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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually Awakening people, and about spiritually related topics done over 660 of them now, if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com Bat gap and look under the past interviews menu, where you’ll see them organized in several different ways. This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it and would like to support it, there is a PayPal button on every page of the website. Also, I encourage you to subscribe to this YouTube channel if you’re so inclined. And that way YouTube will notify you of new interviews as they’re posted. And also we can notify you we have an email list that you can sign up for on on BatGap. My guest today is Dr. Mario Beauregard, PhD. He’s a neuroscientist currently Well, in your bio it says currently affiliated with the Department of Psychology University of Arizona, but he does not anymore. Not anymore as of last summer now he’s up in, in Montreal has an excuse me, about 80 miles north of Montreal and Quebec. Yes, he has received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Montreal. He also underwent postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, and the Montreal Neurological Institute, and McGill University University. And this bio is a little long, but I’m going to read the whole thing most most of it because there’s a lot of good stuff in here. And you’ll get to know Dr. Bogra better. He is the author of more than 100 publications in neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry. He was the first neuroscientist to use functional neuro imaging to investigate the neural underpinnings of voluntary control in relation to emotion. Because of his research into the neuroscience of consciousness, he was selected in 2000 by the world media net to be one of the quote 100 pioneers of the 21st century. In addition, his groundbreaking research on the neurobiology of spiritual experiences, including near death experiences, has received international media coverage. In 2008, he was invited to participate in a symposium held at the UN. In 2013, he participated in a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. In regard to the new science of mind, Dr. Beauregard has appeared all over several radio programs in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia. His research has been featured on the Discovery Channel and in many newspapers and magazines. And he’s received a number of distinctions. He’s an author, he has published, quote, the spiritual brain HarperCollins and brain wars. In these books, he demonstrates that mind and consciousness are much more than the activity of nerve cells in our brains, which is in large part what we’re going to talk about today. He also shows that spirituality is a central feature of human beings that cannot be reduced to physical processes. Dr. Beauregard actively contributes to the articulation of the new post materialist scientific paradigm, co author of the manifesto for a post materialist science, which has been signed by several 100 scientists. He is also one of the founders of the Academy for the advancement of post materialist sciences. So that all might sound rather heady or post materialist sciences, new paradigm and all. But um, this is something that has really interested me tremendously since since I was in college and 80s. And I think it’s extremely important and hopefully we’ll be able to show you why as we have this conversation. What’s the name of your new book? I just read the whole thing, but I forgot the title.
Mario Beauregard: Expanding reality,
Rick Archer: expanding reality good.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah. The the emergence of the post materialist science,
Rick Archer: right. So Before we get into that, I thought there was there was an experience that you described in your book. I’ll just start reading it and you’ll know what I’m talking about. “One evening, I was so desperate that I mentally bellowed at the sky. Apparently, my supplication did not fall on deaf ears.” And this is because you had gotten very sick and been sick for a long time. “And then a being of light radiating immense and unconditional love reassured you telepathically that what you were experiencing was no disease, but rather a process of transmutation.” And he told you, you are not alone, you had to hang in there. And he told you about certain events that would take place shortly in your life. And that your disease would diminish over the coming months, and all of those predictions came true. So let’s start with that. What more would you like to tell people about that? And this interest, the word transmutation is interesting. It’s like you were being, you know, like, squeezed out like a cloth in order to be ready for something that you were supposed to do in life.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah. Well, when I was younger, at primary school, I was very good than the, the teachers. The me they made me skip a few years, but which was fine. But I didn’t want to arrive at the university too young. So I decided to take off a year and I went to work in a humanitarian hospital. I was working with handicapped children, and the hospital was directed by Catholic nuns. And so it’s what it was very close to Jerusalem in Israel. And I became very sick there. I was 17 years old back then. And, but I contracted the, an infection. But we didn’t know what exactly. Fortunately, the symptoms vanished after about a weekend. So I worked there for a number of months, then I came back to Canada. But a year, a year after that, I started my studies at the University of Montreal in psychology. And I was beginning my second semester. When one, one morning, I woke up and I had lots of symptoms in my body. And I was my visual perception was altered, and I was not taking any drugs. And I didn’t know what was happening, but I was very weak. And to make a long story short, I’ve been forced to quit my studies at the university, and I went back to my parents. My parents were farmers in a region of Quebec, that is called the Eastern Townships. It’s close to the border with Vermont. So I went there, and I spent almost a year laying down in a bed like a patient suffering from terminal cancer or AIDS. And so I, I was not able to eat, I was not able to do anything. And I felt like dying. And that’s when I decided that many years before that. It was 11 years before that I had another experience, a mystical experience on the farm of my parents. And during that experience, I’ve had the impression that I downloaded my life mission. My program. I saw clearly I was eight years old. It was during the summer break during the vacations. In July. I received or I saw clearly what I had to do in my life, what I would do as an adult, and I realized that I would be involved in a scientific movement, and that the goal was to demonstrate to the general population on the planet Earth that contrary to what mainstream science was saying, At that time, mind, consciousness and spirit are not located or produced by the brain that they are interacting with the brain.
Rick Archer: And you had that cognition when you’re eight.
Mario Beauregard: Exactly. Very strange.
Rick Archer: I mean, had you been thinking about that…
Mario Beauregard: my parents were farmers
Rick Archer: kind of thing.
Mario Beauregard: Pardon me,
Rick Archer: had you been thinking about that kind of thing?
Mario Beauregard: No,
Rick Archer: no, you were just like a kid. You’re playing baseball. And all of a sudden,
Mario Beauregard: I was in the woods when it happened. Yeah. Yeah. So I told my parents about that. But they didn’t know anything about. Andy, they couldn’t understand how a child could talk about these things and couldn’t know, something like that. But anyway, that’s when I decided to become a neuroscientist. I knew I had to become a neuroscientist. So that was the beginning. But 12 years later, when I fell very sick, then I was confused, because I knew what was my life mission, if you will. And, but I was not in a physical condition anymore to be able to realize that life plan because I was too sick. And I couldn’t understand that. And I was even thinking I had bad thoughts. I was thinking even about killing myself at one point, because and so that’s when I asked for help. I was, my parents were religious, they were Roman Catholic, and I was an altar boy when I was younger. And so I was a religious boy at that time. And, and so I decided to ask for help. And a few days after that, during one night, I had the impression that my subtle body, or my spiritual buddy, if you will, was extracted forcefully, from, from my physical body, at the heart, at the level of the heart, from what people call the heart center, or chakra. That’s what happened. And then I I saw a beautiful being a flight, and I thought it seemed to be more masculine. So I thought he was a guide. And he showed me things about how you can end up when you decide to kill yourself, what can happen in what kind of sphere of existence, you will end up for a while.
Rick Archer: Not such a good place I imagine,
Mario Beauregard: but still showed me that.
Rick Archer: Yeah, so sort of a dark place or something that you would end up for a while? do you have a better understanding of it now?
Mario Beauregard: Yeah, a gray, grayish. Yeah, yeah. And so that was the first part of the experience. And then he told me about my what what I was going on in my body and that to not get discouraged, because it was essential, apparently, for my transformation and for my, the deciphering of my research, future research program. And so I was not sure, what was the meaning of all this. But you talked, he talked about the process of transmutation, total transmutation, Oh, yes. Because
Rick Archer: what more can you say about it?
