The Afterlife Revealed: Shocking Near-Death Discoveries

Will & Karen: [00:00:00] Karen. Yes. Today I am excited. Woohoo, me too. What are we excited about? What are you excited about? I don't know, I just sound, I'm excited. Should I not be excited? Well, you don't know what we're talking about yet. My life is exciting.

Well, that is true, that is true, but I'm really excited today because we're headed to church. I'm sorry, no, no, that's not right. Hang on, hang on. Karen. Yes. I'm excited today. Really? Yep. Because we are not headed to church. Wait, wait. No, no, no. That's not right either. Hang on. Hang on. Karen. Yes? I'm excited today.

Are you now? I am. You know why? No. Because we're headed to not church. Yay! Not church! You heard that right today. We're speaking with an ex reverend who now does a show on YouTube called, You guessed it. Not church. You guessed it. Where he offers spiritual counseling and consultation to this audience. And today he gets to do it for us here, not in church.

Great. On today's show, [00:01:00] we're talking profound, mystical and near death experiences, single minded meditation, and we might even sprinkle a little Kriya Yoga in for good measure. This is definitely one not to miss. Welcome to the Skeptic Metaphysicians. Hey there. I'm will I'm Karen. And today we have the absolute pleasure of hosting an acclaimed author and spiritual counselor known worldwide for his bestselling book. Heaven is beautiful. How dying taught me that death is just the beginning. Which Karen is now in [00:02:00] active development as a feature film.

Wow. That's exciting. It is very exciting. His life is a testament to the power of personal transformation, having undergone profound changes following his two, count them, two near death experiences. Oh. And he's here to completely change our lives with the messages he's sharing with millions across the world.

Welcome to the show, Master of Divinity, Peter Panagora. How are you doing today?

Peter: Excellent. Thank you very much for making me laugh and smile already. Will and Karen,

Will & Karen: I love making you laugh and smile. That's great. Much better than the alternative because we've had people cry before and that's no fun. That's when I wasn't here.

All right, well, we're thrilled to have you really, truly, you are a wealth of information. and I don't even know where to begin except for the obvious things, The very most basic, most important question that everyone in the audience wants to know right now is, you know, firsthand. What the heck happens to us when we die?

Peter: uh, [00:03:00] you, we transition from this world to the better world, to the better place. I don't know if you saw the, the show, the good place.

Will & Karen: We love the

Peter: Yeah. Only, only it

Will & Karen: the real good place or is it the

Peter: the real, it's the real good

Will & Karen: Okay, all

Peter: the real good place with a capital G where, uh, all of my suffering and pain and, uh, Just went away.

It was gone forever. Love, beauty, joy, bliss, ten zillion times better than living here.

Will & Karen: And if it's the same as a good place, then there's a lot of frozen yogurt places too, which is really great, right? Here we go. Good place. Lots of frozen, no? No, no frozen yogurt.

Peter: Sorry. Don't need them though. You don't need it. You don't miss it. You don't need it. And there's no weight to be gained. No,

Will & Karen: yes, it sounds beautiful and wonderful, but are you just floating in space? Are you [00:04:00] feeling this good thing? Are you, are you, you? Are you more than you? Are you everything? Are you just one thing full of, surrounded by a thousand million things? I got so many questions though.

Peter: it, those are all good questions. This is a, a toughie because everything that I say about it is metaphor, simile, symbol because when I was dead I had no brain and no body and I was no thing that was anything molecular or cellular or particle, I was an entirely otherness that was Me, that always had been me.

And yes, I had been, part of my experience, I was floating in, uh, no thingness, the size of our universe by myself and content, about 10, 000 times bigger than I am now, knowing that this was the true me, that I had never been this physical body, not really, I was occupying it. the levels and the changes were [00:05:00] it wasn't just one experience I had, I had a whole series of levels of experiences of heaven, where in each one of them, I came to understand a different aspect either of my human life, uh, that I had just gone by the human lives that I had lived, all these different levels of my beingness, my soul level, right up to this place where I was in union imagine this, a singular photon.

I am a singular photon, and there's a field of photons, and this field of photons is infinitely deep, infinitely tall, infinitely wide, and all of these photons are entangled with each other, making a multitude of oneness, and I am, part of this. So, there was this stage at which I was in union with the light itself with no recognizable self of my own,

Will & Karen: Mm

Peter: but totally, a hundred percent in paradise, [00:06:00] bliss, ecstasy, welcome, love, beauty and wholeness, no loss.

Will & Karen: All right, we're gonna get into that in a second because that sounds incredible, but I gotta know the details because I'm that kind of guy, just gonna say I told you so. Well, thank you, Karen. No, you're not the type to do that, though, but yeah. You know what I love about what he just said?

Here's what I love about what you just said, Peter. You said a lot of woo mixed in with really hardcore quantum physics. It was like the perfect mixture of Karen and Will. It's like, it was like the perfection, the juxtaposition of it all. And it sounds perfect. I mean, this is, we're trying to describe things that are undescribable.

with our current understanding, right? our human brains are made to filter our greatness because otherwise we would never be able to not be babbling baboons running around crazy because it's too much to handle. So thank you for trying and doing it in such an eloquent way because that was a really nice way to [00:07:00] explain it.

