Jonathan Ashford Interview

Jonathan: Everything has this slow breath, like it’s all alive. I want to say vibrating, but that to me is fast. It’s just like this breath or pulse of something. And the grass was all moving, like it was underwater, almost in unison. But there was no breeze. There was no climate, in a way. And the light, this light was like love.

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. If you’re not familiar with it, Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people and about related topics. And this is our 17th season. We’ve done over 750 of them now. If this is new to you, you might want to check out the website, where you’ll find a number of interesting things. One is a categorical index, that lets you search for the interviews by category. and there’s an NDE category of course. Another is a video context search thing, where you could type in a search term, such as Kermit the Frog, and if that’s been mentioned in a particular interview, you’ll immediately see the interview in  the kinds of topics we cover, including 1,700 of the world’s sacred texts. And  there’s a page which explains alternatives to PayPal. So, as I mentioned, my guest today is Jonathan Ashford. And a lot of you who are on this call, are probably familiar with him, but many of you may not be.  his account of his near-death experience. Because for many people listening, they will have already heard it half a dozen times, and others haven’t heard anything. So, it’s in your hands, Jonathan. Why don’t you get us started by telling us what happened to you?

Jonathan: Yeah, I was 46 years old, C-level executive, single guy who climbed the corporate ladder rather quickly.

Rick: That helped you climb the corporate ladder?

Jonathan: uh uh. By 25, I was a vice president. I just was merciless. I didn’t care if you had been there 35 years or 10 minutes. If you had to go, I didn’t think twice about it. Yeah, I just didn’t connect with people very well. I could not   I kind of found my groove. I was a workout nut during the day. I’d ski, I’d snowboard, I’d mountain bike, I’d rock climb, I’d hike, snowshoe, trail run. I was very active. A couple  and drink and spit chewing tobacco and talk about all the Vegas trips with the guys.  There’s more of an understanding of spirituality, I would say, in the Pacific Northwest than where I moved from back East. I was just opposed to it. I was like, “What is this? Is this your weakness? Why do you guys talk about this?” People would come up, and I would overhear things about astrology, or I would overhear things about tarot cards. I’m like, “What?” I used to call it witchcraft.   it today?” And that was my inside joke. Why go into a building every Sunday? Like, what’s wrong with you? And I would say, if somebody asked me to go to church with them, I would say, “Meet me in the bar when you’re done.” And that’s just how I looked at life. I was irreverent, brash. And then,  felt really ill. I felt something wash over me like, it’s just like a blanket of illness. It was immediate and I couldn’t figure it out and I thought, “well, I’ve only had a cup of coffee today, no big deal.” I went home, kind of powered through it, was working outside. It was now lunchtime, I went to a grocery store, and I collapsed. I collapsed in the coffee aisle, and about the   medical care here is “just keep you alive medical care”, because they’ll even misdiagnose a broken  “Well, you’re walking and talking, so it must not be that bad.” And they ran a battery of tests and nothing came back. And the ER doctor said, “Well, you’re having an allergic reaction.” And I said, “It’s not an allergic reaction, because all I’ve had is a cup of coffee today.”  For the next week, I was paranoid. I was like, “Something’s wrong.” I felt off. I felt weaker. I wasn’t sleeping well. I seemed to be getting sicker. “I just do not feel well.” It felt like something I’d never felt before. The following weekend, it happened again. I felt that same feeling wash over me and start to come on again. And I was like- “oh-oh”, and I lived at the time about three quarters of a mile from the hospital. So, I just jumped in the truck and went. Sure enough, same nurse, same everything. Yeah, “you’re back again?” kind of thing, and this time a marker came back in the blood, and they said my blood was acidic and I didn’t know it at the time. But that was apparently a big marker that they missed.  Well, it turns out, that isn’t completely true. It can, I guess, increase the acid profile in your blood,  –

Rick: And sepsis is a blood infection?

Jonathan: Yeah, as far as I know, it’s a bacterial or infection that seeps into everywhere in your body.

Rick: Yeah, it could be in your abdominal cavity and all over the place.

Jonathan: It can be in three stages. I guess I was in stage two at that time from collapsing. So, I went home and then the next day, I fell off a cliff, physically, and I was half a germaphobe at the time. So, I figured I had just picked up COVID from being in the ER twice. Like being in the ER once a year was a pain for me, but now I was there twice in two weeks. So, I figured, “well, I have COVID, I’m going to power through it.” My body temperature started to change, at least felt like it was changing. So, I was bundling up. It was 70 degrees outside in May, end of May, and I just started to not be able to control my body temperature, the feeling of my body temperature.    I started sleeping more and more and more and it was just getting awful. I would have half my face swell. Actually, have a picture. I don’t think I’ll ever release it, but it was three days before the event, and it looked like-I just looked awful and sure enough about a week later- it was bad enough to where I was so cold. I had the heat on in the house. I was wearing heavy wool socks, heavy sweatpants, heavy hoodie and I   that evening around 5. I think it was like 4 or 5 at night. My entire body was yellow.  mirror and I was like, “whoa”, and everything was yellow. Just everything- like even like under your fingernails, like every part of me was yellow. I dropped my trousers, and everything was yellow. And I thought to myself, “Well, I don’t feel worse.” And the weird thing was, I was so worried about  being yellow, it wasn’t affecting my breathing. So, I just didn’t really think much about it. And I went to bed, and I figured if I feel worse in the morning, I’ll just call the  at that point I was sleeping till almost noon every day. I was so sick. So, to be up at 4:30 in the morning, I was like, “what the hell am I doing awake?” I was looking at my cell phone like, “Are you kidding me?” So, when I went to roll out of bed, I put my legs off the edge of the bed. I tried to stand up and when I did, I fell right into the wall. My bed was only about three feet from the wall, and I caught myself.   It was like reality was being moved. And I thought, “well, that’s strange. That’s really weird.” And I tried to make my way to the bathroom. It was maybe 15 feet. I had to go down a short hallway and make a right into the bathroom. And as I started to walk, my legs weren’t really working too well. And I couldn’t feel them. That was the weird part. It’s like, I couldn’t really feel my legs. And as I was making my way to the bathroom, I was like, “what is going on?” And I look down and I’m dragging my right leg.  And at that moment, I was just like, “whatever. Just keep going.” That was my mentality in life. It was like, “if it’s not killing you right now, just keep going. Why are you stopping?” It’s like, I used to say that to people at work. “Why are you stopping? There’s oxygen everywhere. Keep moving.” And so I make it to the bathroom doorframe   So, I did.  And when I did, I looked down at my hands, and they were completely just empty. Like all the fluid had leaked out   I had a blood pressure machine. It was just all over like within 10 minutes. It was just all over and I found that to be a side effect of sepsis. Your fluid starts leaking into your cavity,    It’s like pushing a button on a microwave. It just, there’s a click. And when I felt the click,   I’m looking at myself in the mirror, looking at my eyes going, “This is it.” And it was like the  It’s like, I was a power-hungry guy.  I would put it back in myself. There was no stopping ever. And in that moment, it was all gone. That person was completely gone, and it just allowed me to shed any clinging to life that I had. You know, like “I’m too young” or “what is happening right now”, like the intellectual questions were gone, my dog- the only thing in the   “wow” or “why?” The why was gone and it was just kind of graceful for me. It was- it’s going to sound strange, but it was beautiful in a way. It was delicate and It just flowed. And in that moment, that was it. That was the last thing I saw. It was lights out. I collapsed. I didn’t even feel anything after that. It was just black. And then the first thing I experienced was this velvety blackness. I was actually using that when I returned,  us, almost half, who see darkness, who don’t necessarily see a tunnel of light. So, this velvety darkness that I experienced- I felt horizontal in a way, but I felt caressed and I like to describe it as …

Rick: You felt horizontal. What do you mean by that?