Mario Beauregard: Well, that that was the the turning point of my experience overall. My I’ve been very, extremely sick. And it took seven years to a famous doctor in Montreal to discover what was going on. He identified five different types of viruses that I had contracted in Israel. You see,
Rick Archer: yeah,
Mario Beauregard: but and the severity of what he saw in the tests, the results of the tests, was incredible. And he told me that he didn’t understand why it was not dead. Because he had seen other patients before like this. And I told him about my experience. He was a bit open minded. He was a he was coming from the farm. His parents were farmers, also. So I taught perhaps this guy will be able to, to hear that. So I told him everything. And he said, you know, medicine is limited. It’s a it’s it’s based on science, but it’s an art also, and we don’t know everything. So yeah, so but I was considered to be a miraculous case. Apparently.
Rick Archer: I find it so interesting that you had this download when you’re eight and then being of light was talking to you and everything and I just really feel like we’re guided you know that this physical reality that we live in and perceive is not the only thing and that there’s so much more going on on we could say higher levels or subtler levels. And you know, and many of the goings on pertain to us, you know, there are beings there who are guiding us and inspiring us and who have a, almost a vested interest in our success in certain areas that they’re, they were here to accomplish something and they’re helping us and you know, nudging us along.
Mario Beauregard: But you know what happened after that is that I became extremely psychic and spiriual, very spiritual. But for whatever reason, I left the church. I was very spiritual, but the tradition didn’t interest me. For whatever reason, when I was younger, my parents were hoping that perhaps I would become a priest eventually, when I was very young, six, seven years, I was already an altar boy, and it was something of value back then, because it’s, we’re talking about 1960s, late 60s, beginning of the 70s, religion was still very influential in in Quebec. But no, I decided to leave and to follow my own path. And that’s how I also received at about the same time, the grand axis of my scientific career, what I would do – the most important questions.
Rick Archer: received, meaning kind of psychically, cognized
Mario Beauregard: Yes,
Rick Archer: yeah. Okay.
Mario Beauregard: So I was a, I was in my early 20s. But it’s been tough to go back to university because my, my directors, my supervisors, were neurologists, one neurologist, the other a psychiatrist, they were atheists, materialist. And they didn’t want me to go back to university because they thought I was the I had the schizoid type of personality. That’s what they told me.
Rick Archer: They thought you’re crazy.
Mario Beauregard: Yes. Bright but crazy.
Rick Archer: Right.
Mario Beauregard: So
Rick Archer: because you were telling him some of this stuff, right?
Mario Beauregard: Yes.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Mario Beauregard: Well, yeah, because I felt I had to be honest.
Rick Archer: Right.
Mario Beauregard: And but it was not the right move, because they put me on a blacklist. So I had to, I needed a miracle to be able to go back and so the doctor who examined me at the hospital in Montreal, he wrote a letter for me to try to convince the guys at the university that I was not crazy that you know, and it did work so that’s when I I went back to the university.
Rick Archer: Can you say more about this psychic spiritual stuff that was going on?
Mario Beauregard: Ah, remote, a lot of remote viewing. clairvoyance and clairvoyance. Telepathy with but with people who were close my, my family and especially my, my sister and but also other people. And the impression of being in touch with deceased people also a lot. But the sees deceased people that I knew, and it has stayed like that for now. I’m I turned 60 year old last summer, and it’s still like, that never changed.
Rick Archer: Interesting. And you never really tried to do this stuff. It just came became natural.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah. But I discovered that my mother was like that, but she didn’t say it.
Rick Archer: Ah, it runs in your family.
Mario Beauregard: it was like, Yeah, but she didn’t know if it was poker, okay, or not. She didn’t want to
Rick Archer: She didn’t want to get burned at the stake.
Mario Beauregard: So, okay, but she was a lot like that.
Rick Archer: That’s interesting, that’s fascinating. Okay, so that’s a little bit about your background. And incidentally, I should have said this earlier, but anytime throughout this conversation, if if something comes to mind that you’d like to say, and I’m not asking a question about it, feel free to say hey, I want to say this and just just get into it. And
Mario Beauregard: okay,
Rick Archer: we will. So that’s, it’s a fascinating story. I love it. I mean, I wish we all had such a clear vision of our purpose in life at a young age. You know, a lot of us bounced around for a while before we find that if we find it, but you obviously had a mission. I mean, some people if we were to talk to some people who talk about life between lives and all they would probably say that you agreed on all this before he even came here.
Mario Beauregard: Oh, I’ve been told that.
Rick Archer: Yeah, you’ve been told?
Mario Beauregard: Well, yes, I been told that by did the being a flight. Exactly. Said you don’t remember it. But yes, that was part of your plan.
Rick Archer: Right? Yeah. I mean, there’s you probably heard Michael Newton and then
Mario Beauregard: Yes.
Rick Archer: And then a guy named Rob Schwartz whom I’ve interviewed. And they say that any significant thing that we ended up doing in life was pretty much pre arranged any significant person that were involved with or, you know, an accident or perhaps your even your, your sickness, period, all that stuff was foreseen.
Mario Beauregard: Exactly.
Rick Archer: Do you feel like the sickness period was an essential purgation of some kind of purification? Maybe Maybe karmically? If not physiologically?
Mario Beauregard: Something like that? Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah, it was, it was very difficult. My but there was inflammation everywhere in the body, including my brain, my brain was infected. And that’s why my visual perception was altered the, and it was very severe. And so that’s why the doctor, the specialist told me, It’s a miracle that you’re still alive after all those years when I met him. Yeah.
Rick Archer: So we could conclude that and so far, from what you’ve been saying, that they’re not only people on Earth, but they’re higher beings and higher dimensions, who who very much, who feel strongly that humanity needs to change its thinking that it needs to change the paradigm on which it functions, namely, that the world is a material thing, and that the brain produces consciousness and all. And so why would you say that these beings and also people like yourself, who work on this stuff, feel that this is so important, what kind of difference is it going to make what what would happen to the world if it really changed?
Mario Beauregard: Because it’s, it’s a matter of, you know, the kind of worldview we entertain. So, for instance, in science, the, the, the founders, the people we call the founders of modern science, like Galileo Galilei, Descartes, Newton and company. All these people were deeply spiritual, and religious, as well. But what happened is that the church, there was a council, and the church, the pope, and the Cardinals, let the the emerging scientists know that the church would take care of the non physical world, the non material world, it’s well as of interest to the theologians, philosophers. And the so called material world would be the object of research of the emerging scientists, the new science, the physicists back then, especially. And the physicists, they didn’t have the choice. They accepted that, but so after a few generations of scientists, the New Scientists during the 19th century, they forgot totally about the history of science. And they didn’t know that there was not they were not aware of that. Except for a few exceptions, and rare exceptions. And so they, they thought that the founders of modern science were strictly materialist that they only believed in back then they were talking about corpuscles, or billiard balls, small billiard balls, and that were composing the universe. And that was, that was it, there was nothing else. So that’s how, after a number of generations during the 19th century, science became synonymous with materialism. And it became what has been called the scientific materialist worldview. And according to this worldview, like you said, everything is composed in a universe of, you know, material principles, corpuscles particles, whatever, or waves. And so this means that when you die, there’s nothing, your personality and your consciousness they vanish automatically. This means also that you don’t have any free will. You cannot really exert any effect on your brain or on the other physiological systems connected to the nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system. So you only have an illusion of influencing. But in reality, you’re like a robot, a biological machine, sophisticated, but still. So that’s what I’m trying to say is that this worldview, which became an ideology, add, it has had very negative impact on the world on society and it became an really an ideology at that by the end of the 19th century, and during most of the 20th century. This was the central dogma. So if you were a scientist, and you dared publicly challenge this, there was a price that you’re going to you will have to pay, ultimately. And this is exactly what happened. And but there were, according to the, you know, the, I don’t know if you are aware of the work of about what we call a paradigm so called paradigm,
Rick Archer: Thomas Kuhn?
