Mark Pitstick Transcript: Soul Phone, Afterlife Evidence, and Consciousness Research

Mark Pitstick Interview

Summary

The discussion explores spiritual experience, the question of life after death, and whether consciousness is more than a product of the brain. Mark describes research he says supports communication with deceased people and explains why he believes this evidence could change how people understand life and death.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What evidence suggests that consciousness may survive bodily death?
• Can people communicate with deceased loved ones through controlled research?
• How can meditation and spiritual experiences affect a person's sense of connection with the divine?
• How does belief in an afterlife change the way people think about death and suffering?

Key takeaways

• Mark argues that replicated research offers strong evidence for survival after death and communication with the deceased.
• He sees consciousness as potentially fundamental rather than simply produced by the brain.
• Meditation and transformative experiences can deepen a felt connection with a source beyond the individual self.
• Mark believes evidence of continued life could ease fear of death and reshape how people live.

Transcript

Rick: 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. We’ve done a great many of them now, over 500. If this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to www.batgap.com and look under the Past Interviews menu. You’ll see them categorized in several different ways.

My guest today is Mark Pitstick, MADC. Welcome, Mark.

Mark: Thank you, Rick.

Rick: You’re welcome. Mark has over 47 years of experience and training in hospitals, pastoral counseling settings, mental health centers, and private practice. His training includes a pre-medical degree, graduate theology and pastoral counseling studies, a master’s in clinical psychology, and a doctorate in chiropractic health care. He has also provided suicide prevention counseling and education to many people.

Mark became aware of clairaudient experiences at age 10 and has since been blessed with numerous miracles, revelatory experiences, and spiritually transformative experiences. After working in hospitals with many suffering and dying adults and children, he was motivated to find sensible, evidence-based answers to the questions that many people ask: Who am I? Why am I here? What happens after I die? Will I see my departed loved ones again? Is there a God? If there is one, why is there so much suffering? And how can I best live during this brief earthly experience?

Mark has written a number of books, including Soul Proof: Compelling Evidence That You Are an Infinite Spiritual Being , The 11 Questions: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Life, Death, and the Afterlife , and Greater Reality Living: Integrating the Evidence for Eternal Consciousness into Your Daily Life , with Gary Schwartz, Ph.D.

Mark has written a number of books, including Soul Proof: Compelling Evidence That You Are an Infinite Spiritual Being, The 11 Questions: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Life, Death, and the Afterlife, and Greater Reality Living: Integrating the Evidence for Eternal Consciousness into Your Daily Life, with Gary Schwartz, Ph.D.

Mark was the executive producer of the documentary film Soul Proof, a 93-minute movie featuring interviews with people who had evidentiary experiences. He also hosted Soulutions, a nationally syndicated radio show about practical spirituality, and Ask the Soul Doctors, interviewing top consciousness experts. Mark is certified in past-life regression therapy. He directs the Soul Phone Foundation, which supports research and development of technology to communicate with post-material or deceased persons. He also assists in research conducted by Dr. Gary Schwartz and other scientists at the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health at the University of Arizona.

Mark founded Greater Reality Living groups to help prepare people for the great news that life after death has been definitively demonstrated scientifically by replicated, multicenter studies. He has several websites, but the main one I’ll mention here is soulproof.com. Of course, I’ll link to them all on his page on batgap.com.

So, Mark, I thought we’d start by just sketching out your early life and what led you to where you are today. One thing I noticed as I read your bio is that you went from medical school to theology school to this and that. As I listened to some of your recordings, I got the impression that you would try something and think, “Well, this isn’t ultimately what I’m looking for; there’s something missing here,” and then you’d try something else. So you were kind of a seeker at heart, not satisfied with the conventional status quo and security in life, but really wanted to find something deeper.

Mark: Exactly. Let me start with the earliest information I have. When I was six years old, my parents were showing me a beautiful sunset, and I told them it reminded me of God. They only told me that 20 years later, when I was in theology school. I was brought up Lutheran, so it was always God the Father this and that, the big guy in the sky, so they were puzzled. There was really no reason I would have equated a beautiful sunset with the divine. So that was the first suggestion that I wasn’t your usual earthling.

Throughout my life, I felt a little alienated. It seemed like I had to work to figure out how to be a good human.

Rick: Don’t we all?

Mark: Yeah, yeah. I was a little kid watching a football game, which I love, but I thought, “Gosh, if we just took 10% of the money spent on this silly sport to feed the poor…” Thoughts like that. My family would be watching—

Rick: Let me just interrupt there. I saw Buckminster Fuller speak one time, and for some reason he brought up the topic of boxing. He said, “People spend so many millions of dollars to watch two men destroy each other’s thinking machines.”

Mark: Yeah, yeah. By the way, he was one of my early teachers. Critical Path was the book, and I learned so much from him. Good old Bucky.

My parents and brother and sister would watch sitcoms with the canned laughter, and it just drove me crazy. So I would go to a room as far away as possible and say, “I think I’ll get on the floor and stretch.” Years later, I discovered those were yoga postures.

In the same way, I would lapse into a meditative state really easily. I would be bouncing a ball and catching it off the steps. One time I was doing that, thinking, and then I looked up and it was dark outside. I mean, it was getting dark. I must have been doing it for two hours.

It was the same when I was starting to fall asleep. I would experience my consciousness—I didn’t know that word at the time—just traveling through space. No matter how far I went, I would never encounter any walls or bright lights and so on. At first it was a little scary, and after a while it was very pleasant.

Those are some of the things that made me think I was a little different, but it really came to a head when I was 19. I started working in hospitals as a part-time respiratory therapist, and they gave me training. By age 20, I was doing things that only physicians can do now: cardiopulmonary resuscitation, arterial blood gas punctures, and putting the breathing tube down to the lungs.

Each shift, usually the night shift in the ER or ICU, I was with one or more dying people. Seeing that, especially little children, just drove me to my knees. Everything I had believed in—God was all-knowing, all-loving, all-caring, all-powerful—and I was like, “Well, if that’s true, we have a few problems here.”

That’s why I then made the shift to theology school. I wanted to find out for myself, “What game are we playing here? Is the idea of an afterlife and a God just kind of like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, or not?”

Rick: Yeah, I remember hearing you say you had started meditating around the age of—what was it, 17 or something?

Mark: Yeah, 21, actually. I saw a poster. I was going to Ohio State as an undergrad, and here’s this little brown man sitting in this position. I’d never seen a person from India at that age.

Rick: Which little brown man was that?

Mark: That was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Rick: Oh, okay, there you go. I was a TM teacher for decades.

Mark: Yeah, and I saw that, and a voice said, “You’re supposed to do that.” It was like $200, which is a king’s ransom when you’re an undergrad, but I did it, and I’ve been meditating in one form ever since. Same with yoga.

Rick: Yeah. As I was listening to your recordings, I remember hearing you say you had a really kind of blowout awakening experience at one point. I forget how old you were or when that was, but it was really profound. You know what I’m talking about?

Mark: Probably my OM experience, in 1997.

Rick: Oh yeah, that was it.

Mark: I had been doing some intense Hatha Yoga taught by Swami Satchidananda. Every morning I would get up at 5 and do about an hour and a half of breathing, pranayama, and asanas—postures.

Well, this morning it was the dead of winter in Ohio. All the windows were closed, and my wife and two girls were upstairs sleeping. I was working with the mantra OM and silently repeating it, with a single candle in front of me. All of a sudden, I heard OM as if it were being sung by hundreds of people all around me. I mean, I thought if I opened my eyes, I’d expect to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but I don’t think they do that number.

The Awakening Experience of Inner Light

Then, next, bright light. If you are in a darkened room with just a single candle and your eyes closed, pretty much you see the blackened back of your eyelids. Well, now my vision—my internal vision—was filled with the brightest white light, and it was just so wonderful.

Next, I felt unimaginable love and understanding. Anything I’d ever done, thought, or said was understood. I wasn’t condemned or judged. At this point in my life, I wasn’t yet at a place where I understood all these things. It was so powerful that tears started trickling down my cheeks. I kept up with that, you know, OM, cross-legged and all that.

Next, I felt a tingling. When we were kids, we used to get a kick by touching our tongue to a nine-volt battery.

Rick: Oh yeah, I used to do that.

Mark: It was about four or five times that. It was a tingling throughout my whole body. Put all that together, and then finally, the most wonderful fragrance you can imagine, with no source for it. I had burned incense about an hour before, and there was just this indescribable smell.

I stayed with it for a few minutes, and then I just started laughing. “Oh my God!” I couldn’t stay with it anymore. I was just laughing. Whether that’s Kundalini rising or seeing the light, that was definitely a transformative experience for me.

Rick: How long have you been meditating with OM now?

Mark: Well, ever since age 21. I mean, not every day, but most days. Again, it’s just something I lapse into. In the Bible it says, “Pray without ceasing,” and in the beginning I was like, “Well, that sounds like a lot of work.” But now I just joyfully do it, whether I first wake up, am going to sleep, or am driving. I just don’t see any separation at all between myself and source energy.

Rick: Nice. I was curious because you mentioned Maharishi. He used to warn people against meditating with OM. He said it was a recluse mantra, and if you used it, it would make you more reclusive; you’d start losing relationships and your money and things like that. But I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any evidence for that.

I’ve been meditating with a mantra that has OM as part of it for the last 20 years. Before that, I meditated for about 30 years without OM in my mantra, and this has been the most successful period of my life. So I’m just curious whether you’ve noticed any kind of deleterious effect in terms of your relationships, any tendency to make yourself more reclusive or something?

Mark: I think I’ve done a good job keeping grounded and centered and being what Ram Dass calls an impeccable warrior, covering all your different callings in life. I was given what is called the bija mantra—two different ones—but I reasoned that my goal has always been to reach as many people as possible around the world, and not everyone can afford a few hundred dollars to get their special personalized mantra. So that’s one reason I stuck with good old OM.

Rick: That’s fine with me. I’m just curious. Amma—I also have a mantra from Amma—and she says that charging for meditation is like a mother charging her baby for breast milk or something. It should just be, you know…

Mark: Yeah, I have several dear friends who are devotees, and they tell me such wonderful stories about her.

Rick: Yeah. I was curious: You mentioned that you’re certified in past-life regression therapy. Is that Michael Newton’s certification?

Mark: Brian Weiss.

Rick: Brian Weiss, okay. I’m not as familiar with him. I’ve read all of Michael Newton’s books, but I’m not as familiar with Brian. I heard you mention him, though.

Mark: Yeah. At the time, Michael was a guest of mine around the year 2000, and I read all his books—in fact, four times, which I’ve never done with any author.

Rick: Yeah.

Mark: But every time I read them, I learned more. It just rang so true. So I had an opportunity very early on, when he started training other therapists to do the Lives Between Lives training, but I just didn’t feel like I was supposed to do that. At that time, it was like, you know, I’ve done so many things; it’s time to put this together and apply it more.

