I had intense fear and panic because we were obviously crashing. Out of my heart came the
thought, oh God help, I'm going to die.
From the time that they pronounced me dead was a good 45 minutes.
It's determined that I was not breathing for 20 minutes.
They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped. And I could
see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realize that was actually my physical body
because I was somewhere else.
By which you went to the past far, in the afternoon, by half past seven I was dead, clinically
dead for four minutes.
And they were crying because I was dead and I was trying to tell them, no I'm not dead,
I'm just fine, I'm okay.
I was greeted by people I'd known in the past.
I started to feel like I was surrounded by all this warm, loving, beautiful, soothing,
loving energy.
I'm back with God again. I just felt this all night to release, like, wow, I'm back,
I'm back home again.
Incredibly safe and felt at home. I'd come back home. It was a very strong feeling,
I've come back home.
The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't
anything else to be felt.
And light is literally emitting from him. And I could feel that that tremendous amount
of love was coming through him as well.
They were brighter than everybody else and I just knew who they were.
Welcome everybody to Round Trip Death. We are super thrilled to have Peter Bedard with
us today from sunny, sunny Southern California. How are you, Peter?
I am fantastic. It's good to see you.
I think when I say Southern California, most people are thinking along the coast.
Right.
What's your desert man?
I am. I love the heat. It's amazing here. I was saying earlier that our winters are
many places summer. So we have beautiful winters that are in the 70s and 80s that our summers
do get on, but it's been remarkably cool. It's only 88 degrees today, which in June,
we should be around 100. So for us, it's just a lifestyle. You learn to adapt to the desert.
We have tons of festivals, awesome, cool things out here. I love living in the desert.
That sounds great. A lot of retired people as well.
Yeah. It actually predominantly was Hollywood. It was medicinal. So there's a lot of hot
springs here. So a lot of people came here over the years, especially back in the day
for the hot springs. And then you know, Hollywood, the Rat Pack and all that type of stuff really
made Potter Springs famous. And a lot of people retired here and now it's turning into like
me more of a year round community. I'm part of our business chamber and we do all kinds
of really just amazing stuff. I just love living out here.
Well, I warned you I was going to do this. Our listeners want to find out who Peter is.
Tell us just a little bit about you. And then we're going to jump right into your NDE. So
go for it.
Okay. So I, who am I? I am the divide present as an individual.
I live out here in the desert.
I'll believe whatever you tell me. Go right ahead.
Well, you know, it's that philosophy question. Who are you? I am that I am. Right. But I'm
a human level and I, I used to guy, I lived out in the desert for several years. I grew
up in California. I had a unusual career path as a kid. I was in the theater and I was discovered
as a dancer. I have the body type of a dancer. You know, there's a football player, body
type basketball player, Bobby body type. I'm very blessed to get older and I, you know,
still kind of have that. I've certainly put on a little weight. But back when I was younger,
I was the guy that, you know, still fit in this high school jeans for quite a long time.
I was a dancer. I am that piece part of my near death story. So I will go into that too
much, but I was a child actor. I lived in LA. I did a lot, nothing really big. I did a lot
of stuff in, in London for a while. I came out to LA and I at some point just decided
that I really didn't want to do that anymore. And I got a degree in consciousness studies,
a master's degree in consciousness studies. And that's the study of science and religion.
So I got to study cosmology and string theory and, and the big bang and all that type of
stuff along with the bog of the Gita and Christian mysticism and, and Buddhism and all types
of really wonderful things. It's one of my favorite things that I've done and I was not
a school person. So for me to go back to school and get a master's was it meant I really,
really loved it. And I still do. I love the intersection between philosophy, theology and
science. It's just an amazing place.
I'm going to let our listeners know right now as you tell your story, they're going
to hear some things they have never heard before. And it just, it just kills me that
this keeps happening. When I think I've heard it all, I haven't, and I know I never will
because everybody's near death experience is different. And that is so cool about it.
All right. Get us back to the Bay Area. You're 17 years old. You're a dancer. What, what's
going on in your life?
Yeah. So I was, I was a kid that didn't fit in. I was kind of little Billy Elliot. My
dad was a Marine and a professional umpire. And my mom was a housewife who sold Avon. And
I grew up in the suburbs of Silicon Valley. So as Silicon Valley came into being, it was
San Jose was where I grew up the city. And as it came into being, as I grew up, the orchards
came down and it turned into from an orchard farming community into what we know today
as Silicon Valley. And I grew up the theater. I grew up in the suburbs. It was not the best
place for me. It was great for my brother and sister, but I was more of the Billy Elliot
star. I don't know if you remember that movie Billy Elliot. It came out many years ago.
It's the dad who has a gay son and they have to figure out how to do, how to be together,
how to connect with each other, how to live together. And the son just wanted to be the
dancer and the dad was a brawler and a drinker and all that type of stuff. Boozer, right?
That type of thing. I like, I wanted to go to the museums. I wanted to go to theater.
I wanted to learn all that type of stuff about art, music and stuff like that. And my parents
were very sort of low middle class, uh, wonderful people, but I really didn't fit in. I didn't
fit in at all. Give us an idea of what years this was. That'll help people put this in
perspective. Sure. Well, I'm in my 50s now. So this was back. I was born in the 60s.
So this is the 70s and 80s. Well, things were changing socially at that time, especially
in the Bay Area. Absolutely. That lifestyle was much more accepted all of a sudden. Yes.