Mario Beauregard: Pardon me?
Rick Archer: Thomas Kuhn?
Mario Beauregard: Yeah, for instance.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I read his book.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah. So we could say that materialism was like the, the big or the metaparadigm which ruled everything and so you, but after, after a while, there were scientists who were investigated other types of phenomena than physics. They were not in mathematics, but they were studying what was called back then parapsychology. So you know, maybe extrasensory perception, like telepathy or clairvoyance, remote viewing precognition, also, but they were all some of them were also investigating the possible influence of mind over the material world over matter. And so that was an avenue of research which started at the end of the 19th century. And in 1974, Dr. Moody, Raymond Moody the psychiatrist, I met him on a couple of occasions during conferences, he reported, what he call near death experience. And then after that, after him, we discovered that millions of people have had near death experiences in the western world since the 1950s. That’s what the statistics are showing. And so these sorts of phenomena were considered if you were looking at them through the lens of through the materialist paradigm, they were considered to be anomalous anomalies. Not but it’s, you know, a paradigm it’s, it’s the type of lens that you’re wearing. If you if you do not, if you challenge the materialist paradigm, then it’s possible to be to accept these phenomena, and to integrate them into another theoretical structure and other framework or paradigm. And this is exactly what we did. I knew exactly that. That was part of my, my job to do that. And so when I was at the University of Arizona, it was also an idea of Gary Schwartz who invited me there. And we talked about organizing, a symposium of maverick researchers in various fields, black sheep, physics, biology, so that there were people like Rupert Sheldrake did the famous British biologist, Dean Raden, one of the best parapsychologist in the world or Psy, researcher as we say now, and people like that in neuroscience. I was taking care of the neuroscience, but we have mathematicians, also philosophers, few philosophers, and we spent three days together in Tucson, and at the end, I, I wrote a document that was called The Manifesto for a Post Materialist Science. And it was co-written by my colleagues. And it’s been signed by like you said, the beginning of the interview by hundreds of scientists from around the world. And so post materialists it’s vague. It doesn’t mean what it is. But what we are saying is that we need a different paradigm, the old way cannot explain, you know, a ton of phenomena related to mind, consciousness, spirituality, spiritual experiences. So we need something else. And so since it was in 2014, the manifesto, few years after that we created the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Science. And since then there’s a growing movement. So now, when I was younger, when I beginning I began my career as a young scientist that I had an encounter with a man, famous neuroscientists, one of the pioneers of neuroscience, Dr. Jasper, and Herbert Jasper, he was the friend of Dr. The Dr. Penfield, the guy who created they were working, they created the Montreal Neurological Institute in the 1920s, at the end of the 1920s. So he allowed me to talk to him. And so he asked me, he was about 90, 93 years old at that moment. And he asked me, what was my plan? Why? Why did I want to talk to him. And so I told him about my vision for the future. And he said, he was shaking his head and said, You’re going to, they will demolish you. And you will, you will expect you will have a very hard life, it will be very difficult for you. Don’t do that. Play the game. Be smart. If you play the game, you’re bright, you will benefit from the system, you will move, you know, upwards in the hierarchy and will end up at the top of the pyramid. But if you don’t, you’ll be a black sheep, you’ll be you’ll be seen as you know, an erratic, take about that. But I was I was very disappointed that my meeting with this famous researcher. But because that’s what he had been doing for his entire career, even though he was not a materialist, but to protect himself. And that’s what people were doing. But I decided I was young, and I was rebellious. I’m still rebellious. So I decided, who cares? I will, you know, I want to shake the system. I want to, even though it may cost me dearly, I don’t care. I’ll do it. I know. That’s what I have to do. And I did, I was expelled from the University of Montreal, in 2013.
Rick Archer: Really? For not being a materialist for for presenting,
Mario Beauregard: I was, I was working at the medical school, and the, the dean of the school and the, my direct directors, the departments where I was working, they were materialists. And at first I was doing the kind of like the work that they enjoy working with Big Pharma, checking the impact of drugs on the, you know, on the brain and, and this brings a lot of money to the institution as well. So, that’s how you, you have to do it. But I didn’t want to do that. I knew I had to do something else, something totally different. I wanted to show that the brain was not the producer of mind consciousness spirit. So they thought I was totally crazy. And so they were warning me each year, I was asked to go to the, in the office of the the big boss at the medicine school and they were asking, sometimes they were few people they were looking at me was and the they were threatening me because the they said that because I started studying near death experience spiritual I was the first to use a scanner, a brain imaging scanner to examine what’s happening during spiritual experiences in Carmelite nuns, cloistered nuns, things like that. And so it was the media was covering this kind of research all over the world. And I was becoming very famous but didn’t like that, because that was not the kind of work they were expecting from me. And so they start threatening me and they they told me Do you realize that we have the power to, you know, greatly influence what will happen to you and your future from a professional point of view? And I was not responding, I was not listening. So finally, after a lot, after several years of confrontation, and they decided to let me go, they didn’t renew my research as my, my contract as a researcher. And so that’s what happened. And it’s a funny story, because a few days after that, I didn’t know Gary Schwartz. And we never met, Gary Schwartz was received at about the same time, sort of intuition, an inner voice telling me to contact me, he knew who I was, even though he didn’t know me personally. But he didn’t know why. And after a few days, I received an email from him. And he said, I know that it will look very strange, but there’s something compelling me, urging me to contact you and to ask you, is there anything I can do for you? And he didn’t know why. So I responded to him immediately. And we talked over the phone and and then he said, My goodness, we would be honored to have somebody like you, here at the University of Arizona, because over there, that’s where the first center for the research on consciousness for center of consciousness studies emerged in 1995. And so for whatever reason, there, there were more open minded scientists than on the East Coast or in Montreal, in Europe, in general. And so I did a collaboration. That’s how it started. That’s, that’s very interesting.
Rick Archer: That’s a great story.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah.
Rick Archer: And you’ve probably heard Max Planck saying that science progresses through a series of funerals.
Mario Beauregard: Exactly. Yeah, that’s what that was.
Rick Archer: Because these guys get so stuck in their rut, you know, that they, and everybody’s so concerned about their salary and their tenure and all this stuff. You know, whatever happened to finding out what’s real and investigating what’s true. Yeah. It’s like that, that goes out the window.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah. But, you know, I learned that it was a science is a human institution like other human institutions. So it’s, it’s not necessarily about the truth, but it’s about who gets the most money.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Mario Beauregard: Reputation, fame, glory. rewards, awards. You know, and I was an idealist. I was, I was only interested in the truth really, out.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And, you know, ironically, you might get all that stuff during your lifetime, the money and the fame and all that stuff. But in 100 years, everyone will have forgotten about you. But they will be remembering the people who are Mavericks, those are the people who end up, you know, being honored for, you know, changing the way world the world works.
