Anonymous #41 — If Life Comes from Death, What if Nothing Ever Really Ends?

This caller was born into death. Their mother survived a rare, near-fatal condition as an infant only because a doctor happened to be at the house that day, checking on a dying sister. That's the reason this caller exists at all and it sets the tone for everything that follows.

From there, the conversation opens into a full cosmology the caller has been building for years: reflections in a bubble, a lava lamp as a model of consciousness, the Mandelbrot set and what fractals might have to do with the soul. Robert Monroe's astral projection experiments, the CIA's Gateway Project, a childhood spent doing dream interpretation. It moves fast and doesn't ask permission to be believed. It just asks you to follow.

Underneath it all is a caller who grew up Pentecostal in the Bible Belt and never stopped asking the questions the room didn't want asked. Including teaching themselves pieces of Greek and Hebrew just to check if the Bible had been translated right. That same refusal to accept an easy answer is what eventually led them somewhere stranger, and more spacious.

This is a good one if you're drawn to big, unresolved ideas that don't tie up neatly. It asks you to sit with concepts you may not have language for yet. But it lands, at the end, on something disarmingly simple.

In this conversation:

• A doctor, a dying aunt, and the coincidence that let the caller's mother survive infancy
• Astral projection, Robert Monroe, and the CIA's Gateway Project
• The Mandelbrot set, the Buddhabrot, and fractals as a model for the soul
• Growing up Pentecostal, teaching themselves biblical languages, and learning not to accept easy answers
• A string of losses across adolescence and what they taught the caller about impermanence

Book recommendation: Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Monroe

All Anonymous Book Recommendations: View the full list

Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

Transcript

A Baby Saved By Another Death

SPEAKER_06 0:00

So even her existence was because of death. She's one of 10 girls born in the South. And so she was one of the youngest. And they had all been born at home. But one of her older sisters, I think she was maybe 12 at the time, she had gotten scarlet fever and had heart failure. So she was dying when she had just been born. But my mother, who was just an infant, was dying. Something was wrong with her. And the doctor who had come to the house when they still did house calls to see my dying aunt, Paul, my mother, and was like, That's a dead baby. I need to take this baby to the hospital. This baby just is not gonna live.

SPEAKER_05 0:44

It all starts with a single question asked to an anonymous caller. What do you think happens when we die? And from there, the conversation goes in completely unexpected directions. Some speak with certainty, others with doubt, some are still trying to make sense of it all. I'm Zach Ansel, and this is When We Die Talks, a podcast about death, meaning, and how that shapes the way we live. This podcast was born from my own fears around death and the need to talk about. Thank you for being a part of this conversation. I'm glad you're here. Hey,

Why This Call Gets Weird Fast

SPEAKER_05 1:18

welcome back or welcome here if this is your first time. This week's call goes from pretty wild places. Our caller's mother was born into a family of ten children. When she was a newborn, one of her older sisters, around 12 years old, was dying at home from complications of scarlet fever. A doctor came to the house to check on that dying girl, and while he was there, he noticed an infant in the room and realized something was badly wrong with her, too. She had a condition called pyloric stenosis, had surgery, and survived. Her older sister did not. That's the reason this caller is alive to have this conversation with me at all. And that's just the beginning of a lifetime that stayed close to death in ways most people don't experience. This caller grew up in a strict Pentecostal household in Mississippi, the kind of upbringing with a very strict definition of heaven and hell, and they were the kind of kid who kept on asking questions nobody wanted them to ask. Questions that eventually led them to try teaching themselves Greek and Hebrew just so they could check the translations themselves. Somewhere along the way, a single word from a dream sent them down a rabbit hole into a set of books from the 1970s about astral projection, and that's when things really opened up for them. By the time we get to the middle of the call, we're talking about bubbles reflecting light, lava lamps as a model for consciousness, and the Mandelbrot set as a way of understanding what happens when we die. At one point during the call, I'm Googling some of these things, just trying to keep up. If any of this sends you looking up things afterward, you're not alone. I did too. The newsletter that went out today on SubTec has some of what I found, and the show notes will have some jumping off points as well. This one is very interesting and very unique. Let's get into the call. I hope

Technical Hurdles And Human Stories

SPEAKER_05 2:56

you enjoy.

SPEAKER_06 3:00

Hello.

SPEAKER_05 3:00

Hey, how's it going?

SPEAKER_06 3:02

Good.

SPEAKER_05 3:03

I just have to say thank you so much for bearing with. I don't know, we've had multiple technical difficulties. Then we had a bunch of scheduling stuff with I lost a friend, and then I was on my retreat, and we have gone through so many hurdles to get here. So I just want to say thank you so much for sticking with it and being willing to continue to indulge me in this crazy project of mine. The place that I have no problem.

SPEAKER_06 3:25

I do want to thank you too for the opportunity because I also I love what you're doing. Oh, thank you. Because most of the time there's lots of good people out there and a lot of people that hold a whole lot of wisdom, but they don't get to tell their stories or talk. Yeah. Usually, especially on a podcast like this, if they haven't achieved some sort of yeah goal. Like if you haven't started a business or written a book or yeah, you could already be like pseudo-famous in a way.

SPEAKER_05 3:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 3:54

Yeah. To to just and normal people hold lots of good thoughts and wisdom and stuff. And so I think you're opening a door for people to express that and other people to experience other people's that are just like I've thought about a podcast similar. Like, how do we get people who haven't achieved big things?

SPEAKER_05 4:14

We're just doing normal stuff day in, day out.

SPEAKER_06 4:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:16

Yeah. Thank you for saying that. It means a lot because yeah, I don't know. Sometimes it does feel like shouting into like uh a void or something because it's just me creating these things and putting them out, and you never know how it's resonating with other people. So I really appreciate you saying that.