And I was in the suburbs. So, so not as much, not as much now. Uh, but luckily I, I was
discovered. I, you know, I was put into dance by other people who saw my talent and put
me into these scholarship based classes. We didn't have the money to pay for them. So
to be able to have a scholarship, uh, and get that training within my first year of
dancing, I was already assistant teaching, which was just a huge gift. And I felt like
I found my home. You know, I found a way to fit in. I found a way to feel safe in my body
as a teenager. You know, I, I didn't feel safe in my community. Not that anybody was
overtly doing anything, but there was no one like, I just didn't fit in. And so to have
that experience of, of finding where I could excel, you know, it's kind of like the kid
discovering that they're a great basketball player. Well, I discovered I was a great dancer
and I was good at it and I had to work at it, but it was natural and came natural to
me to be able to dance and perform and do those types of things. So that was really
my home. I didn't necessarily feel safe, but it wasn't that my family was doing anything
to make me not feel safe. It's just, I was the kid that didn't fit in. There was no,
there was no role model. There was nobody liked me around. And my, my parents were cast
like an Episcopalian and there was a lot of that sort of energy coming at me. And again,
this was the seventies and eighties. And like I said, there was a lot happening and you
know, people were talking later in the eighties about the age crisis and all that type of
stuff going on. And there was a lot of shame. And so I stayed in the closet for a long time
because I didn't feel again, I didn't feel safe being who I was. And it was, it was a
little bit dangerous because I saw people get beat up being who they were and then people
hurt for who they were.
And was your dad one of those kind of tough macho military dads?
Yeah, kind of. He was, he got kicked out of the Marines because he couldn't take orders.
My dad did not like anybody taking, he didn't like having a boss. So my dad ended up being
a mailman where he could just do his job and they kind of just left them alone. And he
was beloved. Our community loved my dad. I grew up with all these kids who knew my dad
and thought my dad was absolutely amazing. And yeah, and I was, I, Danny was, he was
a great guy, but we just didn't know, we didn't have a common language. We didn't know how
to speak to each other. And it took a long time for us to find that my parents have come
such a long way. I'm so proud of them. They've really come to a point where my nephew who
is gay, they are absolutely supported by mom literally just showed up at the second pride
festival in her small town. They live in a small town out in Southern California now
too. And, and literally like she was wanting to be there and support and, and be out there
and say, you are loved no matter who you are and that type of stuff. And dad, my parents
come that way. But I can tell you a very personal story. It's a tangent to what this view of
it is.
You know, go, go right ahead.
Okay. So a few years back, gosh, this is probably 10 years ago. This was how I knew
my father had come to terms and actually accepted me. And it was, it was just such a wonderful
experience. I lived in LA. I was in the Hollywood scene. I knew lots of people and I did lots
of things. I went to lots of parties and all that type of stuff. And I had met one, I had
made friends with one of your first Victoria's secret supermoms, right? She had become a
friend of mine. And you know, the angels, the Victoria's secret angels, they would
wear the lingerie and the angel wing. I don't know if you're familiar with that.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, no, no, what are you talking about?
Well, I met one of those girls.
My wife and my kids might listen. So no, I don't know what you mean.
Yeah, I never heard. So I met one of the first angels and she is really sweet to me and she
invited me over to for Thanksgiving. And I called up my dad and they said, dad, I don't
know what I should do. Should I come home for Thanksgiving? Should I not? I have this
invitation to go to the supermodel Thanksgiving. And my dad said to me, which was just one of
the, I said, yeah, my heart still softens when I hear what I tell this story. My dad
said, well, don't supermodels have a lot of gay friends. Maybe you should go there and
maybe you'll meet someone. And so for my Billy Ellie dad, like Marine umpire, sports fanatic,
you know, tough guy dad to tell me that he thinks I should go to Thanksgiving at the
supermodel's house says, because maybe I'll make a, I'll make a friend or be the partner
or something like that. That was just the moment that I knew that my parents, my father
specifically came around and loved me exactly as I was and wanted me to be.
And how old were you then? Gosh, it took a long time. I was in my 40s. So that took
a long time. It did. It took a long time. There's so much misinformation and fear and
religiosity and all that type of stuff that just gets in the way of us loving each other.
Well, and a big part of the message that we learn from near death experiences is pure
love period. Absolutely. People just do not feel judged. It's just love. All right, let's
jump into it. 17 year old Peter. What's going on? So as you know, I was involved in performing
and I was, it was my senior year of high school and I, there was a, there was a little theater
in the downtown area near not far, not too far from my house. And this theater was a
old vaudeville theater. It was amazing. It's like, you know, boo and hiss of the villain
and the red hot mama. Yeah, no, all that. Of course it had red hot mama throwing popcorn,
all that type of sound, right? It was, it was amazing. It was so cool. I still wanted to
do that. At the time the drinking age was 18. I was only 17. I was only allowed to be
on the stage. I couldn't even step off the stage. I could only be backstage and because
I wasn't old enough to be in a, a good environment where they served alcohol. And my grandfather,
one of the reasons I was so excited about this, because my grandfather played the banjo.
And when he could, he would play in the vaudeville circuit. He would, you know, when he couldn't,
they needed somebody to fill in or be a banjo player, he would play the banjo. So I had this
connection with vaudeville. So I auditioned and I got the part and I got to play the horse's
ass. Literally, I got to be the horse costume and do that type of stuff. And it was just
so fun. And I'm 70, I'm over 17 and a half. I have just a couple of months till my birthday
and that opening weekend there, of course, was a party and my parents were very protective
of me. They were overly protected. They were very protected of me, told me I couldn't go.