Yeah, it was a really good way to visualize it as well. Yeah. And we have this conversation a lot, you know, he's like, Oh, we're all one, we're just one. And I'm like, well, But we're not. We're individual. We're connected. So, I don't know. I kind of like what you said. I like that. You know, one photon in a sea or a multitude of photons.

But he was all of them.

Peter: I was entangled with all of

Will & Karen: Entangled with all of

Peter: but which means that the information that passes, you know, entanglement with information is the same that passes through, even though they're separate particles. So, yes.

Will & Karen: could say that you were all just one. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter: I could,

Will & Karen: Yeah.

Peter: I, but my, but, but my experience of it was, I was still somehow, so the paradox of

Will & Karen: an individual,

Peter: the two things can happen at the same time and, and not be contradictory.

So I was both all of them entangled and I was still, so what I didn't say is that in this part of the experience, this field of photons was in front of me if I had a front, which I didn't cause I was a, I had no eyes. So it was like,

Will & Karen: No front, no [00:08:00] back, no side, no back, no nothing.

Peter: but I was still in this vast darkness, this darkness of contentment, this, this sea, like, the ambiotic fluid where the baby's nice and, warm and, fabulous.

I was still in that, space of heaven. I had a type of individuality in that I was, I knew my separateness, but I also knew my wholeness. So we had this experience of, what I describe as union and communion mushed together.

Will & Karen: So here's a really important question that I know Karen is dying to ask. Was it boring? What? I mean, you just kind of just hang in there out there, right? No, man, you're floating. Right. That's really cool. But you are the person who can't go to the beach and sit on the beach for more than an hour before going crazy.

You have to go out and do something. So imagine sitting for Well, I can float. But even for, for eternity? Really? I mean, there's a lot going on. You're not just, you're, you're like the intake of the joy and the [00:09:00] love and, and the, I don't know. For eternity. Yes. Forever. Well, cause it doesn't feel like it's forever then.

Cause I don't think there's a concept. Well, there's no time. Like here you're having the concept of time, but there you're just, you're being, and that's what it is. Obviously I'm being devil's advocate here, but I'm really curious what your thoughts are.

Peter: are very similar to Karen's thoughts. Yeah, yeah. Ooh,

Will & Karen: No, no, no, no fair. First of all.

Peter: So, was such paradise and bliss beyond my capacity to tell you, a percentage of this came back with me that was so powerful in my life that it reoriented my entire personality. Character, direction, self understanding, experience of the world and all of my relationships forever. and the, experience on the other side was so, imagine, imagine all of the love that ever existed on earth.

All of it, of all through [00:10:00] history, of all different types of love, all condensed inside of me. And, and that's an inkling of, of how not bored you would be in the presence of, of infinite love. And so here's the thing about timelessness. Timelessness doesn't run in a linear path. Timelessness is eternal now.

And so it's not like minutes passed and I was bored a moment ago and I'm not bored now. There's no passage of time because there is no time.

Will & Karen: Right. I love that eternal now. Yeah. That is awesome. I want a t shirt. I think. That's awesome. I think we've lost Karen. I think I've just minimized it by making you into a t shirt

Peter: No, no, no, no. I think it's merch is good. If you guys can.

Will & Karen: By the way, if you'd like to get your own Skeptic Musician merch, you can go to our store. It's eternal now. So I have a couple, I don't know if they're dreams or visions, And I want to tell them to you because I have a question about them and I think you might be able to answer it. So one of them was, it was right before I fell asleep and it was just like this really [00:11:00] quick snapshot of, it was very, very dark, but there was this just beautiful glowing grid sphere thing that was just like this beautiful light, but you could see like all the connectedness of something.

So there was that. So then another time I had, this, I guess it was a dream and I was in this very, very dark place. It was, I don't know if it, it wasn't a room. It was just, And this little white dude who kind of reminded me of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, because I can't really describe it in any other way, kind of shows up and he's looking at me.

He's like, you know, it's all about the love and the joy. And as he was saying that, he's like, putting his hand out and things would just light up, like a tree would light up. And like he was creating these beautiful lights and he was so happy. It's like, it's the joy, it's the light, it's the love. And every time he said this, something would light up in these beautiful colors. But I guess the question I'm asking is both of those dreams and whether they're dreams or visions or whatever, they started out in the darkness. So in your experience, when you went to this realm. [00:12:00] Was it, you said you started out kind of like in the darkness, did it, did it stay like that? Or was it a bright light?

Like what, how was

Peter: Oh, well, I'd love to talk to you about your, experiences. The,

Will & Karen: We're here, we're here for you, Peter, not for Karen. We're here for you.

Peter: Okay, I'm like, I'm sitting here taking notes. I'm like, Oh, that's interesting.