SPEAKER_06 4:32

Yeah, it's and it's just like your everyday opportunities that you walk in, you never know what little bit of interaction with humans ever like what it does for somebody in the whole of their life. It's just the same. I know it's a lot to put into it. I've started my own podcast, but like that, just the putting all that work and effort into something that you don't, it's just gonna sit there and you don't know who it's gonna resonate with or where it's gonna sit.

SPEAKER_05 4:57

But yeah, you get it. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. And yeah, I think there was there was something in there that you said that I don't exactly know why it flipped a switch in my brain, but you're like one of the early applicants of the project. You probably applied a long time ago because I don't have any information about you at all. I've changed the format a little bit, and so now I get a little tidbit from people. And I guess we've exchanged some messages back and forth, so I know a little bit about you, but really going into this blind, and I love these conversations. I mean, I love knowing a little bit too, so then I can if things stall out or whatever, then there's room to, you know, okay, oh well, how about this thing that you mentioned? But I also love these because this is where it started with just me getting a phone number from random people, jumping on the phone, seeing where it goes. And so maybe that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_06 5:47

I'm not sure where I came across you either. I don't know if you had posted something on like a Reddit at one point or I should do Reddit, it's probably Instagram.

SPEAKER_05 5:55

I'm most I'm most uh Instagram, it was possibly was Instagram focused on Instagram, but anyway, I think one of the ways that I really like to start these conversations, and especially in this case, because I don't know anything about you really. I know that you're a nurse, but there's not a ton of information. And I think just in general, orienting listeners, it's good to get an idea of why you even wanted to have this conversation. It's a topic that a lot of people don't like to talk about. It's a topic that is avoided, it's taboo. I think I might be my view, might be kind of skewed because I've been doing this for a couple years now, so I'm seeing a lot more about death, but it seems death is becoming a little bit more of a common topic. Death doula is becoming a term that more and more people know. But yeah, I am curious why you in particular wanted to jump on the phone with a random stranger and talk about death.

Growing Up With Death As Normal

SPEAKER_06 6:49

Yeah. So for me, death has been part of my life since I was really young. So I've been exposed to lots of deaths throughout my entire life. Which there's a lot of people I've learned the older I've gotten and the more people I've met that there are people that go almost their entire lives without ever losing somebody to a death until it's like their grandmother or or their mother. And I was born into the world with lots of death around me.

SPEAKER_04 7:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 7:18

Both my father lost his mother when he was nine years old to cancer, my mother lost her mother to cancer as well before I was even born. So my mother was still really young.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 7:30

So I think for me, death has always been a part of life and a part of existence. And to come across so many people when I have had other deaths in my life and and I come to it from from a place of the understanding from all the previous deaths I've had in my life for other people who have never had them or have only had one big tragic or something. And then it's weird when you try to explain or when they want to have sympathy for you, but you're not reacting the same way that they I think they feel like you should react to something.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 8:04

And then you realize that there's this huge like gap between some people in life and what they experience and others. But also like understanding that there are people out there that have those gaps. So there are there's gaps for everything. And too, when people are like, I hate when that other person is suffering because I have all this, but it's in life we all have the things that we suffer from, and it could be vastly different, and you just never know what somebody's suffering from, but also it's it's those people's lessons in their lives. Yeah, so being raised around death a lot and having death as something that has occurred is one of those things that was part of my journey. Whereas others may have a completely other thing, they may have never come across death in their life, but they have their own journeys and their own vices or things that they've so I don't know. I think just being part of that the conversation, just allowing the things that I've experienced to be spoken about so other people can experience them in a way that they've never been able to experience. Yeah. And just understand that there is those differences.

SPEAKER_05 9:14

Yeah. I think we're gonna have a wonderful conversation because I am by and large kind of that other kind of person who I haven't had a lot of loss in life. I I've basically only lost my grandparents, and I did have that death of a friend recently, and it was a big deal to me. But strangely, it's because I started this project. I met him through this project, and yeah, I haven't experienced a lot of death, so I think we'll have a good conversation. But before we get into kind of the heart of the conversation and really dive into those things, because I feel like you have a lot that that's gonna be really I don't know, it always feels really weird to say fun to hear about, but I think it'll be interesting. I'll think over what's I think it's fun in the way that it's connecting and it's deep conversation with another human. It might not necessarily be fun in terms of the subject matter or the things that got get brought up, but it's still important, and I'm excited to dive into that. But I want to get to know you.

SPEAKER_06 10:12

I'm definitely one of those people that when you I have a story just about for anything, you know, it gets to a point where it's really you there's no way you've experienced you just blow that out, you've not experienced all of these things, and it's it just I'm just one of those people that just things happen, you know. I'll try to guide the conversation as much as I can, and then if there's so much to left, I am ADHD, so sometimes I do have difficulties finding words or putting sentences together. Okay, and then with the ADHD, sometimes I can go off in a large tangent. So please wrangle me in.

SPEAKER_05 10:45

I'll do my best. The only thing is the tents are the best part sometimes that gets us to really interesting places. And if we end, you know, if uh if once we get closer to an hour, if there's a lot more left, then maybe we'll talk about doing a part two or something or doing another call down the road. But we'll see where

Bible Belt Roots And Many Lives

SPEAKER_05 11:01

this goes. I'm excited. But I do want to get to know you. Obviously, we're keeping the anonymity and everything, so nothing like super personal, but I like to get an idea of where you're calling from, like state-wise. And then maybe the state that you grew up in as well. I think those two things help inform where our beliefs come from to some extent. And then the other kind of question is what your favorite book is and why.

SPEAKER_06 11:27

Oh, oh, I may have needed that beforehand. It's okay. Yeah, I'll yeah, I think. Okay, so I'm currently in Virginia. Okay, and I've been in Virginia less than uh about seven, seven or eight years. Okay, but I grew up in Mississippi, north Mississippi, outside of Memphis, Tennessee. So it's the Bible Belt, very hyper-religious upbringing. Okay that was cultish denomination, where it was very strict. Okay, so that's some of the background. But I have um one, like I said, I've had lots of experiences. So even just I've worked in many different fields. Currently I'm a nurse. Yeah. I've been an artist, painter, writer, multi-talented, executive administrate as a secretary, as yeah, bunch of different bunch of different things. It's like one of those, I still haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up in my 40s. And then favorite books.

