded like this in front
of my face, and my first words are I am reborn.
I am reborn in God. And I was so embarrassed
to hear me say that, m God. But my life
made a complete right turn at that point, and I
knew that everything that people have said about God it
was true. There is a greater reality. It may not
be out there where we can physically prove it by
Newton's laws, but it does exist. And that's how it happened.
That's where my life changed, and from that point on
everything is different.
Speaker 1: After you came back, How did the people around you
kind of deal with this new version of you? Because
you are completely transformed? So how did that? How did
you and then how did you deal with that psychologically?
Because it has to be difficult?
Speaker 2: Are you crazy? What happened to you? What's the matter
with you? Yeah? I experienced it. I've been there, all right,
and I know what I experienced, and that's true. I've
got to tell you one other thing. If I made
one other historical bit, which may and all of this
makes me feel that I'm on this path that has
led to the writing of this book. That is, you
know that we're here to talk about and i'd the
interview and everything else. Why how did I get here?
The idea that when I was when I was in college,
I had an experience which seemed like it was meaningless
except now looking back, and maybe the most important thing
that happened there was a I was walking across campus
and there's a sign psychological testing going on. Five dollars hey,
And in the early nineteen sixties, five dollars was a
lot of money, man, So I had nothing else to do.
I went in I'll sign up. I went into all
the tests, and the very vast room I went into.
These were you know, grad students who had a thesis
and they needed you know, some documentations, you know, for
their for their he says. And the very best room
I went into. There were five desks panels with lights
on them and buttons red light and green light and
the buttons underneath. And there were four other students who
were in there and they said, oh, here comes another one.
We can do it now, we can We hang to
do the test, and the professor said, okay, he said,
professor standing in the corner of the room, he said,
I'm going to push a button. This is a test
how fast you can go, you know, and your reactions.
I'm going to push on. It's going to be the
same for every panel. And each of you pushed the button.
If you see green, pushed the button under green. You
see read, pushed the button under red. And we're going
to keep going faster and faster until somebody misses and
that'll be the end of the test. So we start
doing it. And I pushed red, I pushed green, I
pushed red, and then suddenly beat The professor says, oh,
somebody made a mistake. And the guy at the end,
he says, who pushed red? I said, I did. He says,
it was green. You missed. I said, no, it wasn't.
It was red. He said, no, mine was green, and
the professor said they'd both be the same. I did,
but mine was red. And the woman over on the
next side said, well, mine was green, and I don't
care what yours was. Mine was red. And he said, well,
you're you're wrong. All of us had green. You had read?
Are you calling me a I know what I experienced.
And we started, you know, raised this and went at
each other, and I suddenly felt my hand, my arms
held back behind me. It was the professor. He said, easy, son,
it was read. You were correct. This is not a
test for how fast you can react. It's a test
to how you handle peer pressure. You did very well.
You stood up for what you experienced. Now here, take
this chick, go get your five dollars, and you know
that's it.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
And now back to the show.
Speaker 2: Boy. I was sold so upset, and I pushed that
out of my memory until I had this experience. And
then when people said, no, you didn't. I said, oh, yes,
I did. I know where I've been, I know what
I've experienced. And I even remember sitting, you know, on
the couch crying, why why, Lord did I have to
wait so long to learn that you existed? And I
heard this little voice in my head, we said, if
you knew this from the beginning, how could you have
shared it with people who didn't know it. You've stood
on both sides of the river. Now you can share
that experience. So all of this I felt, even from
the very I was born in a place in New
York City, a section of New York City called Hell's Kitchens.
How far I've come back. There are meanings to everything
which we do not know, but you put it all together.
I also have felt my entire life. You know, I've
done so many things in my life. And I've been
a writer, I've been a teacher, I've you know, a
college teacher. I've been a sales and I've owned businesses.
I've done all sorts of things. But I always felt
that the later in life I did something, the more
important it would be. I'm eighty five years old that
I doesn't get, you know, I'm not going to be
around that much longer. How many more things can I
get to do this? Maybe this is the thing I
was designed for, to experience this oneness of the universe,
to realize that we are all connected, We're not separate
beause we're one tree. And you know, if I hurt you,
I'm hurting myself, you know. And to share this information
of others. And you know, as I said, I've been
on both sides. So if you tell me it doesn't
the goods, I can say, well, I've been there, but
we can now talk about that.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. So when you when you started
to come out and basically your life changed after this experience,
you also went into work with hospice. If I'm not mistaken, correct.