Mario Beauregard: But but you know, it was the same thing in when they have they’ve had their revolution in physics, from, you know, classical physics to the new physics that they call quantum physics. It took 30 years for quantum physics to establish itself. Because there was fine. It didn’t have happened like that. It took three decades.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And there’s actually some benefit to that. And, you know, we mentioned Thomas Kuhn in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions…
Mario Beauregard: Yeah,
Rick Archer: …he describes that paradigms have a certain inertia. And that’s good because the paradigm shouldn’t just be toppled. The moment some little question comes along. It takes repeated buffeting by anomalies, until eventually the anomalies get so strong that the paradigm has to collapse. And then a new paradigm gets formed. And there’s a period of transition between the old and the new that can be kind of chaotic. But it’s okay that things might take a little while to change because everything would be kind of chaotic if if everything changed too easily.
Mario Beauregard: Yes, but but but things are changing really because and I never thought I would see something like that. But even philosophers were deeply materialists philosophers of mind interested in mind consciousness. Neuroscientists, famous neuroscientists like Christof Koch, who was working with Francis Crick. Very materialist, when it changes by and now he’s becoming a what we call, technically a panpsychist. So he believes that there is consciousness or mind everywhere in the universe. There’s a. And now you can see more and more books from philosophers and scientists about the waning of materialism. And they’re so so we are in a transition period. But I cannot tell you what exactly will be the para, the new the new theory, the the big theory. But I think that I know, we need at least some, I have some clues about it. Because first of all, we need to recognize the existence of what we call mind. Because mind it for materialist theories, either it does not exist, it’s only an artifact, an illusion, or it does exist, but it doesn’t exert any effect at all. It’s like, you know, steam produced by the engine of a train or something like that?
Rick Archer: How can how can they say that, because if in my mind, I think I want to go and get something to drink, then on that my body gets up, and I go, so isn’t that an effect of my mind producing? You know, making me do that’s Out of body
Mario Beauregard: the problem is that is, is because there’s, it seems, Well, if you’re committed to materialism, what you will say is that your impression, and your desire, your motivation, etc. It’s only electrical and chemical activity in your brain. So they will say, it’s one part of your brain involved in executive functions, for instance, the huge prefrontal cortex that we have sending information to motor structures in the brain, and then that that’s how it works in and you have the impression, you’re under the illusion that it’s you. But in reality, it’s, it’s the brain, regions of the brain affecting other structures other regions in your brain, and that’s it, you don’t need a ghost. And that’s what they were telling me when I was younger, we don’t need a ghost in the machine, there’s no ghost in the machine. So they didn’t understand why. That’s what that was my conception, but I was telling them about the so called psy phenomena and so they had to deny their existence to, you know, maintain their materialist worldview. And the same thing for near death experience. But what about near so called near death experience, when there’s a A cardio you know an arrest you know of your heart, and at the same time, if breathing is, which means clinical death? How do you explain that. And so they were telling me, you know, pure coincidence. But, you know, at certain point, they don’t have any explanation anymore. They’re trapped. But it’s, it’s what I discovered is that me and many others like Sheldrake, and several others. It’s, it’s an ideology, and it’s, you’re emotionally attached to your ideology. It’s like politics. For instance, if you’re a left winger, a right winger, you’re communism versus socialism versus capitalism in you know, and so on, so forth. And so scientists are human beings, and they are very deeply involved in this, you know, their, their life, their ideological life, is built on a theoretical structure. And you arrived there, and I was very young, and I was trying to convince a lot of people I and I, I’ve had physical trouble with people because some of them try to attack me, because it’s a matter of emotion. It’s becomes very emotional.
Rick Archer: You mean they tried to physically attack you?
Mario Beauregard: Yeah. Yeah. Because they, it’s like a religion. It’s your religion. And so, you’re there and you’re, you. You’re young. And, you know, I went to reminds me 15 years ago, I was invited to Paris to the oldest and the most prestigious university – the Sorbonne in Paris. And they asked me to talk for about two hours and at the end of the talk, there were a number of old, very old scientists who were members of the Academy of Science. And they were after the talk, they will comment on what you just presented. And I was seeing them, they several of them were becoming red, and they were angry because of what? So at the end, that’s what two hours, the president of the committee told me, It’s too bad that we’re not a few 100 years ago. And I had an idea what what he meant,
Rick Archer: Amazing. because you’d be burned at the stake or something.
Mario Beauregard: Exactly.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Mario Beauregard: I asked him, he said, Yes. That’s what we would have done with you. That’s what we should do with you.
Rick Archer: Wow,
Mario Beauregard: it’s 2007. You see? So that gives you
Rick Archer: Maybe you were burned at the stake in some past life.
Mario Beauregard: I don’t know what. But, you know, it’s, so it was like that for a while. But I would tell you that since about seven, eight years, and I’ve traveled all over the planet. Things are really changing 10 years, but there’s a change in the world. And now you can go to a very prestigious institution, university. And you can talk about these things, and they won’t attack you anymore, which means that there’s an evolution, a progress. They will listen to you even though they’re not do not agree. And they don’t take they don’t think that you’re a flake automatically. It’s things are changing. And for the for the people, the general population. Well, them, they knew they were open to all these ideas, decades ago, they were in advance relative to scientists, and social institutions. Of course,
Rick Archer: it’s true. I mean, a lot of the movies, you know,
Mario Beauregard: Oh, yeah.
Rick Archer: And books that they portray this, these kinds of ideas, Star Wars, you know, the force. That’s interesting. Aside from your experience, when you were younger, have you ever had any formal debates with people – materialists? And you know, if so, what are How’s it go? Or what are some of the objections they raise? And how, what are some of your counter arguments?
Mario Beauregard: I stopped doing that very rapidly, because sometimes it was turning ugly,
Rick Archer: too unpleasant. Yeah,
Mario Beauregard: yes. And I’m not like that. I’m not. I don’t need to impose my my view on other people. I am not like that. And they were using insults, personal insults, they were not addressing the facts, the evidence, the and so I decided to let go of this. And it was not very productive. And now I’m more interested to talk to people or do interviews with people who are at least a bit open minded with regard to these questions.
Rick Archer: Have you ever talked to Sam Harris or read any of his books?
Mario Beauregard: I read the one of his books, but no, I didn’t talk to him.
Rick Archer: I’d like to see a conversation between you and him. Because he’s this real spiritual guy. And he has been doing spiritual practice for ages and he’s done psychedelics in a very careful way and things but he also prides himself on being an atheist and, and arguing against freewill and, and things like that. I couldn’t quite match wits with hi but I’d like to see somebody like you do it.