Rick: Yeah. One thing I love about this topic that we’re discussing today, and about books like that and all the various near-death experience books—you know, James Van Praagh and Betty Eadie and Dannion Brinkley and all the rest—is that when you read them and kind of just put your awareness on that whole topic, it almost seems to thin the veil between this side and the other side, so to speak. You just kind of gain this deeper confidence or certainty that life is a vast continuum and that this life that we’re in is just one little chapter of it.

That becomes kind of like your de facto mentality after a while, and you just don’t—I mean, there’s a verse in the Bhagavad Gita that says, “Even a little of this dharma removes great fear.” And I think even a little appreciation of the fact that life is a continuum and that we don’t die when the body dies—there must be a deep underlying fear if you think otherwise, you know? If you’re walking around thinking, “Well, when this meat puppet ends, that’s the end of me,” and then you have a complete reversal of that perspective. My perspective has been reversed for so long I can’t remember thinking otherwise, but it must be a tremendous relief for people.

Mark: Yeah, great point you’re bringing up, and a few comments on that. First of all, decades ago, I learned again from Ram Dass the chant, “Gate gate, para gate, para sum gate, buddhi swaha,” and I’ve done that for hundreds and hundreds of hours. So I think that’s part of it. The translation is, “Go out”—in other words, become enlightened—“go even further, go even further than that,” and you realize you’re the Buddha, far out. So I think that when that’s a person’s intent and prayer, it happens, and life supplies us with experiences that reinforce that. Like you say, after a while, it’s your set point.

Dr. Schwartz and I are considering creating some sort of measurement instrument for degrees of certainty about the afterlife, because we have experienced ourselves—I mean, we thought when we started working together four years ago, we knew as much as we could know that life is eternal. But when we have some of these—and I’ll share some of these once we get talking about the Soul Phone Project and research—when we have some of these just mind-blowing experiences, we’re like, “Oh my God, that just took me up three clicks.” It’s a lot of fun.

Rick: When you say some sort of instrument, would it be some psychological test like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory or something that you would answer a whole bunch of questions on, and it would measure your degree of certainty?

Mark: Yes, that would be one way.

Rick: Okay, yeah. One thing that I think is very important is paradigm shift, and the paradigm that governs society for the most part, and the overturning of that paradigm. The paradigm that I’m alluding to is the materialist one, where we think that consciousness is merely a product of the brain, and when the brain dies, consciousness dies. And if all of modern science and technology are fundamentally based on that paradigm, and thus all of the technological—well, I want to say science and technology, everything that impacts our world—no wonder the world is so screwed up, you know? I mean, no wonder there’s so much environmental degradation and so many other problems, economic inequities, and so on.

It seems to me that if we truly underwent a complete upending of that paradigm, placing consciousness where it belongs, at the foundation, everything else would sort of fall into place over time, and the ripple effect would be huge.

It seems to me that if we truly underwent a complete upending of that paradigm, placing consciousness where it belongs, at the foundation, everything else would sort of fall into place over time, and the ripple effect would be huge.

Mark: Yeah. Well, it’s happening right now. Dr. Schwartz founded the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences a couple of years ago. They have 250 scientists, physicians, and university professors now whose working assumption is that consciousness is primary. So we’re getting there. Not all scientists disbelieve in the postmaterial possibilities, but as you say, most do.

Yeah, yeah, there’s also a thing over in England called the Galileo Project, along similar lines, and led by a guy named, I think it’s David Lorimer. I’m going to ask you a question in a little while written by a friend of mine, Mark Gober, who wrote a book called An End to Upside Down Thinking: Dispelling the Myth That the Brain Produces Consciousness and the Implications for Everyday Life. He sent me several questions he wanted me to ask you. But anyway, I think that’s very important. I’m curious: are you guys—you’ve alluded to Gary several times, and we haven’t really explained who he is and what you guys do down there in Arizona—but are you guys in any way affiliated with Stuart Hameroff and the people who organized that consciousness conference in Tucson?

Mark: Great question, one which we’re asked often. Gary knows him, since Stuart is a professor there at the University of Arizona, but they’ve not worked together on this Soul Phone Project. However, I think they worked together earlier on energy healing. Gary’s been at the University of Arizona for 32 years.

Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting there’s so much interest in consciousness in Tucson. Some other thing I came across recently with somebody also seemed rather academic, and it was this whole other exploration into consciousness. So I don’t know, what is it? Is there some peyote in the water down there or something?

Mark: I don’t know, but it’s a cool town. It’s surrounded on all four sides by mountains, and it’s just incredibly beautiful. It’s an oasis in the desert. I don’t know if you’ve been there.

Rick: I have, yeah. I taught meditation there back in the ’70s. It was lovely.

Mark: Okay, yeah. You drive down from Phoenix and you’re through the desert, and all of a sudden you see trees and grass and so on. So, yeah, I like it. I spent a lot of time there the last few years.

Rick: Yeah, good. Well, let’s get into talking about what you’re doing there with Gary Schwartz, unless there’s anything else you want to cover before we get into that?

Mark: Nope, sounds good.

Rick: All right, let’s get into it. So you just start, and I have a bunch of your slides we’re going to be showing as we go along. Just kind of take it from the top, and I’ll probably introduce you with a few questions here and there as we go.

University Research and Scientific Integrity

Mark: Okay. So first of all, it’s important for your listeners and viewers to understand that what you’re about to hear is based on university-based research. As you know, we live in a time where people think they can say anything with or without any evidence behind it, so we worked really hard to make sure that we have the utmost integrity and ethics behind all this. Dr. Schwartz just wrote a book called The Case for Truth with an attorney, Alan Borey, and he is finalizing a book called Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence, which is based on a statement by Dr. Carl Sagan. So I want to make that really clear.

The two first mind-blowing statements, before I talk about Dr. Schwartz’s credentials and so on, and more about the project, are: number one, life after death has now been definitively demonstrated scientifically. We understand that a true scientist will never say “100% proved,” but Dr. Schwartz has, as a scientist, 99.9% certainty that the afterlife exists. Secondly, through a series of replicated—and these are all controlled, replicated, MOLUS Center study, peer-reviewed, published journal—experiments, we have demonstrated early communication with post-material persons, which, as you said earlier, is our preferred term for the deceased, the departed, instead of spirits. It turns out that those who have passed lose only what you referred to earlier, the meat—

Rick: Meat puppet or something?

Mark: Yeah, that’s it. It’s much less than 1% of who and what we are. So that’s the great news. And this communication, by the way, is focused on two areas. First of all, so people can have contact with their “departed loved ones,” who aren’t really departed, but just as important, so that we can build the quality and quantity of communication with some post-material luminaries—scientists, inventors, educators, responsible leaders, etc.—who want to help us heal our world. The ramifications of that are unimaginable in every field, for the positive.

Rick: Yeah, and a little bit later we’ll talk about who some of those luminaries are and how you have been in touch with them, and by what means you’re confident that you have actually communicated with them. Okay, so continue. I have your slide presentation loaded here, and I think the next one is a little bit more about Gary Schwartz himself and his credentials. You want to just introduce him a little bit more?

Mark: Sure. His dad was a Columbia University-trained chemist, a master’s chemist, so there was certainly intelligence among his parents. His mom was a schoolteacher. Gary had two near-death experiences when he was a little boy, and my theory is that his control valve—you understand how much of what the central nervous system does is inhibit sensory input. If we could indeed see and hear everything that’s going on around us, we couldn’t function. In India they’re called God-intoxicants. They see too much, too fast, of the total reality.

At any rate, he was a prodigy in just about anything he did. I mean, he self-taught seven instruments and was in really good bands when he was a teenager. So whatever he went for, he did really well. Undergrad at Cornell, master’s in clinical psychology at Harvard, PhD in psychophysiology at Harvard, Harvard professor, tenured Yale professor, where he and a couple of other doctors founded the field of behavioral medicine. I mean, that statement right there is huge. Behavioral medicine—that’s a whole giant field. And Gary started it, and he only told me that like two and a half years after we joined forces. He said, “Yeah, I got it started, and I let somebody else take it from there. I was interested in some other things.” That’s what he does: plant seeds.

As you mentioned, he’s the director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health at the University of Arizona. He has written over 450 scientific papers, which is a huge number for any scientist. So the point is, he’s the real deal as far as science, and that’s one reason we can trust what he’s doing. Now, the other thing about his work is that he has had wonderful team members. They’re hired experts; sometimes they’re graduate and postgraduate students from the university, but there are electrical engineers, software specialists, optical physicists, as well as evidential mediums. We can talk more about that, but these are mediums who have been evaluated and found to be highly evidential, who feed him bits of information from these post-material luminaries. So he’s had a wonderful team. Putting all that together is how he’s been able to achieve what he has.

Rick: Okay, good. And so you guys have been working on something you call the “Soul Phone.”

Mark: Yes, that’s an overarching term, and in retrospect, we maybe shouldn’t have used it because people keep saying, “When can I call my loved ones?” You know, and we’re like, “Huh.” So it was always meant from the beginning to be an umbrella term for four different devices. If you’re ready to go with those, the first is the “Soul Switch,” and that’s what I referred to and what we’ve used so far with these post-material persons. A switch is like a key on your laptop, for example. You push the L key, that’s a yes for that. For the others, it’s a no. It’s amazing what you can do with just that yes/no, on/off communication.

Sidebar: when I worked in hospitals, I worked a lot with people who were paralyzed from the waist down, from the neck down, and sometimes the cord injury would be so high they couldn’t talk. The only thing they could do was blink, and whatever the system was, blink once for yes, two for no. So I was very comfortable with the capabilities of binary communication.

Now, the electronic device, or I’ll just call it the “Soul Switch,” was never envisioned as a commercializable device. Some people would want it. You can ask questions of your loved ones and get yes or no answers, but what we’re shooting for, for the first commercializable device, is the “Soul Keyboard.” With forty or so electronic switches in the series, Dr. Schwartz anticipates that the first keyboard will be about four feet wide and three feet deep, but it will allow texting and typing with those living in another dimension.

Rick: Okay, let me stop you here because we’re also going to mention Soul Voice and Soul Video, and we need to probe into this a little bit more than I have yet heard you probe. All right, so, you know, “Soul Switch,” I’ve heard you explain how that works in terms of asking certain questions, and then somehow or other people from the other side are able to give some kind of signal that’s interpreted as either a yes or a no. Okay, but a keyboard where you have forty different keys, that gets a lot more complicated. So how in the world—give us some idea of how that would work.

Mark: Yeah, well, so far—well, maybe it would help, Rick, if we go back to the seven ways that Dr. Schwartz has measured the presence of spirit, because that will give your viewers more of an idea about the qualities of people who have passed on: their physicality, their light, electromagnetic field, and so on. Sound good?

Rick: Yeah.