And I was really upset. I had always been a good boy. My brother was the black sheep
of the family. And I saw my older brother and I saw all that was like, I'm not doing
any of that. They would get fights and just, it was awful. And so I decided to not go down
that path. And I was always a good kid. So I was really angry. I was very pissed off.
And my parents told me I couldn't go to this party. But I obeyed them and I jumped on my
bike. I had a Moto B cane, which is like an Arleigh Moped. It's an English Moped. And
I got on my bike and I was driving back home into the suburbs. And people, I'm sure, know
that as you go into the suburbs, there are often really wide streets that lead into the
developments. There's like four lane streets that go in. Nobody's on the streets.
The feeder routes and it's dark. Yeah, it is dark. And the street has a curve to it,
like a big S, right? So I'm approaching that curve. I'm turning into the curve. There's
a car that suddenly appears. Literally, I did not see this car come from anywhere. Suddenly,
this car is behind me. Its headlights are flashing in my side mirrors, my side rear view mirrors.
And as I'm turning into the curve, there is a parked semi truck in that curve. And I try
to go around the semi truck. I'm not, I can't. I have several thoughts flashing my head really
quickly. What am I going to do? Am I going to try to fit between the semi truck and the
car? Can I jump the curb and get on the sidewalk? But there was a cyclone, those metal cyclone
fences right there. So I could lay my bike down. And I, before I could even make a full
choice, the car hit my back tire and it pushed my back tire. I was probably going maybe 20
miles an hour. I was breaking the car, pushed my tire, takes my bike up up the impact, picked
my bike up and pushed me into the back of the park semi truck. So the bike went under
the truck, slid out through there. There was a wheel guard underneath the truck at the bumper
of the truck. And so I get that and bounced off into the street. And the car drove away
and it was in October. And I don't know if you know the weather, where you do a little
bit the Bay Area in San Jose. The weather is just amazing. And it's those warm days and
those cool, crisp sort of, you know, autumn, summer nights.
Yeah, it's a beautiful time of year there. So this car didn't stop to help you.
Oh, no.
Did it, besides it hitting your tire, which threw you into the truck, did the car hit
you too? I'm just trying to picture all the damage that happened.
No, the car hit my bike, thrust my, I was already going 20 miles per hour. It sort of
pushed my bike probably into a faster speed. I consciously jumped out of my bot. So I didn't
come my mentality, my consciousness didn't hit the truck. My body did. But I jumped out
of my body those seconds and watched the bike and the car hit the truck or my bike and my
body hit the truck and watched the car drive away. I watched that whole thing.
Before we go on, some people are going, huh, what? I can't do that. Is this a gift that
you already had or did it just in the split second happened?
It's something I had done previously. Just as a kid, I think it's like, you know, we
call it astral projecting. I've never practiced it. I've done it a few times just while meditating
without not being on purpose, just done it over the years. It's, if anybody wants to
look it up, it is called astral projecting and it's bringing your consciousness, right?
Separating your consciousness. There's people often talk about having a tether and stuff
like that to link you always. But I jumped out of my body and watched that whole thing
and it was a beautiful experience. I remember thinking of what a gorgeous night it was.
I think it was all known. I remember it just, there was the sky. Even though it was probably
around 1030 at night, 10 or 1130 at night, I watched the whole thing with this sense
of just curiosity and detachment. There was no pain. And I think that one of the lessons
I learned is I think is when we do go through the death process, often we can step out.
We can have a choice. And if I've seen this before with other people and they're dying
processes, I've been around people and helped people go through the process of transitioning
and dying. And as us looking at people maybe in the hospital bed, writhing in pain, what
I discovered was that's their body, but not necessarily their consciousness. That oftentimes
they're really not even in their body while their body is going through this process of
letting go of its human flesh. I think that's a very common thing. And we get very upset
about it because it's hard for us to look at someone suffering. And at the same time,
I often don't think that that person is really there. So are they really suffering? In my
case, no. There was really no suffering in the process of my transitioning, of my dying
and letting go of my body. It was actually really beautiful. I think it's a choice that
we can make. If people haven't done that, maybe I happen to believe because of these
experiences and my spiritual education, I happen to believe they're reincarnation. I
think we come back and we do these things many, many times. And in that experience,
if we've already experienced something, then maybe we don't have to do that again. We don't
need to. Oh, I've already done that. I don't need to learn about that. So I can step out
like I did and just watch the whole thing.
People that listen to this show, this isn't a new thing to us. This is we've had people
on before that have talked about, Hey, I was in this car accident where we came around
a mountain road. I see mountain road car slid off a cliff. And as the car is plunging off
a cliff, she said, I wasn't in my body. I was just watching and I love how very matter of
fact it is. It's not like I was out of my body screaming bloody murder. It's I'm just
watching like, okay, no fear, no fear, no worry. And I've talked to other people, especially
in horrific accidents of some sort, like traffic accidents that were out of their body when
it happened and they didn't feel the impact, whether it was off a cliff or head on collision.
And they hadn't practiced it or anything. They didn't even know the term astral travel
like you're talking about, but they they had somehow some way right before the moment of
collision became an observer, a witness instead of experiencing the most traumatic thing that
could ever happen.