Will & Karen: puffed marshmallow man. I know, he was more like, he was like bendy. Anyways.

Peter: So I lost your question at the end there. I was so interested in what you were saying.

Will & Karen: So is it, is it always, is there always darkness that light is coming through or is it ever just light?

Peter: It's both of those things. So it was, I was in this vast universe size. darkness that was also illuminated. So I could see in this darkness. I knew that it was darkness, but I could see in it, but I had no eyes. I could see in every direction at once 10, 000 eyes. I could see this vast distance and beyond this vast distance was this barrier.

And this barrier [00:13:00] was deep darkness. And this was the deepest infinity that even in my expanded state couldn't comprehend the depth of the mind of God, of the single, infinite nature beyond the light that was manifest. manifest. all the light that I saw, And I did. the light came out of this deeper darkness.

I'm, so I'm floating in this no thingness. I know myself, I'm in contentment. All of my pain is gone and out of this deep darkness, this light pours like a waterfall or erupts like a volcano or like a door opening, but suddenly there's this light and it's coming out of the deeper darkness.

have you ever seen light come from darkness? And it's not negative darkness, it's dark only because even in my expanded state with no brain where my thinking is my being is my self understanding and I don't have a brain in the way of my thinking, slowing down my thoughts. I'm [00:14:00] the most capable I'd ever been with my intellect and the light itself. Emoted from the darkness and when I saw it, I was so, seduced by the beauty and the brilliance that suddenly instantly all I wanted was it. And in my, in my moment of wanting, I traveled to it in an instant and it was gigantic compared to me and it was flowing It was a single white light, but it was also simultaneously not switching from A to B to A to B, simultaneously 10 billion different colors, not just like eyeball colors, but x rays and ultraviolets and all these colors I'd never seen.

It was all of these individual lights. And as it came to me, and I was right in front of it, it was, emanating joy and love and all life and beauty. And I wanted it, [00:15:00] and so I touched it with my being. And as I touched it with my being, it opened me and poured inside me as it pulled me into it.

And I was surrounded a bath of love, a wash of love, but also the love was inside of me, expanding me. and it was. It's all I've ever wanted ever since.

Will & Karen: I think Karen is in a bathtub of love right now. You're explaining her perfect heaven right now. This is like exactly what she has always felt would be what was out there and also what she's trying to create here on earth. So

Peter: the deal.

Will & Karen: it's so you're, you're totally speaking directly to her right now. So, this is so difficult.

To wrap your head around, like we talked earlier, we're not meant to wrap our head around it. So you're doing an admirable job of trying to explain it, but I'm not getting it because I never will. I get it in spits and starts, but you know, the [00:16:00] words aren't enough to truly explain. You can say you can't wrap your head around it.

It's too infinite. You have to let it wrap around your head. Oh, good God. Hmm. Yeah.

Peter: I'm sorry. I'm not, I'm not ganging up on you there, Will,

Will & Karen: No, I mean, you kind of are, but, but at the same time, this is, this is par for the course, right? I come, for the good looks and she comes with the wisdom. So, uh, or is it vice versa? Or maybe she's, she's got both actually.

It's, it's, it's fine. Yeah. I'm just around for. Hey, go ahead. You guys talk.

Peter: well, I have an explanation, Will. My explanation is that historically around the world for centuries, this has been the fundamental problem of not just near death experience, but of mystical experience that language cannot ever contain the ineffable. It can't. But. It can be experienced. And the, teachings and practices that go back thousands of years are still taught today [00:17:00] because they reduce the attachment to the lower self, to the ego itself in such a way that it quiets it down and allows one to be able to experience the silence, which is the beginning of the presence itself inside us.

and it can be transmitted. So maybe you've heard of the word Shakti Pot.

Will & Karen: Oh

Peter: Shaktipat's a real thing. it can happen between two people meeting on the street. who don't know each other, who look into each other's eyes and exchange the divine light itself.

Because the light is everything that there is. And it is always at the core of the goodness inside ourselves and it can be shared through eyes. a more intense situation, it can be, Transmitted through a microphone or a lens or in person and, not manipulating somebody or something, but sharing the divine presence together itself.

Jesus said, where two or three are gathered, the I am is there. [00:18:00] So there's this multiplication that happens when two individuals get together and the divine energy becomes a third. And it can be transmitted. You can feel it. You can feel it. I'm sure you felt it, Will. You might just not know that that's what it was.

Your two dreams, Karen, you touched into it. when it comes and shows itself, it leaves residuals of joy or peace or understanding or knowledge or all of those things in a. air quotes here for your radio people, air quotes, uh, in a, in a radio frequency, cause that's also metaphor, in a radio frequency that leaves A mark inside of you so that it's always there should you wish to access it.

And if you choose to access it, that little mark becomes larger and larger and larger. And when I say access it, I don't mean like, try to use it for your own good because that never, that doesn't work. It doesn't work with selfishness. It works with no [00:19:00] selfness.