The Dream Word That Opens Doors

SPEAKER_06 12:33

So I have lots of favorite books, but on the topic of where I am now in my life and mentally, the a book that really set me on that track was I would think Robert Munrose. He has a series of three books in the 70s he wrote. Are you familiar with Robert Munrose?

SPEAKER_05 12:55

Nothing's coming to mind, but maybe if you said the title, maybe I think it's the first one, I think in the series is Out of Body. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 13:04

So he did Astro Projection. Okay. And then it's like Journeys Out of the Body or Oh, interesting. There's another one. But the way that I came across that book is I do dream interpretation. Okay. Yes. Yeah. I I love um dream interpretation, and I've done that for a long time. Where because I've had very prophetic dreams throughout my life, and and then some experiences with what I now learned later on were like astral projection, maybe when I was a child and didn't know what was going on.

SPEAKER_05 13:37

And so this kind of helped you understand that a little bit.

SPEAKER_06 13:40

Yeah, so I had a dream, and in the dream I remember this word loosh. And when I woke up, I was like, that is the weirdest word. What was that? But I always like things that really stick with you is what you usually use for symbolism when you're looking through and doing dream interpretation. And so when I looked up loosh, that word was used in the book by Robin. Interesting though, and that's why it was one of the words. So then I was like, I've got to read this book apparently. And this was around maybe 2011. Okay. And so I was at the same time as I was I had a blog and I was blogging with a bunch of different people that we all circling around reading each other's blogs and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 14:20

And it was when synchronicity started becoming a thing, sort of in mind.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 14:25

And so I think even there was a bunch of the different bloggers, like of 20 something of them, that came up and I think in 2011, they published the sync book.

SPEAKER_04 14:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 14:38

Also at that time. So, but it was all that happened together. So that that dream I had, and then I started reading the Robert Monroe. So that book, he just all of a sudden he was like a radio broadcaster. Okay. And he just asked for projected out of his body and was thinking he was losing his mind. Well, started going to his doctor friends, and something's not happen, something's happening. I'm sleeping, but I'm not sleeping. I can see my body, I'm outside of my body. Like he was freaking out.

SPEAKER_05 15:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 15:07

Obviously.

SPEAKER_05 15:08

Rightly so, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 15:09

Right, yeah. So he's something something is not right. So he once he figured out that nothing's wrong with him physically, then he started playing with it and doing all of these experiments with people. Like, hey, tomorrow I'm gonna try to astral project and go see if I can see you, and things like that. So he could say, okay, now he'll talk to him the next day and say, You were doing this at this time.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_06 15:34

So they could then verify with him, yes, I was doing that. So you really are seeing me, like you're really projecting out of your body. So he's the guy that actually, after his astral projections and his little experiments, he got bigger and bigger. They he started going out of this realm and out of our solar system and into other places in the solar system and meeting all these beings and things like that. Wow. And they're the meetings and stuff are I think how he created the binaural beats. So he's the one that started the binaural beats in the gateway project.

SPEAKER_05 16:10

Oh that's the one that I know, I know of Gateway Project.

SPEAKER_06 16:13

CIA CIA had done over the gateway project. So Robert Monroe is the one who was the initiative of all of that.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_06 16:22

Which is funny because I had already read all of the I think his name is John Ron Johnson, and he had done a book on the men who stare at goats.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 16:34

Or he talks about it in in I think his one about it's like something about the psychopath test, I think is the name of that book.

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 16:44

That was at the same so I had already read that one, the psychopath test. And in that, he talks about the gateway project.

SPEAKER_05 16:51

And he talks about synchronicities.

SPEAKER_06 16:54

Right. And and this was all that same time of like where like you start learning about a topic, especially like synchronicity, and then the these grand synchronicities start beginning to coalesce in your life. So that that book there, The Journeys Out of the Body, I believe is what it is by Robert Moreau, I guess, would be one of because it's really in the last, I guess, 15, 20 years, has made a huge impact on who I am today, where my thoughts are the building of my character. Yeah, it's just sent me on such a journey. I would say that's one of that's a really good book.

SPEAKER_05 17:33

Yeah. Well, with

Bubbles, Light, And What We Are

SPEAKER_05 17:34

that setup, it's I don't even really want to say anything else because I feel like it's just perfect to jump right into the big question of what do you think happens when we die?

SPEAKER_06 17:42

My end thought process at this point, and I've been creating an art project in the last two years coming across this, but it's it's more of us just I think when we do die, there's still a lot of this like energy about us. We all are nothing but energy, like we're just vibrating molecules, and then our brains is what kind of helps everything like calculate it and project it to us in our minds so that we talk about a holograph or whatever, like it projects the solidarity and the separateness.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 18:21

And for me, what I've recently, I'm still like working through some of these thoughts, but that the light itself. So if you think about a bubble, like a bubble floating in the air.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Okay. I love it. I love a vision.

SPEAKER_06 18:36

Yeah, so you have this bubble, and when the light shines onto the bubble, it'll create a reflection. And then that reflection that you see really isn't any, you know, it's it can look like you if it reflects you from the light, and you can see you, but it's only an essence of you. So that reflection is just this essence of what you are reflecting off of it, and that's to me what our reality is. We are that reflection.

SPEAKER_05 19:07

So you've got light, whatever light is, you mean divine light, the you mean here we are the reflection, or yeah.

SPEAKER_06 19:15

So I think our physical reality right now.