It's one of the I like to differentiate nowadays because there's so much like ayahuasca and
drug use where people have these experiences where they feel like they're dying. And I have
to check myself because I get a little offended sometimes from this because oh my God, I died
too. Oh, tell me about your NDE. Oh, well, I did ayahuasca and and it was oh my God, I
would do this death process. And I'm like, okay, that's all right. That's not exactly
the same thing. Please don't call it that you don't say that you died. Maybe your ego died.
Maybe you had to face a bunch of like experiences and you had to kill off a part of you that
needed to be released or something like that. But that's not the same thing. And I often
hear these people, oh yeah, I am in your death experience. Well, no, no, no, you didn't.
Not exactly. I like to say maybe close to that experience or an ego death experience
or something of that. But that's not a near death experience. Right. Or they may have
had an out of body experience of some sort. Exactly. And ions classifies those as near
death experiences just because they're putting this blanket term on all of it. But yes, some
things are different than others. Yeah, because in those experiences, there's a lot of fear.
Yes, those people feel so much fear. They feel so much pain. They feel this death, this dramatic
idea that especially with the ayahuasca death experience, they feel these dramatic kind of
painful, ripping away type of things. And when I see people talk about near death experiences,
like like when I add, that's very matter of fact, like you said, it's very, oh, it just happened.
It's part of my story. It's part of my experience. There's really no drama with it. So that's why
I like to think of the other one as an ego death experience. Okay. Not quite the same.
Anyway, super interesting. So we're just getting started here. Okay. Let's jump back into it.
So you're now crashing into a semi truck, a parked semi truck. Yeah. Yeah. What happens to your body
and what happens to you? So I get to watch the whole thing and that was not wonderful. I think it
was a gift where I get to watch my body just get mangled and not feel it. What a great gift that
and feel great. So my body itself, I shattered five vertebrae, I cracked five vertebrae,
I split my right wrist open, I lost all the nerves in my right hand. I had undiagnosed brain
damage and I shattered my left knee. So my knee was a very interesting injury because it was from
the back of the knee. So my kneecap was intact, but the ballers leading into the knee had shattered
in the joint to little tiny pieces, which was another just amazing experience because that's
what a lot of football players gather when they got a knee injury is from the rear and they,
my injury, they flew 14 surgeons in from the NFL to actually put my knee back together.
And they ended up doing at the time a very experimental surgery where they glued all the
little bone fragments together. I only have three little pins in my knee. So I have three metal
pins in my knee. I had a big steel rod in my knee just to stabilize it. And they took that out.
And when those bones, those bones grafted back together and they were stabilized because of
that rod, they pulled the rod out. And those three little pins are the only thing there.
So I feel very blessed by how the doctors were able to handle putting my bones back together.
They had no idea what to do with me after that, but I was able to walk. I couldn't dance.
But, you know, one doctor told me I wouldn't be able to walk and if I could, I'd have to have
assistance or the wheelchair or a walker or something of that sort. And I beat their prognosis.
I actually said a bad word to the doctor. I told the doctor to f off when he told me that
there's no way they could, that's a prognosis in their opinion. That's not my life. And so
I was a little sassy kid.
I've had a couple of doctors. I've wanted to do that too. When I've had major injuries, Dr.
Rogers, you don't know what I was thinking about you anyway. Anyway, keep going.
Okay. So my body was pretty shattered. I watched myself down there. I watched the car drive away.
And I was just in this very serene, quiet place of just admiring the beauty of the night. It was so
like the juxtaposition was just odd. And I was aware that it was odd. I was very aware that, oh,
that's my body. And I'm fine. I was very aware not only am I fine, but I actually feel good.
So I'm out of my body. My body's over the street. Nothing's happening against a quiet suburban road.
We have no record. The police record disappeared. We have no record of an ambulance. An ambulance
called someone called it. Someone, I saw the ambulance as I was outside of my body.
And there's no police report. There's no ambulance record. There's nothing until I get to the hospital.
So my parents home was about a half hour, 25 minutes from the hospital. And somebody at some
point had to find me and then call the paramedics. Paramedics had to come out, which at that time,
the response time was about 12 minutes. So in that time, I have no idea how much time it was,
because I didn't go back into my body fully until I woke up in the hospital. I was outside
the, at least for an hour that I could think that I'm aware of. I'm watching my body. The car drives
away. It's beautiful. And suddenly I feel myself being pulled. I did the tunnel. So I feel myself
being pulled into the tunnel. And that's, you know, very common. My tunnel was spinning. So it's
spinning clockwise and it was spinning clockwise and moving forward. So the tunnel is rotating,
but also rotating in a direction. It was a very interesting experience. I think why that's so
interesting to me is just my physics understanding and quantum theory. And, you know, that's like
what the universe is like as our solar system is moving through space. It's rotating, but it's also
going in a direction. It's not stagnant. And so my experience was very much like that. I was
rotating clockwise, but I was also spiraling towards something. And what is that tunnel looking like?
Is it white? Is it dark? And there must have been some kind of, I don't know, structure or
something to it to where you could actually tell that it was spinning. That's right. If it was pure
white, for example, you wouldn't be able to tell. So give me some detail on the tunnel.
So the tunnel that I went down was, it sort of had a base of white, but you know, when you look
through prisms and you see the white of the light gets shattered into rainbows, that's what my tunnel
was like. It was full of light, was full of color, and it was full of depth. It was like,
I don't know how to say it exactly, but like if you were thinking of a cave and a crystal cave,
and the crystal's growing on the cave, and some are going to be bigger or longer or be wider or
whatever, that's kind of like what my space was. There was nothing solid about it. It felt like
pure energy, so I couldn't necessarily see through it. It wasn't translucent, but it was just light.