Jonathan: There was like a movement in a way. It’s so strange to think about, because when I felt it, it’s like you’re cradled in something. I felt like I was cradled, but I also felt like I was moving in a way, but  Cause there’s no light. There’s no distance. There’s nothing. There’s nothing that would say, “Oh, I just passed something” or “something’s getting closer,” but  the chest of someone. And that kind of darkness is dark. You can’t see any light.  There was no…

Rick: Yeah, secure, protected.

Jonathan: Absolutely, you got it. And I don’t know how long I was in that space. There’s no time as I know it, no time as I felt it. And then the next thing I know, it’s kind of like you wake up; I call it a long blink. If you blinked your eyes long enough and you’re no longer in the room, where are you now? Like you’re somewhere else. And when I woke in this place, it was a landscape. It was a glowing landscape. Someone described it once as “gloaming.” It looked like the Scottish Highlands or the Irish countryside. There was this six-inch or eight-inch grass, maybe.

Rick: Before you go on, I’m  and all that stuff was some kind of a portal or some kind of a transition zone, that you needed to   maybe the dudes on the other side said, “Okay, we got an incoming. He’s in the tunnel, but he’s in the dark place now. Get ready.”

Jonathan: Yeah, yeah. Like, “Set the table. The company’s coming.” So, yeah,  Like the only explanation or comparison, I can make is this right now, feels like a cartoon to me. Like it just changed my understanding of what is real and what is illusion or what is manufactured and what is truth in a way. It just feels so incredibly real and I’m looking at this landscape, Right? There’s light coming from everything. There’s light coming through the grass. There’s light coming out of the rocks, out of the hillsides. Everything is like, has the slow breath. Like it’s all alive. It’s like, I want to say vibrating, but that to me is fast. It’s just like this breath or pulse of something. And the grass was all moving. Like it was underwater almost in like in unison, but there was no breeze. There was no climate in a way. And the light, I recognize, like you could- this light was like love. It felt like love. It’s, I don’t want to give you the wrong idea, but it was like tentacles and as it hit parts of me, which I know I didn’t have a body. You just feel this most incredible love this. Unconditionally, like everything was there just for you.

Rick: Let me interject a question here.  they’re presented with something they can relate to. So, a Hindu might see Krishna or you’re kind of an atheistic, outdoorsy guy, so, you saw a nice outdoor scene and you’re going to tell us in a minute about  So, they kind of customize it so you won’t feel out of place or …

Jonathan: Correct. Correct. I learned that. I think it was a year and a  yeah.” So, it was just a loving landscape, the light that you could go into. I immediately recognized I could see 360 degrees around me. Feeling was seeing, they were as one.  but I couldn’t really see things. It’s like if you’re driving in a car and it’s fog, it’s like as you drive further, things start to come through the fog. You start to see them take shape. And it felt like that. It felt like I was always in the middle of it, like a video game almost.  And it was on the right-hand side of this essence that I was. And it was weird because you feel like you’re walking, but you’re not. It’s like you recognize there’s no weight. Like it was weightless and weight at the same time. It’s very bizarre. I can’t replicate the feeling I’ve tried.  kind of like 10 feet up, I would say at the one o’clock or two o’clock position, was just a dude, a guy, a hiker, just sitting on the edge of a rock. He had his hands crossed and his elbows on his knees and he’s dangling his legs. It was like he was looking out at this beautiful landscape,  being says “you’re dead, you’re on the other side”. It’s my translation of something telepathic but I’m like in an in-between stage he described, kind of the welcome,  there’s just no part of you that makes the trip, that’s like “oh really?”, like “wow” right? There’s no humanness that goes “hmm, are you sure?” like that sheds that ego piece gets left behind that part of you does die. So, he, he made his way down off the, off the rock.   going, “I know you, but how do I know you?” And it’s the weirdest feeling. Cause you’re like, it’s a good feeling. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m so upset. I don’t recognize you.” And he felt that.  All these different people, like a deck of cards, just voom, voom,voom.

Rick: And you were seeing that in his form.

Rick: Becoming different people from the chest up.

Jonathan: yup, from the chest up. He turned into a woman and then a man, and I recognized all these people. And it was the same feeling. I recognize them.   So, I’m looking at myself as this being and I’m making eye contact with this being. And then he quickly, he didn’t, he actually didn’t stay on that very long. He just kind of showed me and then zip. And after he turned back into the full hiker, he said, “I am you and you are me.”  Just was like, boom.

Rick: Every time you say that I’m reminded of I am the walrus by the Beatles.

Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.

Rick: So let me ask you, so this guy, do you have the feeling like he was your higher self? Because some people say that we have this higher self and most of us actually does not even live on this plane. That we’re just a portion of us here and the rest of us is there. And therefore, he was showing you all the past lives that he as the higher self-had gone through, and you just having been the most recent one or some other interpretation?

Jonathan: Yeah, I have a different interpretation because I was shown over there in the second part of the experience that you can access your higher self. It was something else. It was a God being. Was not me. Was not my higher self.

Rick: Some sub-celestial being. Some cosmic being.

Jonathan: Yeah. I use the name Jesus or Yeshua, but I also know that this thing is beyond. And I think is probably not the right word, but it is beyond man-made identification. We have names for these things and words for them, but I will tell you, meeting them, it doesn’t cut it. And the incredible unconditional love I felt from this being, was beyond his name. We have an identity and we shoebox people. We’re like, “Okay, he’s this.” You put all the stuff in and you’re like, “Okay, there’s my Yeshua box and put that over there, and there’s my Krishna box, and there’s…” And I will just tell you that whatever boxes we have,   ego that says, “Call me by my right name or else.” There is no ego in that state. So, he directed my life review, and it just started. There was no warning.  I would say are beautiful and loving and showed me when I was love, but a lot of it was how I dealt with people. A lot of it was understanding I was just walking around in denial of what I was, what you are, what everybody is, denying my connection to others. I was an elitist,  embarrassed or going through all kinds of emotional conniptions because of the influence you’d had on people?

Jonathan: No, you know what it was? It’s worse than that. It’s… I didn’t have regret or I didn’t have the emotional side. When you’re there with this being and you’re feeling the love that comes from this being and you’re witnessing yourself play out something, and you’re either in your body or in somebody else’s receiving kind of the garbage you’re   it is everything, we are it. When you realize what you’re doing to somebody else, you’re doing to it, then that’s the worst feeling.

Rick: Yeah, remember Jesus, you probably don’t remember this because you didn’t go to church, but Jesus said, “Whatsoever you do unto the least of these,  like unconditional love, even doing the worst thing I had ever done in my lifetime, all the worst things, unconditionally love, not even a flinch. And it’s like your best friend,  because you don’t want to feel that. You just don’t. It’s not fun. It’s not fun at all. And it’s not about like how many F bombs I dropped or how much porn I watched or like those are human things.

Jonathan: Correct.

Rick: This being wasn’t giving you a hard time but it’s like “okay let me just  Like I could have taken everything in my life review and said, from the age of  That’s an excuse. There’s no excuse there. It doesn’t exist. There’s no like you’re too tired, you were tired, and you yelled at your kid, right? We’re going to do these things because we’re here to experience. However, if you’re awake to the fact that this is an experience, you won’t have the excuse of why you do certain things. And that was the eye-opening piece for me. There was no judgment from that being whatsoever, and I’d done some really crazy, nasty things. You just weren’t awake.

Rick: Yeah. Remember what Jesus said on the cross, he said, “Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do.”

Jonathan: Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s weird, it’s like you feel like a child there. We live a complete adult life; we think we know what’s up. You die and you have an experience, you’re like, “Oh, I was the kid in the corner of kindergarten just eating crayons, I thought I knew what I was doing.” It’s like you just have this difference of feeling between you and what it really is, and you just realize we’re all children here just feeling our way through it, all in this stage of trying to remember what this is about, and how could a God-being, in a sense, look at you and go, “Well, you know, when you were 16, you did this, and I’m going to punish you for it.” There’s no punishment, in a sense. So, it’s beautiful. It was a little rough.  But you leave it. I remember when it ended, and it was just like it happened instant- It felt like it was instantaneously and a hundred years long. It was the weirdest thing. It was both at once.   And I just remember that feeling was so overwhelming. It just changed me on the spot. It just made me realize what connection meant.  We’re connected to people.

