NDE – Died During Church Service & Saw God! with David Maginley

David Maginley 0:00
We don't realize how lonely we are here. You don't realize how profound the sense of separation is. That there the connection to everything was indescribable. And I'm just walking on a grassy hill

Alex Ferrari 0:17
I've been able to partner with Mindvalley to present you guys FREE Masterclass is between 60 and 90 minutes, covering Mind Body Soul Relationships and Conscious Entrepreneurship, taught by spiritual masters, yogi's spiritual thought leaders and best selling authors. Just head over to nextlevelsoul.com/free

I'd like to welcome to the show David Magiley. How you doing David?

David Maginley 1:05
I'm doing really well. How are you?

Alex Ferrari 1:08
I'm very good, my friend. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm excited to talk to you about your experiences you've had. You've had a pretty interesting journey so far.

David Maginley 1:19
Yeah, I'd say so. We I don't think we'd ever consent to the journey if we knew what was ahead. Or maybe we do. And we forget before we embark, I don't know. But what a wild ride.

Alex Ferrari 1:30
It is a wild wild ride, to say the least. So before we get into the interesting, the really interesting parts of your journey. What was your life like before your, your near death experience?

David Maginley 1:43
Oh, well, it was the life of an insecure, extremely tall, young cocky guy who didn't really know who he was in the world, but was faking like most young men do and stumbling along. I was very introverted, very shy. Grew up in a family of five. So you know, you're fighting for your, your, your place at the table. And so I kept mostly to myself, right and just moved along, stumbling upon friends and interesting experiences and topics that sort of made me go. And then a big one happened. I was diagnosed with cancer.

Alex Ferrari 2:35
You were diagnosed with cancer prior to your near death experience.

David Maginley 2:39
Yeah, I was 17 years old. Oh my god. And this was not a kind of cancer that most people have ever heard of. The full name is paraganglioma. And it's 90% of these grow on the adrenal gland. It's an encapsulated tumor that it's on the adrenal gland, and it's making Amala tell calm cocktail of chemicals. So its danger is not that it's going to spread out and compromise the body's metabolism and different organs. But instead, it sits there waiting to explode. It's got dopamine, norepinephrine, catecholamines, these are very dangerous. And it's like the trigger, the fuse is lit, whenever my adrenal gland is activated. So the moment I got excited, or angry, or afraid, even if I exercised, trigger the adrenal gland, and that would cause the tumor to explode. Most people die in about 30 seconds. I was lucky, I would have small explosions. And they looked to me like anxiety attacks. I didn't know I had this tumor in me. And the thing is, my metabolic response was lower because the first tumor was in my bladder, so I was peeing out the metabolites and it wasn't going directly into my circulatory system. So I survived it. The doctor said, Oh, it's a current going to the OMA. Most of those 90% are benign. Don't worry about it, you're good. But it grew back again, and again and again. But it four times and each time got worse.

Alex Ferrari 4:37
So can I can ask you a quick question that we've before I forget. When you were told for the first time you had cancer, how does a 17 year old process that? Because I know I didn't I couldn't process that 17 So I was curious, how would you how would you process it?

David Maginley 4:56
Well, I didn't process it either because the doctor said It, it's benign. And right. So I thought I was out of the woods, I thought it was just this weird tumor. And when I went to the library to look up the paraganglioma, after the word benign, I just closed the book and said, Hey, I got away with that one. But it made me wake up. And it made me ask some hard questions. What is life all about? That was a close call. Maybe I should stop living small, and step out of my comfort zone. I kept asking questions, and they led to better questions. So because of cancer, I went to university and I studied the meaning of life.

Alex Ferrari 5:42
So it did start you on on a path that you would have never been on?

David Maginley 5:47
Exactly. I thought I was going to be a recording engineer and a photographer. That was what I enjoyed. But no, I, I studied philosophy and comparative religion, and dug deeper and deeper eventually, that led me to a community, a Christian community. And I experienced a lot of fun and a lot of belonging and, but couldn't really swallow that they, as it was presented. I knew there was something deeper in there. And I didn't have a vocabulary or language or a context for it. So I actually went to seminary where you're trained to be a minister, right, a pastor, and I deeper and deeper. Right, just kept going.

Alex Ferrari 6:42
You, you you were tunneling for something, you were looking for truth?