Mario Beauregard: But but you know, we’re talking about the implications of a post materialist view. And in the future, we will have another term more specific for this. But you know, in the the other view, we’re not only physical beings, but we have freewill we can, our mind can greatly influenced what’s going on in the brain and also in the body, everywhere in the body. I was the first show that in neuroscience with brain imaging, in 2001, for a long, very long time in psychology and neuroscience, since the mainstream view is that we’re sophisticated animals but still animals. People taught that we didn’t have any control over our emotional impulses. It was not possible to so what I decided I didn’t believe in that. I didn’t believe in that because I knew that religious people or spiritual people, true genuine people can live their lives differently for from a moral point of view. So I decided to do an interesting study, I, my team and I at the University of Montreal, we decided to present erotic film excerpts to young guys aged between 20 and 30. There were students and or PhD, young professors. And the we knew that there is the emotional part of the brain, what is called technically the limbic system would react greatly. And this is exactly what happened. But what was very interesting is that we we use another condition, we scan them during another condition, when we present it to them exactly the same kinds of stimuli. But this time, we we, we taught them to become detached observers of the film excerpts and have their own subjective reactions, feelings and what was going on in their bodies. And all of the the major activity in the emotional brain, the limbic system vanished. And these guys, I became famous because of this study. These guys were not, you know, the never practice any form of mindfulness meditation or other types of meditation. We just taught them how to do this, subjectively, 30 minutes before the actual experiment. The results were very impressive. And so that’s, that was my first demonstration of that, we can exert a great influence over things that are considered to be biologically programmed, you know, and genetically programmed. And, and then after that, that was the beginning of epigenetics. And epigenetics show that things that your your thoughts, your emotions, your memories, do have an influence over the activity of certain genes. They respond, they turn on or off. That’s, that’s what we say. They are activated or not. And so in reality, through our mental processes, or our intentions, our plans through will also volition, we can exert a great influence over what’s happening in the brain and in the body. So that’s one thing. That’s one major implication, we’re not robots, like, in the materialist worldview.
Rick Archer: Many people were doing biofeedback back in the 70s. And controlling, so yes. Oh, yeah. And there were studies starting way back then on meditation and the neurophysiological correlates, right.
Mario Beauregard: Yes, and but yeah, but it was not interpreted back then as I reinterpreted the these data in viewer for a different framework, a different theory, and a non materialist theory. But mind can also operate in what we call a non local fashion. So non local means it’s borrowed from quantum physics and means not limited to a single point in space, like the brain. And it’s not limited also to a single point in time, the present so mind can access information from the past, but also from the future, as shown by some studies in the in parapsychology, or the study of so called psyphenomena.
Rick Archer: I’ve interviewed Dean Radin a couple of times and he…
Mario Beauregard: Oh, okay.
Rick Archer: …talks about those things. Yeah.
Mario Beauregard: Well, well, yeah. And with these guys, we at the Academy, we have published new books for a, mostly for academic people, but still about this, this new visions, the new the new paradigms, what could be the new paradigms in the future. But to come back to what I was saying earlier, we have to recognize that mind does exist. It’s not. People have to accept in science, that it’s not reducible to physical processes. It’s something else but it does exist. And not only it exists, but it exerts a great influence and the influence of is local, for instance psychophysiological, you interact with your own body, but it’s non local as well. So you, you can you’re interconnected with other people with your, with pets with even trees, and they’re the you can see the world in terms of information, interactions, communication all the time, like, like internet, for instance. And, of course, there’s so much information and the brain into a normal state of awareness, it plays a role, it acts as a filter. So you’ll focus more on what’s related to your biology. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Do you have pain? Do you, you know, are you feeling some sensations and what’s going on around you in the so called physical world and so on and so forth. But it’s when you alter, somehow you can alter the electrical and chemical activity of the brain. There are several ways you can, if you do meditation, that’s what you do. Prayer, sports, you can practice sport, you can do jacking, it will change what’s going on in the brain. You can do sensory deprivation in the floatation tank, for instance, and you can take psychedelic substances, and so on and so forth. You always change what’s going on in the brain. You alter, it’s like if you’re you’re reaching other frequencies, if you will, other programs, other nformation. And that’s how you can have expanded states of awareness, spiritual experiences, psychic phenomena, you have access to information, and it’s not there’s nothing paranormal in the universe. There’s nothing supernatural. It’s only related to our materialist worldview, it seems paranormal or, but in reality, it’s perfectly natural. There’s there’s nothing that is not natural. It’s all depends on your lens through which you’re looking at the world.
Rick Archer: In your book, you mentioned neuroplasticity, and how it was once thought that the brain can’t grow new neurons after a certain age. And now they know that it does, and the brain is changed by just about every experience we have.
Mario Beauregard: Oh, yeah, all the time. And for about 100 years, at the beginning of the neuroscience, it was a central dogma that the brain was static machine couldn’t change your you had to deal with the kind of brain you inherit at birth. And but that was not true but but all scientists believed that because belief, the beliefs are implicated or involved in science. Also, it’s not only about facts, evidence, it’s also about how you see the world. You, there’s a subjective element, importantly, involved in science like any other sphere of human activity.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And all the sort of human shortcomings of stubbornness and greed and jealousy, and possessiveness, and aggressiveness and all those things. They all are tugging science around this way. And that and really not, you’d almost say you can safely say that there are no pure scientists, because everyone is influenced to some degree by their human shortcomings.
Mario Beauregard: Exactly. And I am included in this. It’s same for everybody,
Rick Archer: but it’s a matter of degree.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Towards the beginning of your book, you present several terms materialist, reductionist. There’s scientism, I think, and maybe one or two others that I’m not remembering. And maybe you can just… are they synonymous? Or does each one contain a certain nuance or implication?
Mario Beauregard: Yeah, they’re different. So when I was talking about the, the scientific materialist worldview, which became an ideology, they weren’t number of postulates implicated in this ideology, or I party. In reality, they are hypotheses about the nature of the world reality. And they were first proposed by Greek philosophers even before Socrates. But the theory appeared during the birth of modern science and so and they were used by scientists, so materialism, it’s like I said before, and you said also, it’s the idea that everything is composed of material, particles components. And so this is that was one of the hypotheses proposed. But at first it was only an hypothesis, it was not presented as an absolute certainty. The other other postulates were mechanism, the idea that the universe works like a huge machine. New turn, like that idea very much. reductionism, it’s the, the idea that you can reduce complex phenomena or complex systems. Now we use this term systems to you can reduce them to their most elementary components. So, for instance, you take the brain is composed of over 100 Billions of nerve cells or neurons. So the so that’s what we studied, when we, we talk of neurobiology, we study the nerve cells. But if you look, you you, you can see also that neurons interact with chemical messengers. So you can try to reduce mental activity to chemical activity. And that is what is done in the, what we call Biological Psychiatry. And that’s why we use drugs to try to interact with the various brain regions and the neuro chemicals, chemical messengers to influence them. So for instance, if you’re suffering from major depression, one finding that is quite robust is that there’s a lack of, you need more serotonin, a chemical messenger and the most anti depressant drug will target certain and will increase the production and synthesis of serotonin. So that’s an ID. So this is, but if you talk to physicists about the brain, they will, they will tell you that the nerve cells, the molecules are all composed of atoms, and subatomic particles. So, they will propose quantum models of the brain interacting with with mind, for instance, and so that is reductionism. And another assumption, a postulate that was part of the scientific materialist ideology was determinism. So that was the idea that everything is predetermined is related or programmed by previous phenomena or components or, and that there’s no, there’s no free will. But quantum physics showed that all of these assumptions were wrong, were erroneous. And it’s been demonstrated nearly 100 years ago. But in neuroscience, it’s not been integrated yet. It’s not. It’s not been accepted yet, because not many science, neuroscientists have the time to become interested in quantum physics, and it’s quite complex. And so, you know, there are a number of reasons but these old assumptions are not valid anymore. So we know that
Rick Archer: would it be useful to go through these one by one and say, Okay, here’s the assumption, and here’s why it’s not valid, or do you think you did that enough? Just now as you were laying them out?
Mario Beauregard: Oh, well, yeah, we can do that.
Rick Archer: But you know, for instance, materialism. Okay? science, physics tells us there, it’s really hard to find any material if you go deep enough.