Rick: Do you think everybody encounters something like this when they cross over? Adolf Hitler is, “hey, welcome home.” Or do you think there’s some kind of variation depending upon how we’ve behaved? You’re kind of an innocent little boy scout compared to somebody like that. And then how does it – I don’t want to use the word – retribution would be the wrong word, but how do the scales get balanced if a person has lived a really horrible life? And obviously as a soul, they’re going to continue evolving, so how does that get worked out? I mean, obviously some traditions talk about hell and all that stuff, but what’s your take?

Jonathan: I know that there’s no hell, other than what we manufacture. If you believe in it, you will manufacture some version of it there. That’s in the studies as well. But for someone of that cloth, there are two parts to that.   much agency as we would like to believe.  opportunity to be a loving person, right?  perfect! We just walk around in love!” But   let’s say it was all free will. Yeah, their life review is going to be a bear. It might  letting this being down? Was that a second? Was that a minute? Was that a hundred years? Was that eternity itself?   Oh yeah. Oh, wow. What he’s going to feel. Yeah. Might be an eternity. Will he come back? Yeah, certainly he’ll have to. But if it’s part of something that he was supposed to do, yeah, is he going to be judged? No. No.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a tough one for people to swallow. We could spend an hour talking about it. If Hitler  come to terms with it. So, in the interest of time, we’ll probably have to keep going.

Jonathan: Okay. So, after the life review, I just felt the connection to all things. It just changed me. I realized I was, I felt alone. I always felt singled out. I felt like a lone wolf kind of guy. And I had the group of wolves that I hung out with other animals like myself.  And then I was given a choice, in that moment,  that moment I would have chosen to stay there. Like, no matter how much love that you feel there,   would get hot and red, it would dissipate and life here is instant. Like we feel it as a hundred years, but it’s instant on that side to make a decision, like, would you make a decision to snap your fingers on the other side? If it helped a thousand people, of course you would like, why wouldn’t you? And when I made that decision, everything changed. When I telepathically agreed to come back to help. It was like, of course I would.  As you said earlier, we’re all welcomed by something.  It was like this embrace. And it just disappeared. Everything disappeared. Everything changed. The being kind of changed out of the hiking clothes. You look like more of a God type of being very tall, powerful. And that we’re in, I will call it a version of space, I call it the void. It’s like this living place that you just have this understanding all form comes from.  shape of a pot when it goes through the machine. So, it’s like space but  The interesting thing was the darkness that was between them which was like like a tar pit almost, like a just bubbling moving darkness, was just as alive as the celestial beings.  kind of sentient creature of some kind. Their homes obviously are insentient.

Jonathan: Size-wise. Size-wise.

Rick: Oh, they’re as big as homes.

Jonathan: Big as homes.

Rick: What do they look like? Can you describe them?

Jonathan: Giant orbs of light.

Rick: Orbs, okay, so they were sort of featureless but luminous and sentient.

Jonathan: Sentient. Yeah, definitely sentient, massive and glowing a color. It’s like a bluish whitish, but it’s not bluish white. It’s some other color. Color was very strange there. There were colors- I experienced colors there that I can’t describe. Their color is alive. Like we would say, well,    because it was like, “okay, he’s agreed to come back. Let’s give him the download.”

Jonathan: Yeah.

Rick: And then all this started.

Jonathan: It’s very strange to me because when I play it back in my head, like chronologically,

Rick: Yeah, but maybe it takes a while to kind of download, just like you download a file off the internet or something. 10 megabytes, it might take a little while.

Jonathan: I know there were things, when I started giving talks, where there were connections that I made realizing that the way it was shown to me on the other side was the way I could present it to others. I used to use a whiteboard and I used to draw the shapes and I used to draw the things that I  props, their props would appear- like voids and screens and things that look like openings to infinity and golden letters and things would shoot. And it was all about perception and time and love. And it just went on forever. Like it was, it’s interesting. Like I come back with it and I have it all. And I just call myself a search engine. Like you ask a particular question. I know the answer is in there, but it’s not here. I don’t have to think about the answer. or it’s just, it’s like comes from here.

Rick: And you

Jonathan: It comes out before I know. In fact, that happens very often when I give interviews. I have to go back. I have to go back, because I oftentimes, or even talks. People ask me,” Oh, that was that one thing you said in that last talk.” And I got to go back and look,  And they’re not my words. So, it’s, yeah, it stopped when in this void, there was this one celestial light or sun that was different from all the other beings. And it was like, they dropped back in a way. And this light just grew and grew and grew and grew and it was just getting bigger, it was swallowing everything.   And in it, you feel everything. And when I say everything, I mean you can feel every hair on everybody’s head. You can feel every blade of grass, every bird, every molecule of anything here. You feel all, and you realize that when you feel it, it’s all for you. All of it. Everything that’s been created is just for you and your experience.   Every car going by, you look at cars all day and you’re like, it’s just a car. But when you realize that you are viewing the car as part of your experience is the reason the car exists, then you start to plug into something greater. Everything here exists for our experience.

Rick: Well could the person in the car say, “Okay, that guy on the sidewalk who’s looking at me, he exists for me. The reason he exists is for me.” So, in other words, what you’re saying here could be applied to all 8 billion of us.

Jonathan: Yeah. It was shown to me as a giant sandcastle. It was one of the things that showed up. It was a sandcastle like a hundred miles high. And I was being shown the bottom, like where the sandcastle rests on the beach.  of sand in the castle. But if one grain was removed the whole thing falls.

Rick: Yeah. No man is an island apart from the main. Ask not for whom the Bell tolls it tolls for thee.

Jonathan: There you go.

Rick: Yeah, John Donne.

Jonathan: But it’s interesting. Like you remove the grain from the bottom and the top is affected, and you would say, well, the top of the sandcastle doesn’t know the  You are the sandcastle. So, we have this sense of individuality the  And this is me. But then in that place you understand.  Your experience, your existence, it’s shown to me like, everybody asks me, “what’s my purpose?” And I laugh. I’m like, “take your next breath, please. Like start there.”   We wouldn’t have the back and forth, the contrast. So yeah, in that place, I call it the embrace of God, in that light. It’s just, I can’t explain it well enough, and anything I do is not even close.

Rick: Is that why we come to earth? Somebody sent in a question like,  when there’s this lovely realm, but maybe what you’re saying is we can learn lessons or something, or there’s value to be found in this concrete, difficult dimension of life, that you’re just not going to get if you just hang out in the heavenly realms.

Jonathan: Yeah, it was shown to me as a gift. This is going to sound crazy to half the people listening. That life is a gift, because I sometimes explain it as ice cream. You’re like a three-year-old, you have ice cream for the first time, and you’re like, “Oh my God, I didn’t know ice cream exists,” and you’re just amazed by it.  You’re like, “Meh, ice cream.” But imagine you would forget every day. So, every day you tried ice cream, it was the first time again. The first time again. The first time again. And that’s why we’re here. We’re here to forget love, to remember it, because when you remember the unconditional love that you are, it is, there’s no greater feeling. None, not even winning the lottery. It beats that.  You not remembering love, is also serving the whole. So, your individual free will piece is, “well, can I remember it today? Can I remember it right now?” Yeah.

Jonathan: Ooh, ice cream, for the first time when you start to feel it truly authentically, But it won’t make sense to our intellect here. It won’t make sense.  This divine intelligence created everything for us to experience, so it could experience our laughter, our love, our sorrow. It’s experiencing through us.  And the sun is like, “you remember.” And it’s like hugs and love and it’s just, it’s an exercise. And the unfortunate part is we look at it as something to solve, and in trying to solve it we create our own suffering. And I would just say it’s an exercise. It’s an exercise in right now. So right now, can you be love right now? Don’t worry about tomorrow. Don’t worry about five minutes from now. Just right now. Can you do it?  You’re going to forget you’re going to be the nightmare in somebody else’s life. You’re going to be the grumpy person. That’s to be expected. This was never about perfection. But when you get to the “right now, I remember,” that’s what changes the world. That’s what changes the experience. That’s when you turn and face the sun and go, “oo, I know you’re there.” And that’s where magic happens. That’s putting yourself in a state where magic can happen.