Will & Karen: Right. you read books and you hear talks and everyone's talking about the way to divinity, the way to enlightenment is actually helping others enlighten, right? Others awaken. I just read that today in conversations with God, he said, the fastest way to awaken is to help others awaken the fastest or something along those lines.

And you're right. I think I have felt it in the past. And I think there's something to be said about what we just. This banter, this fun that's how I experience it makes sense here in my heart, not so much here.

And when I try to do this too much with my brain, it gets lost. So I am trying to live more from my heart and then I thank you for bringing me back today because I've been lost. And I wonder if, part of the frustration so many people have is, is trying to understand something that's incomprehensible.

At least in this, you know, state, right?

Peter: But it's experiential. that's the thing, if there was a way to understand it, we would have a book [00:20:00] about that now. But there's no way to understand it. Reason is never going to reach it. Analytics never going to reach it. Knowledge is never going to reach it. It can't. Those are all things of the mind.

The only way to access it is to stop all those discursive thoughts, to quiet down the self to the point where, on a repetitive pattern, little moments of silence are, grown inside oneself that become a big huge pile of silence that allows the, goodness that is natural inside us to speak for itself.

And so deepest practices of yoga and meditation and prayer all have to do with silencing the self and listening to the voice that has no sound. And that's tricky thing because unless you're going to dedicate your life to it at some level, sort of hard to figure out how to do that when you're too busy trying to stay alive.

Groceries, kids, you know, plumbing, whatever is going on. but a dedicated [00:21:00] practice every single day of a little bit of meditation goes a long way.

Will & Karen: And we're going to talk about single minded meditation and Kriya Yoga in a few minutes, but think that we're doing this whole of disservice. You've had two NDEs, what happened? How did you die? How did you have your first experience?

Peter: I made a big mistake. I'll try to make a long story short. I was an experienced outdoorsman since I was a kid. an outdoors boy. And then it became an outdoors men. And I was on an expedition in Alberta and British Columbia in March of 1980, back country skiing into snow caves and then ice climbing on my first ice climb.

I'd been a mountaineer, but not ice climbed before. And I made a mistake ice climbing. And I, my mistake, us on the mountain through the night and I eventually died of hypothermia.

Will & Karen: Oh, wow. Wow. That's not one that you ever hear. No. It's like, I was in a car accident or I drowned. Wow. [00:22:00] so you died of hypothermia. Uh, you were still obviously on the mountain. So how long were you dead for?

Peter: I don't know. we were a hundred a hundred and fifty feet up having fought our way all the way across and down this Sheer face all night in the dark freezing all night long as the cold got Deeper and deeper inside us and then I just succumbed to it and And when I came to, when I came back, I chose to come back.

The divine offered me the chance to stay or go. And I came back. when I came back, my climbing partner, and also he was a certified lead ice climber, was, Shaking my body, screaming and crying, don't die, don't die, don't die, don't die, don't die, don't die, don't die, don't die, and I opened my eyes and he was still shaking me, screaming at me, and then he saw my eyes open and he freaked out.

He's like, you were dead, you were dead, and so I don't really know how long I was gone for, but on the other side, on the dead side of [00:23:00] things, had a very long experience. to tell you the whole experience would take me an hour just to get from beginning to end, all the things that

Will & Karen: That sounds like a challenge, Peter. I don't know. It's like

Peter: for you guys,

Will & Karen: It's a mini series. I guess I don't really want to veer off the topic, but I am curious. We've talked to several people that have had NDEs and. Their experiences have been different and we have heard the typical there's a tunnel and there's the people that you love Why do you think people's experiences are different?

Is it just so that they can handle it or what are your thoughts on that?

Peter: have several thoughts on that. I think that we're all given, there's something else that we're all similar in. Before I talk about the differences, there was a study done, with an award of I think it was half a million dollars you know, Mr. Bigelow who used to own Skinwalker Ranch.

Will & Karen: Yeah, yes

Peter: Okay. So he sold the ranch and he took all his money and he developed this foundation called the Bigelow Foundation and he produced this million dollar award for these people researching near death experience. [00:24:00] And the award winner a couple of years ago, he found that of all near death experiencers, 70 percent of us use two words to describe our experience.

It's love. and light. And that doesn't matter whether you're, Jewish or Muslim or atheist or agnostic or Christian or whatever. and so there's this similarity that is very deep. Now that said, I think that people are given the experience that they need. when they come back. I also think, I'm re reading the Bhagavad Gita right now, and I think it makes a very strong point, where it discusses that in the hour of your death, the experience that you have is a culmination of who you are in that hour of your death.

Who you become, is how you live in your afterlife. And that's a, an idea of karma. But also, my experience, and I've thought a lot about it for 40 years, my first experience, it had Christian elements to it. And I was raised Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, and I [00:25:00] went through a judgment, But I wasn't judged.

I judged myself. God didn't judge me. God also, God had no gender, no religion, no, no nothing that has anything to do with humanity. I think that we are all given what we need when we come back in order to accomplish whatever it is that we need to accomplish.