Mark: We’re going then to slide number 13. So again, these are experiments that Dr. Schwartz has done over the last eleven years in an attempt to show the presence of spirit, show their ability to send signals, and always with the interest in producing a commercializable device. So the first one…

Rick: And by “commercializable,” you don’t mean that you just want to make a lot of money with it. You mean you want something that people could actually afford, because your stuff costs tens of thousands of dollars and nobody would be able to afford it, so it’s very clunky and expensive. I mean, some of the first computers were not very effective at all. They were much weaker than the little phone you now carry in your pocket, but they filled a whole room. They used up huge amounts of electricity, had great big fans cooling them, and so on. So we’re kind of at that stage in terms of this technology.

Mark: Yes, thank you for clarifying that. By “commercializable,” I mean that our overarching goal is to allow anyone who can afford a cell phone to afford a cell phone, and eventually this may be an app that people can use with any smart device. That’s our goal: widespread use for people around the world.

With that in mind, the first experiment, or one of the first he did, was measuring their electromagnetic fields. So when I say “their,” I’m talking about post-material persons. As you know, Dr. Schwartz did experiments with mediums twenty years ago and found—well, about ten of those became colleagues and friends. Over time, they started independently telling Gary bits of information. Albert Einstein keeps showing up, as does David Bohm, who’s a contemporary of Einstein. They’re telling us that we’re supposed to build technology so they can have a voice, so they can help us heal our world, and they provided bits of information.

Rick: So, let me interject here. It’s not like you said, “Hey, mediums, find us some far-out, intelligent deceased people to communicate with.” It’s more like those people—Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, and so on—became aware, or were aware, that your project was going on and that the mediums were collaborating with you. Through the mediums, they communicated with you. They wanted you to know something or tell you something, and they saw the medium as a channel through which to do that.

Mark: Correct, and sometimes three or four different ones would come up with the same message independently, and then communicate with each other.

Rick: Through different mediums, not through the same person.

Mark: Correct. So that’s partly how this information came in.

The first device measured their electromagnetic field. You know how humans have an electromagnetic field that emanates from the brain, but especially the heart. He did some work at Harvard in the past, so he’s very aware of that. There are electromagnetic field radiation detectors, sensors that can pick that up.

The control in this case would be an empty room with a detector, and the computer measures and shows if anything is detected. With no one in the room, material or post-material, human or otherworldly, you see what you expect to see: a baseline, just kind of hovering along the x-axis, like a flatline EEG or EKG. Then one of the humans would go in, and the sensor would detect their big energy. Then one of the mediums would ask one of the post-material persons, one of the A-team members, “Please go in there,” and the EMR sensors would pick up their energy, not as high in amplitude as humans, but very statistically significant versus the control.

However, these things are so sensitive, they can pick up other things besides persons, so there was no way it was envisioned to be commercialized. The second device for SHARE measured their motion, and this is one of the two experiments that shows they have physicality, or at least can. This is called the dynamical interferometer, which is basically an airtight chamber with a very sensitive measuring device inside that measures micro-air currents. The control is when nobody is in the room, and certainly nobody is inside the chamber. Again, it’s pretty much a flatline.

Rick: So is the box that we’re looking at in this slide the chamber you’re referring to?

Mark: No, I’ll get to that in a moment. When one of the mediums asked one of the AAT members to enter into or put their hand inside this airtight chamber, immediately the sensors showed micro-air movement, a current. The laws of physics show that for those air molecules to move, something had to displace them; something had to enter that system. But again, there was no way to commercialize that for the masses.

The one that you’re referring to in slide 13 is called a silicon photomultiplier device. This is a $50,000 piece of equipment. It’s basically a box within a box within a box, pure blackness inside, with only a shielded light sensor in a minus-35-degree centigrade sleeve that can measure a single photon of light. The control is blackness: nobody’s in the room, nobody’s in the chamber. Then a medium will ask one of the AAT members, “Please enter the chamber or put your hand in the chamber.” Right away, a beam of light appears. “Please move from left to right.” It does. “Please move from right to left.” It does. “Please leave the chamber. Please go back in.” It’s like clockwork, this beautiful white light.

However, again, I don’t think people want—this is the size of a thick suitcase, $50,000. I don’t think people want to carry one of those around. So far, this shows they have an electromagnetic field, they have some physicality and density, and they have—or at least reflect or can emanate—light.

Rick: Yeah, well, I mean, everybody’s heard ghost stories, so to speak, of things getting knocked off the wall or, you know, feeling something brush past you or seeing some diaphanous apparition or something like that. So that kind of refers to all the things you just mentioned, really: some ability to interact with physical reality and to be seen to some extent, to emanate some sort of light.

And this is something I just want to say: anybody who finds this conversation far-fetched, that’s understandable. I mean, this is pretty far-out stuff, but take a scientific attitude toward it. Don’t just say, “Oh, that’s BS,” or stifle any doubts you may have. Try to formulate them into a question, and if you’re watching the live version of this, send in your question and Mark will answer it. If you’re watching it later on, there’s a discussion group that I’ll link to from Mark’s page on BatGap where people might want to hash this stuff out a little bit.

But, you know, I mean, if you could go back 100 years and one of us could hop in a time machine and tell the people who lived then all the things we’re going to have today, they’d all think you’re crazy. They’d probably lock you up, unless you happened to run into H.G. Wells or something. So who knows what it might be like 100 years from now? What if we are seeing, in what Mark’s describing, the precursors of very advanced technologies that would actually allow the kind of communication he’s talking about? So I’m open to the possibility, and I can’t say for certain that it’ll pan out, but it’s interesting to consider.

Mark: Yeah, and as you say, people have had these experiences, and that’s one of the—there are three categories of evidence for the afterlife. Scientific, of which there is very little, but I’m sharing some with you today. Clinical, such as near-death experiences. And then evidential or experiential: people have these firsthand experiences. The trouble with the latter is they’re subjective. There’s no way to objectively measure those, whereas in this case, everything I’m describing is occurring in a university-based laboratory with controls, everything else that I described in the beginning.

The fourth way, Rick, that we measured their presence and signal was by seeing an image, and this is a precursor to the fourth device, Soul Video, which is like what we’re doing now: Skype, FaceTime, Zoom. Here’s what happened. One or a couple of the mediums shared a message from David Bohm, again, the Princeton mathematician and physicist, a close friend of Krishnamurti. He was blending Hindu wisdom with quantum physics.

Rick: As many of the early physicists did. They were quoting the Vedas and so on.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. David Bohm, B-O-H-M. He passed on to Gary, he said, “We, that is, we post-material persons, are visible to the human eye. However, the brain, limited as it is and designed as it is to function in this physical world, can only detect one or two frames out of a thousand.” So Gary took that information and bought a very expensive camera that takes 60,000 frames per minute. He reasoned that that ought to capture some of those frames.

So the control was that the cameras pointed against a solid black background, and the outcome was what you’d expect: black. Then he had a software programmer create proprietary software that detects anomalous frames, frames that are different. So again, most all the frames are pure black. But this software detected ones that were blurry, white, shadows, movement. Then the medium involved with the experiment asked an A-team member, one at a time, to stand in front of the camera and move, because that motion is detected. And sure enough, there were a number of those anomalous frames, which, when you pair them together, are like an early video.

You’re probably old enough to remember the big excitement we had where kids had, like, a deck of cards, and you flipped it slowly and it looked like a video motion picture. Yeah, one of the things we were excited about back then. Well, it was very similar to this. So that’s the precursor for Soul Video. However, the funds were not available to pursue that. But Dr. Schwartz actually thinks that creating the video might be easier than we think. It could fall right in place, especially once we have the keyboard and are getting increased quality and quantity of information from them.

Rick: Yeah. So do you get the sense that they’re trying to feed you information as best they can? These guys you mentioned are geniuses, and people like Tesla invented all kinds of incredible things way ahead of his time. Do you have a feeling that they actually have an understanding of how to make these things that you’re trying to make, and they would like to convey that to you somehow?

Mark: I like the way your mind works, right? Yeah, Dr. Schwartz really specialized in the field of systems theory. He wrote about it in his book, The Living Energy Universe, and he says that systems theory and quantum physics require that anything we create on Earth is stored in the zero-point field or the quantum field. You know, Rishis call it the Akashic Record, Akashic Field. And so, if we come up with a cell phone or a computer or whatever, that should be very elementary to those living in an unobstructed part of the universe. So certainly, they should be able to replicate that, and then what we need is an interface so we can communicate. So that would be another way versus them using our technology here on Earth.

So the last one was measuring their appearance, their ability to be photographed, which is big. The next one was their ability to speak, to create sound, and this is one that actually got me involved with Dr. Schwartz. We were both involved with Eternia, which is a group started by John Audet and Evan Alexander. Gary was the chairperson, I was the vice president, so Eternia.org was designed to merge science and spirituality. Well, it’s evident that we were kindred spirits, and sometimes we used very similar language. He would send to the core group his latest experiments, and this is one I read. I got goosebumps, cold chills, hair standing up on my arms, and I knew I needed to contact him and see how I could help.

The experiment was this. They had an audiologist booth, a soundproof booth, and a vibration-dampening floor in it. It was covered with copper foil, so it was effectively a Faraday cage to minimize electromagnetic field fluctuations. It was in a room with no heating or cooling ducts, so there weren’t temperature fluctuations, controlling as many variables as possible.

The control for this was a large microphone with a three-foot plexiglass shield, a sound collector, inside the booth. The control was nobody in the booth, nobody in the room, silence, showing on an oscilloscope. Then a human would go in and whisper nine words that were predesigned at a cadence, one word every second, and whispering those words showed high-amplitude peaks on the oscilloscope.

Then one of the A-team members was asked to go into the booth and yell those same nine words because, “Hello, they’re coming from another dimension.” And indeed, for each of those words, there was a blip on the oscilloscope—not as large as humans again, but very highly statistically higher than the control. And those nine words, spoken for those in the next part of life who were geniuses while on Earth, very caring, loving, productive people who want to help us, were, “We are here to help you heal your world.”

You know how in life you’ll encounter something—well, like I said, the picture of Maharajah—and it’s just like, “Okay, I’m supposed to do that.” When I read this, it was like, “Okay, I’m supposed to help,” and I called him. We were going to be in Arizona in a few weeks, never thinking he’d have time to meet, but he made time, and that’s when he asked me to be the spokesperson. We’ve achieved a lot in the last four years together.

Rick: Cool. One thing I just want to throw in here is that one way—I often try to put myself in the audience’s shoes, and I have conversations with people who are spiritual people, but they have a hard time accepting even something like reincarnation or that anything survives bodily death. For some, you know, they can say, “I’ll meditate all my life and it’s great and I have nice experiences, but come on, don’t tell me that I’m going to live when the body dies.”