David Maginley 6:47
Yeah, I was I was looking for this underlying the nature of the underlying mystery from which reality emanates, and the doctrine and the theology seemed like Windows, but there was something beyond that. And then I was on an internship. Right? So I had a church, I was a student minister, though I wasn't a fervent believer, right. I knew I was in relationship with this mystery. And this mystery was personified in the Christ. Right, which I came to understand is a word that means the everything, the consciousness. And so I'm on an internship and the tumors, another tumors back and it's getting active, and I'm starting to have attacks and I'm passing out and my heart is racing. And, and it was really hard, because I still thought that this was anxiety. It really hit my self esteem. I was blacking out. I was having dizzy spells getting in the pulpit. Right. Now, I put I joke. I joke that I put a lot of people to sleep on a Sunday morning, but it's not good when the minister passes.

Alex Ferrari 8:10
Well, let me ask you, after all the studying and obviously we'll talk about your experience in a minute. From this point of view, why do you think that that tumor kept coming back? There's a purpose for that, I believe that there's a purpose that when things like that happened to you, there's like, like, it literally changed the course of your life. But it kept coming back, which was interesting. Not once, not twice, four times. Do you have? Did you ever give a thought of that? Like, why is this? Why did that happen?

David Maginley 8:41
Yeah, cuz I'm thick headed.

Alex Ferrari 8:44
It's generally the way it works.

David Maginley 8:52
Alright, I asked that question quite a lot. But go, I don't do that anymore. It's because because I'm not I'm never going to get an answer. I'm never going to understand it from this side of the grass. So instead of why did I get this I now ask, What am I going to do with it? Right, then it becomes fuel for life, for living for connection for adventure.

Alex Ferrari 9:21
Well, it's it's that philosophy of life doesn't happen to me. It happens for me. In many ways, yeah.

David Maginley 9:28
Yeah. And I am not a spring in the world. I am a thought of the world.

Alex Ferrari 9:39
Very interesting way of looking at it. Alright, so let's go to your near death experience. How did it happen? And can you tell us a little bit about it?

David Maginley 9:49
So it was an internship, it was that second tumor? I was. It was really fortunate, because I died in a hospital chapel. That's a pretty decides to go,

Alex Ferrari 10:01
Pretty serendipitous, my friend.

David Maginley 10:04
You got the doctors, you got the nurses, you got the people of faith. And I was getting up to do, I was like, two, three minutes into the sermon. And I felt it hit. Whenever the tumor hits. It's like a punch in the gut. And you get really warm and you start to sweat and your heart's racing, and I breathe into it, breathe into it, pull yourself together. But I couldn't. And I blacked out. I was I was gone before I hit the floor, which is good, because I'm six feet eight inches tall. Wow. Yeah. And so the concussion is

Alex Ferrari 10:49
A long way down, sir. So long way down, as they say,

David Maginley 10:52
Long way down. But yeah, I passed, I passed out and I was gone. And suddenly, like, a lot of near death experiences, you have an out of body, right? See yourself above. And I didn't have that I was suddenly in a different realm. And it's, it's difficult to describe, I'm sure all of your guests talk about that. As soon as you put it into words, you're reducing it and you're, they're not the poverty of words just are inadequate. However, it sounds simple. I was on a grassy hill, there was a tree at the top of the hill, I wanted to run to the tree with every fiber of my being, and I was one with everything, I could feel every blade of grass as it moved, I could feel the light flowing, and the light was infused with love. And it was flowing through me. I could feel the tree drinking in the light. But even more important, I felt complete. So as I'm talking with you, there's a massive amount of material in my subconscious that I'm not aware of. And, you know, I'm thinking about how good the chicken smells downstairs for supper. And I'm thinking about the day that I just had at the hospital with cancer patients. And I'm not, I'm not fully here. No disrespect, but fair enough, right. But there, I was completely integrated, congruent, completely aware, there was no aspect of myself that was suppressed or that I was blind to. I think that's why people say they, they feel that they were home. We don't realize how lonely we are here. You don't realize how profound the sense of separation is. That they're there connection to everything was indescribable. And I'm just walking on a grassy hill. And I was I was me, right. So did I have an ego? Well, I don't I don't know if maybe I didn't it was integrated. After all, I feel like I only touched my, my toe on the doorstep of whatever's out there. But I was still me and I still had a body. A biped humanoid.