Will & Karen: So it was this wave of light God or was there another God

Peter: Oh, it's so much bigger than that. there is no thing here that is not God. Everything here is made up divine self. On the other side, that's also true. even I was made out of the divine light and the heaven that I was in was made out of the divine light. when the beloved was speaking to me, it reverberated through the entire space around me.

and inside of me. So there was nowhere the voice wasn't. the light pouring out, yes, it goes by lots of different names. some folks call it Maya, some folks call it Prana, some [00:26:00] folks call it Pra ha dra? I think they pronounced that right. it's an emanation of the infinite in a form that is approachable to us, but the infinite is so far even beyond the light.

but it's also the light itself. So there's no separation, even though there were different parts of it.

Will & Karen: Peter, before we go into the next part of this conversation, I think it's important to understand what were you like before you died?

And then how did that change you when you did?

Peter: Well, years and decades and decades later, I asked my mom and dad, well, you remember that year that I came back from Montana and this is when they still didn't understand. I had told them about my near death experience, but they were still trying to figure it out. I said, was I any different? How did I behave that summer?

And they looked at each other and they said, well, Pete, your mother and I, we talked about this. [00:27:00] and we didn't know why, but you were much more compassionate and kind, kinder than you'd ever been. Not that you hadn't been kind and compassionate before. They both agreed. It's just that your behavior was entirely different.

You are more attentive, more caring, you're a better person. Yeah. that's probably the main thing that happened when I, came back, that was most noticeable to my parents, but in my interior world, I was a wreck,

Will & Karen: So then when you came back, what was that feeling like? were you able to bring with you the feeling that you had on the other side, or was it kind of a rude awakening for you when you came, came out of it?

Peter: A and B. Can I choose both?

Will & Karen: Yeah. Um, Yes. None of the above teacher. Yes.

Peter: so, a percentage of it came back with me, a tiny, tiny percentage of it. Just a drop of it was enough to change my entire life and direction and who I am and what I would become. And it was bliss. And I, got an extra dose [00:28:00] of, radiance. So I could feel my own aura.

I could feel my own energy body. I could feel everybody else's energy body. I could feel plants and trees and nature saying, and the sky was radiant with light, but everything was also like this celluloid black and white old broken movie from a hundred years ago that was so immaterial and that the light actually was making it exist and that nobody else could see it but me.

and because I was in this, new world in this old body and still above myself and not fully living inside my body, I was, how do I manage myself in this world now? Everything about my, my psychology had changed my spirituality, my, my physicality. I could feel things that couldn't feel before.

I had new senses. I had, difficulties with electronics, for instance. and my, my whole self had been destroyed. my attachment to my egoic self had been so [00:29:00] utterly completely shattered that I didn't know who I was as a human anymore. And I had to pretend that I did because otherwise I didn't want to end up in a mental institution.

And so I became isolated. This was 1980. was no internet. I had no idea even to what to call this thing that had happened to me until 85 probably. And figure out how to live with it. But I went into a very long, deep, dark depression of isolation. and suicidality that lasted decades. even while I was deeply in pursuit of the oneness of being and the light itself. So I lived this sort of contradictory experience where there was exuberant radiance in my life every moment of my day. And yet my being bereft of my beloved of home of heaven was so overwhelming in my grief for having chosen this [00:30:00] path that I became.

Well, depressed, despair, suicidal,

Will & Karen: Yeah.

Peter: and my task was to figure out how to live with myself.

Will & Karen: Right. We've heard that before where people did not like kicking and screaming came back. Like the divinity gave you a choice to come back and you chose to come back. A lot of people we've spoken to didn't have that choice. They said you're going back and it's going to be really hard for you. So get ready, And so I can only imagine intellectually how difficult it must be to have been everything and then suddenly be nothing. For lack of a better word, right? You're one speck of the everything that now you are having to interact in a 3D world where so many people have no knowledge that they are one. And the feelings, the emotions that that must call out have got to be incredibly difficult.

Peter: I was falling in love with everybody I met afterwards. I mean, not just like, Oh, I like that person, but [00:31:00] like falling in love with everybody I met. It made it, so that, I attracted all sorts of undesirable people in my life who just, who were not very good for me.

Will & Karen: Oh, yeah.

Peter: And, and, but I couldn't help but love them. I'm not, I finally learned how to love people from a from a distance.

Will & Karen: Right. Right. Yeah. I love you too, Peter. It's okay. So then there must be lots and lots of people that go through this experience and feel that same type of emotion, that difficulty reintegrating with society. How does someone get in touch? How did you get in touch, back in touch with your humanity and get through this?

Peter: oddly enough, I didn't do it the traditional way which would be reaching into the world. I found that, well, the first thing I did is I, is I realized I had this extra dose of energy. The second thing that happened is that I began to read in Eastern literature. I read the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao teaching.

I read all of the ancient texts in a year, all of them. I just read [00:32:00] everything and everything. And what I discovered was that. The inward journey is where the foundation of self is. And so I decided that I would embark on interior journey that, where I might be able to reconnect in a deeper and more full way with my beloved, with the divine, with the light.