One way I would answer that objection is to think in terms of gross and subtle. I mean, not only large and small, but gross and subtle. And also, like you said in the beginning, we only perceive a tiny fraction of all the things that are actually going on around us that we might perceive if we had different sensory apparatus. It’s said that birds can actually see magnetic fields and navigate thereby, and obviously dogs and bats and dolphins and all kinds of creatures can hear and smell—especially here, in terms of the species I just mentioned—things that humans can’t perceive. So there are all kinds of things that are outside the realm of our ordinary perception.

And, you know, one way of thinking of this in a way that science doesn’t really consider—I mean, scientists understand the frequencies that bats and dogs can hear—is that there are gross and subtle levels of creation. The subtler realms, you know, traditionally have been called astral or celestial or, like you said, Akashic—words like that. They’re just as real as the concrete, gross stuff that we experience, but just outside the spectrum, the band on the spectrum of potential perception that we occupy.

But there are people who have broader bandwidth. They can, they do perceive angels or celestial beings or, you know, devas or elementals. I’ve interviewed some of those people, and they seem very credible to me. I’ve even had a few glimpses myself, but I’m not like—yeah, just glimpses. And I think when you consider all the accounts in the world’s spiritual traditions of these types of entities, of angels and whatnot, around the world, everything from the South American Indigenous tribes to Native Americans to the Indians, the Judeo-Christian tradition, they all have accounts of this stuff, and it’s in the artwork, it’s in the literature.

So something’s been going on for the last couple thousand years, and it’s presumptuous of us to just dismiss it because it doesn’t make sense to us or it doesn’t make sense to our modern scientific understanding. And if you just kind of think that way, it helps you accept the kind of stuff that Mark is saying here. Anyway, that’s a bit of a rant, but I thought I’d throw that in to give people a leg up if they’re having a hard time with this.

Mark: It’s a very good rap. Here’s one metaphor for it, and this comes from Lynne McTaggart’s book The Field, where she interviewed some of the top quantum physicists in the world. They say that if all the light and energy that exists in our world—and you understand that fundamentally, that’s really what we are, beings of that manifesting in different ways; we’re not really solid or separate—were the size of Mount Everest, the portion the average human can perceive would be the size of a golf ball.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: And that’s why Dr. Schwartz and I called our book Greater Reality Living, “greater reality” being our preferred term for the totality of life, all that exists, reality.

Rick: Here’s another metaphor for it. If you took the electromagnetic field, which gives us our visual perception, which also gives us radio waves and X-rays and cell phone signals and everything else, and you made the electromagnetic spectrum the length of the Mississippi River, human visual perception would be like a few centimeters somewhere south of Hannibal, Missouri.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, I know. So that, I think, helps people realize we’re going around looking through a tiny pinhole, and that’s one of the reasons for centering practices: expanding that even a little bit can make a big difference, and we understand more the mind of God, and we understand that life is fair and just and magnificent when we can see more of that.

One other practical point, because there’s a good chance a lot of your viewers are “sensitives,” which is a term for people who can perceive more than that golf-ball size compared to Mount Everest. It’s tough for people on our planet who are sensitives. Now, some are also empathic, which means they can feel the emotions of others. But people who are sensitives, who can feel, hear, see, smell more than the average person, not so long ago were burned at the stake, and they’re considered kooks. People keep this inside and don’t share it, but now we realize how common it is. That’s one of the reasons we start these Greater Reality Living groups, so people can share their personal experiences, have a tribe, have a group of kindred spirits where they’re not judged or criticized.

And it’s great that it’s happening in academia because even now, you know, if some graduate student wants to do his PhD thesis in extrasensory perception or some such thing, his faculty advisor would say, “What are you, trying to ruin your career? I mean, you won’t get funding, you’ll be ostracized, you’ll be siphoned off into some little side channel of the academic world. Do something practical.” So there’s a strong bias against this kind of thing by those who are clinging to the materialist paradigm.

Yeah, you’re right. People can lose funding, they can lose their job, their reputation. Dr. Schwartz has, as you can imagine, many colleagues from over the years, some of whom were his students when he was a professor at Harvard and Yale. They love him, they respect him, they know the quality of his work, but when they see these experiments, they say, “Gary, I don’t see any flaws in your methodology. There’s only one problem: I don’t believe there’s an afterlife.” So your results can’t be right. And it’s frustrating for Dr. Schwartz because he said, “What happened to the credo of ‘follow the data’? Put aside your pre-existing beliefs and see where the data lead.”

That’s why the Galileo Project over in the UK was so named, because church authorities refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. What he was telling them couldn’t be true, so why even bother to look?

Rick: That’s why the Galileo Project over in the UK was so named, because church authorities refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. What he was telling them couldn’t be true, so why even bother to look?

Mark: Yeah. So, would you like to pick back up on—we have a couple more experiments?

Rick: Yeah, yeah. Just give me slide numbers if there’s a slide, and I will just go to that one.

Mark: Yeah, we’re to number 15.

Rick: Okay.

Mark: And this is measuring the attenuation of a photon or laser beam. The experiment is this: You have an eight-foot-wide or long table, and you have a beam emitter, again, either photons or a laser. We know how long it takes to go from point A to point B. That’s the control, the constant. Then a plexiglass hand is passed through the beam, and the beam slows down some. Then one of the post-material persons puts their hands through, and it slows down the beam—not as much as a plexiglass hand, but very highly statistically significant versus the control. This and the air movement one are what convinced us that post-material persons do have physicality, or can. Let’s talk about that for a moment.

Rick: Before you go to that, let me ask you a question about this. Light goes 186,000 miles a second in a vacuum, so are you saying that this equipment we just saw, even though it fits on an eight-foot table, is actually able to measure fluctuations in the speed of light? Is that what you’re saying?

Mark: Yes, but not just light—the laser beam as well. Now, these are—

Rick: Well, a laser beam is light.

Mark: These are small attenuation effects, but measurable and discernible, yes. Things like glass and water can slow down light, especially, and you notice in the photo that there are lots of mirrors there. This is partly to amplify the signal, and it’s also partly to show that diminishing speed passing through all that glass. That was set up by an optical physicist, which is amazing.

Talking about their density, Albert Einstein described it through some of the mediums. He said, “We are historical energy systems who can manifest in various ways depending upon our intent and with whom we’re interacting.” That’s not an exact quote, but that’s a paraphrase. “Historical energy systems” is the key phrase there.

The analogy I use for people whose minds may be starting to blow from this is: Consider that you have an electrical supply coming into your house or condo. That electricity then manifests in different ways and operates different devices—your TV, your stereo, your lights. Similarly, the energy that is us can manifest in different ways. Native Americans recognized this in their art millennia ago.

We were talking about Michael Newton earlier. Based on his work—35,000 different cases from people around the world, and deep, deep hypnosis for our sessions—he was able to gain a sense of how much of their energy it took to visit Earth.

Rick: Yeah, let me just clarify. Michael Newton hypnotically regressed people back to the period between lives. He did so many thousands of them, as you just said, and there was such agreement among the accounts that so many of them gave him that he was able to map out in quite some detail what people generally experience in the period between lives. His books are very interesting. Go ahead.

Mark: On average, 25% of what we call the soul’s or entity’s energy is required to have this earthly experience. The rest could be experiencing other times and places, other parts of the field of all possibilities as a plant, a human form, a formless animal, and part never leaves home.

Rick: Okay, so you and I are sitting here, and we may be using only 25% of the energy that comprises our soul in its entirety, while the other 75% might be doing other things. And that pertains to this A-Team because, who’s to say that Tesla and Einstein and all these people haven’t reincarnated? But even if they have, 75% or whatever of their energy could still be on the other side interacting with you?

Mark: Yeah, a couple of things about that. Dr. Weiss said that, on average, a person will wait 100 or 200 Earth years before coming back, so rapid reincarnations are not unheard of, but they’re not common.

Secondly, the word through the mediums is that none of these people we’ve worked with—we’ve named some of them: Tesla, Sagan, Einstein, Edison, and others—none of them have reincarnated. However, what we were just describing dovetails beautifully with the concept of multilocation. Some people hear about bilocation, the ability to be in more than two places at the same time.

Well, two and a half years ago, I was gifted with the opportunity to work with Dr. Schwartz, have a meeting with him and one of the top evidential mediums, and ask questions of the A-Team. Up until then, no one had done that because we wanted to honor their time; the focus was always on the technology. So imagine being able to ask people like that questions.

One question was, “Gosh, we want to be so respectful of your time. We hope we’re not taking you away from doing your next goals and work.” And I said, “So can you multilocate?” They said, “Oh, yeah.” I said, “Can you be in five different places at the same time?” She reported that they were chuckling and saying, “Oh, you might say that.” I said, “Well, how about 10, 20, 30?” I felt like an auctioneer at some point. They finally maxed out at 50 to 100, depending on the person, different places, different actions, and interactions. So that’s another way to look at this: only part of our soul’s energy is here.

Rick: Yeah, you think about these people who say that they have seen Jesus or are praying to Jesus. I’m just using him as a case in point, but we could consider others. You might ask, “Well, Jesus must be a real busy guy, kind of like Santa Claus racing around, dealing with all these different people.” But a being of that stature could probably multitask to a very great extent without breaking a sweat.

Mark: Yeah, exactly. So that’s how they can have physicality. One of the first ways I came across this was through near-death experiences. It’s a common question for people to ask, “Well, when I pass on, how will I recognize my grandma who died 50 years ago? She probably doesn’t still look like Grandma all these years, frozen in time.” I say, “No, but she’ll probably appear that way to you so that you’ll be comforted and able to identify her. Then later, once you’ve loosened your attachment to ‘we are just our bodies,’ she can appear as she is now, or just as light and energy.”

Rick: Yeah. Okay. So continue on.

Mark: Yeah, the last device, then, and this leads up to the present time, is slide number 16: the electronic soul switch. Most people remember that in grade school they probably did a simple experiment where they had a battery, two wires coming off the poles of the battery, and then a light bulb. You had to touch both bare wires to the light bulb for it to light up. That’s called closing the circuit.

Likewise, we used an experiment where we had an open circuit, and in the photo you see in the upper left what’s called a picoamp meter. This measures one millionth of one volt. It’s such sensitive equipment. With this open circuit, one of the A-Team members can close the circuit, put their hand on the device to effectively close the circuit, and then register the energy. There are different ways of doing it, and it’s patentable, so I can’t give it away, but this is the most conceivable commercializable device to use.

The only trouble was that it was so sensitive. It was picking up 110-outlet voltage, fluorescent lights, and cars going a block away. It was so sensitive that it picked up the signal of spirit, but it was also picking up all sorts of other things. Anyway, it’s kind of a long story, but we have made a number of modifications to it. Right now, the research is on the electronic soul switch, which should be 99% accurate, instantaneous, and very reliable, allowing these yes-or-no answers. Then that will be created in a series for the soul keyboard.