SPEAKER_05 19:18

Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_06 19:18

Just wanted to clarify that our dimension or whatever, yeah, is the reflection. We are the essence of light coming into contact with the darkness, which or the all that is, um, the great mother, the chaos, the um in different texts, there's different words for it. Yeah, I think like in Sumerian it may be like the Tiamat or the Ama. Just so it's like there's this substance, and once the light reflects on that substance, then the interaction between the two is is what creates that essence, okay, which is what we are, and so we all again, like we're all really everything, we're all connected. Or if you think of it like a lava lamp, so think of like the light creating the heat, yeah, and that heat interacting with the substance in the lava lamp that helps you know so this undulating body that just is moving about but then can be sequestered off into pieces, so there'll be like little blobs off by itself. Yeah. So that could be like little reality. So if you think about the thick essence that undulates around inside of a lava lamp, that is like the darkness or the feminine or the matter material realm, and then the light or the heat that's interacting with it, and just the surface level of where those things are interacting. When you look at the what is it called? The Mandelbrot set, when they you calculate out the Mandelbrot set.

SPEAKER_04 21:09

That sounds kind of familiar.

SPEAKER_06 21:11

The never-ending, it just like you can keep diving into it and into it, and it's the same thing over and over again. The deeper you get into it.

SPEAKER_05 21:20

I'm gonna have to do some research after this call.

SPEAKER_06 21:22

Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_05 21:24

No, that's great. No, it's good stuff.

SPEAKER_06 21:26

And they've even they've even recently somebody came up with a more three-dimensional, it's called the Buddha brat. He called it the Buddha brat because when you take the Mandelbrat set and then you create it in a multidimensional reality instead of being flat 2D and make it three dimensional, yeah. It looks like a lot of the iconography through religion of the Buddha. Yeah, so it's it's almost, but then too, when you look at the Mandelbrot set, a lot of it repeats, but there's also like deviations. So some Go down into a weird distorted deviation, but it's almost like the larger picture. Okay. But it also like deviates into this weird distorted view of it. So if you think about if our reality is the same way, that's where you get all of these great reflections of what could be the light, goodness, and things. But then also where those reflections can go off in a weird tangent and then they're so distorted, and that's where we might be like, that's really evil. That's bad. Okay. But it's still all the whole and the same.

SPEAKER_05 22:32

I'm pulling up this Mandelbrot set right now on so I can get a visual of it. But okay. And so I think I'm still not stuck, but I'm still visualizing the bubble uh analogy that you're using. I found that really interesting.

SPEAKER_06 22:46

Like a bubble floating. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:48

And so would you like you said our reality is the reflection we see in that bubble, essentially. And so then is death then the popping of the bubble? And if so, then what does that it sound like to some extent there's this connectedness that you're talking about. And is it similar to the whole? Is it like a collective consciousness, or is there some different phrasing that you would use around that?

SPEAKER_06 23:17

I would say collective consciousness, but also that separateness. So if you would if you like we were to we have our higher selves, so you have a larger you that is that exists outside of this reality because it is part of whatever the bubble itself. Think about we're just the reflection, just that like interaction. So once and it and then it couldn't be like that's why I say like a lava lamp, because you can't you don't really pop that bubble, it just kind of goes back into the hole.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 23:52

And it slowly does though, too. So as death is, you wouldn't just automatically just be part of the hole. Yeah, you'd have this slow movement back to so you also have that slow transition outward and then back in. So actually the full essence of everything would actually be like it's almost like we're something that's grown out of, so it's gotten bigger and bigger and larger over the years. And so that's where like this complexity of like our bodies, and it's really interesting to me where people who do who have had DMT experiences, yeah, or the or like different mushroom experiences where they talk about it feels like you're going down into this worm-like state. So it's almost like you're devolving. So before you get back to where this you feel like this wholeness, you're devolving from humans down into the smaller parts. Yeah, very less complex and going back toward the whole.

SPEAKER_05 24:53

Interesting.

SPEAKER_06 24:53

Instead of being something complex, and then we're the simplicity of it, we're actually the outgrowth of hey, what is this interaction between light and darkness, or between light and material, or between whatever the whole was at the beginning. Like the to me, it's the all that is the thing that existed in reality before there was anything else, before the big bang, before and this is cyclical.

SPEAKER_05 25:21

Like you would yeah, so it would be just we kind of form and unform and form and unform. Maybe form's not the right quite the right word, but there it's not just like one and done. It's you Yeah, I think it's a constant movement of in and out. And when you look at that Mandelbrot, yeah, and I think there I think on Wikipedia there's like a gift that plays over and over again that just goes deeper and deeper into it where you can just see that it's like the same thing over and over again, but there's all these like little tiny variations and distortions and and I'll definitely do some research before I share this and everything, but I'll definitely link something in the show notes of what you're talking about so it's easy for listeners to find.

SPEAKER_06 26:05

But yeah, or to yeah, do their own like deep divers.

SPEAKER_05 26:08

Yeah, you know, I'll give a like I said, I'll give a jumping off point and then you can run with it, kind of type of thing. But yeah, I'm definitely gonna have to sit down with this because it looks very fascinating.

SPEAKER_06 26:19

That's definitely where my thought process is with who we are and why we're and we are, we're just like an outcrop of hey, what is this interaction? And let's see how far it can go. What can we create with it, and how deeply can we become whatever we can become? Like, and then if you think about it, if our reality, even when we see for me, when we see planets and stars far away, those are just other little tiny blobs popping out too. So almost even like our sun, everything comes from within. So think about the beginning of what the earth was, the essence of it itself has coalesced from bits and pieces that came from somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 27:03

And what if they just what if we just pop into reality? You know, like the those obviously it all started with gases and different things, and all those things have come together and made bigger things.

SPEAKER_05 27:14

Yeah, it's more complex over time.