Mario Beauregard: Yes, exactly. And yeah, you can take the brain for instance, as a physical material system, but in reality, the brain is interacting. The brain seems to act as an interface with information coming from other levels and and, you know, when you’re in a state of clinical death, how can you perceive how can you remember I can you feel emotions. If it’s the brain, if there’s a when you’re in a clinical death Oh, A, the there is a shutdown of the low blood flow to the brain after 1020 seconds maximum. So if you’re measuring the electrical activity of the brain, it will become flat very rapidly. So in principle, according to mainstream neuroscience, in that kind of state, there can be no mental processes. consciousness cannot be there. It’s supposed to be gone. And so that’s why I’m saying that this the all these assumptions are not are not valid, right?
Rick Archer: Because so many people have had experiences where they are in a state of clinical death, or they’re under deep anesthesia. And they’re not only seeing what’s going on in the operating room, they’re seeing what’s going on outside the building or down the hall, which is later clarified.
Mario Beauregard: No, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So now it’s the mainstream view, the old materialist view is still dominant, but there’s a battle going on. And there are more open mindedness with regard to new new views. This is what has changed. So there’s a dialogue. It’s now the dialogue is possible before it was not. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Well, maybe rather than going through each of these, because they’re all kinds of stuff unless you want to, because they’re all kind of similar. Maybe another angle we should take is, what do you think society? Let’s say that? I don’t know, 30 years from now, the tables have been turned and whatever, we’re going to end up calling it the opposite of materialism. You know, reductionism has become the predominant paradigm. What do you think society would be like? What would education be like? What would medicine be? Like? What would International Relations be like? Economics, you know, world hunger, all these different than the, the climate situation? How do you think that the flipping of the paradigm would impact all these important things?
Mario Beauregard: Well, well, like I said, the, this new emerging paradigm has very deep implications at various levels. If you take education, for instance, if you receive education, well, we have now enough studies showing that if you practice mindfulness, as a way to self regulate your emotions, you will alter the trajectory of the individual, if you start very young, at school, in primary school, you would create a different type of adults collectively, if there’s enough people doing it, right now, it’s already going on, but not everywhere yet. But there are many projects in various countries around the world doing this. And so this is a key education is key, because you don’t end up with the same kind of adults, if you start doing this, you but we have to teach people that they are very powerful, that true there. When I speak about mind, I mean, mental functions, intentions will memory, emotions, and so on and so forth. And consciousness consciousness is a sort of mental function, but it’s like a big, very big component of it. We can learn how to use mind and consciousness we but we have to be taught about this. Yeah. And but now we can see, you know, there are more and more studies in medicine in the medical field, we see a lot of studies showing mantle influence on genes, epigenetics psychoneuroimmunology, you can influence you know, what’s going on in your brain and so on and so forth. So, it’s making progress also in medicine. But there’s another current in medicine and another trend, which is very powerful Big Pharma. On the other side, and big, what is Big Pharma, it’s the translation at a medical level of materialism man as a machine, and so, you, so you use substances, molecules of various types. And you you believe that by using these molecules, we will affect the individual because these are biological machine a system but so, so it’s a up. So you can you can see right now that there’s there’s a sort of battle going on. Many people are not conscious of this. But there’s a battle between the holistic vision, spiritual vision versus the materialist model at various levels, not only in science and in mainstream science, but it’s the same ideology in economics, in politics in the
Rick Archer: Yeah, yeah. Well, in terms of Big Pharma, we don’t have to be black and white about it. I mean, medicine, Modern medicine has done worked wonders, penicillin, and antibiotics and polio vaccine, of course, you know, all those things have saved millions of lives. On the other hand, I don’t know, it seems like the majority of people in the United States are on some kind of antidepressant drugs. And it’s a very high percentage, I don’t remember the exact percentage. And, you know, when you see the ads for these things on television, it’s like 10 seconds of promoting the drug, and then 50 seconds of telling you all the harmful side effects.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah, it’s the same thing in Canada. Same thing, some TV?
Rick Archer: Yeah. And you wouldn’t need that if it was an ad for meditation or something?
Mario Beauregard: I don’t know. No, but it’s now it’s true that the materialist, material science has made great progress. And is Airbus involved from a technological point of view. And it’s, what we’re saying my colleagues in AI is that it is not complete. It is not that there is more in the universe than only physical processes or biological processes, or that’s what we’re saying. We’re not saying that this is not true that it doesn’t exist. Although, you know, it’s a matter of perspective, because some phase some physicists believe that, like you said before, the matter what we call matter, what is it? Exactly? There’s a lot of void involved in matter, after microphysical level and,
Rick Archer: yeah, but in practical life, you don’t go stepping in front of buses. No, nothing, that there’s nothing there. No, no. Yeah, it seems to me that just as the Church used to own a lot more territory, I mean, the Church used to consider astronomy to be part of its territory, for instance, and people got in big trouble for, you know, suggesting that the stars might be other suns, might have planets around them. And then the church had to relinquish some of its territory as science came along. And as you were saying, earlier, the church said, Okay, we’ll take care of the spiritual stuff, and you guys take care of the material stuff. I mean, by the same token, it may be that there might be many aspects of mod, all the different modern sciences, and medicine and pharmacology and all that, which will still be useful. But a whole lot of things, which can be replaced by technologies of consciousness are many mental technologies or emotional technologies or whatever that are non physical, and that will be much more beneficial and not without side effects.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah, so that that’s what I think will happen. Probably in a few decades from now.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And who knows, maybe it’ll speed up. But I mean, he kind of needs to speed up because we’re at a crisis point.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah, we have to become smart, very rapidly.
Rick Archer: I mean, I think he can be wise, you can even relate what you’re saying to climate change. Because the attitude, the short sightedness of thinking we can do whatever we want and let future generations take worry about it. Or there’s nothing to worry about because I’m making a good salary. And I don’t want to think about the possible consequences. All that stuff is, I think, based upon a state of consciousness that has doesn’t have really good access to their inner, like, inner resources, obviously.
Mario Beauregard: Yes, yeah. Yeah, this is it’s a very egocentric that were
Rick Archer: really egocentric. Yeah. Or international relations. I mean, look what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine or Ukraine right now. It’s such a crude mentality to to resort to violence like that to make my country a little bit bigger, whatever I mean, all this stuff. Hopefully, if we all survive as a species will be seen as such antiquated thinking and Oh, But, yeah, and I really, yeah, I think that the materialistic paradigm that you’re trying to overturn will be seen as the foundation of that sort of thinking. Yes. And it’s opposite whatever, we end up calling that as the foundation of a much more ideal world.
Mario Beauregard: Yes. But you know, that it’s, it’s what we’re thinking about is new in terms of science, but it’s not new in terms of the great spiritual traditions of the world. And some philosophers, they were talking about these things 1000s of years ago, so we’re not inventing, we’re just rediscovering and and then what, what we noticed is that what there’s a there’s a sort of commonality between the vision of the world proposed by many ancient spiritual traditions, and what we call post materialist view of the world.
Rick Archer: Yeah, and I think what we might be heading for is something where we have the best of both worlds. Because, you know, in some respects, you wouldn’t want to have lived a couple of 1000 years ago, I mean, you could die of a, you know, dental problem or something, you know, the, because the infection would spread is something that can be taken care of very easily now. Or if you broke a leg, I mean, they had ancient treatments for these things, but they’re very primitive compared to what we have now. So, you know, we could end up with a world that is advanced, spiritually, as much as it now is, materially materially, yeah, okay.