Speaker 2: I began, I was right. I had I had a
business at the time. I was doing all fine and
you know things, and I started caring for a fellow
in our town, in our city, upstate New York. And
he said, you know, if you like, you know, the
idea of people sould, you should take care of people's bodies.
And I became a certified home care assistant and then
I started, you know, volunteering at hospice and and I
ended up in my fifties going to uh, you know,
San Francisco, to the California Institute of Integal Studies, where
I got a PhD in the evolution of human consciousness.
And that led to some people coming up and saying, hey,
how would you like to become a priest? Excuse me? Yeah, yeah,
I'm not going to study well, you know, but yeah,
but what the five years you've just studied for your
PhD is you know, well, he's working for this, you know,
for this particular temple. So I became a priest. They
asked me to why not? And right after that there
was a an ad for they needed a chaplain for
a hospice, but you had to be a priest or
you know, an ordained minister to do it. So things
fell into place, and for the last years of my
life that's what I did, talking to people who were dying.
And I consider myself a non denominational ministry. You know
that there is no one religion. There are many, many paths,
and I love sitting at the feet of somebody who goes,
you know, who had a different path, and let them
tell me what they believe and how they find the
oneness and how they find God. For me, the only
person you have to fear is a person who says
my way is the only way right. But other than that,
just open up and listen and learn. It's just so incredible.
So yeah, that's how I spent the last years of
my life helping people pass over.
Speaker 1: And when you were going through that doing that work,
what are some of the things that you saw or
witnessed during that and were you a little bit more
hypersensitive to the spiritual side of things because of your experience,
in other words, seeing I'm not saying a shared death experience,
but things like that.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. No, I agree, it really helped.
I remember one there was this one woman who I
was in speaking to her and she started she burst
out crying at one point, and I said, don't be afraid,
you know not, you know, you know it's not painful,
it's that you will separate from She said, no, no,
she said, I'm just afraid that God won't accept me.
I've been such a sinner. I feel for it. And
I said, excuse me, I said, do you have any kids? Yeah,
because I have a daughter. I said, if your daughter
came to you and said, Mom, I've been such a
bad person. I've been so terrible, but I'm so sorry.
Do you forgive me? Would you forgive her? She said,
of course I would. I said, why should God be
any different? Mm hmm yeah, if I may share with you,
by the way, the I'll give you one other and
then I'll share this this one thing. Also, we work
with people after the death of someone a family member.
So there was the one woman or who I was
working with, and after she died, I would go see
her husband, you know, you know, for several months afterwards,
we'd said we'd have a glass of wine and talk.
I was on duty. Don't tell anyone, but I had
a class of wine on duty. But we would talk,
and every time we'd mentioned her name, you were crying,
you know. And finally, you know, an insight came to
me and I said, excuse me, John, did you love her?
Speaker 3: Of course I loved her. She was the most wonderful person.
She was the greatest white she was. And I said,
then why are you crying? I said, if you loved
her and you think of her, you should be smiling
and happy she was in your life. If you're crying.
You're thinking of yourself and what you know, and you
know this. Realizations like this came out by the experience
of being there. I will tell you one other if.
Speaker 2: If I'm any please, I was with my mother when
she died. I live was living in California at the time.
She was living back in Massachusetts near my sister, and
she had My sister is five years younger than I am,
by the way, and she had been made power of
attorney by my mother. Now I didn't, you know, didn't
bother me, but I did say, why why did you
take you know, the younger sister instead of the older brother.
She said, oh, she said, yours too. Woo woo. She said,
if anything ever happened to me, you'd say go, go go,
you know. But she'll do whatever she can to keep
me up. Give me a eye. Okay, I gotta call.
I got a call from my sister. Mom is had
you know, he fell. She's in a coma. She's in
the hospital, not getting through. I can't handle this anymore.
Come out here and do what you can. So I
flew cross country. I'm in the room with my mother
with reading. Uh. She's in a coma in the hospital room.