And I found that by doing that, I integrated in the world with more balance. Whenever I tried to balance in the world, it was like stepping on banana peels everywhere. But when I would back foot my. weight into heaven and steady myself on my back foot, then my front foot, I could touch those banana peels and I wouldn't slip and fall.

And so what I discovered was that by stripping away, my attachment to my egoic self through practices of non attachment and non grasping, that actually what happened was the, it's the, my higher self, My soul self began to assert its presence [00:33:00] in such a way as to cause stability of my, my psychology, of my emotions, of my physicality, of, my spirituality.

And so, counter intuitively, I found stability in the world by leaning back into heaven. and I did that because, not only in the East, I went to, I went to Yale to study mysticism and they didn't really teach mysticism at Yale in the grad school,

Will & Karen: Really?

Peter: go figure.

Will & Karen: That's surprising. What do they know?

Peter: But they had classes, across the university and the Dean of students allowed me this three year independent study and never asked me why.

which is really great. and I discovered that in the West that it was the same thing. So the West and the East. mysticism, they have a lot of points of agreement. And one of their points of agreement is that the only way to find stability in the world is by going on the interior journey. And so the interior journey became paramount to me.

I spent my life in study. [00:34:00] I'm all about head knowledge. I love head knowledge, but I know that head knowledge is never going to bring me to the place that my interior journey can bring me. Because my head knowledge is going to fall away the moment that I die, but this interior journey, I cultivate my connection that allows me to be in more fully in the presence and safe security in the presence of the light inside me, but also it then flows through me into the world.

And that the deeper I went, the more likely it was that I would have additional mystical experiences because I was polishing my lens and the more I polished my lens, the more mystical experiences I had. between my first NDE and my last NDE, my second NDE.

In each one of those experiences, and I had a bunch when I was a kid too, before all this happened, in each one of those experiences, they built on the previous experiences and helped me, become more solid in the [00:35:00] world. Even the mystical experiences that I had, by going out of body and not projecting myself out, but by being taken out.

And when I was brought back, I was more stable in the world. for me, integration is about mastering single mindedness, mastering single pointedness.

Will & Karen: Which brings us perfectly into single minded meditation. Can you take us through what exactly that entails?

Peter: So you might have all of these different techniques. You might use imagery or language or your body as a focal point. But all of these different techniques all involve mental focus and breath. And these two, mental focus and breath, when repeatedly pointed at a single place, several things happen.

One is that they rewire the brain, the plasticity of the brain gets rewired. And so focus becomes easier and [00:36:00] easier. The more one practices anything, the easier it gets. And that's because the brain rewires. And so the more one practices on a single point, even if those single points are in succession. So you move from one thing to the next thing, to the next thing, you're still on a single point when you do it.

And so single pointed meditation, single minded meditation really isn't about the. tools that you're using. It's about the silence that's gained. And so in the silence that's gained in mental and hyper mental focus on a single point, because when one is focused on a single point, eventually that point itself falls away.

And one is for instance, only left with breath. And then the breath quiets down and one is left without awareness of breathing where your, breathing pattern is so quiet, you only need a little bit of oxygen and you don't need to pay attention to it. That's single minded training. is [00:37:00] what creates the opportunity for not grasping the self. And so every single time, in a moment of meditation where you have the moment of no thoughtness, maybe, say for instance, you're meditating and you, and you're using a chant and you bring your mind in your chant up to the top of your head and then you pause.

In that pause is silence of your thought. And that pause is where the divinity is, accessed in that single minded focus is what trains the self to step aside and not grasp the egoic self. And so single minded meditation is entirely about non attachment practice and it is effective.

I found it in the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali back in 1980. And I've practiced it ever since. Practiced a bunch of different techniques from there. But always about this one thing. Because [00:38:00] the thing that I had to give up in my Christianity. In Christianity, there's the atonement. The death of Jesus is the gateway to heaven.

And you don't have to do anything except for believe in him. Except, that's not what the mystics in the West really understand, like Meister Eckhart and Juliana Norwich and Teresa of Avila. Their experience of the divine light goes far beyond belief. It goes into the place of non grasping and selflessness.

And the tools that are available, that are found in Patanjali, were reflected throughout the literature of the West. And by the time that Patanjali wrote them down, they'd already been in use for thousands of years. And the reason why they're still in print thousands of years later is because the tools actually work.

And so the practice of single mindedness, the practice of single pointedness is effective and practical. it's practical because it, Trains the brain for staying on [00:39:00] task at your job or whatever you have to do, you could, it's good to be able to stay on task, especially as an ADHD person, me. the other thing it does is that it gives you access to your original self.

problem that there is in, and it's not a terrible problem, but a problem that there is New Age ism is the utilization of the energy for selfish desires. And that's totally okay. You're still in touch with the divine, but you're still grasping at the things you want. people grab at the gifts of the giver, instead of pursuing the giver.

themselves. And that's what single minded meditation does. It, reorients you away from yourself and your own selfish desires to the oneness of being.