Mario Beauregard: I believe that.
Rick Archer: And that would hopefully make our material endeavors and accomplishments are not harmful as they are now. Because right now, it’s like guns in the hands of children. We have these powerful technologies, but we don’t have the emotional and mental spiritual insight to wield them responsibly.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah, that’s so for the best.
Rick Archer: Yeah, let’s say we have plenty of time left, if we want to go into some more details, and your book does go into a bunch of details. You know, you argue for you present various bits of evidence, why the materialist paradigm doesn’t stand it because we can call them anomaly. So so many, so many things, which conflict with that worldview? And, and maybe these are some of the things that are making some of the people you mentioned, change their thinking about it. But no, let’s review some of those things. Whichever in whichever order you’d like to bring them up. Well, the
Mario Beauregard: first line of evidence, it’s related to our capacity to modulate what’s going on in our brain and in our body. And so that’s because when you take about it, it’s it’s not that obvious, you but you can learn to take control through. You can use meditation, you can use deep abdominal breathing, you can, or there are various ways but intention, visually majoring, but you can influence really, and that’s what I’ve shown. That’s one of my biggest finding through brain imaging, the discovery that we can greatly alter, you change your mind, you change your brain automatically. It’s but it goes both ways. You affect the brain, in the body and it it will alter also your your mental experience mental activity. Sure.
Rick Archer: We all experienced that all the time. Yeah.
Mario Beauregard: So that that’s one line of evidence the
Rick Archer: but before you go on your new line, let me in each case, as you bring up a line of evidence, let me play devil’s advocate a little bit and see how you respond. So in that one, you know, what would a materialist, reductionist mechanistic mechanistic person say they would say that doesn’t prove that the mind exists that does authority that consciousness is fundamental. They’re all can be explained to? Mechanistic?
Mario Beauregard: Exactly. That that’s what they say. They will say that you don’t need something? Well, the call that that goes into machine, you don’t need that, because it’s only like we discussed before, it’s only certain brain regions acting upon other brain regions. And you don’t need more to be able to explain these phenomena. So that’s, and I recognize that I admit that but we can also use a non materialist perspective to interpret these findings, but I agree with you that it’s that’s Right.
Rick Archer: So it doesn’t prove anything, but it is not one one piece of evidence among many.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah, because for people who do not believe in free will or power of intention, it’s, it’s, it’s hard to interpret if you don’t recognize what’s going on mentally in an individual. And it’s very closely associated in terms of physiological activity and what’s you’re entertaining at the mind level. And it’s, it’s deeply interconnected. To give a few examples. While there, there’s a scientific discipline called psychoneuroimmunology, studying the relationship between thoughts and emotions and memories, and the nervous system, and also the immune system, the endocrine system. And now, there’s epigenetics also. So, there are an increasing number of studies showing that we influence all the time, the activities of our genes, based on the kind of thoughts we we have, and kinds of emotions we experience and the traumas we have, and so on and so forth. And it’s all interconnected. It’s a, it’s, it’s like if the physical body is it’s a huge Information System, or highway, and everything is interconnected through chemical messengers and hormones, and so on and so forth. So,
Rick Archer: somebody they told me that the word materialist is kind of a pejorative term, I’m not sure of a better term, but for the sake of convenience, let’s keep
Mario Beauregard: well now with the use a physicalist or physicalism
Rick Archer: Yeah, okay, so is that less insulting or something to say a physicalist?
Mario Beauregard: It’s accepted,
Rick Archer: whatever, so let’s call him physicalists. All right. So, this thing you just explained about epigenetics and the mind and mental processes actually changing the genes with a physical with a with a physicalist have a rationalization for that
Mario Beauregard: yes, it would say that thoughts or intentions are neural activity and brain regions. These these neurons, this this activity is connected to the activity of certain glands, the endocrine system to the hypothalamus in the brain, which is a brain structure involved also in the endocrine function. So So yeah, they will they will explain that you have electrical phenomena connected to chemical phenomena messengers. But it’s all based on physical processes of various kinds.
Rick Archer: All right, so So when blow their minds any more than I’ve been able to raise my arm or make myself breathe fast, or Breathe Slow, or they just have a fancy explanation for how it could change that, yes. Not have to acknowledge anything, physically.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah, but it’s harder when you talk to them about the second line of evidence, the site so called sai research phenomena, for instance, your your daughter is away and there’s something negative happening and you feel her even though she’s 50 miles from your home and, or you can have your dog in the woods and you will feel something there’s something wrong or, and very often, this is true. It’s related, something happening in the physical world, something negative happening and not always negative. But more often than not, it’s it’s negative stuff. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I’ve interviewed Rupert Sheldrake and Yeah, his book dogs that know when their owners are. Yeah, they’ve studied that every week. And yeah, it’s significant. Or I interviewed this guy named Steven post to was taken on a very scary motorcycle ride going 140 miles an hour in the rain and stuff like this. And he he got back to his college dormitory at two in the morning, and all of a sudden, the payphone on the wall rang, which, which he never picked it up. He was right there. It was raining. So I picked it up and it was his mother calling from the other side of the country saying, Steven, are you all right, you know, like, woke her up in the middle of the night? Yeah, there’s a million examples like this.
Mario Beauregard: Yeah, but the physical they will see you ah, that’s random stuff like coincidences,
Rick Archer: and they can To say that forever, but i There are some pretty significant, I think, studies by Dean Raiden and others, which are hard to hard to just brush off.
Mario Beauregard: Oh, yeah. If you’re willing to look at them. Yeah, it’s very hard to explain. So, but usually the these people the, they like the idea of what has been called promissory materialism. So it’s, it’s, it’s the idea it was I came in appeared about 300 years ago, French philosopher said that perhaps we don’t have the explanation, the materialist explanation or the physical explanation now. But one way or another. If we have enough time, we’ll find out the true explain the physical explanation of the phenomena. And so they were saying that 200 years 400 years ago, when they are still saying, some of them are still saying that. Yeah, give us more time. And we’ll find an
Rick Archer: explanation. Yeah. Another phenomenon is that they refuse to look at the evidence. You know, you’ve probably participated in things with the Galileo Commission have you are the scientific and medical networks. And, you know, the Galileo commission was so named because some of Galileo’s contemporaries, particularly Church authorities, refused to look in his towel, right? Because, you know, he was telling them something that would conflict with their theology if it were terrible. And so they didn’t want to look at it. And that’s the way some of these guys are now they they, you know, they say to Dean Raiden, well, it couldn’t possibly be true. So I’m not going to bother to look at it. So. Yeah.
Mario Beauregard: Exactly. Yeah. But to me, it’s not. If you’re really, after you’re looking for the truth.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s the go where it leads, you cannot act like that. Right? Well, that’s what we were saying an hour ago is that, you know, don’t tell me about it, you’re interested in your salary, you’re interested in your can your you’re interested in your reputation? And the truth doesn’t necessarily, is not necessarily conducive to those things.
Mario Beauregard: Exactly. Yeah. And finally, the turn the third line of evidence, it’s, it’s the near death experiences, but mostly during cardiac arrest, because during clinical death, that’s even hard to explain. Because the brain is not functioning. Sure people
Rick Archer: like even Alexander, you know, who had this marvelous experience when his brain was passed, pass. And, but then to that, they say, oh, it’s oxygen deprivation, or you just had a vivid dream, or I don’t know, what else do they say?