So it's hard to explain because it again, it wasn't solid. My whole experience being on the other side,
nothing was solid, but everything had form. And were you headed towards something down the tunnel?
Was there something at the other end you were seeing? I didn't see anything. I was just in a
tunnel and I was enjoying the light and the movement and the direction and the colors. And
then all of a sudden, it was just in a snap. Suddenly, I was in a place. I have no idea what
this place was. That place, like the tunnel, was full of light. I had this sensation that I was in
a defined space, and yet at the same time, it felt infinite. I felt like I was at a location,
and there was a sense of like it's stamped, but I couldn't necessarily see or explore. It was kind of
like that white energy, that light energy, and the colors there, I can't even explain. The colors
are so brilliant. They're colors that we don't see in our daily human life. I got to think about it.
I think I read once that seahorses have the ability to see twice as many colors as we see.
That's amazing. That there are more colors that exist even in the world that we're living in,
in this physical world, that we as human beings can interpret with the colors of our eyes.
There's actually so much more out there that we just don't see.
So try to describe one of them. I mean, I'm looking at that artwork behind you. There's red,
blue, yellow, green. There's nearly everything orange. There's nearly everything in the rainbow,
in this kind of geometric abstract. But are we looking towards the reds, towards the blues,
or towards something you can't even describe at all?
I can't describe it. It's just, it's as if our spectrum of color is multiplied, and I want to
say by four. There's four other realms, spectrums of color that we are part of. We see a particular
section of that. But there's more, and the colors are just, the colors are more energy than color.
I don't know if that makes, I don't think that makes any sense. The colors are more perception.
In other words, it's not something you just see with your eyes.
No, exactly. It's something that you feel. It's literally physically. The colors, you feel the
vibration and the frequency of the colors. Like they're tactile. You can touch them,
and you can feel them on the body that I had there. I actually had a body there. I actually,
it wasn't that I was disembodied. It wasn't that I was just pure energy. I personally had a shape.
I had a form. I never saw a mirror of myself to see myself, but I could see my hands. I could see
my feet. I knew my body was intact. I knew my legs were fine. I knew my spine was fine.
I knew my face had gotten ripped open. I knew it was fine.
You didn't see a mirror, but you felt like it was more of a human form, like your regular fingers,
toes, et cetera. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. I can look down and see my legs and my legs fully functioned. I had my toes. I had my
legs. I was a dancer, so I was very strong. I was very long and lean and sinnowy, and all that was
still there. I could see my arms. I could see whatever you've been seeing, looking at your body
without a mirror. I could look down and I could see my hips. I could see my elbows. I could see
these parts of me. I had the same form that I have now, and I had the same structure that I have now.
In this place of feeling and frequency and light and vibration, I don't know how to describe it,
and I'm sure you've heard this many times. If you take the word joy or bliss, let's say,
in the English language, the happiest word that you could use, the word with the most,
I think it's joy. Joy is above all emotions, the joy or bliss.
I agree. It's way deeper than happiness. Happiness can be very fleeting joy is much deeper and much
more eternal. It comes from within. Yeah. It's this joyful experience of being in this place.
It's inside of me. I feel the joy. I am the joy. Multiply that by a million, and maybe you'll get
a fraction close to the understanding of what it is on the other side, a fraction close to that
understanding. It is the most beautiful, blissful, joyous, happy, expansive, conscious, gorgeous,
this amazing experience being that. I wish I had more adjectives for you to fill in,
because I could tell you could use a million of them.
They still wouldn't come close to this frequency, this vibration, to this feeling tone.
They just wouldn't, from this beingness, because it really is a beingness. It's like your whole
self, every cell, every part of your consciousness, every part of me was lit up and filled with this
joy. It wasn't like being high. It was fully aware. It wasn't like being unconscious or detached.
It's not like people describe trips or drug trips or something like that. It was full consciousness.
In fact, more conscious than I think we can be as human beings, at least in this earthly plane.
There was this access to self, to everything, like the capital S self, to the divine itself.
I love this. Keep your train of thought. I'm going to sidetrack us for just a second.
Why, if you felt that, and it was that amazing, when you came back, why didn't you just commit
suicide to get back there? Oh my gosh. I'm so glad you brought that up, because
I never tried to consciously plan out suicide. But for at least 20 years, if not more,
I would put myself into situations where I could have left. I could have died. I could have ended
my life. I had four experiences after that, where I was severely hospitalized, and I had to consciously
choose to stay. And you did. And I did. I didn't want, there was something, there is something
holding me here. There's something that's saying, nope, not yet, not time, even when I've been in
my most, because I have, I've had quite a few dark nights of the soul in my life. I've had quite a
few of those experiences of just being like, I'm just going to, I'm done. I'm done. I don't want to
be here. And there's something when I get to that place that keeps me here. There's, I'm here for
some purpose. If somebody is having a really, really hard day today as they're hearing this,
please tell them something that's going to help keep them here.
That they had, there's a reason they're here, that their life is important, that their life is
valuable, that they are already and have already achieved their purpose in life. They're already
fulfilling. So many people are, I feel useless. Nobody loves me. I'm not receiving my purpose.
And I'm going to get a little spiritual on people that I think we are all emanations of the divine.
I think God in itself is getting to know itself through us. We are like a wave on the ocean.
That's part of what I've made my studies and that experience of being crossed over has taught me
that I come from, we come from divine source. We are pure divine source in human form. And just
by being here and being in human form, you are already achieving your purpose.