Will & Karen: I feel so called out. No astral projection for you. I was just going, that's exactly what I was going there. Okay, Peter, are you saying is abandon your pursuits of astral projection. That's [00:40:00] not what's important. You're the important is to get inside and know myself. And then I totally get that, but dang it.

I want to fly.

Peter: Yeah, but it won't do you any harm, Will. so when I was dead, I had, I don't know, a thousand lives. that I had lived before. And been on this, spiritual journey. I got to enter into two of my lives when I was dead. And one of them was a long time ago, somewhere in the world in a deserty palm tree kind of place.

And I was in a group of guys and we're all having a spiritual conversation. So this is like, I've been on this journey a long time and, and, if I make my achievement in this lifetime, I could, but maybe I won't. Maybe I won't. And if I don't, well then next time, and then next time, and then next time.

So if you want to practice astral projection now, it won't do you any harm except for that there are dangers out there in the cosmos of which we are unaware.

Will & Karen: No, there's not.

Peter: oh, well, you haven't encountered the darkness features then, perhaps.

Will & Karen: So anyway, [00:41:00] uh, what are we talking about? Uh, you know, you know, I, I do, I believe me, I read Robert Monroe's book, uh, so I know all about it. I just don't like thinking about it. So

Peter: Well, well, I can tell you that they can't get inside you if you don't let them in.

Will & Karen: Okay. back to single minded meditation for a second, because I do want to make the distinction between that and Kriya yoga because, people in the West believe yoga is exercise, right? Stretching and things like that. But yoga is actually way more than that. Yoga is like a way of life, right?

It's a way of being, and there's different types of yoga that not all clued stretching So, what does Kriya Yoga have to do with meditation?

Peter: A Kriya Yoga is meditation. and, I practiced my Kriya Yoga with my sitting meditation. I practiced my Kriya Yoga with my Hatha Yoga, which was our Hatha Yoga, my, my stretching, my Ashtanga, my Ayyangar, my Vinyasa, all these different physical styles because you, I can [00:42:00] use my physical body.

instead of a mantra in order to focus my mind and bring myself into single pointedness. And I found it effective because a, I stretched my body and I like to stretch and it made me stronger, but mostly it's because I was able to use my physical body with my mind and my breath in order to access the prana energy inside of me that is all that there is.

Pramahansa Yogananda called it the fastest route to heaven that he could find. And Oh, that's not a direct quote, but that's what he meant.

Will & Karen: Sure.

Peter: um, I want heaven here now. I've been bereft of my beloved for the whole of my life.

Exiled, back here, even though I chose it, it felt like exile. so I've, Kriya Yoga is a way to bring heaven here now. it expands my capacity and increases my intensity.

Will & Karen: So, you had that first near death experience and you chose to [00:43:00] come back. When you had the second one, were you given that choice again? Um, And if so, after knowing how that loss feels, why did you come back?

Peter: I came back the first time because I saw my parents future lives with and without me. My sister had vanished when I was 14 and my family had a terrible, terrible time. My mom had a terrible, terrible time. It broke her pretty badly. And when I died, there was going to be the second loss of a child.

And even though she wasn't dead, she was like, she was dead, only worse cause she was still alive and they didn't know where she was, what was going on. And so, I saw, I was shown, I didn't just see this, I was shown my parents parallel lives, with me and without me, and they were both filled with suffering, but the without me was like a bazillion times more, like a nuclear bomb goes off in their lives.

my experience, at the moment, was paradise, bliss, unconditional love, and eternity, and I asked, if I go back there to live [00:44:00] my life, can I come back here to the paradise, bliss, and the voice said, yes. the length of my human life at the moment felt like the wink of an eye. I could stand the wink of an eye.

So I chose to come back for my parents sake. And the second time I died, I had coronary, I had a widowmaker heart attack. 7 percent of the people who have those live. And,

Will & Karen: Wow.

Peter: runs in my family. It's killed a bunch of my family members over the years. And, uh, I got rushed to the hospital. I live an hour and a half from the catheterization lab.

And by the time I was in the ambulance, I was already outside my golden hour. And I was at a yoga class also, by the way. Um,

Will & Karen: Was it hot yoga? Because I told Karen, do not do hot yoga. That's really bad.

Peter: died on the way and. my granddaughter had just been born. This is night, uh, 2015. My daughter had married a man and he had some issues before he went to the Marines and went to Afghanistan [00:45:00] where terrible, terrible things happened. And he came back a very destroyed person and they had a baby and we rescued our daughter out of that marriage in a really dramatic way.

The nine month old and our, and my daughter, it was still a kind of a threatening situation. And I, I left my body the angelic being that came to collect me, allowed me to go back and take a look around. Cause it was rather sudden. I was like, let me make sure things are in order. And one of the things that I saw was my granddaughter's life with me and without me. And without me, she would have men problems her whole life. And with me, as, the daddy figure, the beloved grandfather, her life was much improved. and as it is now, as it is right now, nine years out, my daughter, uh, is in love with a really wonderful man who is taking over the daddy role in a beautiful way.