SPEAKER_06 27:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:17

I will say, um this is why I love this this format. Because, like I said, you're one of the earlier applicants where I had no idea any sort of background or anything. And then from our rudimentary text messages of just trying to coordinate this and you talking about your schedule and being a nurse. This is not where I thought the conversation was gonna go. And it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_06 27:44

And then too, as a nurse, I work with sorry, with psychiatric dementia. Oh, that's a whole nother like level of death and dying as well.

SPEAKER_05 27:56

Absolutely. And now I've got the the Wikipedia page pulled up with the GIF running, and it's oh yeah, I feel like uh gonna have to watch that a little bit more later and kind of dive into this. But yeah, it's fascinating because yeah, this is just not the expectation of jumping on a call with a nurse and thinking it's gonna be a very clinical and maybe pragmatic. I don't know if that's quite the right word, but just a very, this is what happens when we die, and then we jump into all this stuff now that I'm like, I like we said, I have come across, and I'm blanking on what that wasn't it like a series of recordings that you mentioned from Robert Monroe, whatever that kind of government like gateway. Yeah, I've come across. Yes, like I've come across like little tidbits of this stuff, but now I'm like, okay, great. Now I have a whole new rabbit hole to fall down. And I guess literally this this gif of the Mantel Brot set is literally like falling down the longest rabbit hole, it seems like um the longest rabbit hole possible. But yeah, it's very fascinating.

Family Tragedy That Shapes A Childhood

SPEAKER_05 29:02

I am I I don't want to necessarily go completely opposite of where we're at, but I do think you introduced some things at the start about just being close to death your entire life.

SPEAKER_06 29:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 29:14

And so yeah, I'm curious about what that relationship has been like. You also mentioned, I guess you didn't necessarily say that you grew up religious, but you did grow up in a religious, a very religious place.

SPEAKER_06 29:26

Oh, I grew up very religious.

SPEAKER_05 29:27

And so I'm curious like what your journey has been like from childhood till now, as we're talking about this kind of very I don't even know. I was gonna I was gonna say esoteric was the first word that came to mind, and I was like, I don't even know if that's quite right, but this very esoteric way of thinking.

SPEAKER_06 29:44

And so I'm just curious what that journey has been like for you from you know child to so there's so growing up from very young, like I said, I'm Audi HD, and I I really believe my mother is probably on the autism spectrum. Yeah, so she was very blunt, straightforward. She told you like it was personality. There wasn't a lot of loving energy, like hugs and I love you. I don't think she ever said I love you or hugged me until I was even an adult. And she had five children, but but growing up, so even her existence was because of death. So her older, she's one of 10 girls born in the south, and so she was one of the youngest, and they had all been born at home. But one of her older sisters, I think she was maybe 12 at the time, but she had gotten scarlet fever and had was had heart failure because it can mess up your valves and your heart.

SPEAKER_02 30:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 30:42

And so she was her sister was dying when she had just been born, and the mother had her at home, but my mother, who was just an infant, was dying. Something was wrong with her. And the doctor who had come to the house when they still did house calls to see my dying aunt and check on her and things like that, saw my mother and was like, That's a dead baby. What is I need to take this baby to the hospital? This baby just is not gonna live. And so took her to the hospital. She actually had something called pyloric stenosis. It's really rare in females, it's usually it's passed out, it's genetic. The stomach, the valve that goes to the stomach when it empties into your intestines, for some reason it like bulks up after you're born and then it closes off and the stomach can't open.

SPEAKER_03 31:33

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_06 31:34

So then the baby just starts vomiting everything it eats because and it can't get any nutrients. And they used to basically die of dehydration or starvation. But it's normally in boys, or it's seen a lot in boys, and it's not seen that often in girls. But that doctor, when he took her, so she had the surgery, they fixed it, and she's alive, which means I'm gonna say, which you know, obviously spoiler alert because of the death of because of scarlet fever. Eventually, my aunt died of the scarlet, she died young as a small child. So then my mother also grew up who had a dead sister, so she was around death, yeah, also. So there were these tragedies that occurred, but also I'm alive because of the tragedy. Yeah, so it's like I've had that understanding since I that was a story. My mother was there, was never a let's hide them from the truth of reality. So that was a story we knew from a young age, just like my father, who had told the story of his mother, he watched his mother as a nine-year-old die her last breath. But then six months after that, my father was at a little swimming hole with his brother, and his brother drowned.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Oh died.

SPEAKER_06 32:49

And my my my father was the younger sibling, and he wasn't able to help save them. But then six months after that, my father also lost his grandmother. Well, his mother's mother. So those were stories that I had they had related to me. So it was like, you know, it was out there, it's just part of reality. We which is true.

SPEAKER_05 33:12

It's not so even hidden like it is for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_06 33:15

Yeah, and even I think when we were small two, we had a little puppy that we got. We finally got a little puppy, and then the puppy got parvo, and at the time it wasn't treatable. And my uncle came over. All right, y'all say goodbye to the puppy, and I'm taking the puppy down to the river and I'm gonna shoot it in the head with a gun. That was the reality. We were from Mississippi, just like we at Thanksgiving, along with our turkey, we always had deer, and everybody went deer hunting. So, like the killing of things and death, and you're just surrounded by it. But even in high school, so I I even had I think in elementary school, there was a girl we were on a field trip who fell off of uh like a play thing, you know, like the big wooden ones that were probably not appropriate for small children.

SPEAKER_05 34:05

Yeah, that are not anywhere.

SPEAKER_06 34:07

But I remember her falling while we were on the field trip, and she had to be taken by ambulance. And I remember all of us like writing letters to her. The teacher, she was in the hospital for a while. I don't know if she broke some bones or not, or whatever, but we all wrote letters to her, and I can remember writing, I hope you don't die. Um, that was on my brain because it's a possibility, you know. Like I had already been and and then and even in high school, I had multiple people like that I knew that were friends that died of a lot were of car wrecks. One, a kid came to school, he had come to school that morning, school hadn't started yet, and then his girlfriend called and said she had missed the bus. Could you come pick me up? So he left in his car, went to go pick her up. It was really foggy. They were driving back toward the he had picked her up, we're driving back toward the school, and an old lady pulled out in the fog and didn't see them, and they hit and the car rolled. Nobody knew the girl was in the car, the girlfriend, because she fell out of the car and she had landed in a ditch and drowned. Um and so that was a loss. Another friend of mine, this was all in high school, there were four of them had gone out drinking. It was Mississippi. We were drinking as teenagers, and they were going too fast and hit where like the car kind of went airborne a little. Yeah, they hit the brakes, and when they come back down with contact with the concrete, the car swerved off the road, and out of the four, two of them died.