Rick: Do you find that you don’t have to practice this anymore, like be attentive and remembering it and so on? Does it become second nature after a while? So, it’s just your spontaneous way of functioning. Whereas for maybe somebody who hasn’t experienced  and they have to be more vigilant.

Jonathan: Yeah, I tell people, don’t make it an effort, make it a practice.

Rick: Right

Jonathan: Fake it till you make it.

Rick: An effortless practice.

Jonathan: Fake it till you make it.  I eat three meals a day. Breakfast,” thank you for the day, thank you for the opportunities”, right?   I don’t feel it right now. Not feeling that unconditional love in this moment because my boss, well I hate his guts, but I recognize there’s a gift in it.” And that’s just starting the process. It’s a muscle in a way.  Sometimes I say it’s the shedding.  And some people do that in this life, and some people won’t. Some people refuse and love them anyway because they’re serving to help you do it. You recognize the action in another and go, “I just don’t condone that behavior, and   you recognize that. And then coming out of that, it was like dropping in slow motion back into a body.

Rick: The question just came in that’s directly relevant to what you were saying, from a guy named Martin Klein. If the only decision we can make is whether we choose to be awake or asleep, how do we actually do that? Do we make the decision once and ask the thing in the room with us, “Please, I choose to be awake,” or is it more like thousands of little micro decisions in daily life, where we try remembering to choose to act or react from a space of love, rather than from a space of   rather than blindly walking through life. It was kind of like… I’ll use it. You know, I wasn’t a good guy. I hung out with people that weren’t great people and I would say, “Hey guys, let’s go to the bar. First one to pick up a married lady wins.” And it’s kind of like, yeah, and it’s kind of like that’s who I was. And it’s kind of like you would look at that and say, “Well, obviously don’t do that, dude. Like, go to a movie.” And I was shown if I had gone to the movie, it wouldn’t have changed a thing.  It’s like, we think, well, it’s this decision or this decision. And I’m like, well, kind of, but it’s more about the state that you’re in. If I had woken up and said,” well, obviously I should go to a movie because I want to be a good person or I recognize that I am love,” then you’ve changed state. So, it’s a reflection. It’s like, you’re dropping rocks in a pond and those ripples go out.  not look like love. And we try to go forks in the road. Every decision, I would say, that’s…you’re going to burn up trying to do that. Think about your state. What state are you in? Less about the decision, more about the state.

Rick: Okay, good. And then presumably, as the state becomes more elevated, then the decisions spontaneously flow from that state and are loving or more appropriate.

Jonathan: And it’s, it’s multidimensional.  It kind of picks you up and says, “Oh, you’re on these loving tracks.” So, you won’t even get put in the situations as often where you need to go, “Oh, I need to be loving this moment.”  So, if you’re authentically in that state, it goes, “okay, I’m not going to challenge you.”” You don’t need it. I would prefer you to just be love so that others can recognize it in themselves.” So, it’s not like, “well, you’re a loving being. Let me give you a bunch of stuff to really mess with you to see if you are.” It doesn’t work that way, but it’s more loving than that.

Rick: Cool. So, okay. So, you were about to turn to the emergence of near-death experience.

Jonathan: Yeah. It just felt like I dropped back into my body like a raindrop. It was in fact, when I say it that way and I get a vision of this slow motion, just raindrop falling and it felt horizontal at a point at a point, kind of like going in and that’s when I had like the tunnel of light was on the way out way back into the body. It was like that light was pulling back from me. Was I moving? Was I actually falling or was it just pulling away? I don’t know, but it felt like I was slowly, something like a feather. If it just floated down, not that it was swinging, but it just gently. Slow motion, just placed back in the body, which is very, very strange.  And when you get on it, get through it, it’s like you feel material again. You feel the heavy, like you feel oxygen. It would be like coming from space into oxygen, right? There’s a point where it’s just there. And I felt that before I had re-entered the body, it was kind of like I was back in reality or this illusion or this matrix. And it was the weirdest feeling. It was like being in the center of my chest. It was like I was standing inside my body in the middle of my chest in darkness,  And it wasn’t until recently, like maybe in the last year, I was talking to someone who’s a big Rudolf Steiner reader. And he said, “Oh, he describes it in the same way.” And I don’t know much about Rudolf Steiner. And I expanded, I felt like I was expanding into the torso. I felt like I was just slowly growing, kind of like that light grew that embraced me, like a slow 1/1000, 2/1000, through just very delicately expanding. And that’s when I felt things that I don’t think anybody should feel. I felt like the heart struggled to take a first beat, and it was like a half beat first. It was the strangest feeling in the world. Don’t recommend it at all. I felt the first beat. I felt like, I felt it like cramp like it was cramped and it didn’t want to be, it like struggled. I recognized that I could feel my lungs on my back.  I felt fluid move down my left arm first, and it had a weird like texture to it almost, like a sound too, it was very strange. And then about that time I took my first breath. All this time I was expanding into the body. It wasn’t until I took my first breath, it was like sand filling a shoebox. It’s just slowly filling the shoebox. And I’m expanding into this body, and when I expanded up to the head, I took my first breath, and it was a gasp. Huge gasp, like somebody drowning. Yeah, I don’t recommend that either. It was excruciating, in a way.  I’m looking at the ceiling and then the confusion started like “what happened?” And then I reached, I went to reach for my phone. And I kind of looked to my right and it had fallen out of the hoodie pocket. It was lying face down on the bathroom floor and I picked it up and I was so weak, even picking up the phone was a struggle and I just kind of looked at it, clicked the button and it said 4:30, I mean 7:30

Rick: 7:30

Jonathan: 7:30 in the morning. Light was now coming through the bathroom window. And it was like, “what happened?” I felt different. I felt empty, in a weird way. I felt the mind was empty in a weird way. And I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. And then I tried to get off the floor and I couldn’t move. My left leg was kind of under my right leg. I twisted and just kind of fell. And I tried to move my left leg out from under my right leg. and it wouldn’t move.  And I know nothing is random, nothing here is random. I was shown that, not even the piece of dust that’s flying by your face right now, nothing. So, I stuck it in my mouth, and it came back 94.0. And I know that’s emergency hypothermia because I grew up as a hunter. I’m like, “you’re in deep, deep trouble.” What if you see that? And I looked at it and I said, “Hm”, that was my response. “Hm” And I put it down on the floor and I laid there for a minute. Nothing. It was like no thought. It was very strange, very empty, caught my breath, then sat up again, tried to get off the floor. And this time I used the sink helped me more, to get up. I stood up and when I stood up, there’s the mirror right there.  The face is filled in. I’ve got a little bit of color in my cheeks, and I stared at myself. I just stared at myself like, “what’s going on?” And I didn’t know what to do in that moment. It just it seemed like forever. I don’t know how long I was staring at myself, but I turned to walk out of the bathroom, and I noticed my leg was working again, my right leg. I was no longer dragging it and I could feel my legs. I can feel my arms and I still felt awful. But I could move, and then I walked into the bedroom to see what my dog was doing. I figured he would have got off the bed if I was laying there on the floor for three hours. He never got off the bed the lazy lump. And I walked in there and he just turned- he was facing the wall, the other wall. And when he heard me walk into the bedroom, he looked over his body at me and he gave me the most eerie look,   It was like he didn’t really recognize me, and he saw through me. It looked like he was looking through me and I looked at him. I said, “what’s your problem?”     And I’m walking around going-no desire to call anybody. Like it never even crossed my mind. Like, “oh, maybe you should seek medical help.” Like nothing, zero. And I went into the kitchen and made his breakfast and called him out and he ate. And then I sat down on the couch for like three hours and I just sat there, no TV on, no music, nothing. And it was like I was not here. It was like I still had one leg. I started replaying this experience.

Rick: At this point did you actually start remembering everything you had just been there that whole near-death experience?