Mario Beauregard: You can say that when you’re not dead. But if you’re clinically dead, and in some cases that people have been clinically dead for several minutes? Yeah, sometimes only five minutes or even an hour, then they don’t know how to explain that. It’s. They don’t have any explanation.
Rick Archer: Yeah, you had a guy in your book, where and I’ve heard this story before where he was found comatose and a fee brought into the house, but you tell the story
Mario Beauregard: in the Netherlands? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And he was Yeah, deeply comatose. And you arrive at the emergency. It’s a it was a an astral in the Netherlands. And so the move is dancer because, and to reanimate him, because at a certain point, the heart ceased bleeding and was not breathing anymore. So he was clinically dead, for in this case, a few minutes. But, but he was already clinically dead. And he had the impression to leave his physical body and floating above his physical body in the room. And he saw the nurse removing the denture. And finally, after a few minutes, the doctors and the nurses they’ve been able to reanimate him. And he stayed at the hospital for almost a week. And about five days after that, before he was ready to leave. He saw the nurse will remove the denture, the denture and he asked he asked him, it was a male nurse. He asked the guy to bring his bring his back his denture?
Rick Archer: Yeah, he described I see I saw you remove the denture? Yeah, you put it in such a cart and wheeled it off and
Mario Beauregard: and the nurse was very surprised to hear that. But there are many many cases like
Rick Archer: what is it Martin Luther King said he said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. And somehow I feel like we could adapt that quote, to say, the arc of, of the realization of truth is long, but it bends toward realizing it. Because there’s, there’s a beautiful Sanskrit saying I forget the actual Sanskrit but the the translation is that, that which is closest to truth last longest. And similar thing, they also say Sufi, Satyameva, jayate de, which means truth alone is victorious or wins in the end. So, I have a feeling that the time has come that we’re in a time when these outmoded ways of thinking, just don’t stand a chance, but it’s just gonna take them a while to get deconstructed, and for something better to take their place. We’re seeing
Mario Beauregard: great changes in the world at this time at various levels, you know, in various fields, and it’s a time of great change. And, yeah, but I’m optimistic about that.
Rick Archer: Yeah, me too. In all of your visions, and you know, psychic glimpses of things. Do you see a period of upheaval and, and chaos as a transition to a better world? Or do you think that we can breeze through without too much of that?
Mario Beauregard: Oh, I feel that. Yeah, there will be chaos for for a while. Yeah. We’re already in this. But yeah, it’s there’s a lot of fighting everywhere, politically, economically, you know,
Rick Archer: the war militarily? I
Mario Beauregard: mean, yeah. So. But at the same time, there’s a, there are more and more spiritual people more and more. There’s more positive people realizing that we need to help each other. And, you know, it’s, if you look at only at the television, the news, or internet, you have mainstream news, I mean, you have the impression that everything is going negatively. It’s, it’s like hell here. But in reality, that’s not the case. There are so much beauty on Earth and magnificent things and people and activities. And so there’s a bias for mainstream science to focus on the negative stuff. But there’s a lot of beautiful things also going on. At the same time. There’s a
Rick Archer: saying in the newspaper industry, if it bleeds, it leads, no. And so they show us all the meat guys, you know, this is significant. We do need to know what’s going on in the world, I think, yes. I watched the news. But I, you know, I watch the news for a smaller chunk of my time when the rest of my time is focused on this kind of thing. Do you have any sense of timeline? I mean, do you think this is going to, you know, this chaotic period is going to drag on for the next century? Or, you know, a decade? Or what do you think?
Mario Beauregard: No, I don’t think it will be a century but it’s hard to say. I don’t know. I hope it’s not too long. I hope to be still alive. Still physically here, to be able to see major change, positive changes.
Rick Archer: I feel that way, too. I’ve got about 13 years on yet, but um, I take good care of myself, so we can both
Mario Beauregard: meet you.
Rick Archer: And have you had this when you’re young you had this download when you’re a and then you had this vision with the big being of light. Have you had any other visitations or downloads like that, that have upgraded or your
Mario Beauregard: I’ve had the very deep mystical experiences, few times my life. And during the such experiences the small self, the ego, my ego vanished. And but it was not very, it’s more at the level of being what was happening, it was emerging with it seems the source of everything in the universe, everything that exists and more. Very impressive, but I’m a mystical type of scientists. Obviously, yeah. But it’s been interesting about that. It’s funny because at the the last project of the Academy for post material science, it’s a, they produced a collection, a book and ontology of more than 5050 essays of scientists from various fields. Well Non scientists, and it’s about the most significant spiritual experience in their life. Yeah. You see, something like that would not have happened 2030 years ago, this wouldn’t have been possible. But now, it’s not only old guys, and you know, my women, and it’s you, even the young scientists, younger scientists, and they they’re doing this now it seems more natural to them to do that. They don’t feel the need to hide, like I did. Well, I did to a certain extent, but for a while, but But if things are changing, it’s a sign of time.
Rick Archer: That’s great. Is Ray Hernandez involved in that? No, no, Ray, is he’s somebody I interviewed some years ago. And he got in touch recently. And he was talking about this whole compendium of books that’s on this topic. And okay, I was just wondering, and that organization is still happening. This academy. Yeah, it’s growing. You have conferences and things like that.
Mario Beauregard: Well, we had the country’s plan, but it was done through to online because the sanitary situation, right, let’s hear. But yes, yes. That’s the plan to organize something at in Tucson. At the University of Arizona.
Rick Archer: I would like to go to that. I’ll check into it. Okay, well, is there anything else you’d like to add? While we still have? Yeah,
Mario Beauregard: we covered a lot,
Rick Archer: I think. Yeah, good. And, okay, so people can get your book, and I’ll have a link to it on your page on that gap. And do you have YouTube channel or anything else? Or what else can people do if they want to hear more from you?
Mario Beauregard: I’m just starting to I’m reorganizing my website. So. So for now, I don’t have a website in English, but it will come soon. So it’s more it’s more my books, and I’ve lots of interviews on YouTube, I believe, but I’m not. You know, I don’t have a general your own channel. I’m not old fashioned. You know, I’m an old guy now.
Rick Archer: So younger than me.
Mario Beauregard: Oh, yeah. Doesn’t show.
Rick Archer: Okay, so yeah, let me know in the future, if you have a new website or anything else that you’d like me to add to your page on BatGap, and I’ll add it on there. Yeah. All righty. Well, thanks so much, Maria. I really enjoyed talking with you. Sing for me. Yeah. Next week, I’ll be speaking with a woman named and mathy. Talking about Kundalini. Oh, you know, and
Mario Beauregard: no, but I’ve had, I’ve had some of those experience, one of my mystical experience that was associated with this phenomenon. Yeah. And I never practiced, so it came spontaneous, apparently, spontaneously. And at first, I was thinking that I was going mad or something like that. But it was. It was stressful at first, but I heard the an inner voice saying, just relax. Let go. We’re taking care of you. Yeah. Don’t be afraid. Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yeah. These days, it seems like every week somebody contacts me and says they’ve had some Kundalini experience and in many, many cases, many cases, they’re they’re scared, you know, because they don’t know what it was. Yeah. There’s help for that kind of thing. There are people who are kind of experts in it and who can help people. Yeah. All right. So thanks again. And I really enjoyed speaking with you. Okay, thanks. Take care. Have a nice weekend. You too. Bye. Bye. Bye.