🛤️ Identifying communicators and expanding the research

Rick: Okay. Good. Mark Gober, whose book I held up earlier, sent in a few questions. Would this be a good time to ask them, or do you want to continue on? Okay, so here’s a few questions from Mark. He asked, “Is the soul phone capable of discernment? Even if accurate information is obtained, how can we be sure that the being is not an imposter?”

Mark: Yeah, that’s the number one question we receive. We have a series of tests. One is called the personal identification test. That was really the most recent experiment.

By the way, I haven’t mentioned this yet, and it’s very important: We are preparing to embark on a series of multicenter studies at other universities, laboratories, and institutes. Multicenter studies are the gold standard for scientific evidence or proof, as close as you can get.

Rick: So, in other words, other people will try to replicate your findings.

Mark: Right, yeah. So, first of all, the personal identification test. We were using four A-Team members then. Nikola Tesla was one; I’ll use him as an example. There are 12 different questions, and for one of the four, the answer would be “yes.” For the others, the answer would be “no.” We were using a plasma globe, a Tesla coil, at the time to measure their yes and no answers.

The system was: If the answer to the question shown on the computer is yes, put your hands on top of the globe—actually, inside it. If the answer is no, keep your hands in your lap. Questions like, “Were you born in this country? Was this your mother’s name? Was this your father’s name? Was this your birthday? Was this your death date? Did you write a book by this name?” and so on.

When you see them answer correctly to questions, whether the answer should be yes or no, 100% of the time, then you have more assurance that they are who the mediums say they are.

In addition, we have what’s called the expert knowledge test, where a very arcane piece of information will be shown on the screen. For example, a section of Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the question would be, “Okay, Dr. Einstein, was this part of your theory?” Yes. However, if it was somebody else’s theory, the answer should be no. Again, this would be information that almost nobody knows. We’ll have to research and find, if the person was a musician, the lyrics to a little-known song, and ask, “Are these lyrics to a song you wrote?” This is another way we can be sure that the person is really who they’re purported to be. It’s a topic we’re very much aware of, and we have to be concerned about it for safety and integrity.

Rick: Aside from the A-Team members in the slide that I’ve been showing, I’ve heard you mention Harry Houdini in the recordings I’ve listened to, and a musician named Peter—I was wondering if that was Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, by any chance? And then you’ve also mentioned Michael Jackson. How big is the A-Team, aside from the five or so people that you have in that slide?

Mark: Mm-hmm. You can imagine working with a team: if you’ve got hundreds, communication would be difficult. So there are about 30, but they say that for each one of them, there are hundreds more working behind the scenes and waiting in the wings to get a voice through our communication technology.

For example, I think it was two years ago. It wasn’t long after Steve Jobs passed, and a couple of the mediums said, “Steve Jobs is coming through. He would like to help you guys.” The answer was, “Sorry, Steve. We can’t use you right now.” And I’m thinking, “Oh my God, this is Steve Jobs. What are you saying?”

Rick: Whose answer was that?

Mark: Well, from the team, because we just couldn’t use him at the time. We had too many voices involved, and we weren’t at the point in the technology where we could use his input.

Rick: Wouldn’t you want to hear what he had to say first before telling him to get lost?

Mark: This is a small research team, and we’re deluged with projects and information. So, yeah, we would like to hear all kinds of things.

Rick: I can understand “deluged.” We’re that way with interview requests.

Mark: Yeah. So that’s how many of the A-Team members there are. We’ve actually quit talking about them too much because that sets off the bullshit meter for some people, like, “Okay, this is too weird.” And we realize that. We respect that. And so we’ve decided not to talk too much about the A-Team members and wait until they can speak for themselves. I mentioned this session with one of the mediums where I could ask some questions. And one was, when the technology is able to provide a webinar, even if it’s texting and typing, but certainly once there’s voice and seeing, would you all be willing and able to teach us on different topics? Global sustainability, healthcare, feeding the poor, world peace, free energy. There’s so many topics. Would you be willing and able to do that? And the medium started laughing.

She said, “They’re pushing each other out of the way to get first in line, so they very much want to share that with us, so hope is coming.”

Rick: So you’re implying that those on the other side, if “other side” is an okay term with you, are privy to all this knowledge that would solve many of the problems here on Earth. And presumably, we were privy to it before we incarnated here, but somehow we lose that knowledge when we come here, just as we lose a lot of stuff, a lot of knowledge when we come here, knowledge of our higher nature. And so it’s a matter of facilitating the communication between here and the other side, so that there can be more of a free flow of knowledge and information.

Mark: Yeah, and I don’t know if I’d agree with, you know, they’re all privy to it, but I would say that if we on Earth are looking through a pinhole, they’re maybe looking through a silver-dollar-size opening, so they’re understanding more about the greater reality. And also, they’re…

Rick: Especially the Einsteins and the Teslas and the Jobs and people like that.

Mark: They were geniuses while on Earth, and they continued working, so, yeah, they certainly have something to share. Tesla said, by the way, “If you think I invented some amazing things while I was on Earth, wait until you see what I’ve been working on here,” and immediately the words “free energy” just kind of came into my intuition.

Rick: And presumably, when you say that Tesla said that, you’re not saying he communicated that knowledge through your soul switch or anything; he got that through a medium, Susan Giesemann or somebody.

Mark: Yeah, and so I should say, purportedly said.

Rick: Purportedly, sure.

Mark: But, yeah, we trust our mediums.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, you and I both have a scientific attitude. You’re not presenting this as the gospel truth, and I’m not listening to it as the gospel truth, but I’m just listening. My attitude is that everything is a hypothesis. Angels, do they exist? Aliens from other planets, do they exist? It’s like, it’s a hypothesis. You don’t have to disbelieve it, you don’t have to believe it, but be open-minded to whatever evidence presents itself. And some hypotheses are much more credible than others because they have accumulated a lot more evidence. There are people who believe we haven’t put men on the moon, and there’s so much evidence that we have, you know? So you just have to sort of be open to what we do know and then strive to know more.

Mark: I agree. That’s the process of science, scientific inquiry.

Rick: Yeah. Okay, so here’s another question from Mark Grober: “Is the soul phone limited or restricted in terms of the types of beings it can access?” Because there are all kinds of beings, not just humans who have crossed over. There are many beings on the other side.

Mark: Yeah, our initial research is, as I mentioned, on post-material persons, that is, those who were humans on Earth. The next stage of research, as soon as we’re able, will be for higher-energy beings—angels, guides, whatever terms are used. However, the equipment involved will be much different. With humans, the trick has been to dampen the background noise and amplify their signal, because it’s so relatively tiny. For angels and higher-energy beings, the assumption is—we haven’t had a chance to test this yet—that they would blow up our current technology, and so we will need technology that can handle large currents.

It’s very much like what I was describing in my Ohm experiment, and that was one of the takeaways from that: my nervous system, even though I was chiropractic and had an optimal nervous system, and did meditation, yoga, et cetera, wasn’t able to handle that much current at the time. There were probably masters who could have just kept going on for hours like that. Likewise, or in a similar way, the technology we need to communicate with humans or angels, or hopefully eventually source energy itself, will differ widely.

Rick: Yeah, there’s a term “spiritual emergency.” Stanislav Grof, I think, popularized the term, but there are so many cases of people who just, you know, get too much voltage going through their system, a bit more awakening than they’re prepared to handle. Sometimes it’s catapulted upon them through drugs or something, psychedelics, and other times even through meditation or even sometimes nothing. Some people just have this radical, sudden awakening, and a lot of integration and stabilization has to take place. That’s why spiritual traditions, most of them, have all sorts of methodologies for purification and integration that you would want to engage in before any kind of major awakening; otherwise, you won’t be able to handle it.

Mark: I agree, and Dr. Grof is a genius. He was one of the guests on my show. I learned a lot from his holotropic breathing, and, yeah, what a giant in the field of consciousness.

Rick: Yeah, he’s been on BatGap, too. Another question, final question from

Mark: “Has there been any collaboration with the Windbridge Research Center? If so, are there aspects of their methodologies that can be applied to soul phone research?”

Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Beischel, Julie Beischel, were colleagues years ago. I think she got her PhD under him at the University of Arizona. They are focusing primarily, as we understand, on credentialing mediums now, and focusing on that mediumship field, whereas Dr. Schwartz has largely moved away from that, except for the ability of evidential mediums to pass through bits of information from these luminaries.

Rick: Okay.

Mark: But she and the institute are excellent.

Rick: Yeah, I think she’s on our short list of people to interview. So, we have several ways we can go here. One is that we haven’t shown all your slides, and there may be things in your slides that you still want to talk about. And then I also made a list of many of the titles of the posts, you know, the articles you wrote on your website, which would be interesting topics for discussion. So where do you want to go next?

Mark: Well, you’re the host, Rick. You’re the crazy guy that’s listening to all my… So I’d like to…

Rick: Yeah, I get the T-shirt for that. You’ll be sending me the T-shirt, right?

Mark: You get to be the conductor here.

Rick: Okay, well, yeah, but also feel free to interrupt me if there’s something that comes to mind that you want to talk about that I haven’t thought to ask you. All right, so I’m just going to take these from the top. One article was entitled “A Good Death,” and I know you’ve worked—you’ve witnessed at least a hundred people die in your work in the medical field—and I’m sure you’ve seen the whole gamut in terms of people who are terrified of dying, people who have no problem with it and feel like it’s just going to be like changing clothes or getting off one airplane and getting onto another. So what do you mean by “a good death”?

Mark: It’s one of the projects that Dr. Schwartz and I want to work on in the future. He’s actually written a paper, worked with a team of medical doctors and psychologists and others, because it’s a big problem, as you may be aware of, deciding when enough is enough. Medical doctors are taught you never give up and you keep trying. Well, when I worked in hospitals, for example, true story, I swear to God, middle of the night, code four, we go up there, and the patient is 93 years old. He had two limbs amputated because of severe diabetes. He had chronic liver and kidney failure. He had had several heart attacks. This poor guy is trying to die, but they went through the whole thing, you know, shocking him, putting in tubes and ports, and so on.

And I said to the chief resident, “What are we doing?” “Yeah, my God,” he said, “teaching hospitals are a rough place to die.” You know, basically, they were practicing on him. And after a few hours of being poked and shocked and subjected to inhumane things, he finally died.

I’ll just share a few glimpses of this, a few snippets of it. I wrote that about two years ago. One of our cats was dying. She was very old and failing. It was clearly time to move on. Just before the veterinarian gave her the relaxing shot, he said, “I just hope I can pass on this peacefully when it’s my time.” And I said, “Yeah, I mean, that’s what I’m saying. Who made this one up? Cats and dogs can pass in a timely way with dignity, but humans have to suffer and sometimes curl up in a coma with contractures, down to 80 pounds.” And unfortunately, part of it is about money. Part of it is about fear. I talked with a physician friend about this recently. He said, “Hey, sometimes we try to get through to the family that they should let them go, but the family is so afraid.