SPEAKER_05 35:43

Jeez.

SPEAKER_06 35:44

There was another, they were racing in vehicles, and both of them they hit a tree and both of them died. One of those that died in that wreck, his father died in a wreck as well, and then his brother, his older brother, had died in a car wreck. And then there were two girls that were coming too fast down a highway and swerved off and hit a bus, and when the car went underneath the bus and it sheared off the top of the car, and both of those girls passed.

SPEAKER_03 36:15

Jeez.

SPEAKER_06 36:16

So this was all just from my high school years. I we had actually moved too. So like I was in one high school, some of those deaths occurred, those three of them, and then I moved to another high school, and some of those other deaths occurred in the other high school.

SPEAKER_05 36:32

And then what is what's your relationship to these kind of deaths? I get like, you know, how you knew them, but like how are you comprehending them?

SPEAKER_06 36:44

Where like Yeah, for me, again, like I said, it's one of those things where at that point already, when that happens, it's like it is tragic. And I understand that there's all these deep emotions with the tragedy of losing the person that they're never coming back. You can't talk to them again, but also you never know what's gonna come of it. Yeah, what lessons are people learning because of those deaths, what choices are gonna change people's futures and realities? Because again, I am only alive because of a death. Yeah, and so you just don't know.

SPEAKER_05 37:21

And you also have a you have an idea at this point too that like death is very much a part of life. Like, I think that's something a lot of people say.

SPEAKER_06 37:31

I think I had I had lost my my grandfather had passed away of a heart attack, and I had my papa had he got cancer and tried to fight it and it didn't work, and it metastasized, and he we watched him, all of us, and everybody went over there. I we used to go over there to his me and my sister would go and hang out at his house with him on the weekends and spend the night and go play in the creek and everything. And when he got the cancer, he suffered and suffered, like he was nothing but skin and bone, just yeah, skin hanging off a bone, and toward the end, the metastases to his bones just ate away at his bones. It's like his head collapsed, you know. Where we were just like, when is it gonna end? Yeah. Like when he just hung on and hung on.

SPEAKER_05 38:19

And so you're seeing in some ways.

SPEAKER_06 38:21

I'm like 15, you're seeing dealing with yeah.

SPEAKER_05 38:24

I was gonna say, you're seeing some uh and I the description that you gave is not gonna sound this way, but you're seeing in some ways the beauty and the beauty sounds like a really a hard word to use right after that, but just like the beauty and power that death has in our lives to like to in that to bring about like change, yeah, and and suffering perspective changes, yeah, and how suffering can and how it can also help with creation.

SPEAKER_06 38:57

Yeah, like because two I'm I'm hypermobile, so I've also suffered with like pain in my body since I was small. So I've also, and it's one of those I came to the reality of is like the pain that I've experienced throughout life has kept me very present.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 39:16

In the fact that we all die, like we're born dying. We're we will die, we all know we're gonna die. The moment you're born, and it keeps you in the reality that that just don't take it for granted, even if things are crappy, or like the whole our conversations, the computers aren't working. Well, that's okay because there's a reason for that. Well, there's maybe there needed to be another experience, or there needed to be that experience, or there needed to be another book you read, or an article you came across, or a podcast you listened to that needed to coalesce with all of that, so that the creation that needed to come about and be created. Yeah, so there's created some synchronicities. Yeah, these little bumps in the road or whatever, and that's to death is one of those bumps in the road, which it's hard to for people who are losing or dealing with loss, yeah. It's hard to put it that way that, like, yeah, bluntly or like I'm trying not to be and you don't mean it that way for sure. At all. No, there's so much more deep emotion connected to all of that, but also that is the like reality of the fact of the matter. Yeah, it's not gonna change.

SPEAKER_05 40:26

I think one thing then I'm interested too is from the beginning of our conversation, we go into this really kind of like we said, esoteric, really kind of I don't want to say out there, but just this like really different way of looking at what I mean, not just what death is, but what life is and what this all means. And

Pentecostal Faith And Relentless Questions

SPEAKER_05 40:45

I know you said that you picked that book up and were on this journey maybe about 15 years ago, roughly. And as are maybe about yeah yeah, so six fifteen, sixteen years ago. And so you're having this experience with all this death growing up. You said there is influence of religion as a kid, but like when did you start moving? Because I would say the two maybe they're not that much different. I don't know, but in my mind, they feel very far apart. So, where did that kind of start to happen?

SPEAKER_06 41:17

Me growing up religious. I grew up in holy roller, Pentecostal. You believe in the Holy Spirit or being embodied by the Holy Spirit. So then, like the talking in tongues, the slaying of so very religious, but also very there are like you you're raised believing there are demons. Yeah, you know, there are these like things or a little more supernatural, yeah. Spirit of yes, very so you're still kind of a little open to those possibilities. Obviously, you have to get over the hump of the dogma that comes with it, yeah. To go outside of that, but for me, from a very young age, I was the one who was constantly questioning. Okay, like so it was always in here. We know our religion is the religion that is the real one when there's these other people who are really devoted to their religion. Why is theirs not the real one? But ours is the real one. And some of those people are nicer than our people, you know, like and things like that. So I even went as far as trying to teach myself like Greek and Hebrew so that I can make older forms of the Bible, so that I could I'm I'm I'm definitely autistic, but just so that I could be like, let me make sure that this is I want I want to see for myself that this was translated how it's being presented. Yeah, because some of these things don't, it's like one of those the actions don't align with the words sometimes. And why are these interpretations or some of these things don't make sense?