Beautiful. Your purpose is to be an expression of the divine. And if that expression is sad,
be sad. Great. Own it. It's the divine getting to know itself. People say, well, why would God
make that? Well, God would make that because God wants to know all of the human possibilities.
God wants to know every human possibility. God wants to know what it's like to be itself
in a handicap like what I have. God wants to know what it's like to be itself unhappy.
God wants to know what it's like to be itself. Enjoy and bliss as the human experience. I think we
are all that consciousness getting to understand itself when you stop thinking in the old ways of,
oh, well, why would God want pain in the world? Well, we are in the closeness of the divine.
And that pain is an opportunity for us to move closer to the divine, to choose, to make that
choice. We have free will. Thank you. We're jumping back on the track now. Okay. Okay.
You were talking, well, about the beautiful colors, about the amazing feeling of joy that is
inexplicable and how the form of you was either the same or similar to your form now in this life.
Okay. Keep going with your experience. So I'm on the other side and I'm, I start to get very
curious of like, well, where is everybody? Because I had this idea that when you die,
my dead dog was going to be there. My great-grandmother and, you know, my ancestors or people that were
part of my family were going to greet me and bring me through the pearly gates. And so there was
nobody there. Where were they? Where were they? Exactly. Not disappointing. Well,
so this is part of the learning that I took away from this experience too, was that, and I wasn't
upset that they weren't there. It was just pure curiosity. There wasn't a judgment about it. It
was just, oh, where is everybody? I thought they were, I thought I was going to get to see my dead
dog. I really want to see my dead dog. And so I'm on the other side. I'm exploring this space.
And in this space, I'm aware that again, like I said, it's, it's a defined space, but there's
really no ceiling. I feel like I'm standing on something, but I look down and there's really
no floor. There's just frequency and vibration and energy. I'm so curious about this space. I'm
moving about it. I'm curious where everybody is. I have no idea how long in there it felt like a long
time. And not in a negative way, just it felt like time had really gone by in that place. And then
suddenly I turned around and there is this man standing in front of me. And the moment I turn
around, so that's an interesting thing because I have consciousness where I could turn around.
Like I'm viewing this space in a way like in humans still. I'm viewing this space, my eyes are in
front of me. I'm taking everything in and I have to turn to see that, oh, there's somebody else here.
So I turned to see that there's somebody else here. When I do, I feel like my breath,
which I don't know how that works, but I feel like my breath is taken out of me. My chest is
splitting open and there's this ecstatic experience of recognition of I love love. It's an ecstatic.
I used to read a lot about medieval nuns talking about their marriage to Christ. And they would
talk about this heart-wrenching, chest-breaking, painful experience of their chest splitting
open. And I'm like, oh my God, that's what they're talking about. I literally felt this love that
was just being ripped through me. And at the same time, my mind is saying, who the hell is this?
I don't know who this guy person is. He looks, he's an Asian man. He looks like Lao Tzu or
Fu Man Tzu, like this traditional Chinese British man. I go back to the phrase too, the understanding
of maybe Hong Kong in 1880 or something like that. He's like, he's wearing a tweed suit,
but again, he's all aggrieved. I can see through him, yet there's texture and there's color to
the fabric. And I remember being so curious about the weave of the fabric and seeing the depth of
the fabric and the weave itself in the fabric. Anyway, all this is happening at the same time.
My heart, my chest is being ripped open. My heart is just reaching out. There's this ecstatic love.
There's this curiosity, who the hell is this? Who the heck is this guy? And the same consciousness
of, is God Asian? What's going on? And he has like the must-ask, the Fu Man Tzu, must-ask,
the long wispy beard, tweed suit. And he says to me, what are you doing here? And I just kind of
look at him and the conversation goes along the lines of why I feel this love. I feel the love
coming back to me. It's a receiving that's happening as well. My body is literally like vibrating
with the body that I'm the energetic body that I'm in. And she's saying, what are you doing here?
And I'm confused. I'm like, well, I'm dead. I'm very clear that I'm back there. And this is where
I'm supposed to be. I'm dead. And he says, you're not supposed to be here. And with that, with that
being told, I'm not supposed to be here. All of my, I want to call it human, my anger that I said I
was feeling before I died from my parents, right? All of that anger, the feeling of being rejected,
feeling of being unwanted, which is my Billy Elliot story, that story of not fitting in.
All of that comes back to me. He says, you're not supposed to be here. It's not time. And then,
literally snap, I'm back hovering over the accident. I'm no longer on the other side. I'm not in my body.
I am watching the paramedics as they come and get. And I literally said, my last word in heaven or
whatever this place is called, my last words, like I said earlier to that doctor, who were as you,
who, who, those are my last words. And that anger is what brought me down. So I told God or whoever
this was to F off. And with that, I was back watching the paramedics as their truck parked,
as they got out of the truck, I saw them open in the back doors. I saw them take out the gurney.
I saw each of them doing the job that they were doing. One was, I remember one was African American,
one was Latino, African American guys pulling out the gurney, the other Latin guys pulling out the
journey gurney, the African American guys on top of me, check, I'm guessing checking my pulse, his
face is super close to mine. He I assume he's trying to feel if there's a breath or see if
there's any movement or anything like that. And then it a split second again, I'm in my body.
I open my eyes. He like tigger, like a cat, how jumps like all these body in one movement,
just jumps up and this is a big man, just boom, he's up in the air. I must have scared crap out.