‘No, do whatever you can to save them.'” And I think seeing a loved one pass makes them afraid and reminds them that one day they’re going to be in that same situation. So there are a few angles to it, but certainly, as we know without a doubt that life continues on, people should have a choice to end their life when they’re ready, in a timely way. That’s the term “good death,” which is what euthanasia means.

Rick: Yeah, a couple of sort of funny things come to mind. One was Woody Allen. He said, “I don’t mind dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” And another was kind of a joke. He said, “I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather did, not screaming in terror like the passengers in his car.”

Mark: Oh, that’s a little irreverent, but I love it.

Rick: But, yeah, and also, if you look at the percentages of the healthcare expenditure that this nation inflicts upon itself, a very disproportionate amount of it is in keeping people alive in the very last years of life, where there isn’t much quality of life.

Mark: Yeah, I worked with a patient for weeks, again, probably in their upper 80s. This person was in a coma. They were trying to die from pneumonia, but we wouldn’t let them, so we kept giving them breathing treatments and suctioning their lungs. I was with this person numerous times and never saw any visitors, never saw any cards or flowers. And I was reading Elizabeth Kübler-Ross at the time—this was in the mid-’70s—and was aware that hearing is often the last to go, even if a person is comatose. So I just spoke into their ear quietly and said, “Hey, if you want to keep living, we’ll keep doing everything we can. But if you’re ready to move on, you realize you have control over that. Look around; you likely will see the light.” I was aware of near-death experiences at the time.

“You likely will see visitors, loved ones, perhaps pets, who are there just waiting for you.” And I said, “If you want to do that, follow the light, reach out, take God’s hand or their hand.” And I did that with two people, and both of them passed on within 24 hours. This was a time when there was a nurse in Cincinnati, which is not far…

Rick: I remember that, yeah. She was killing people, right?

Mark: I was like, “I probably should quit this. I might get arrested for something.” But it showed me that perhaps part of why people linger in a vegetative state is because they’re afraid. They’re not educated. So shame on us; we need to do a better job.

Rick: Yeah. There’s a verse in the Bhagavad Gita which goes, “Certain indeed is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead. Therefore, over the inevitable, you should not grieve.”

Mark: Yeah.

Rick: Well, I’ll tell you, I’m glad I’m not still driving the car I was driving in 1965. And if I were trying to, I’d be putting a lot of money into repairs. It’s nice to be driving a newer one.

Mark: Sure, yeah.

Rick: I think people get the metaphor.

Mark: Yes, it’s a very good metaphor. So let me, you know, you asked what else I’d like to share, and that is to bring this together and help people realize how it helps them here and now.

Last—when was Father’s Day? A week ago Sunday? Or last Sunday? God, what a week it’s been.

Rick: Yeah, it was last Sunday.

Comfort for the bereaved

Mark: And I received an email the day before from a woman. She said, “I just bought the book Greater Reality Living for my husband.” She said, “Our son passed two years ago, and I figured this is the best gift I could give him.” That’s slide 24: “This is the best gift I could give him to give him some comfort.” And she said, “We’ve been following news about the SoulPhone for some time, and frankly, it’s the only thing keeping us going—that we know we may be able to communicate with our son someday.”

And I thought, my God, first of all, I’m glad it gives them hope, but secondly, how sad. You know, fathers want to be with their kids, or at least have a good conversation, and here’s this poor dad reading a book about the afterlife and the possibility of communication someday. That’s the best he has. And, you know, it’s so sad, it’s so painful, and there are lots of people. I mean, I get numerous emails from people around the world every day: “My wife passed,” “My husband passed,” “Our child passed.”

I was on the board of Helping Parents Heal for five years. I’ve worked with thousands and thousands of bereaved parents. It’s just one of my callings. Also, people who are suicidal and people whose loved ones have passed by suicide. That’s the toughest of the tough. So there’s an example of how learning this information can give relief, can give comfort.

Another true-life example, for younger kids: We also have, on slide 24, the book that Dr. Schwartz and I just wrote with a woman named Cotta Mapes. She has a dual master’s in childhood education and counseling, and it’s called The Big Picture of Life. It’s basically Greater Reality Living, but written for kids around nine to 16, although it turns out some adults say they understand it better than Greater Reality Living.

A couple of weeks ago, two of my grandkids were over, a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old, and the nine-year-old, Stella, was reading the book to us. We read a chapter about a grandmother who’s dying and the family’s there at her bedside, and then finally she passes. Our illustrator created a picture of Grandma’s body lying in bed, supposedly dead, but then here’s her essence—her 99.9%—hovering in the air, reaching out to the family, trying to let them know, “Hey, I’m here. I’m okay. I’m alive. We’ll see each other again.” All this great news.

After we talked about that, I said, “So, you guys, one of these days I’m going to die. I’m 60 years older than you, and quite probably I’m going to pass on first. I hope this helps you remember this talk when I do pass, and know we’ll see each other again. I’m not really dead. We can communicate in different ways and still have this happy, loving relationship.”

Well, little Johnny said, “I know, but I don’t want you to die, Grandpa.” And I said, “Well, I know it’s kind of sad, but hopefully what we’ve been talking about helps.” And Stella said, “I’m still going to be sad, but just not as much as before.” And I thought, “That’s it. That’s right there.” Being on Earth is tough, and we’re still going to suffer somewhat, but if we can lighten and abbreviate that suffering, what’s that worth?

Rick: Yeah. You know, one thought that comes to mind is that you guys are trying to develop these contraptions, and it would be really cool if you do, and commercialize them and make them accessible to lots of people. But we have a pretty cool contraption right here, in terms of our mind-body system, our nervous system. These evidential mediums you’ve been working with have unfolded certain capabilities of that contraption that make them different than most people. They actually can communicate in a way that you might hope your cell phone would enable more people to do.

But we might actually be heading into a time where the kinds of abilities these evidential mediums have become much more commonplace. I could envision a society in which it was kind of the norm for people to be able to communicate with, even see and hear, people who had passed over. Obviously, human beings do have that capability, and I think that if anyone has any capability, everyone has it. It’s just that most people haven’t tapped into it and unfolded it.

But we might actually be heading into a time where the kinds of abilities these evidential mediums have become much more commonplace. I could envision a society in which it was kind of the norm for people to be able to communicate with, even see and hear, people who had passed over. Obviously, human beings do have that capability, and I think that if anyone has any capability, everyone has it. It’s just that most people haven’t tapped into it and unfolded it.

Mark: Love it, and that’s why you’ve done 500 shows, Rick. Splendid job. Yeah, The 100th Monkey by Ken Keyes.

Rick: There you go, yeah.

Mark: He talks about the true observation by animal zoologists who were observing that monkeys would peel fruit, but then it would fall into the sand and they couldn’t eat it. Then one monkey washed it off and learned how to do that, and these animal behaviorists noticed that on other continents, almost immediately, animals started washing their fruit, never having been observed doing that before.

So that is one of our hopes: that as people learn this evidence, scientific evidence, and as more people develop their sense of abilities, as you say, that becomes more normative for people, opens up that control gate more, and more people awaken to who they are, why they’re here, and how wonderful life is.

Rick: Yeah, there’s also Rupert Sheldrake’s work with morphic fields or morphogenetic fields. And the whole notion that—well, this relates to the 100th Monkey thing—but, you know, for instance, running the four-minute mile. It was such a big deal to run the four-minute mile. I think it was Roger Bannister—I think that was the guy’s name—who finally broke that limit and ran a four-minute mile. No one thought it could be done, and he finally did it. But after he did it, it started to become more and more common.

And I think that’s true of all kinds of things—athletic abilities, various types of knowledge, and other kinds of human capabilities. Once somebody breaks the boundary, the field becomes more porous in terms of that particular thing, and it’s easier for other people to penetrate, even if they might not have quite the capability of the person who first penetrates it.

Some people even say that about enlightenment. It took kind of a superman like the Buddha to get enlightened in his day and age, but now so many people have crossed that barrier that the barrier is quite diaphanous, quite porous, and awakenings are kind of multiplying in a popcorn fashion.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Wayne Dyer had a book—such a great teacher—you know, with the saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” He switched it and said, “I’ll see it when I believe it,” and that’s just what we’re discussing here.

Rick: Yeah.

Mark: When people know it more, it’s all around us, right in front of us. And that’s part of it. I created a technique called the facilitated after-death communication technique. After-death communications, as you know, are a meaningful perception of a “departed loved one” while awake or asleep, but usually those are spontaneous, and they’re so treasured.

After training with Raymond Moody for a week doing the mirror-gazing psychomanteum technique, I reasoned that if indeed the goal is to turn down the brain’s analysis and see more of what’s really there, we could do that through deep hypnosis. I’ve been using clinical hypnosis for 40 years, so I created these techniques, and they’re described under article number 9 at soulproof.com.

There are different practical ways a person can facilitate or enhance the ability to perceive their loved ones, like setting an appointment, holding an object of theirs, and so on. With this technique, many people, especially these bereaved parents, experience their child holding their hand, stroking their hair, hugging them, sitting on their lap, and so on. Afterwards, they’re profoundly moved by it, and it provides a lasting benefit that stays with them.

So that’s what this group is all about: going from being a bereaved parent with lower energy, emotions, sadness, anger, guilt, blame, et cetera, to being shining-light parents who realize, “Oh my God, I was lucky enough to have a child who graduated from Earth School early. I’m going to find the silver linings to this. I’m going to create more meaning.” And these people are some of the most enlightened people—happy, serving others—I know. It’s just an incredible process of alchemy to watch.

Rick: You know, earlier I was mentioning how angels and things like that have been mentioned in all the various religious scriptures of the world, but they also mention the dark stuff: hell and evil spirits and devils and, you know, that kind of thing. There have been many movies that are kind of scary, depicting ghosts and things like that. The movie Ghost, for instance—the screenwriter was a guest on my show—kind of depicted some dark entities that were giving people trouble.

So what’s your take on all that? You’re spending so much time and effort to contact the other side. What if you contact something that you’d rather you hadn’t?

Mark: Yeah, it’s a big question. Thank you for asking. Decades ago, I studied the Aramaic language through a couple of authors: Rocco Errico, George Lamsa, and Neil Douglas-Klotz. And it’s amazing because, as you know, Aramaic was a seminal language in the place that birthed Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

Rick: Yeah, so Jesus spoke.

Mark: It turns out that the Hebrew word for the passageway people go through after the body dies, where there’s a sorting-out process and you sort through your life, was mawet. This was a couple thousand years ago. Now let’s fast-forward to today, when we have so many near-death experiences because of our current resuscitation capabilities. We have very well-mapped and documented life reviews, and people describe having a life review in which they not only see but feel everything they did or said to others. If you were mostly good, then your life review is heavenly, and if it was mostly bad, it’s hellish. But it was not punitive in nature, unlike what some religions teach. It was always instructional, to help people grow.