SPEAKER_05 42:44

So in some ways you were like dangerously curious.

SPEAKER_06 42:48

Yeah, my mom like was like, Don't rock the boat, please stop asking questions. This is not what we do. You're like, I have 45, I'll ask three people, right? And so yeah, I I was the one I read the entire encyclopedia as a kid. That was like the thing I loved. I've read through dictionaries. I just I've just been voraciously curious about learning ever since I it's one of those you just and somebody gave me a book too one time. Maybe that was one of the ones even before that. Oh, I have it somewhere and I can't think of the name of it, but he's the one it talks in that one about these people being born with just a pen in hand, like they're just writing as a two-year-old. When you have people like that are born, it's like you have this purpose, and you're just no matter what, you're gonna do that thing. Like there's famous vocalists who were singing at yeah ten months old, and the parents just can't get them to stop singing, but then they become a great singer and like those types of stories.

SPEAKER_05 43:52

Yeah, just incredibly gifted, just right out of the gate.

SPEAKER_06 43:55

So I think I was just constantly just I was just I've always been just. Seeking more and more. I need to know. Yeah, figure it out. It wasn't necessarily a turning point to get there.

SPEAKER_05 44:06

It was always there.

SPEAKER_06 44:11

And so where religion, I think, even though there's a lot of bad things, especially for somebody who has very concrete visual, there's a lake of burning fire, hell, and somebody stares at you all the time and they know everything you do. And if you do the bad things and you go and die in that lake of fire, and those are visuals a small child probably doesn't need when their brain is growing. And I think wanting to think maybe maybe it was too harsh of a reality for me that maybe I wanted to figure out maybe it's something else because I don't want that to be the end. I don't know, you know.

SPEAKER_05 44:53

I mean, I would say that's exactly what I'm doing. My thought has always been nothing happens, and I'm like, hey, you know what? I'm just gonna get really curious about this and talk to a bunch of people and learn stuff and try to experience things and go down different rabbit holes because I don't know if I really want it to be nothing. Like, even if that's what kind of comes up most for me in my mind, I want to, I want to explore. I want to make sure that's actually what I believe and not just be locked into because I would say, and I've said this a bunch on here before, my religion, I didn't grow up religious, but my religion is science. I think there's a lot of people that grew up with science being their religion of everything is facts and figures and everything can be proven. And if it's not proven, then it's then it's and I'm and anytime I say this, I do it with the caveat of I'm not saying science is bad, but I do think that there's a faith in science being able to prove everything, and we know that it can't. There's a lot of things that are just theories. Go ahead, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 45:53

We're just the same with being taught science growing up through elementary school and stuff, it's the same sort of like dogma you're given with religion. These are the rules, this is what happens, and then your brain goes, Okay, that's part of my foundation. And then if anything happens to you later in life, and then all of a sudden there's these cracks in the foundation, and you're like, wait a minute, that those don't line up, that can't work, it's a little too, you know. And I think that some people never come out of that, where like they just stick with these are the rules and it never changes, and then you start learning that like a lot of science is just a theory, and we can prove bits and pieces of it, but some stuff, especially in the medical field, when I I didn't I became a nurse in my 30s and learning going deeper into science and learning that like a lot of medications and like things about how stuff works in our bodies is all just now we kind of think it works this way, and we know this is the end thing, but we really don't know what the full mechanism we don't even fully know how our bodies function completely, like there's such complex machine, like organic machines, or like these little organic robots, yeah, that we still don't even completely understand.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

Oh, totally.

SPEAKER_06 47:09

Um, and there's so many chemicals in the body that we still like they're all interacting, even like the folding of proteins and stuff. There's so much. So when you start breaking those down, then you're like, oh, science is just like with religion, you're like, oh wow, there's these holes here and there. And oh yeah. So it's awesome to just keep exploring and trying to pick and choose.

After Death As Memory And Belief

SPEAKER_06 47:33

And then I think that's what everybody gets to do, and I think that's where, especially like when we die. So, say you've taken all of this information in, and that's what I tell people all the time, especially these dementia patients, you only die with your memories. Like when you leave, you have nothing but your memories. You're not gonna have a house or a car that you're leaving with, it's all gonna be the memories of the life that you lived. But all those memories are based on the filter that you've put it through. So, all the perspective you had when you had those experiences and the story you built around all of those experiences. And then when just think about when you die, there is this like the collective consciousness where it's all garbled together as this energy that is this memory, and that's not gonna fade immediately. It's over time it may go away. So that's where people that die and have near-death experiences they say, I experienced this or that, but it's it's a all of these, it's like a big lucid dream, like all of these perspectives, thoughts, memories, everything you've watched over time and things like that is all it's still there, and so it's gonna take a long time for it to fade. So you may have a whole reality that you live in, and that's in those books, the Robert Monroe books, he talks about like creating your reality. So if you think you're going to hell, when you die, you're gonna create a hell that you're gonna live in. If you think you're gonna go to heaven and you're gonna meet Jesus, then when you die, those that's where you're gonna go because that's where your best sense of self will take you to the place and make the thing that you want as long as it's strong enough, the intent is there, but that doesn't mean that it's gonna be permanent, it'll fade over time or change and morph, however, it may be that. And so science can be a part of that, and everybody's perspectives for you, like you know, your reality when you die could be just nothingness, and you just experience nothingness because that's what you believe is there when you die.