Alex Ferrari 13:34
A perception of a body. Yeah.

David Maginley 13:36
Yeah, it was not like this body, no way. And I was I was not alone. There was an entity there of being human, and yet, not so much more than whatever I am. And it was a masculine figure. If I were to describe him I couldn't visibly Like, it didn't matter what he looked like. But he was he looked like love and power and wisdom and compassion, and beauty and wonder, and authority. That's what it looked like. I mean, but he felt like my best friend. Like, like he had known me all my life, and I've known him. Lot of people ask me since I'm a Christian minister, well, sounds like Jesus, did you meet Jesus? And to be honest, I never presumed it was the big guy. Okay, it's a junior apprentice from the warehouse or someone right? But it didn't matter who he was. He was no less than fused with that, that character of the Christ consciousness or the divine love or whatever you want to call it. We had just this relaxing conversation. He said, I was jumping up and down like a kid at Christmas. I was saying, I'm home, I'm home, I'm home. And he said, Yeah, it's great to see you, David, welcome. It's great to see you. And I said, great to see you to come up. Let's render the tree. So I'm behaving like a kid. And he said, Oh, no, you can't go up there. But let's, let's walk and talk for a while. So we're walking through the grass. And we're talking about my life. And he says, you know, things are going really well. I know he's talking about my overall life. And I know that I have a life here, and I'm not here anymore. But I didn't care how well things were going. I kept saying, that's great. Come on, let's go to the treat. It says, No, you're doing great. But you have a lot more work to do. It's important. And I said, I don't care. I'm here, I'm home. I wasn't being disrespectful, right. I was just enthusiastic and overjoyed and filled with more life and vitality than I've ever experienced here. And I said, No, come on. Let's go play it. Cuz I knew if I got to the tree, if I got to the top of the hill and saw what was on the other side, I've never come back here. Which is common. It's all it's often this boundary this border.

Alex Ferrari 16:41
Window, your door. Yeah. Window Door. Something. Yeah. You know, when our return point on our return.

David Maginley 16:50
All right, really wanted. Because I didn't want to come back here.

Alex Ferrari 16:56
Another thing that most near death experiences, say like, I don't want to come back. I don't want to go back.

David Maginley 17:02
No way. No way. And he said, instead, like the work you have to do is really important. And I knew that wasn't specific things that was that was about growth in love. And not only my own, but to help others. And I knew I felt the significance of that. And he knew that and he said, Don't worry, don't worry, it's gonna be okay, we'll be with you. And I knew I wasn't gonna win the argument. I said, Please don't please don't send me back. You can't, not after I arrived, I just got here. And he put his hand on my shoulder. And I felt this, this love, slow into me this compassion. Instead, it's okay, we will be with you. We'll be with you every step of the way. And it won't take long. We'll see you later boom, you're back.

Alex Ferrari 18:10
Really. So there was no tunnel of life. No life review. When you guys were talking about your life was that would you will associate that to be kind of a life review. Like you were having specific conversations about parts of your life.

David Maginley 18:25
I wouldn't consider that a classic life review, as in most other accounts in the near death experience. But he imparted the importance of my life, the significance of what was to come the gravity of that and coming back, it's the hardest thing. It's, it's miserable.

Alex Ferrari 18:54
You know, what's fascinating is, and I know you, I know from watching some of your other interviews that you you delve into the quantum physics and, and to the science of why we're here the reality of life in general, the big questions. And I was talking to a quantum physicist the other day about our life being very much like a video game and we are avatars. And there is a player which is consciousness, the aware of what is happening consciousness, soul, higher self, and that we don't particularly know where we're going. Someone is moving you in the direction you need to go and some stubborn people, like you and me will get reminded like, No, don't go in that door. And you're like, Nope, I really want to go in that door. Don't go in that. It's just like smacking you to like, No, this is the path. And it's really interesting how it says I've spoken to so many near death experiencers they always seem to know that like if you're going back like No, you've got to Go back. Because this, this and this is going to happen. So there's kind of like this blueprint, this mapping of a general idea of like, these big things are going to happen to you. And you're going to do this, this and this. And as if you look at it from a video game perspective, you know what levels are ahead of you? Because you've either read about them, or you've experienced them, but the player itself doesn't know. Go ahead.