To me, that’s the purest way of understanding the nature of hell. When I was about 10 years old, I was sitting in our church, and our minister was talking about the fire of eternal hell. A voice in my head—and it was one of the first times I was aware of this—said, “Mark, they have that one a little mixed up. God has no need for such a place in this plan of salvation for all.” What was so clear and so obviously right, I looked around to see the reaction of others, and they were all looking straight ahead, listening to the minister. I realized I was the only one who heard it, so I played it straight. But I have shared that with so many people, and so many elders have shared with me that, yeah, they believed the same thing when they were kids.

You’re like, “Here’s a God of unfathomable love and caring. However, if you don’t do certain things or believe a certain way, you’ll fry forever.” Yeah, that’s schizophrenic. So this new model of hell is that, yes, we create; there’s karma, and we create. You make your bed, you sleep in it. But it’s not forever, even if it is for a while. We’re also asked about Hitler. Somebody like that may have to sleep for millennia before he can heal enough and build up enough energy even to begin his life review. And then that begins—oh, my God—feeling and seeing all the pain. But eventually, even then, consciousness can be restored.

Rick: Yeah. Did you ever hear of Danny Brinkley’s story?

Mark: Yes.

Rick: He was a sniper in Vietnam and he had four near-death experiences. In each one, he had to experience not only what the people he had shot experienced, but also what their families experienced, having lost their loved one and their provider, and so on and so forth. Then he devoted his life to helping people in hospices and things like that. So even from those reviews, it wasn’t just some punishment.

Mark: Yes, and now that makes sense to people. Okay, it’s not God putting a hell on us or God deciding, “Oh, you made it to Heaven forever; not you, buddy, you’re in Hell forever.” It’s that we created ourselves. And it’s the same on Earth, by the way. We create how heavenly or hellish our experience is. And, by the way, let’s double back to what we talked about before: this earthly experience, real and solid as it seems, may actually be a virtual reality movie. We may be wearing goggles, you know, at home base. It might be like reading a book or watching a movie, but with our limited brain, it seems like this is the only thing that’s happening.

Rick: Yeah, the Hindus call it a leela; it’s God’s play. And obviously, plays have tragedy and humor and all kinds of variety, which makes them interesting. Now, you studied theology academically, and I think I’ve heard you mention that. Many people know this, but the Bible is a hodgepodge of information. Much of it wasn’t written down for a few hundred years after it happened, and then there was all kinds of editing and pruning and insertions. It’s definitely not some kind of set-in-stone, infallible authority on anything, although some people cling to the notion that it is.

I think it can help somebody with a Christian background to study Elaine Pagels or some other authorities on how all this information got cobbled together. I’ve heard you mention Jefferson. He created the Jefferson Bible, in which he cut out everything except the stuff that Jesus had actually said—and even that hadn’t been written down for a few hundred years. So you even have to take that with a grain of salt.

Mark: Yeah, what a mind, Thomas Jefferson. He said we need to separate diamonds from the dung heap, as with any religious scripture, and he’s right. That’s one of the reasons I went to theology school: to find out for myself about some of these teachings that never made sense. For example, “Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God.” I said, “Wait a minute, I don’t fear my parents. God is supposedly at least as loving as my earthly parents.” I found out that the word “fear” could just as easily have been translated “respect.” So, all right, that makes sense.

After a year and a half of biblical history, the lead professor said, “So, as you now see, there is so little actual evidence for the stories reported in the Bible that it has to be taken upon faith.” I was like, “What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me that the first day? I’d have saved myself a lot of tuition.” But it’s true. As you say, there were councils that voted to delete or add different books. It was political, just like today: power mongers focusing on fame, fortune, and control. So I tell people this: Look for the golden threads that exist in the world’s religions. Look for what resonates within your heart. What would a loving God and teacher really say and do? And so it becomes pretty evident.

Rick: Yeah, I believe that reincarnation used to be in there, too. It was edited out at the Council of Nicaea on the orders of some emperor or something.

Mark: Yeah, it was a common tenet in the early Christian days.

Rick: Yeah. Huh, interesting. Well, you know, the times are such, I think, that a lot of stuff is being reshuffled now. As we speak, there’s been the coronavirus and a whole lot of social upheaval. In your experience with people on the other side and the evidential mediums and all, have you gotten any indications of what’s happening to society right now, why there’s so much commotion and upheaval, and where we might find ourselves when it all settles down?

Mark: Yeah, we have no input. Keep in mind, the team is so focused on the technology that I’ve not asked for any input from the mediums. And, by the way, even the best mediums have bad days. They can be tapping into the monkey mind. So that’s why we need some reliable, very accurate technology. Nor have we sought input from the A-team.

My sense is that we’ve fooled with Mother Nature so much that we’re experiencing the ramifications of it. I still practice part-time as a holistic physician, and I see it in so many people, including little children. Our food and our water are so polluted; our brains are being bombarded with heavy metals and chemicals, and nutrient-deficient “food.” The ramifications are horrendous. Look at suicide, the number one cause of death in teenage girls. My God, what’s going on? And when is humanity going to wake up?

I’ll give you an example. I’ve got a white beard. I dyed it until a couple of years ago, and then I thought, “What am I doing? I’m not fooling anybody, number one. Number two, I’m putting this on my face, not so far from my brain, and I know there are chemicals and heavy metals in here.” When I was a kid, old people had white hair. Now you see so many people on satellite TV with solid black hair, and you can tell it’s fake. They’re paying such a price for that. Look at all the Alzheimer’s centers now. I knew a lot of people when I was a kid—in church, at school, in our neighborhood. There was one person my mom said, “Oh, he doesn’t think quite right sometimes.” But now we have these huge centers in every city. So people need to wake up.

This is why I talk about how to fine-tune ourselves in body, mind, and spirit in my book Radiant Wellness, so that we live a great life, have the energy and vitality to handle life’s demands, and have some left over to brighten the corner where we are. This is actually part of the Soul Phone Project outreach: to get some help from those looking at it a different way, but also to gain a greater platform to share what we already know and try to wake people up.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, the body is the temple of the soul, right? So it’s the vehicle. Whatever we want to achieve in life, spiritual or otherwise—if you want to be a great pianist, yet you never get any exercise and eat copious amounts of junk food all day, I bet it’s going to hamper your piano-playing ability. And what’s to say of spiritual development, which requires a deep refinement of the nervous system? It’s important to take good care of the body.

Mark: I agree, yeah, and that’s a big part of it. We talk about that in Greater Reality Living. It might be helpful for your listeners to look at the LIVES formula. That would be slide number 30, and that’s what we built the Greater Reality Living book around.

LIVES is an acronym. The L stands for “Learn the Evidence”—clinical, scientific, and experiential evidence that clearly shows that death is not the end of life. That in itself is huge. The I in LIVES stands for “Internalize this great news.” In other words, we want it to be more than just a dry, superficial, intellectual knowing, but a deep, internalized knowing that stays with people.

I’ve worked with numerous people who had a religious faith throughout their life, but when they were in the on-deck circle, they were like, “Whoa, are you sure these teachings are accurate? This is getting pretty real for me.” They were scared, so it’s important to have an internalized knowing that helps us get through life’s toughest challenges.

The V is for “Vitalize yourself holistically,” just what we were talking about in body, mind, and spirit. The E is for “Enjoy the many benefits.” There are so many wonderful benefits that we can make strong, substantiated inferences about, for example, from near-death experiences. We each are one with the One and part of Source Energy right now. Secondly, we know that we can communicate with our “departed loved ones,” and that we each have meaningful reasons for being here in this place and time, even when it doesn’t seem like it.

So, E: “Enjoy the benefits.” And then the S: “Serve others and yourself and make the world a better place.” We’ve found that when people do this, it transforms their life for the better in every aspect. They can enjoy the ride; they can do what they came here to do. It makes life make more sense.

🛤️ Suicide, suffering, and seeking support

Rick: Yeah. You mentioned suicide, and once in a while that topic comes up on this show. I always think, well, thousands of people listen to this, and if we were to say something that would prevent even one of them from committing suicide, it would be a great accomplishment.

There was one fellow I interviewed who actually committed suicide himself because he had had some injury and was in a lot of pain. He had this, I don’t know—to me, I thought it was a misinterpretation of the whole reincarnation notion. He thought, “Well, all right, I’m in a lot of pain. I’m just going to off myself, and I’ll get a better body that doesn’t have this pain.” Personally, I think he should have hung in there. I mean, I’m not in his shoes, but maybe he could have been helped; maybe he could have gotten over the pain and continued on. I don’t know if it’s—well, before I ramble on any longer, what are your perspectives on that? I’m sure you have a lot to say. I’ll just let you take it.

Mark: Yeah, it’s a big topic, as are most of your questions. I’ve written articles, by the way, on almost all these topics at soulproof.com, on the homepage. There’s one called “When a Loved One’s Body Dies by Suicide” and another called “When You Are Considering Suicide.” By the way, I try to avoid the word “commit.” It’s been pointed out to me that “commit murder” or “commit adultery” is usually used in a negative context, so I try to avoid that with “suicide,” because these people are suffering; they’re in pain, whether it’s mental and/or physical.

There are quite a few sides to it, but probably the number one thing I could share with people is this: it differs depending on the situation. For example, when I was 21 years old, my first love—we’d been together four years, which is a long time when you’re 21—broke up with me out of the blue, and I felt suicidal. I was driving home at 60 miles an hour on the highway, and I thought, “Boy, you know, I could just get away from this pain really quickly by driving my car into a tree, and nobody would know. They’d think I veered off the road or something.” And me, I was like, “No way. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to hurt my family. I’m not going to end my life abruptly like that.”

However, some people don’t have the support system I had or the balance. They’re in so much pain, and there’s no judgment; they act impulsively and do that. So there’s a big difference between an impulsive 21-year-old after their first heartbreak and a 90-year-old who’s lived a long, full life but is clearly losing their physical and mental capabilities, doesn’t want to go to an Alzheimer’s unit, doesn’t want to be a burden to their family or drain the finances that the kids and grandkids could use, and so on.

I was listening to a John Grisham audiobook, and one of the characters in it talks about what he’ll do when he gets old and infirm. He says, “When the diapers go on, the black pill goes down.” I said, “I get it. You know, I will probably do the same, because I don’t do well. I wouldn’t want to be an invalid and all that.” So I can certainly understand that.

Years ago, there was a Unitarian Universalist minister in New York. He and his wife were in their late 80s; he was losing his mind, and she was bedridden and really failing physically. They didn’t want to burden anyone else. I think they didn’t have any children. So they died by carbon monoxide poisoning. Some people say, “Oh, that’s horrible. They killed themselves. God will send them to hell for that.” And I say, “Good for them. They decided when and how they were going to pass, with dignity.” But people shouldn’t have to do it that way. They should be able to get a shot or a pill. Our system is getting there; there are some states and countries allowing that.