I told him to take me to the hospital that my insurance card was in my back pocket. And then
I was back out of my body. I did not want to be in that but I did not want to be there. I did not
want to be alive in human form again. Did not want that at all. I watched them put my God body
on the gurney. I watched them put me in the truck, close the doors, go around to the front of the
truck, get in and drive away. And I said to myself, I am not going there.
But you weren't back in that beautiful place either, were you?
No. No. And this is where I have no idea my curiosity. I started to think, oh, again,
I'm not in that sense of pain. I'm still curious because like I was before I went to the other
side, I was still in that detached kind of, oh, I'm looking at my body. My body's down there.
That must really hurt. I'm in that state and I'm saying to myself, I guess this is how ghosts
start me because I don't want to go back in that. So if my body then dies and I'm not on the other
side, maybe I'm a ghost. So how did you change your mind? Well, I didn't. So my next conscious memory
is I'm back in my body. I open my eyes. I see the white of the stuff, the drop ceiling.
And I'm so disappointed. And I know I'm in the hospital. I started to cry. I don't want to be
there. Explain all the emotions that you were crying over. The disappointments.
You know, it's like ripping a kid out of the candy shop when they really, really want candy.
Frustration. Frustration, sadness, anger. Ooh, that anger, the blame. Well, this happened because
of my parents. They would have just let me go to that party. This wouldn't happen. This happened
by the blame of why would God kick me out? Why would I not be accepted in heaven? I'm not accepted
anywhere now. That's when I was being told by culture society. I didn't fit in. I wasn't okay
for me to be me. I was angry at the withdrawal of what felt like a withdrawal of love. And that
shattered my heart. That sadness, it affected me for decades. That experience took me a lot of healing
work to actually put the pieces of my heart back together in that moment, from that moment.
Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Let me just interject for those that are keeping score. I
promised we were going to hear something different today. And Fumanchu in a tweed suit, that just
might be the title of this podcast. There we go. That's you, God. Why do you think that the being
that you saw, and if you think it's God's say so, or some other kind of being, why do you think that's
how that being appeared to you? I thought about that a lot. And my understanding of God from these
experiences, from my learning and growing and curiosity of this world that we live in, my
understanding of God is God is everything. Father, mother, pachamama, whatever you want to call it,
you can't escape God. So we are, it's the forest through the trees. People say, well, where's God?
God's right there. God is that divine spark that lives deep within you. God is that joy. God is
literally the breath that you breathe. Even science is talking about a holographic universe or the
universe that is breath. We are breathing in God every day, every time you take a breath,
you are one, you are connected. God is breath itself. This person on the other side, this God,
part of God, I again, I had my whole life, I have had a connection to Asian culture.
The only thing I've ever collected was these deities that you card, you ask at craftsmen,
you card for you, and you put it on the altar and the deity might be a scholar,
might be an angel, might be a guardian, whatever it is. And then you ask the deity, it's like a
Saint Michael's crystal or a metal, you ask it to bestow its gifts upon you, whether it's protection
or guardianship or guidance or knowledge or whatever it is. That's the only thing I've ever
collected. I've always been on to that. Maybe that was a propensity of the past life. Maybe it's a
previous life experience. Maybe that was my guardian angel. And my guardian angel is in that form.
I have never been able to figure it out. I know that that experience, that cursing, let's say,
was a representation of the divine. I don't think it's any different though from your being a
representation of a divine. And on that other side, all of our human pettiness, all of that ego
stuff goes away. And the divine could take any form at once. It is, we are the divine understanding
itself in the many, many millions, billions and trillions of ways that it can. So my question
I always come back to myself is, well, why couldn't God be through that issue? I don't know. Yeah,
I don't either. You've obviously spent a lot of years thinking deeply about all of these things.
How has this experience changed your life? And from a 17-year-old, maybe changed the whole
path that you were on besides just the dance issue? And did it end your dance career? It did.
It ended my dance career. I could, I never could go back to my body just cannot handle that type
of movement. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that. So besides the physical things, how did it change you?
Well, first, there's a deep gratitude that I could even walk. And to this day, I'm in my 50s
that I could still walk because back then I was told I wouldn't be able to. So the fact that I,
you know, within a year of my accident, I was already walking and I was attempting to take dance
classes, just the fact that I could be in a class. I couldn't, I couldn't succeed in it anymore. But
the fact that I could like walk down and do a pot of meringue, you know, something that that in
itself is just an incredible gift and a blessing right there. Now I look back and I am grateful
for my murder because I think that what was the car behind me, I think it was done purposefully.
There were a lot of people in the Bay Area. My feeling from that very moment was that it was
done on purpose. And there's a part of me that even says, I think I know, like there's a feeling
that I know who did it, but I've never consciously been able to pinpoint who that was. And I don't
need to. And I really don't do anymore. No, there's probably nothing positive to come of that. But
why do you think, why do you think someone tried to murder you? I don't, I, I, there's a perception
when I look, when I can look into the rear view mirror. So I'm on a bike, right? And there's two
mirrors coming up on the side that let me see behind me. And there's this idea that I can see
the person that's in that mirror that I recognize who that is. Maybe it was just somebody who was
angry. Maybe it was somebody who needed gay people and wanted to remove us from the earth.