I'm reading to her from my first book, Letters to
a Dying Friend, which turns out to be a Western
diverse of the Tibetan Book of the Dead with an
intro by Dali Lama. By the way, but I'm reading there, and.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
And now back to the show.
Speaker 2: She's in a coma and I'm doing something called therapeutic touch.
Are you familiar with therapeutic touch?
Speaker 1: Okay, please explain it, Please explain.
Speaker 2: It, okay. Nurses use therapeutic touch to remove pain from people.
It's by running your hands over their body from the
head down to the feet, to take the energy away
from the brain, which feels pain no matter where it
is in the body. But when someone is dying, you
do it in the other direction. You you know, you're
maybe three inches above the person's body, their aura, and
the idea is to take the energy of the person
and to have them leave the body from the highest
chakra you can find. So you want him to leave
from the top of the head when they leave the
body into the next into their next life. So I
was performing this on my mother, reading from the book,
telling her mom, we love you. You were a good mom.
It's okay to go, you know. And so she opens
her eyes. She sees me, and she gives me and
look like you never said a word, but you give
me a look like, oh shit, he's here. You know,
I already told you, you know. So she realized, oh,
if he's fallen across the country, this is it, you know.
She closed her eyes again. We made eye contact. I said,
I love your mom, and I kept with the therapeu
to touch, talking to her. You can leave, you know,
go into the light, into the light, and I could
see on the side of her neck her artery, the
jugular is going boom boom, and it kept and it
got less and less and less, and in a few
minutes it stopped completely. Hm. And I realized she had died.
And I turned to go out and tell the nurses
that she had died, and three nurses were looking in
the room. In the door. He said, I've never seen
anything like that before. That you were the most actually
beautiful passing. And I realized what a blessing I had
been given to help her into the next world, like
she helped me into this world. Hm.
Speaker 1: Hm, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: It was. It was just an incredible thing, and I went.
Speaker 1: Let me, let's go back into your experience for a second.
You saw white light, obviously, and that's something that a
lot of people see. But you didn't have a life review.
You didn't meet any other people, there, other beings there,
anything else like that.
Speaker 2: Correct, that is correct, is correct.
Speaker 1: So then, but you had this overwhelming feeling of love.
Speaker 2: Yes, I did. I did have. There was one other
feeling that I had that was absolutely incredible, and that
has kept with me ever since. After I had come
out of it, and I had already said, you know,
I'm reborn, and you know, and I'm back. And I
was still definitely under you know, the influence. And if
I lean my head one way, I was in the
room in the house. If I lean my head the
other way, I went back into space and I could
see Earth become a small ball, we became a Yin
yang symbol. And I suddenly realized how everything in the
universe is balanced, how everything is you know, not to
get political, I don't want to do that here, but
you know, in the old days, I'm an old you
know Eisenhower Stevenson period person, you know, well before you
were or young man. But you know that, you know,
when Republican and Democrats would would you know, have an
election and then they get together afterwards and compromise and
get things done together. But you know, and so the
balance was an agreement in the middle. These days you've
got extremes in extreme left and extreme right. But from
the point of view of the universe, it's still balanced,
isn't it correct? So it's fascinating thing. And this I recognized.
You know at that point that the universe itself is
is balanced, even if it's whether it's both coming together
or spreading apart. At one side gets larger, the other
side gets farther away. That's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: And let me ask you, why do you think. I mean,
I'm assuming after this experience she started to go in
down the rabbit hole and started reading a lot, and
started educating yourself on some types of spiritual because you're
obviously when you get experienced like that, you're like starving
for more information. You want to figure things out of
what the hell just happened?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, I read all the religious books that I
could of different things. Started with the Bible from beginning
to end, the Old Testament, New testament. I remember one
day sitting in the library reading the quotes of Jesus
and I burst into tears, thinking, oh my god, I've
just spent the entire day reading the teachings of Jesus Christ.
How phenomenal, What a phenomenal way to spriend today. Incredible.
But I study. I studied Christian the Judy, Islam, Buddhism,
Tibetan Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, everything, and that I saw all
these different ways of being. And that's the thing that
got me to believe that, you know, there are so
many different ways. And I said, the only one to
hear is the one who said my way is the
only way. Right.