However, there’s one more thing I’d like to share about that, and that is that some of the information I get—and part of this is from Michael Newton’s work—is that some souls will get into the habit of bailing out too early, giving up. So I would say to a person, “Hang in there. Try as much as you can. Try not to take the easy way out,” because it can be easy at times. But I don’t have any judgment about it.

There is also some evidence from mediums who will say they’ll channel through the person who passed by suicide, or the person whose body has passed. Accurate language is important here. The person didn’t die; the body did. But the person will be apologizing to loved ones: “I’m sorry I did this. I’m sorry I put you through it. I wish I could do it over again.” So it’s a big, big question, and ultimately, who has a say about the person? Hopefully, it’s in counsel with their support team, both on Earth and in Heaven.

Rick: Yeah, I would just say to people, don’t let all this talk about assurance of life on the other side give you a cavalier attitude toward life on this side. I had a really good friend who I was quite close with, and he killed himself right around the time, shortly after I started this show about 10 years ago. He was only about 25 years old, and there was nothing wrong with him. He just, I guess, went into a little period of depression, but he sort of philosophized so much about, “Oh, I could just check out anytime, and it won’t matter, you know, because life goes on.”

I don’t think that we’re supposed to do it that way, like you said about checking out early or bailing because life isn’t going quite the way we like. I’m sure that if he stuck around and sorted through whatever was troubling him, he would be an incredibly bright, productive person. He was really smart, and I miss him, you know, so I really hope that people take that to heart.

Mark: Yeah, one of the number-one statements in suicide notes is, “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t take it anymore.” And those who are more evolved souls and sensitive, as we spoke about before—certainly empathics—it just becomes so difficult to stay here on Earth. That’s why it’s so important to gird our loins with this knowledge, have kindred spirits, have our tribe, so that we can get through tough times.

Rick: I think that patience—I’ve often heard respected spiritual teachers say that patience is one of the most important qualities you need on the spiritual path. And there are, again, great stories in various spiritual traditions about people who just hung in there through thick and thin. In many cases, what they were going through turned out to be some kind of test, and because they hung in there, they passed the test and managed to attain some higher level of consciousness or some wonderful thing.

So, you know, like Nietzsche said, “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” I think it’s important for people to just try to go the distance if they can at all.

Mark: I agree.

Rick: Without sounding too presumptuous—I mean, because you can’t really put yourself in another person’s shoes, and like you said, there could be instances where the situation is pretty hopeless and it might be time to move on—just don’t make that decision hastily.

Mark: Yeah, quality of life. A couple of years ago, a movie came out on Netflix. I can’t recall the name of it, but it starred Robert Redford, and we on the Soul Phone Project were very excited because it was exactly the same as what we were doing. The top scientist in the world had just proved life after death, and Robert Redford was in it. Where they went with this was horrifying. We waited so long to watch this, and they had lots of people around the world dying by suicide, or their bodies dying.

Rick: Because they knew there was something on the other side.

Mark: Yeah, they weren’t happy here on Earth; they were imbalanced. Rather than work to get balanced, they took the way out. So, yeah, we hope people don’t do that as well. It’s important, and this is part of what I deal with in Radiant Wellness. Some of the commonly prescribed drugs have, as side effects, homicidal and suicidal ideation and behavior, and the FDA requires a black box warning. My God, what’s that about? Why should those kinds of drugs be available out there? So people have to watch out for that.

Rick: Yeah, I just looked up a quote. Hang on a second.

Mark: Oh, what a great line. I didn’t see that one coming. Yeah, good.

Rick: Yeah, good one.

Mark: You’re such a lover of knowledge, Rick. I’m impressed.

Rick: Well, so are you, man. I mean, you know, we’ve both been devoting our lives to this stuff in our respective ways.

Mark: Yeah, and I would encourage listeners and viewers to follow their bliss. I mean, you and I know how good it feels when we’re doing this, reaching others and helping others, and likewise, that’s available for all people. Again, there’s an article on my website, soulproof.com, about how to identify and fulfill your soul’s missions, and an accompanying audio product. These are like $15 or $13, not much at all. I use deep hypnosis or relaxation, where a person can go within and consider what some of the clues and signs are that point to why they’re here in this time and place.

That makes such a difference, as you know, when you’re doing it even a little bit, versus the existential malaise that some people experience.

Getting involved and looking ahead

Rick: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so what can we say by way of conclusion, so that people can have an overview of how they might plug into what you’re doing?

Mark: I would say, educate yourself about what’s out there. The website, by the way, for the Soul Phone Project is soulphone.org, and there are lots of articles and pages. There’s a Soul Phone update that has a link to the abstract for one of Dr. Schwartz’s articles on sciencedirect.com. If you type in Dr. Gary Schwartz, you’ll see the abstract.

So first of all, people can educate themselves about all the evidence that’s out there. Secondly, on my website, soulproof.com, there are lots of free articles, newsletters, and radio interviews I did with some of the people we’ve mentioned: Raymond Moody, Brian Weiss, Michael Newton, Wayne Dyer, and others. There are a lot of resources out there you can use to educate and prepare yourself, so no matter what you’re going through, you can make it better, understand it, and make your life a work of art.

Rick: Okay, and then in terms of participating, a person can actually get involved in a supportive way with the Soul Phone Foundation, right?

Mark: Yes, we have a number of membership levels, starting with a $5-a-month contribution. Those people receive a free copy of the Greater Reality Living e-book, as well as the newsletters. Then each level—$10 a month, $20 a month—goes up to finally a $5,000 or $10,000 one-time donation. There are free readings with mediums, free admission to events we’ll be doing early next year, which we can talk about: seed events and hope sessions, having lunch with Dr. Schwartz and a tour of the lab, and all of our books and audio products. People can visit soulphone.org/getinvolved to see the membership levels and all the gifts that go with them.

Rick: Okay, and obviously a lot of the stuff you’ve been talking about involves equipment that is very expensive and people working full-time to do this, so you’re not just sort of buying gold-plated Cadillacs or anything. It takes money to support all this work.

Mark: Yeah, actually, today we have 20 wonderful volunteers for the Foundation who help me with PR, social media, IT, project management, et cetera. They don’t receive a cent. I’ve been working on this for four years, probably averaging 40 hours a week. Neither has Dr. Schwartz and his wife, Rhonda, who’s the head of Evidential Mediumship. Now, he has his professor’s salary, but they have not made a penny. They’ve spent lots of their money and time on this project over the last 12 years. So, yeah, nobody’s made a penny.

Rick: How do you support yourself?

Mark: Well, through donations from visionary people. It’s kind of magical.

Rick: I mean, you personally—you say you haven’t made a penny. How do you manage to pay the rent?

Mark: Oh, I have my holistic practice. I have an associate that I own, so I make money from that, and I still work eight hours a week. So, yeah, it’s a blessing that I have that so I can spend all this time. But we’ve had donors over the years. Just when we’re kind of like, “Okay, we can’t go further,” we’ve hit a brick wall as far as funding, and then somebody will donate $50,000, which allows us to go for a few more months.

We have an underlying assumption that all this is unfolding at the right time, in the right way, with the right people, and we bow to the wisdom of the universe, because we are told that the Soul Phone Project is just a small part of a greater plan and design. So we honor that, and when we run into walls, we just say, “Okay, time to take a break, time to be patient.”

Rick: Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, there are all these people I interview and have been interviewing for all these years, and people like yourself. If you think of it, visualize it: there’s this sort of golden Indra’s net, kind of a network around the world of all these people pursuing spiritual development in various ways that are suitable or appropriate for their personal makeup and capabilities. And it’s just kind of unprecedented.

People have always been interested in this kind of thing, but the confluence of so many factors now—with our amazing telecommunications and the way knowledge can disseminate around the world instantaneously, and the dire need of the world for some sort of solution to problems which, if not met, could exterminate life on Earth, or at least human life—all this is coming together at a very critical time, I think. Anyone who is making efforts along these lines is part of a very important enterprise, and we’re all like team members on one big team, each playing different positions.

Mark: Yeah, and at the same time, we need to remember the big picture. I heard Swami Rama speak years ago. He founded the Himalayan Institute. He was at a Sufi conference in Asheville, and someone asked, “Well, what about if the world ends?” I was sitting very close to him, and he just kind of smiled, kind of like the smile of—what’s the term for the Buddha? Unbearable compassion.

Rick: Yeah.

Mark: This little smile, and he said, “Your world might end, but mine cannot.” So it’s important that we define our world and ourselves in larger terms, so that, yeah, we do everything we can to help many people and turn our world around. However, if it does blow up or the human race is exterminated, life goes on. Maybe that’s part of what needed to happen to wake up a bunch of people: “Oh, wow, we screwed up. We don’t want to do that again.”

So it’s been described as walking on a razor’s edge. You love, you care, you do everything you can, and at the same time you know the universe is perfect right now.

Rick: Yeah, as in the verse in the Gita: “You have control over action alone, never over its fruits.” So you do the best you can in the field of action, and then you accept the fruits of action as not anything that was actually in your hands. You just, you know, you have control over action alone.

But a lot is invested in the development of a planet like this. When you think of how many stars had to live and die before we even had enough heavy elements to make a planet and make our bodies, and all the billions of years of evolution it has taken, you know, it would be a shame to see us blow it to bits or overheat it to the point of extinction. It would be nice if we—I think it’s well within the realm of possibility that we could establish quite a heavenly existence on Earth. I opt to strive for that.

Mark: Me too. I love books and movies that end with happy endings. I don’t like tragedies.

Rick: Yeah. All right, well, I guess that’s a happy ending. We can just end on that note, I suppose. So I will be putting up a page on batgap.com with links to your several different websites. I’ve already put the page together; I’ll post it. People can get in touch with you through those websites and find out more about everything you’ve talked about today. So thanks, Mark.

Mark: Well, thank you for sharing all this and all the great work you’re doing, Rick.

Rick: You’re very much welcome. It’s a pleasure. And to those who have been listening or watching, thanks for doing that. Come to batgap.com and check out the menus, and you’ll find a number of things that might interest you, such as the audio podcast or various ways in which the past interviews have been indexed. You can sign up to be notified by email of new interviews as they come out.

And also, if you’re just watching this on YouTube, you might want to subscribe to the channel. I think we’re up to 60-something thousand subscribers now, and every once in a while I have some problem on YouTube that I need to figure out, and you can’t get much help from them. But I believe once you’ve reached the 100,000 mark in terms of subscribers, they assign somebody as a contact to you that you can turn to if you have some difficulty. So it would be a nice goal. I wouldn’t mind hitting the 100,000 mark to see if that’s true. So please subscribe if you feel like it. All right, thanks, Mark. I’ll talk to you later.

Mark: All right, take care now.

Rick: Yeah, you too.

Mark: Enjoyed it.

Rick: Keep up the good work. Thank you.