I have no idea. I mean, I've had guns pointed at me, knives pointed at me. I've had groups of people,
you know, surround me and tell me horrible things. I had employers fight, fire me. I've had, you know,
put people put knives up to my face. I've had all kinds of stuff. People I don't even know
who don't like me. And they tell me they don't like me because I'm gay. And I'm not one of those
people that can hide it. I know a lot of people say, well, you can hide it. You don't have to be
that way. Well, no, I have a peak neon triangle up my head that everybody sees. So it's, it's there.
It's all me. It's there. Paint neon triangle. Yeah, it's like classy. You know, it's like
classy. He's like above my head. Yeah. You know, I can't find who I am. And I know there's some
people who can't, you know, but for me, I've never been that person that could really do that.
Well, unfortunately, I think in this earth existence, we're not going to come to a point
anytime soon where everybody has the kind of love that they need to for everybody. Yeah, we could
just keep loving everybody and making those choices. And that's one of my, one of my takeaways.
I from my death experience, one of my takeaways is that accidents are real. A lot of people say,
oh, there's no such thing as accidents. You know, everything's meant to happen. You know, maybe.
And I certainly can't prove it. I think that as a, as a species, as, as evolutionary beings,
we are all going in the singular direction that how we get there, we bump into each other.
And we have free will. And if you're going to have free will, then you have to make wrong
for accidents. There are, we make mistakes. We go down wrong paths. We make choices that are
out of alignment with the love of the divine and accidents happen. And so I truly believe in accidents.
I don't think they're bad things. I believe we all get back on course, right? Like that tunnel,
we were going in a direction, right? Now, how we get there, well, accidents can happen.
I believe that too. I don't think everything is predestined for us.
I don't either.
I don't either. It just doesn't make sense to me. So how else did this experience change the
trajectory of your life? Oh, it recreated my entire life. Because as a, as a kid,
I started as an actor around eight years old. And that was how I, that was my vision,
my perception of myself. It took me a while. I struggled with chronic, chronic pain. I had
to learn how to walking and I have a mild and I, Friday's as my bronchitis, my white blood cells
were attacking my red blood cells, my hemoglobin was splitting at different times, shutting down
my organs. I severely dehydrated a few times to the point of if I hadn't gotten medical intervention,
I would have died. And those are those sort of what I like to say close to death experiences
that I went through. And I was lost. I felt like I had no purpose. I had no reason to be here. I had
been kicked out of the habit. And I've come to now be grateful and to either bless my, my murder.
I have come to be in a place of just never wanting to change that. If anybody gave me the
opportunity to go back in time and change that I wouldn't, you know, I got my master's degree,
I learned so much. I became a therapist. I helped thousands of people to heal. I taught around the
world. I, I consulted at Stanford University. I wrote a book that was published by Simon and
Schuster, like these gifts and especially the gift of being able to sit down with someone
and witness their pain on a deep level. I could not do that if it wasn't for the gift of that
near death experience. Why did you want to be on this podcast today? Because I love sharing that
message. I love sharing that message that death isn't something to be afraid of. It's something to
be embraced. I love sharing the message that you can't get this wrong. You can't get this wrong.
You are so loved. You already have fulfilled your purpose just by being here as an expression of the
divine. You mentioned the book. If people want to learn more about your experience and what you
learned from it, where should they look that up? Yeah. So I wrote this book. It's called
Convergence Healing. That says become my brand, how I put myself out. Convergence, C-O-N-V-E-R-G-E
and C-E, Convergence Healing, Healing Pain with Energetic Love. I wrote it really for my clients
and then Simon and Schuster got a mold of it. I didn't even try to sell it. They bought it and
published it. It was just amazing. So they could find my book. I reported the audio version on
Audible. It's on Kindle. It's on Amazon. It's at Barnes & Noble. It can get it pretty much
everywhere. So I wrote that book. I have a new book coming out this September called Billy and
the Anxiety Monster, How to Love Your Anxiety and Heal. I get to share these experiences with people.
I get to live what I love. I get to work what I love and do what I love. And so I don't really work.
I just share these lessons and learnings and experiences and help other people and hold
their hand as they go through there. Sounds like a great life. Thanks for sharing. Any last thoughts?
Any last thoughts? I think that what this world needs more than anything is that joy, that bliss,
that love. And as a therapist, a lot of people are suffering in the world. And there's a lot of
division. There's a lot of hatred. There's a lot of anger at ourselves and our own bodies. And I'm
hoping that people will look at their pain, not as something to medicate, not as something to cut
away or throw away or be embarrassed or ashamed of, but to look at their pain as a part of them
that's suffering. And what that part needs more than anything is not your anger or your frustration
that it's there. What it needs is your love. So for those who are listening, if there's a part of
you that's suffering, whether it's a physical part in your body, whether it's a mental part in your
mind or spiritual part in your heart, I ask you to bring love to that part. Hold it, embrace it,
accept it. Give it the love that it needs in order to heal. Stop being a bully to it. Stop telling
it to go away. Stop medicating it and drugging it and wanting to cut it out. Do what you need to do.
Follow your own instincts, but bring love to the part that's suffering. If we actually choose to do
that in the world for ourselves, we contribute to what I think is the tipping point of bringing
more and more of that love of the divine into this life that we are living now.
Thanks, Peter. I enjoyed it. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here.
Thanks again for listening and remember to share this podcast. To be notified when the next episode
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our email newsletter. One last thing, we are continually trying to improve this podcast and
we value your feedback. If you have a comment about what you like or what we can do better
or a near-death experiencer that we should have on the show, send an email to Eric at roundtripdeath.com
and that's Eric with a C. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life
and the next.