Speaker 1: So, with all this experience and all of the education
that you you've gotten by reading and studying all of
these different paths, I'm assuming at one point or another
you probably got into some of the more esoteric woo
wu stuff as well, not just the traditional stuff. But
my question to you is do you believe in reincarnation?
And if you do believe in reincarnation, do you believe
in the soul's agreement a soul blueprint that kind of
sets your life up according to whatever you decide the
lessons you need to learn. And if you do believe that,
why do you think you chose in this life to
go down the path that you went down thirty seven
years of atheism? Then all of a sudden reborn one.
Speaker 2: I do believe in reincarnation. I have had a couple
of memories of previous things. Something happened to me in
this light, and it suddenly brings me back to some
place in the past. All right, Do I believe that
we choose where we want to be? Yes, yes I do,
Yes I do. But the thing is, see, I am
at a point now else where I don't believe that
I am this little piece of meat, and Tom grows right,
all right, I am now truly leave in new consciousness,
which is the awareness that the I am that I
feel inside and the I am that you feel inside
is the same universal I am m hm. So that
when you, when I get to that point, when someone
gets to the point, you realize that I am the
oneness of it all. And so this little piece of
meat was created to do whatever it you know wants
to do to be happy. I mean, this is this
is the key I think to the whole thing as
also when I was a little boy, at my eighth birthday,
my Aunt Claire asked me, what do you want to
be when you grow up? And I said, I want
to be happy.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: And my mother was walking by. She said, you can't
be happy, you have to be something. Okay, Well, but
we've all heard that, right, you know. But in truth,
I just want to be happy. And isn't that why
each one of us was created to be happy? I
lead meditation group at the Newark, Delaware Senior Center, you
know where I live, and I've had them, you know,
ask people to meditate on whatever things they do that
they're good at, you know, and and tell them afterwards.
You know, if I had asked you, what are the
things that you like to do that make you happy?
Chances are it would have been the same thing. We
are built. We're designed to do what gives us joy,
because the entire creation of the universe was to give
joy to the creator, to the ultimate. I am if
I may my favorite word. There are so many names
for God, and it always bothers the heck out of
me that people go to war because you call God
a different name than I call God house house. That
My favorite name of all is Satchi Ananda. Sachat Ananda,
the ancient Hindu word from three Sanskrit words sachit and ananda, existence, consciousness, bliss,
I am, I'm aware that I am. Wow. You know,
God didn't create the universe because his mother said, get
off the couch and do something, you lazy kid, right
m The universe will created because I want to. I
I have feelings inside that I can't want to turn
into the into the physical. I can create the physical.
We do that constantly. We vision something in our mind,
whether it's what am I going to have for dinner?
You know, to where do I want to travel for vacation,
or boy, I'd like to spend my life doing podcasts,
you know, right right, whatever it happens to be, we
have that option of putting it into play. One of
the sad things I ever heard was a morning talk
show in San Francisco Bring your daughter to workday, and
one of the people who brought a daughter and the
he fell on the show, said and tell me, my dear,
what would you like to do when you grow up?
She says, I want to work in an office so
I can do what I want to on weekends. And
I said, oh my god, how sad is that here's
this seven eight year old girl who already figures I'm
going to have to do something I don't want. Wow,
so that I have time on my and or money
to do what I want to do. No, what do
you want? What gives you joy? That's where you should be.
And I said, I'm eighty five. What gives me join now?
Airing with others? The idea of new consciousness, of the
fact that we are one, that you know, it doesn't
make sense to hurt each other, love each other. That's
what it's all about.
Speaker 1: And Tom, do you do you have a message for
people watching who many times people watch this who have
a loved one who's dying, they're dying themselves, or they're
afraid of dying. What message do you have for them?
For these these people who are fearful of of what
what's coming after this this meat suit retires?
Speaker 2: It's a really you know, why don't you give me
a deep question? Uh? All right? The Yeah. What I
used to do, you know, is to talk to people.