Jonathan: The strange thing is I didn’t know what it was  I was not as fear. So, I was like, “what the hell just happened?” And I had done psychedelics in college.  It felt way different.

Rick: Yeah.

Jonathan: And I was just sitting there just trying to resolve it. Just trying, what do I do with this? What do I make of it? And I had this overwhelming feeling of love I could not place. It was just so foreign to me, to who I was three hours earlier. And I’m just like oozing love, like out of my chest. I’m thinking about the neighbors. I love them. I’m thinking about the neighbors two doors down that I hate. I love them. I’m thinking about how much I love my daughter. I’m just like tearing up in love, sitting in this place. And it’s like, I lived like that for the next three days.  Like I was still there.

Rick: So you still didn’t go to the hospital or anything. You just sat there for a few days.

Jonathan: I had, it’s funny. I had a doctor appointment scheduled for like four days after the event. And when I walked to the kitchen to make his breakfast, I said, “I guess I’m good. I’m no longer yellow. my leg is working.” I’m like,” I’ll wait till the appointment.” And no, nothing, which is, I know is part of the experience because I was, like literally at a button. I was sitting on the couch like this. I’d have the blood pressure machine going. I’d be having trouble breathing and I’d be sitting there with the phone like this.

Rick: Getting ready to dial 911?

Jonathan: ready to push the button. Because if my breathing gets worse, I’m in trouble. And no, nothing. Like no, no desire for medical help. No worry. No “Hey dude, you were gone on a bathroom floor for three hours.”  And that was enough for me to bee line for the emergency room. And here I know that I’ve been gone for three hours. I know my body temperature is 94 degrees and I’m like, “Oh, well, like what a beautiful day.” It was the strangest experience. I still can’t resolve it completely, other than it was part of the experience, which I wasn’t supposed to call. I wasn’t supposed to do anything.

Rick: Before you go any further, I warned you by email that I had a skeptical question. So, I’m going to ask that now, and I want the audience to understand that I mean no disrespect. And I actually think that it may help you to discuss this a little bit. But medically speaking, if you stop breathing and your heart stops beating, for 10 minutes, you pretty much have irreversible brain damage.  and he was under there for nearly half an hour.  dead instead of near dead. And I’ll just say one or two more little things here. You came out of, you were completely unaware of your body during this whole three   It just seemed like they were starting up again. But it could be that they had been going, maybe in an awkward sort of jerky way, but they got to have been going or you wouldn’t be having this conversation with me.

Jonathan: Yeah, from a medical standpoint, it makes zero sense. None. And there are two others that have me beat, one at five and a half hours and one at 16. And I think the interesting part is not how long people were gone. I think it’s more along the lines of what people came back with. I could care less if people think I had an experience or not.

Rick: I know you had the experience, I’m just skeptical of this no heartbeat for three hours thing.

Jonathan: I believe those two others are part of Jeff’s experience, or research study, which I am also a part of. Yeah, I think they are. I’m also a part of his.

Rick: Yeah.

Jonathan: But, the interesting thing is when science is starting to catch up, just now, recently in the past year, they’ve come out with what they call the third state, right? Science has always known two states, life and death. You’re either alive or you’re dead. And there’s a third state that they’ve come out with recently, which they’re saying they’ve discovered is a state between life and death, where something is clinically dead, but also still has life function.   That nothing is actually material. Everything here is light. Probably that same light that I experienced on the other side. So, if we’re not even physical, if we’re not even material itself and we’re just light, what’s time? So, it’s like on the other side, I did not feel time. I did not experience time. I didn’t even experience distance. But everything we have here is,” well, according to time”, well, what’s time? So yeah, I understand. According to any medical literature that you will read, absolutely, it makes no sense. And I will argue that I have all the brain damage.  Yeah, it doesn’t make sense.

Rick: I don’t think your brain dead. I mean, you wouldn’t be able to talk. Obviously, you’d be dead.

Jonathan: Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.  One is, it’s like why do I remember all the information? The average time for,  all of them, the average time for a near-death  All of them. I don’t know.

Rick: I’ve interviewed you know Anita Moorjani and Eben Alexander and people like that. I don’t think it took him that long to remember it all.

Jonathan: Yeah, I’m not saying…

Rick: maybe the average.

Jonathan: yeah I’m not saying  Absolutely none of it. I would agree. None of it. None of it will make medical sense.   I don’t seek any validation. I’m not here for anything. I don’t want anything from anybody, not even money. I just don’t. The interesting-

Rick: Okay, well, I don’t believe it. There are so many things we can talk about, and obviously, I believe everything about your spiritual experience, this other side experience. Maybe I’m a little stuck in the current medical paradigm, in terms of heart stopping for three hours. But there’s so many things I want to talk to you about. But before I start asking more questions,  before I start jumping around with different questions?

Jonathan: No, let’s jump in. I’ll just say that from that point, I was completely different. The cord was cut. That person who I was before, did not return.

Rick: Yeah.

Jonathan: Not even close.

Rick: I’ll let you elaborate on that. You haven’t had a chance to say it, but your entire lifestyle changed right away.    me, if you had come up to me and said anything about love, I would have told you to F off. Like if you had told me- if somebody walked up and said anything spiritual or even hello I would have stared at you like “why are you …?  waking up in a place of love, I immediately knew that didn’t come back. I immediately knew I was never going to work in an office again. And at that point, I was sitting on a move to Dallas, Texas. I had a job offer for $216,000 a year to be chief marketing officer with a large

Rick: Right. Oh, that’s a creepy thing. I’ve read about that.

Jonathan: Yeah. And I had an offer, and I was about to take it and  I had a 25-year career in marketing and technology. I knew I would never ever work in a scenario in  And it ended that day. It’s the weirdest thing. I just, I wasn’t that person anymore. And everything I had owned, I had multiple boats. I had an antique high-end antique sailboat. I had a motorboat on one side of the lake, sailboat on the other. I used to drive one boat to the other. I thought it was great. Like, “look at me, I can drive multiple boats to each other “and all the other stuff that I had, all the money, all the trips, everything, it just stopped immediately. Immediately everything changed and there was no slow integration. It was a light switch.

Rick: Yeah, you sold all that stuff. I mean, did you have much equity in it? Because you must have a little nest egg if you sold all those boats and cars and houses.

Jonathan: I wish I did. I blew it. I came out of a divorce and whatever I had left, I put into the house. I bought a house about a mile from the biggest lake in Idaho. But it was expensive to live out here. It’s a resort town. So, I put the money into the house, had a little bit left over. I bought the first boat. Then I started earning again. And I was like, “Okay, I need another boat. I need a bigger boat.”

Rick: And then when you had your NDE and you sold all this stuff, didn’t you have some money  I paid down all the bills. I think I was $40,000 in debt at the time, so I paid that down. So, I blew the money. Basically, I went through the money in two years.

Rick: OK> And you didn’t get a chance to finish your story, but the audience should know that what was wrong with you was that you had a gallstone stuck in a duct and you weren’t aware of it,

Jonathan: No.

Rick: Okay.

Jonathan: Fourth day in there, I had this giant flush come through my body. Like, it was disgusting.  However, I was still severely ill, and finally I convinced the doctor to do ultrasound and  They couldn’t figure it out. They’re like, ‘” Yeah, you’ve got some real problems. We don’t know what caused it.” I went to a, what do you call it? A functional doctor, homeopathy,

Rick: functional medicine.

Jonathan: Functional medicine.  pain.” She could see the markers. I showed her the ultrasounds. She’s like,  giggling to myself because I was not sharing this with anybody. Nobody was going to know about this. And the funny thing is, I was sitting in this place going, “I know on the other side I had agreed to come and help people, but I don’t know how, and I don’t know what that means.”  And so, it took me six months before I could eat food. Normally I was on a liquid diet for six months and then it was like a little piece of meat. And then it was like it just grew, but it took a solid year before I could eat well again. I’m going on third year. I still have medical problems that aren’t completely healed. I’ll probably have damage for life, but…

Rick: I’ve heard you say that about every six months you have a

Rick: Right.