David Maginley 20:28
I so appreciate that. You summed it up. That's exactly it. And I'm not allowed to remember that information, what those specifics are, I just knew, I really showed me told me I knew the nature of this work. But I had to forget it all. As soon as I am back in this, right. Which means you're stumbling along as much as ever before. But it's kind of worse.

Alex Ferrari 21:06
Because you have a little bit of information. Yeah. Cuz Yeah. You before ignorance was the bliss. And now you're just like, damn it, I kind of, kind of I have a couple of bullet points. Now that I know it's more frustrating.

David Maginley 21:23
On top of that, you are forever homesick for what you had become,

Alex Ferrari 21:27
Ohh, I can only imagine. Because then you know, what's, what's on the other side, you're like, oh, I don't want to play this game anymore. I want to go where the players are hanging out now where the avatars are hanging out.

David Maginley 21:39
And yet, I know that I emanate from that I'm never separate from it. But it sure feels like I am. Right, because I'm left in this reality, the one you're embedded in. Alex, as soon as he get re reconstituted as soon as you're re embodied. You feel the density of flesh and the pull of gravity and the muck of words. And our thoughts have to come one after the other and how they're totally inadequate. And that reality, which is so much more real than this just right. I think it descends into your subconscious. It goes into the core of your being because you cannot integrate it right away. You're going to existential dissonance. You move from this level of consciousness to one so expensive, and then you're depressed back into this. And so that's what happened. I I felt myself back in the hospital on the floor. I heard the voices of the doctors and the nurses who had been trying to resuscitate me my though my chest didn't hurt at all. If they give me CPR and my wife at the time she was she was mad and scared. And she said, You were gone. Like 15 minutes. No heart beat. No, no breathing. Wow. I didn't care. I didn't care about that. I just felt lousy. I had a headache. I felt confused. That, that. That reality I touched upon was quickly removed from my conscious awareness. They wrapped me in a blanket. I felt really out of sorts and strange. They checked my vitals they couldn't find anything wrong. And they sent me home. And I first thing I did was I crawled into bed. I pulled the covers up and I grieved I didn't know why I was grieving.

Alex Ferrari 24:00
It's it's fascinating that once you know that you are in. If I use the analogy, the game if you want you know you're a player in a game. You don't want to play anymore. When you're ignorant to the fact that you're a player in the game and that your higher self or the soul, or the consciousness is guiding you through this game. You're just like, why am I this is because this is not easy. Life is not easy. This is not an easy journey. This is not an easy game to play. It's very difficult.

David Maginley 24:36
And I don't play it well.

Alex Ferrari 24:43
It's designed that way. It's designed for you to be challenged. It's designed for you to go through crap. It's designed for you to eat all the time, but it's um, it's not healthy. It's the equivalent of working out. You go to the gym, you lift up weights. It sucks. But you have to tear down the muscle for it to grow sim.

David Maginley 25:04
Lift, repeat, don't you don't have to believe it's gonna do anything, just do it. And the muscle will grow with sleep and Nutrition. In this game, I'm not competitive. I'm not aggressive. But I always felt the separation from from the ground of being and so it reanimated my faith in a completely new way. I was no longer lifting my prayers as petitions to an external God, I was never participating in the consciousness of God. And God was not an old man with a beard sitting on a throne. It God is a word for the ground of being from which all of reality emanates. So how can I honor the divine light in everything is sacred, ordinary moments. But because you're, you're stuck in this, and you're longing for that. You still do stupid things to fill the hole, make really unwise choices. But that's hard because you know, their own lives and you do them anyway. Oh, yeah.

Alex Ferrari 26:17
There's no, there's no question about it. I have to ask you, though. So once you came back, yours is very interesting. I haven't, I haven't heard that kind of near death experience before where you're gone for 15 minutes, which technically means your brain dead, you shouldn't have any sort of conscious, you are in a hospital, we are surrounded by nurses and doctors, so they can all kind of test testimony that this is actually happening. So that already breaks the thing. And then they they send you home the same day, they don't even like hanging out for observation, which is fascinating. And you just it's kind of like you just had like a bad case of gas. You got knocked out, you were sent home afterwards. And you had this near death experience to during the process. I'm assuming that the after effects of this, what you just said in regards to the different kinds of faith and the way you interact with God consciousness. But how did the people around you deal with this new version of you because this is something that happens to at least everyone I've spoken to I've heard about that have a near death experience, they come back completely different human beings, and people around them have a difficult time sometimes.