And I am, we are so thrilled. but [00:46:00] I came back a second time for the same reason I came back a first time. Also knowing that the length of my life is the wink of my eye. Doesn't feel like it here, but I know that it is.

Will & Karen: Gosh, Peter, you are so unbelievably eloquent. The way that you explain things is so beautiful. I can only imagine this is what you do when you're not church broadcast, right?

Peter: It is something about what I do. My Not Church broadcast is, really, it's an examination of the mystical literature going back centuries globally. began Not Church with a deep examination of metaphor and symbol in the Bible. I spent about a year and a half on that. because the Bible for all of its genocide and hatred and all of the terrible things that are in there and that if any book, if any book ought to be banned, it might be that one because of all of the terrible things that are in it.

But in it also are these things of light. It's not just [00:47:00] all these historical things that happen, that people did bad to each other. It's filled with the prophets full of light. And Jesus himself, his language of light, devoid of, doctrine and dogma and the overlay of theology. He's a mystic who speaks about the oneness of being. So, after I did that, I didn't, did a long examination of the Gospel of Thomas, And then I switched to the Aramaic Jesus, so there's a text called the Peshitta that is, uh, been lost to the West when the Syrian churches were kicked out in about the fourth century for using an an Aramaic text of the Gospels instead of the Koine Greek.

And in the Aramaic, Jesus is wickedly. mystical, like profoundly. So we went through a bunch of that stuff. And right now I'm, I'm working in, um, the after effects of near death experience, as understood through the research of the international association for near death studies.

cool.

Will & Karen: [00:48:00] I

Peter: for similarities and comparisons of divine light and try to give tools to people to help them find the thing inside themselves. That's really what I'm after, is to help people understand that this light is inside of them, that they can access it. themselves that they don't really need me. All they need is some toolkit. I'm trying to give people toolkits to do this. And so these days, this past probably six weeks, I've been trying to help near death experiencers and Spiritually transformed experiencers understand our commonalities on a global scale through scientific research of the things that we all share.

Like for instance, troubled psychology when we come back, 70 percent of people who are married and one of them has a, NDE, 70 percent get divorced because the other person comes back and their value system has changed. my value system changed, fundamental [00:49:00] thing, you know, my channel is, for seekers, but in particular it's for people who've had kundalini awakenings, deep spiritually transformative experiences, mystical experiences, and NDEs to help them understand themselves and negotiate their world. And I use the ancient literature because it's filled with people just like us.

I mean, that's Patajali and Rumi and Jesus, and the list is long. We don't have to do this on our own. That's really what I'm trying to say, is there are examples that went before us. The opening of three chapters of Ezekiel, for crying out loud.

Will & Karen: think that is so fantastic that you're doing this because you hear the story of the people that had the NDEs and they talk about the tunnel and then that's it. And then they're left to their own devices, figuring out their way in the world. And I never really thought about what you're saying, your experiences, everything is different.

Your values change the way you see and taste and touch and everything, colors change. How do you navigate that without feeling like you're going crazy? So thank you for what you're doing. I [00:50:00] hope that, Everybody out there that hears this and that are going through this, reach out to you because it's just so needed.

Yeah, if you're going through something like this, you don't have to do it alone. Peter can help you. So Peter, if someone wanted your help, what's the best way for someone to reach out to you?

Peter: Visit peterpanagor. love. Oh, I love love and, uh, make an appointment, send me an email, Peter at PeterPanagord. love.

Will & Karen: that. You have now become, uh, Karen's favorite guest, just from, just with that website, just for that alone. All right. Well, Peter, this has been fantastic. I could really, I could literally speak to you for hours and, uh, I do want to be conscious of your time, but, I know that this has touched a lot of people in our audience.

So I want to thank you for your time, your sharing of your knowledge, your wisdom with us. And I hope I hope to God, I hope to everything, because we are all God, right, that you and Karen and I meet again, because this has been wonderful.

Peter: I hope so too. And I, most enjoyed this evening, [00:51:00] much fabulous, fun and deep conversation. Uh, you ask great questions and I appreciate your having me on your show. Thank you for that

very much.

Will & Karen: been an absolute pleasure. We'll see you again soon.

Peter: Peace and love.

Will: And a huge thank you to you. We know that there are tons of options out there and having you decide to come along on our journey of discovery with us is an absolute honor for us. We hope you've enjoyed this conversation as much as we have. If you did and you feel called to give back, we invite you to visit our website at SkepticMetaphysician.

com where you can donate to the show or subscribe as a member through our Buy Me a Coffee campaign. Your support will go a long way towards allowing Karen and I to bring you these wonderful conversations and teachings in more and more robust ways. Well, that's all for now, but we'll see you on the next episode of The Skeptic Metaphysician. Until then, take care. [00:52:00]