Jonathan: It’s like every six months I come back and just get a little bit more psychic when I go through that experience. I can feel more, sometimes physically feel more.

Rick: So, there have been people in history like Saint Francis who went, who nearly died and was out for a long period and then kind of came out of it transformed. If you ever watch the movie Brother, Son, Sister, Moon about St. Francis, you see what he went through. But

Jonathan: I do know, the people that I’ve met over the last couple years just doing what    [laughter]

Jonathan: Yeah, it’s a yes and no, because we influence what we see in a way. So those who see Guides- I speak to people and they’re like, “I have my guide Michael and my guide Mary and Lisa,” and they look a certain way, and I just know that that is a formless divinity taking the shape for them. It’s kind of like the welcome that I received in the landscape. It takes the shape for you. We all have -call it guides around us, but you don’t have to call it guides. If you’re breathing air, you’re breathing it. It’s around you. It’s everywhere around you. However, some of us would prefer it in a shape.

Rick: Well, some people say we all have a guardian angel or two that are actually entities, that have been assigned to us for life to look out for us or something.

Jonathan: I wouldn’t

Rick: Right.

Jonathan: That is always around you. It’s a super intelligence, call it a quantum field if you want,  We’re going to do a whole thing on orbs. Let’s do that now.

Jonathan: Yeah. All right.

Rick: So, so what are they? What are these orbs you see? I’ve heard you describe them in interviews, but tell the audience.

Jonathan: I think it’s a manifestation of that formless divinity. Some might call it consciousness. It’s not a thing. It’s it’s

Rick: An orb means, like a circle. So, if you look up and you see one, you’re seeing a luminous circle?

Jonathan: Yeah, it’s like those celestial beings that I saw in the experience, a smaller version. So, you’re seeing an orb of light in the sky at night. I see them in the day too, but most people will see them at night, recognize them. The interesting thing is I came back seeing them almost immediately, within the first week. And when I first saw them, I recognized them from the other side. There’s a feeling that it emits psychically, I guess, for me, that I recognized, “Oh, hey,  understanding that everything your kitchen table is also an orb, right? Like everything here is an orb. Your shirt is an orb,

Rick: but it has a subtler dimension to it. right?

Jonathan: Yeah. But it’s a lot easier to point at the thing in the sky where you’re like, what is that? Right? So, it manifests in  lights. I’ve seen them turn into shadow figures and turn into birds, turn into rainbow color, disappear, turn into clouds of white smoke, hundreds of different things,  primarily in a subtler dimension and we’re kind of seeing them indistinctly as an orb, but if we could see them more clearly, we might see more detail and more specificity?   find that they can see them now on their own. Okay. So, it’s a recognition that it’s there.  room. And I looked to the center, and there was an orb, like right there, kind of. And it felt like

Jonathan: Yeah, that’s how it is. It’ll show up in rooms with me. Sometimes it gives me a message. Sometimes  showing you that there’s more. It’s showing you that there’s a lot more here than you understand. Can you open up to that?”

Rick: Do you think it’s worth people’s while to try to see them?  And he like, smiled, and we got out of the elevator, and he said, they just said to me, “Don’t tell people about us. If they’re meant to see us, they’ll see us.” And then he said, “By the way, there were three.”

Jonathan: That’s great. I don’t tell people to go looking for them. I know that they show up when you were ready. It’s more about a state again. Are you in the state to be able to see them? Because the part of you that really wants to go see them is not in the state to receive them.

Rick: Like you said, if they’re meant to see us, they’ll see us. Okay, next question.  How do you see the change in society unfolding in the coming years?

Jonathan: I’m not going to get too much into what I’ve seen. I’ll tell you this, you’re watching it manifest now. You’re watching the separation of two groups of people.  Where that ends up in society, I’ve seen a couple things.

Rick: Do you think it could be both or either?

Jonathan: It’s appearing more and more like it’ll be a fork in the road.

Rick: Okay. Now, certain fundamentalist Christian groups say, “Okay, we’re going to heaven. Everybody else is going to stay on earth and get tortured for a long time,” which is a rather simplistic way of interpreting what we’re saying here. What would your take on it be?

Jonathan: I would say there’s a possible version of that, right? Like if you’re, let’s take today, if you’re today worried about everything in the world, you’re causing your own hell, right? But if you’re sitting in the space of love right now realizing that that’s found within and is not found within external circumstances, then you’re almost freeing yourself of it. I don’t see- people want to think of it backwards. They’ll think external to internal, and I will say it’s internal to external. So, your internal state is projected out into the world versus, “Well, that’s happening and that affects me, so it really depends on what’s happening out there.” And I will say, flip that quickly. Flip it. Get to the point where you can walk into any room in your house and just feel love. Just feel love, just for the sake of feeling it.

Rick: Would you say that the overall condition of the world is an expression or a manifestation of the internal state of all eight billion of us, taken collectively?

Jonathan: I was shown that it is based on that state that I talked about on free will. So, if everybody wakes up to the love that they are right now, the world changes, we  It’s over.

Rick: The whole world is going to dissolve or something?

Jonathan: Yeah, this only exists for contrast. So, it’s kind of like if there are no school texts, right? School book, your math book. Do they even use books in school anymore? But your math book is the contrast to go, “I hate math,” but if there’s no books, there’s no school, you’re out, there’s no   Okay, here’s a question from Tanya Craig in New South Wales, Australia. I’ve listened to many of your talks and resonate with them.

Jonathan: Yeah, for me, it’s less about knowledge. I mean, people will call what I come back with  until you find something that allows you to experience the love of what you are and experience everything around you as the loving gift that it is, then I would say it is for everyone. But I was told on the other side that it is not for everyone. That was one of the warnings I was giving.

Rick: Oh, the one and the 99 thing.   everybody. So, I will say the timer has been set. You have a limited amount of time here,  means there are people that it is not for.

Rick: They’re not ready.

Jonathan: No.

Rick: Right?

Rick: Maybe sometime they will. Yeah. – I mean, it’s like Jesus’s parable of the Sower, where seeds are thrown on different kinds of ground and some of it dies and some of  I have a more mature understanding of that now. I might have said that differently or  So, there are kind of two questions in here. Can you be too certain, and thereby dogmatic?  Maybe the practice of speaking with thousands of people now, I would say, has changed me. But no, I am certain, because I know it’s not me being certain. I’m guided to it. Half the time the words aren’t mine,  feel the message between them,” because I know that’s where you become the one of the 99. That’s where the message is catered to you. It’s not catered to you in the words that I use. It’s catered to you in the feeling you get between the words. And that’s hard for some people to understand. Is it dogmatic? Well, some people will say it’s dogmatic. Other people will say it’s healing. Other people will say it’s horrible. I mean, I get the entire range.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve heard you. You’re telling me privately that you get some real flak from people sometimes.

Jonathan: Oh, gosh.

Rick: Which seemed weird to me because everything you’re saying seems so positive and uplifting. It’s like, who could have a problem with it?  would ask Jesus to fix his debt problems, I said, “Please understand that you don’t need me. You can  I get a thousand that are, “You helped me so much. I’ve been trying to unlock myself for 30 years, and I feel love for the first time in 30 years,” or “I just lost somebody, and you’ve helped me.” I know it’s just part of it. That was one of the warnings I received on the other side. I always laugh about it, because every time I experience it, I’m almost thankful. I’m like, You’re just fulfilling the prophecy of which I was told. “I will be persecuted for the words.” That’s how it was given to me.  You put it out there, everybody’s going to see it.

Jonathan: That’s right. That’s right.

Rick: Okay, so another thing, and I’ll get back to some audience questions. I’ve heard you say… Well, I heard one lecture you gave in which you kept saying, “Yes and no, yes and no,” at the  and ambiguity is a sign of spiritual maturity. And very often it’s true that there’s  and others saying that there are gradations and degrees of unfoldment of consciousness,  the animal and awakens in man.” So, I like that. It gives the impression that, yes, the

Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah, it’s that original circle that I was shown, that first piece of information, which was truth. In that circle, the rock is both awake and asleep. In that circle, the rock is both a  yes and no. Everything is all possibilities right now.