David Maginley 27:32
Well, I like to think I was a pretty decent human being before it happened. My principles changed very much. Sure. I also didn't, I didn't talk about it. I didn't share it with anyone for years. But I did find that within a few months of returning from internship, back to the final year at seminary that I had developed a sensitivity to energy. And sorry, I explored that and was trained in therapeutic touch. Right? energetic healing modality. And even as I do this, I can feel it between my fingers. That was different. And and the road ahead was was different because I I began to have mystical moments, coincidences, things that I couldn't shrug off.

Alex Ferrari 28:29
And you can give an example?

David Maginley 28:33
Ohh you know, the typical ones where you think of someone when they call or you can read the energy of someone but thoughts and and there's so fleeting that I didn't I didn't think of it as an ability. I would just think, Oh, that's weird. But now I still look back. It's like, oh, wow, that's quite a lot. Not that these are very common. Actually, I'm not saying I'm exceptional. A great study by the Institute of Noetic Sciences found that over 90% of people experienced these non ordinary states of consciousness for some freedom, fleeting moments in their life. But they increase significantly when my cancer returned.

Alex Ferrari 29:19
So then, so you had two cats, two cancer scares, and near death experience. And apparently that's not enough for you. So then go, he hasn't learned yet. We got to send them at least one maybe two more cancer scares. What? Okay, so this is interesting to me, because now you're getting the diagnosis of cancer again, same one, right. same, exact same. So you get in the same cancer diagnosis. After your you've gone to the other side and come back. Did a small part of you say, I've got to help. This is the one that gets me because I just want to go back. I've heard that before.

David Maginley 29:56
Yeah, I'm afraid that every time I was on the operating room table, I'd say a little prayer. And it would be like, oh, please let me die for just a little bit. Okay? Come on. Just a peek. Not asking for the whole meal. That'd be great.

Alex Ferrari 30:14
It's fun to go back to the field every.

David Maginley 30:19
Every time I'd wake up after the operation, or I got nothing, I'd wake up I'm in the recovery room. My first thought would be Oh, come on. Please, and I get nothing.

Alex Ferrari 30:36
Well, let me ask you that I mean, you you obviously became more conscious, more aware of things you you became your your, your vibration, your your, your your consciousness in general had gone up, it leveled up after this near death experience. And then when you get hit with with this cancer diagnosis again, do you ask what am I missing here? Did you did you do some self evaluate? Like, did you dive deep and go? Okay, again, this is happening for a reason. I have so much more information now. Why is this happening at this point again?

David Maginley 31:11
Yeah, so my conclusion was always I guess I've got a lot of growing up to do.

Alex Ferrari 31:17
What was it? What was it trying to teach you though? What is this whole cancer aspect of your life trying to teach you? Have you figured that out yet?

David Maginley 31:25
Well, what I did with it was learn how to love learn how to grow up and wake up. Right, you look at integral theory, that's, that's a really good model Ken Wilber stuff of Ken Wilber. But I, I, honestly, I didn't do that without making a lot of mistakes. Because when we don't know how to love, we enter the people we love. I did that. Just being selfish. Not being considered it. And here I am now. ordained right, a minister. But I didn't know what I didn't know. And I had a lot of maturity ahead of me. In zone, yeah. Cancer did that.

Alex Ferrari 32:18
In your in your ministry? Are you still a bit at odds with the teachings versus what you know as the truth? The religious problem that you were saying earlier, like the window, but it wasn't? It's kind of foggy out there exactly.

David Maginley 32:36
Yeah, there's some tension there. But see, I'm a Lutheran minister. So if you know Anglican and Catholic, Lutheran, it's very much like that. So you got your Protestants in your Catholics and Lutherans started the mess 500 years ago. But at its heart, the Lutheran faith as a reform movement, always upgrade the faith. And so that's what I do. And my language focuses around consciousness. And my work, see, I'm a hospital chaplain with cancer patients and palliative patients in the ICU. So I engage people to use suffering to to use suffering as a functional process, that deconstructs the ego, as a process of waking up and moving towards transformation. It's very effective at doing that. And triggers, of course, ego defense mechanisms for self preservation. And we don't like it. But that's what suffering does. So again, I don't ask why did this happen? I help people say, Okay, it's potent fuel for transformation. How are we going to use this to grow up and wake up in love?