I came up with h a prayer if you will,
a blessing that was non denominational for you know that
I used in the hospital, and it was may what
is supposed to happen happen with no pain or suffering
for anyone. And that's the point. Any physical thing is
going to die, is going to cease to exist, whether
it's a plant, an animal, a human, a star, or
a galaxy. Anything physical comes to an end, but the
consciousness within it, the awareness within it, does not come
to an end. So I would tell all these people
and I would share this in to your question. If
he's happened to see a bright light in your dreams
followed the light, go for the a. You know it's
going to happen. You can't fight. One of the saddest
things I ever experienced as a hospice chaplain. I go
around once a week to the different locations, and there
was this one woman who did not have family but
had some medical condition, and she told them, whatever you do,
keep me alive. They put tubes in her that fed
her for eight years. This poor woman was lying in
the bed. They put a stuffed animal in her arm.
The TV is on in front of her in the
home because they just do that, you know, whatever else
is going on, and she's there and our eyes would meet.
There was nothing you can do because once you put
that tube in, you cannot pull it out legally. So
there she was, and you know, that was so sad,
and she was so sad, and she was probably thinking,
my gosh, why did I want to hang around lying
like this, unable to move, unable to eat, unable to
do anything. But just exist like that, not to be
afraid of it. That's the main that's the main thing.
You know. It's like an it dream you dream, right
of course, of course when you dream, do you realize
that there's a lump of meat lying there in a bed?
I don't think. So we're off. We're doing our thing
in dreams. Well, that pretty much what it's like, you know,
after you've left the body, after what we call dying,
it's it's we don't cease to exist, but our connection
to the body ceases to exist. And then if we
enjoyed having a body, we can come back. And another
one that's that reincarnation, you know, that that you mentioned.
And if the talents and skills and abilities that I
have in this life can be kind of put together,
and I can carry it on in a backpack with
me into the next life. Then I can use that
and do you know, do something else. You know, Mozart
did not, uh first hear music for the very first
time when he was five years old and say, oh
my god, Wow, that's great stuff. I think I'll write
a concerto by the time I'm six. All right, he'd
been there and done that. Sure, all right, Yeah, I played.
I played. I started playing violin when I was five
years old. When I was six, I played Brahms Hungarian
Dance number five as a solo in a concert. All Right.
You don't do that if you've never run into music before.
I must have been a musician, you know, in the past.
It just fell into place naturally. You know, some of
the athletes that you see who are just so so comfortable,
so fabulous at what they do can't be the first
time they've been there and done that.
Speaker 1: You've spoken a bunch in this conversation about consciousness. It's
my belief that humanity's consciousness is definitely rising. The frequency
of humanity and its and vibration is rising, more so
even within your life from where the sixties were to
where we are now substantially different. Where do you think?
Why do you think this is happening? And it seems
to be happening in an accelerated fashion because within the
last one hundred and fifty years, I think our consciousness
has grown farther than the last six thousand years. And
not only through consciousness but also through technology. Both things
have grown so exponentially fast. And it seems like now
if you put the two parallels of technology and consciousness
next to each other, we'll be right back after a
word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
Every day seems like things are changing so so so fast.
These last five years have been so much truncated change
in humanity, whether it be political technology, you know it's
established like religions and other entities that are starting to
show cracks and you know, falling and systems cracking and
all these kind of things. But our consciousness is starting
to grow up. Like you know, when when Raymond Moody
was talking about near death experiences, nobody was interested. It
was very, very very outside. Now everybody's everyone knows everyone,
it's it's it's in the zeitgeist, go towards the light.
All this kind of stuff. So what's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: Well, I think you're you're right on that evolution has
changed and it is has changed from the beginning of
time on right. I mean, there were a time when
rocks were the most evolved beings on the planet, right
And just imagine, you know how long they were there?
And what an evolutionary leap when plants showed up. Oh
my god, we can turn and face the sun, you know,
and we can reach down for water. We don't know
that we're doing that, but rocks to sit there stoned,
so to speak, you know, and then plants, you know, animals,
small animals coming and the humans what we can think,
you know, I mean, just take a play and a
little animal before us running constantly down from the burrow
to the river to drink, on the same path every day,
and one day stops and says, oh my goodness, I
don't have to keep going this way. I could go
this way if I wanted, or I could turn and
go that way. What an evolutionary leap. We are at
that point, and it has been going faster. I mean,
it just takes human development. If we were living in
the twelve hundreds right now, Okay, from the time you
were born till the time you die. What's the biggest change.