Rick: This is from a woman in the UK named Debbie. She says, “I am a 72-year-old woman who has struggled living in a body since I was 40.” Oh, I guess she’s been having difficulties since she was 40. “My desire to go home increases as I age. How can I reconcile living here when longing to return? I live a full life sharing in God’s love through volunteering in my church and have a family, but I am exhausted, struggling with physically living in an aging body. I feel I’m done and I’m ready to take the return ticket home.

Jonathan: That’s tough. I  newborn or you’re 99, you’re still serving. You may not be able to leave the house as much, but you still serve the whole because we’re connected to something that’s invisible. It’s a network. An invisible network that runs throughout this entire place, so you feeling love alone in your favorite chair, still serves the whole.    It’s not stuck in the room with you.

Rick: I’ve heard you say that you’re not going to be damned for committing suicide when you get to the other side, but it’s also not the best option. So, I’ll have you comment on that and also on euthanasia, which is legal in some places.

Jonathan: It was shown to me that we can find what we are in our last breath, right? When you recognize that  suffering that I identify with.” So no, you will not be damned. No, you will not be judged.  experience things through you, and you leaving early means you will probably have to come back, and re-experience some of those things. But no, you’re not damned for suicide.

Rick: Now, when your dog got too old and you probably had him put down, he probably just didn’t die in his bed, you had to have him put down. What do you think about euthanasia? With today’s modern medicine, people are kept alive way longer than they would naturally, which is often a good thing. You used to be able to die from a toothache. (laughing) ‘Cause you’d get an infection, it would go to your brain, you’d be done.

Jonathan: Right, right.

Rick: But I think maybe we, do you think maybe we have taken it too far in the other direction, keeping people on life support and all that? When we should just let ’em go?

Jonathan: It’s hard because I have the experience and I know this isn’t as real as we want it to be. It’s, we take this very seriously and it’s hellish in a way, because we’re just here to experience contrast. You could say that contrast is suffering. And when people tell me, “I want to live to be 107,” I    but yeah, I think we’ve gone a little bit unbalanced.

Rick: Yeah, and these tech bros who want to upload their mind to the cloud and things like that, or like you say, become bionic, replace all your  They think that this meat puppet is where it’s at.

Jonathan: Yeah, yeah, unfortunately, yeah.

Rick: Yeah, okay, jumping right along. So, you have been gifted with what you call the Clares,

Jonathan: Yeah, it’s interesting, the first big one that I received was the LA wildfires. I had received so many small ones or precognition of conversations with others, or things while sitting with others, but the really big one that was shocking to me was the LA. wildfire was because I saw it, I smelled it, I felt it, all of it.

Rick: And you knew it was LA, you knew it was Pacific Palisades, you had it all nailed.

Jonathan: And I knew that it wasn’t for me because when I got the message, I was sitting in a meditation and I came out and I was doing a roundtable discussion with, I think it was like five or six people, and there was a woman there whose daughter was in California, and I knew it was for her. So, I told her, I said, “Look, LA’s going to burn,” and she informed her daughter. So, it’s like, when I get these things, I know they’re not for me. I received them, not too long after That, I was in a meditation with somebody who was questioning the ability. And that day I’m in that meditation, I see, I think it was a Swiss flag. I see a mountain top. I see snow, like there’s a Swiss flag on top of the mountain top and I see this gust of wind come, foom, and the whole mountain, the face of this mountain just slides off in this giant avalanche. And a week later, it swallowed an entire village. Now, what’s that for? I told the woman who was skeptical about it, but what’s it really for? It’s like sometimes I receive these things just as an affirmation. Like I said before, sometimes the experience is the message. So, it’s not like I’m going to pick up the phone and 911 dial Sweden and say, “Hey everybody, there’s going to be an avalanche.” I didn’t know where, what part of Sweden. Sweden,

Rick: Switzerland,

Jonathan: Switzerland, sorry, is going to have all these mountains in them. Like, where am I going to point them? And it’s just this understanding that sometimes I received the message. Sometimes it’s for an affirmation.  Like, okay, “Hey everybody here it is.” It’s more very, It’s for something very specific. so yeah, there are some coming up that I know aren’t supposed to be released, that I received a year ago that will happen and it’s kind of like,

Rick: you get out get on poly market start betting man. (laughter)

Jonathan: If I had any desire for money, I think I probably would do it. But yeah, yeah, yeah,

Rick: it’s interesting.  village in Switzerland that you better watch out, you better evacuate. But if it did become that specific, it would be kind of cool. You could, really help people out. Okay, jumping right along, this is from someone named Christina.  How to make it more of a visceral, real experience and not just a belief.

Jonathan: Yeah, it’s difficult because wanting to know the how, is the very thing that  its language is circumstance. So, we think that it communicates like we do, right?  It takes surrender. It takes an understanding that, and if you want to call it science and and you want to get quantum, it’s saying to the quantum field, you can call it manifestation, you can use all the scientific words you want, and it will do the same thing, but it’s an  Otherwise, the how is always asking, “Well, how did that happen? Why did that happen? Where did it go?” That’s the human that gets in the way of the state, which is reception.   body called buddhi and ahamkara, they don’t get utterly eradicated in the state of enlightenment. They just take their proper place. They’re no longer in the driver’s seat of the car, but they’re still in the car. So, there’s a saying in that tradition that Brahman is the   allow these individual faculties to ignore that greater intelligence and try to run the show.

Jonathan: Yeah, it was shown to me in many ways. You could say two paths, right? Let’s make it super simple.

Jonathan: So, to oversimplify, yeah, the difference is, I think, I sit in the place where I no longer drive anything. I no longer do anything without any guidance. That includes when I eat during the day, like even this morning before, “should I eat now? No? Okay, I’ll eat later.” It’s just sitting in the place of going, I no longer choose to have any involvement in my life, period. I just don’t. I am just guided, including your podcast, everybody, I get podcast invites all the time. I won’t do them unless it’s a yes. It’s not whether I want to do them, I ask.  It’s not like, well, I think I should do Rick’s podcast, because somebody told me Rick is a nice guy. Like, there’s none of that for me. However, I have an experience that provided that for me. The rest of the people who don’t have the experience have to trudge through. I’m sorry you do, but I didn’t. You have to trudge through the back and forth. I’m driving, now I’m not driving. I find it easier to drive in this circumstance where I’m a little bit nervous, than to just, “Jesus take the wheel kind of thing and let go of the wheel.” So, there’s the back and forth between the two lines. The zig and the zag. I just am fortunate enough, or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it, I don’t have the self that makes any decisions anymore. I just “go there, okay, that’s where I’m going.” I don’t ask anymore.

Rick: For me, I seem to go from totally thinking I was driving the car to an intermittent thing for years, where I would feel like it’s all on automatic, do it, I’m holding the, I’m doing the, and then it’s automatic again, and then finally it just kind of mellowed out into– cruise control. Yeah, cruise control, right. Maybe a Tesla on autopilot or something. Okay, let’s get another guest question in here from Christina Ross in Rancho Palos Verdes in California. In light of the wars going on in the world currently, and for all of history, what, if anything, did you learn from the other side about wars?

Jonathan: Yeah, this is going to be a tough one.  example, a parent is supposed to lose a child, and that is part of what they’re supposed to experience here. How will they lose that child? Something has to happen to the child. Well,  We don’t see it that way, because we’re not all in the knowing of how it works. We see the violence.  And in order to do that, as it was shown to me, we would all have to live forever. We would have to make the choice consciously right now, all of us, everywhere in the world, to say, “You know what? No more violence.” And then none of us could have children ever again. Because a child will come in and will pick up a stick or pick up a stone because it’s supposed to. So, it’s understanding that everything happens for a reason.  Can you find love for the person who lost their life? Can you find love for their family? Can you love the fighter who fired the bullet.? When you understand that you are unconditional love, which means there’s no condition or exception to being the love that you are,   the way the concept is used, it is judgment. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the original or deepest understanding of the principle. And often people with an incomplete understanding of all kinds of things, bastardize those things, and turn a beautiful thing into a harsh or senseless thing. But in terms of what you just said, well, I should ask you what your understanding of the law of karma is, but let me take a shot at it and see if you agree with it, which is just that divine intelligence permeates and orchestrates everything, and it has the  In fact, I heard someone say, “If there’s one molecule in the universe that’s out of place, then God doesn’t exist. But there isn’t, you know? And so, my understanding of karma     source, does that mean I should be able to stay in a marriage that is currently broken? Would unconditional love heal it?”