SPEAKER_05 49:36

Which now makes me feel like, and this has come up a couple of times. I'm like, okay, now I need to start thinking about something else. And I do think of collective consciousness is the other one that really just makes most sense to me as I've kind of gone deeper into this, gone deeper into my meditation practice. The only caveat now that I'll say is I do have the visual now that the collective consciousness is just a giant lava lamp. So, you know, maybe that's from your from your inspiration there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 50:04

But yeah, I think And that one for me keeps coming back. I've drawn, I have lots of little because I write a lot in my journal, and I have lots when I go back and look through that, I have so many little sketches of thoughts and lava lamps and things like that.

SPEAKER_05 50:18

About I'm gonna have to get one for the podcast room just to remind me of of this because yeah, it's a good visual. It's a really good visual.

SPEAKER_06 50:26

And that's what I love about that one. That whenever I've come up with that one, it's really the best way to explain that sort of just movement.

SPEAKER_05 50:34

We're definitely gonna have to do another call because we didn't even talk about your work with dementia patients. There, there's so many things still here that I feel like we could talk about. So we'll have to discuss if you're still up for it. When I figure out, I don't know if I want to make it more episodes of the podcast or maybe do it as like something else. So once I figure that out, we'll definitely have to chat if you're up for it, because it sounds like you have so much more to share here. I'd love to dive in more. But so I have this last question what's one thing you still want to experience in this lifetime?

SPEAKER_06 51:05

Something I still want to experience. I think for myself, and I don't know if that's the thing that I grew I'm reaching for through all of this research and reading and thinking and stuff, is I want to I would love to fully be seen, but I think that's the one thing about our reality, and maybe one of the reaching points of what we are in our existence is that we're born individuals with these minds that you can only try to explain to other people. And so we're never gonna ever be fully seen, and we're always gonna be that feeling of separateness. We're always gonna be that because you're never gonna be we can't do like a mind meld like they do with Star Trek, like where you can give somebody all of your thoughts and experiences. Um and that's touched on in the in those Monroe books. So I think that's something I would love like to be deeply seen on a level, yeah. Even though it may never happen, or if it doesn't just an inkling, you know, or you come across somebody who has had very similar experiences and just get you and they understand you. But I don't know if that'll that's achievable, but it is a goal. So I don't even know if that's just sort of our goal of our existence in all is can we create this reality and then experience it be seen within it, yeah. Maybe and that's the collective unconscious, it is that where all the thoughts and memories and experiences all go back to the whole so that everybody can experience it and we can be seen, like we can be known because you may never be fully known and you die alone.

SPEAKER_05 52:54

Yeah. I do feel like you no matter you tied that up really well, like it pulled everything together, and I think that's a beautiful I think that's I don't know, there's a million different answers, but I think at the end of the day, you know, that's what everybody wants to some extent, right? Is just to be to be fully seen. And it's a that's a really hard thing. Like you said, it's the way that this is built, this construct of individuality and and separateness, like it that's a really hard thing to achieve. But I love that answer. It was really beautiful. And I just want to thank you so much for being willing to do this, for uh putting up with multiple technical difficulties. But like you said, it all happened for a reason. We finally had this conversation, and yeah, let's definitely stay in touch. I definitely have lots of research to do, so I might be reaching out for uh for pointers of maybe where to direct me into uh some more things. But yeah, I'm just really grateful for you and for being willing to do this.

SPEAKER_06 53:53

No problem. Thank you for, like I said, for giving me the opportunity.

SPEAKER_05 53:57

Yeah, absolutely. And uh I hope you have a good rest of your day and take care.

SPEAKER_06 54:01

Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_05 54:02

All right, bye.

SPEAKER_06 54:04

Bye.

Follow-Ups, New Projects, And Goodbyes

SPEAKER_05 54:05

It's easy to look at this conversation and say that there's a lot going on. Bubbles of light in the Mantle Brat set, a childhood spent reading encyclopedias and questioning a religion that told them not to ask questions, but it never felt scattered to me. It felt like someone who has spent their whole life trying to understand the thing most of us spend our whole life avoiding. On my end, things are moving. The applications to be an anonymous caller exploded lately, and it's over 200 people now. And there are some calls already lined up that I genuinely cannot wait for you to hear. I mentioned last week that I had something in the works, and I wanted to give you a little more context to it now. This caller and I talked about doing a part two before we hung up, and that got me thinking about how much can shift for someone after they've already told their story. Their grief might have changed, their health, their beliefs, the way they think about the conversation itself. Or maybe there was just more to say that we didn't get to the first time, like this call. So I've been starting to create something around going back to people who have already been on the show and finding out where they are now. Invites are going out to some past callers this week, and if it comes together the way that I'm hoping, I'd love for it to be ready around the two-year anniversary of the podcast. If there's a call from the archive that's stuck with you, one you'd want an update on, I'd love to hear which ones and why. More soon, I'll see you next week. When we die, talks exist because people have stories worth telling, and most of them never get told in a way that lasts. Mostone is my attempt to do something about that. It actually started with a guest from the show, and after his interview, he told me how much it meant to have something he could share with the people in his life. So he didn't have to keep repeating himself, and so nothing got lost over time. I couldn't stop thinking about how many people have a version of that. Honestly, all of us do. All of us have a life worth capturing, and people who love us and would give anything to hear told. Demostheny is a guided conversation with me where we capture someone's life in their own words, where they come from, what made them who they are, and the stories they want people they love to know. The recording is yours, private, personal, something you can share with anyone you want. If someone came to mind just now, even if it was yourself, that's probably worth paying attention to. You can learn more at Nimosony.com. That's N-E-M-O-S-E-N-E.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of When We Die Talks. These conversations don't offer answers, but they do open space. Space to reflect, to feel less alone, and maybe to see things a little bit differently than before. If you'd like to explore your own beliefs out loud, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at WhenWedietalks.com. And if a full call feels like too much, the voicemail is always open. Leave a message at 971-328-0864 and share whatever death has stirred in your life. Listener support truly helps keep this project going. If you'd like to support the podcast, you'll find a link in the show notes. And as always, please like, share, and follow. Every bit makes a difference. Until next time, have a good life.