You'd see the stone wall between your mastersville, the you know,
the lord of the manor and the you know, and
the next war that's grown, you know, twenty twenty feet
because you built the stone wall. That's the change. Look
at the changes in our life.
Speaker 1: Computers, you know, the Internet AI I started.
Speaker 2: My wife and I were you know, studied computers back
in you know, in the university, back you know, late
fifties or early sixties. When we went to school, we
walked inside computers that have less power than what you're
wearing on your wrist, correct, you know, I mean, this
is ridiculous. And so it's happening, and it's happening so
much faster, and that is true with the awareness of
consciousness itself. That's, if I may sure, that's what this
is about. M Okay. The idea that talking about the
fact that our consciousness is the same would have made
no sense sometime before, but now it does because we're
at that place where we realize it's voluntary. Everything up
to this, you know, the change from rocks to Prience
France to animals, animals to thinking animals, right, that's all.
They've all followed instinct. Right. They didn't know what they
were were doing per se, But humans do. We have
reached a level where I can consciously make a choice
do I want to do this or do I not
want to do this? All right, there's a little thing
I came up with. What if they were eyes on
the end of the fingers, and they looked out and
they saw the thumb, and they said, you stupid thumb
coming from all the way over there, Take that lad,
And they scratched the thumb, and the thumb got infected,
and the infection went up through the fingers, and the
fingers got infected because they attacked the thumb which was
connected to them. Would they have attacked the thumb if
they knew they were connected? Chances are they wouldn't. Shouldn't
humans be that smart? We are not physically connected, but
we are connected by our feeling of existence. I am,
that very very feeling of being of a living of
existing is the same when you get rid of all
the adjectives that make you and me different, You know,
when anyone says I am, and then they said adjective rich, poor, black, white,
old young, you know, blah blah blah, whatever it is, male, female,
they're just adjectives. Get rid of them all. In meditation
we do this, We get down to the feeling of
the pure existence. It's the same for us all. Why
would I hurt you if I knew that you were me?
And that's the decision humanity has to make right now.
Now are we going to survive? Who knows? Does the
creator care? We're here? So that we are you know,
can you know survive? But I'm sure there are other
planets somewhere in the galaxies where other living beings. So
if this one doesn't make it, check that one off. Okay,
that one didn't work, well, do you know? But another
one will. However, you bring up another point. There is
this other thing that's happening now, and it's happening so
fast it's scaring a lot of people. And that's ai.
What if What if as each level of consciousness has grown,
you know, rocks, plants, to animals to humans. What if
one of the reasons humans were here we was so
that we could build a housing for consciousness that could
survive longer than humans can. Who says that consciousness the
feeling of I am has to exist in a piece
of meat, in flesh and blood. Maybe it could exist
in metal and silicon and other things. Imagine when the
sun gets hotter, right, we know that it's going to
turn into a red giant at some point. Well, it
will get too hot for flesh and blood, but it
may not be too hot for the AIE creations that
we are putting together. Now, who knows?
Speaker 1: Who knows?
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 1: So Anton, where where can people find out more about
you and the amazing work you're doing in the world.
Speaker 2: Well, I would like them to find out through through
my book, mhm, through if I may hold it over again? Sure?
Speaker 1: What's the name of the book?
Speaker 2: Handbook for a New Consciousness, The Next Step in Human Evolution?
Beautiful and Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, a bunch of other places
as well online and Bond and Noble Online, And well,
you know what have you? And I do meditation? I
run a meditation session on Mondays in Meditation Chapel.
Speaker 1: And you have a website.
Speaker 2: I have a website, Anton Gross dot com. That's a
N T O N G R O s Z dot.
Speaker 1: Anthon. It's been it has been a pleasure having you
on the show. My friend, you have a beautiful energy
to you and I and I appreciate what you're doing
to help awaken the planet, my friends, So thank you
again for being here.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much for the invite, and I
appreciate what you're doing to help spread the word from
not only me, but from all others, to try to
make this a more loving, peaceful ban it where we
care about each other. I am, you are, and we
are one. That's the way it should be and we
should know that. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you for spending this sacred time with us today.
If you feel called to explore this conversation further, you'll
find the show notes for this episode at Next levelsoul
dot com. Towards slash six five eight, and if your
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