Jonathan: Yeah, it’s possible. Unconditional love can heal it. I would say that you’re trying to apply a salve, an external salve.  That’s self-love, which means having a healthy boundary. So, is the marriage supposed to work?

Rick: And so how does one culture unconditional love? It’s like saying, I don’t know, I mean, do we all have the capacity to just snap our fingers and be unconditionally loving? It’s  right? It would take something extreme for you to have no condition to love another, and usually we  So, it is possible. I think more or less it’s, where does it start? And I tell everybody to start with yourself, right? If you can look in the mirror and look at all the ugly thoughts you’ve ever had, you can look at that one time you stole that, whatever you stole when you were 15.

Rick: Bubble gum. Yeah. I got old, old field road. I remember the story.

Jonathan: If you can, if you can look in the mirror and love that kid, right. You love that person. You don’t say, call up the store and resolve it. You just love the person, right? Because we’re creatures of perfection and we’re constantly judging ourselves.  And when you can look in the mirror and say, I love myself, no matter what. It’s like from the life review, I was loved no matter what.  I have a good day or bad day, that’s irrelevant. I love myself no matter what. Then I certainly can stretch that to somebody else. Maybe I can stretch that to my spouse. I’ll start there. Maybe that turns into the neighbors as well. But it’s just knowing that deep down under all the layers of the ego, you are love itself. It does exist. For others, it’s good. For some,  earth in a state of giving, and then you will realize you don’t have to calculate love, you’re  I’ve seen all versions of it. And I think it’s an

Rick: Yeah, somebody used an analogy one time of a man standing in the middle of a great big mud puddle  said, “You’re asking me to step in the mud again.” “Yeah, but just take that step and then take another one and sooner or later you’re going to be out of the mud puddle.”

Jonathan: Yeah.  And some of us don’t want to get dirty. So, we don’t move. And others are like, well, who cares about the white clothes I’m getting out of the mud. Right. And you just trudged through it and you’re filthy by the time you get out of here, but you’ve made it out.

Rick: Yeah. Right. And you go to the dry cleaners.

Jonathan: Exactly. You don’t worry about it.

Rick: Yeah. Um, okay. So, two more questions.   beautiful sunset. I’m a sucker for a beautiful sunset. If I see it, I feel that connection to to divinity in that moment, because I’m no longer me in the moment.  But find what works for you and in that moment bottle it up. Bottle up the feeling.  And in that moment, I’m just breathing it, just a full conscious breath. I’m breathing the space. I’m breathing the feeling, the warmth of it. I’m breathing the sight. I’m feeling the breeze. I am just there. I’m not even here. And it’s important to understand that your connection goes beyond physical. You may be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of your life, but you can think back on a time that you witnessed something like that and be there again.

Rick: You kind of answered this with the wheelchair example, but let’s say for some weird reason  How do you think you would pass your time? Would you be sitting visualizing sunsets or what would you do?

Jonathan: Yeah, I think I would. I think I would probably levitate myself out of there. I would just be in so much, so deep in meditation, I’m not…  They don’t come back, right? They find their bodies in a meditative state. But I do know it’s possible.  The greatest thing about the experience, I think, is just realizing that you’re not this, you’re not the meat suit, you’re something greater.

Rick: Yeah.

Jonathan: The interesting thing is I was shown that I have done this before. I have chosen to come back for what I’m doing now, before.

Rick: Interesting.

Jonathan: Which is funny to me because it’s like, well, what did I do in the first half of my life? Did I just take a vacation from it and just party? It’s funny. But I also know the type of sense of humor it has. I was told that this could be my last existence. But I’m in that same situation, where I understand my connection to all others. So would I say, “I’m free!” or would I say, “Well, of course I’ll go back and help.”  Or I finally do something, say something, get enough people to find their hearts that I don’t have to, right? I don’t have to come back.  I’m like, “Well, what happened all the other times? Like you probably said the same thing.” It sounds like a tough sell, you know? It’s like, “did you say the same thing last time?”

Rick: I know. Isn’t that nice when you get that? I got that just today. Someone said you’ve saved my life, with your Batgap. And I thought, great! Wonderful! I know I went through years where I think I just wasn’t that happy, and I had this ardent desire to sort of be done with this life, to check out and never come back. And now my attitude is, “Whatever.” It’s like, “However I can be most useful, never come back, come back a thousand times, I don’t care. I’m not running the show.”

Jonathan: Yeah, you’re free. You’re free. Yeah.

Jonathan: It’s the best way to be.

Rick: Yeah. Well, Jonathan, this has been such a delightful conversation. We could go for another two hours. I know you’re famous for marathon five-hour Zoom calls. (laughter) But I won’t hold you to that. I think you haven’t eaten yet, you said, so I’m going to let you go. But I really appreciate having had this opportunity to spend this time with you.

Jonathan: Thank you, Rick. It’s been a pleasure.

Rick: Yeah. I have a page on Batgap which will have a link to your website, jonathanashford.com, and  and that kind of thing. And you’re working on a book, you’re looking for a publisher, hasn’t come out yet, but

Jonathan: Actually, I stopped.

Rick: You stopped looking for a publisher?

Jonathan: You know what, I went through one round of editing and I was like, I am in no rush to sell a book.  I haven’t sought publishers out. People keep sending me, like, here, this’ll, they’ll publish, I’m like, I’m not concerned with that yet.  but right now, I’m just helping as many people as I can.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve had a couple of people, a couple of publishers say, “If you write a book, we’ll publish it.” But it’s like, “When am I going to write a book? I don’t have time to write a book.” (both laughing) Too much going on.

Jonathan: Yeah, I know the feeling.

Rick: Yeah, plus these days, how many people actually buy a book, compared to the number of people  I just don’t know. I don’t know enough about it.  I left like 50% of the stuff out that I experienced.  And then I got a psychic message one day that said, no, add it all. So, I went back, and I started adding more to it. I still have more to add, but then it’s like, I feel no rush to put something out. Like I don’t do anything for a transaction. So, for me, it’s kind of like, if it happens, it’ll happen when it’s supposed to.

Rick: Yeah, and just on a personal note, you are very giving. You sometimes do like 10 sessions a day with people and five hours Zoom calls. And I just want to say I hope you’re still like getting out and taking hikes and getting a little exercise and taking care of your body because, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And you’ll maybe burn out or get unhealthy if you just don’t take care of the vessel.

Jonathan: Yeah, I am not doing those things. The only- really the only thing I do is this. I do it all day every day. I speak to others. I try to help as much as I can. I do not take any time for myself.

Rick: Yeah, it’s time for yourself, if it makes you more healthy and increases your life is time for others. Like they say sitting is the new smoking, you’re just sitting in a chair all day, It’s going to take a toll by the time you’re my age. –

Jonathan: I know, there have been some recent messages about maybe it’s time to get some blood work and do some other things. So, it’s pointing me in that direction.  I have less time for others, which means the waiting list gets that much longer. But I’m sure I will find a balance as we move forward.

Rick: You know what you can do? I’ve actually done this.   Yeah, getting your steps.

Jonathan: Yeah. That’s good. I might try that.

Rick: Try that.

Jonathan: I might try that.

Rick: Yeah. All righty, well thank you so much and thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. And if Batgap is new to you, check it out.  Alrighty, parting is such sweet sorrow, it’s hard to say goodbye, but we gotta do it.