Alex Ferrari 33:55
That's very powerful. I mean, those that I mean, the your your buddy on the on the on the grassy knoll, he was speaking the truth, the you have very important work to do. This is I mean, I mean, I've have multiple family members who were doctors and I've been around the medical field most of my life, not personally in it, but just adjacent to it. So I'm familiar with what they do and how they do it. And being around patients, I can only imagine the health you bringing to so many souls, by doing the work that you do it is really, really important work to give somebody an understanding of why they're going through hell and how they can transform that into something positive in their life's journey.

David Maginley 34:47
Yeah, and I'll share a tool that I use that is really powerful and it's from the Buddhist tradition to meditation called Tomblin. This means is receiving and giving. So I'm sitting with a person, they may be in significant existential distress because they're worried about dying. They're worried about the burden of grief and worry on their family members, and they're worried about the suffering that may be ahead because they have leukemia, right? And it's not going good. So I sit with them. And I say, Okay, let's use the energy of this suffering. It's powerful stuff. I want you to take on everyone's problems like that look in their eyes. See, it's very simple. Think of the patient in the next room, they're going through similar things. You're the expert in your experience, and what it's like to struggle with this. Close your eyes, breathe into it. Identify the greatest, like a strong facet of what's hard about this. So maybe it's fear of dying? Where do you feel it all, it's very clear in my heart, okay, breathe into it, allow it, let it live. Stay with it. Now breathe in more of it from that patient in the next room. Draw it out of their body into yours, increase yours by taking theirs. When you breathe out, send back your compassion. To them could be light, to be the words, I understand I'm with you. I'm right with you. I say only you can do this. Breathing take it in. Powerful, because compassion is not some wishy washy nice thing. In the Buddhist tradition, you become a bodhisattva, a warrior of compassion, not by fixing things, but by embedding yourself in that which is not shrinking back from it in any way. And now, by pulling in the pain of other people, you have agency, you have power, you're making a difference. And the research shows that it's the case even though the other person's in the next room, their metabolism, their vital signs will start to synchronize with yours. Pretty cool. So I teach them this. And it changes their relationship to their own fear and suffering, that empowers them to face what is instead of reach for something that may be unrealistic, and want to bring them back to this moment. That is the only moment that touches upon eternity.

Alex Ferrari 37:44
As fascinating you since you work in the medical arena. I'd love to hear your thoughts on why do you think that the medical establishment dismisses these near death experience the Near Death Experience phenomenon as much as it does. And now, there's much more I mean, since Raymond Moody, much more information about this and information about the phenomenon. And so quantum physicists are talking about proof of, you know, mathematical quantum physics, proof of how things happen and out of body experiences and all that kind of stuff. In your opinion, from your colleagues, why do you think that they can't open up to the end? And what's your experience? I'm assuming you've everyone knows that you've had a near death experience? So at a point, and they go, you know, how was that? How was that when you were in the cafeteria?

David Maginley 38:35
So they do know, because I presented on the subject of Grand Rounds. And it was the highest attended Grand Rounds they've ever had in history, and the most highly rated one to standing room only. There were hundreds in the room. And there's resistance to it because there's they're not familiar with it. And the medical team are embedded in the material reductionist, mechanistic model of fixed the body. They don't explore the mystery of consciousness. And they're not familiar with the research behind it. I find the vast majority of nurses and doctors are fascinated by it and open to it. I I've never been shut down. I've never been met with condemnation or ridicule. Most doctor might say, well, I don't know. I think it's hypoxia. So we'll talk about Hypoxi for a bit, but it can create an existential dissonance. Again, that's a different reality. So I'm like, Well, hey, we'll all find out one day, won't we? And then we smile and we all laugh and we move on. But the nurses, the nurses are with the patient as they die. Right. Nurses witness nearing death awareness. The nurses know it's great.

Alex Ferrari 39:54
Yeah, it's they are I found that they are much more open to because they just have more experience with death. And they're there all the time. And it's, it's, it's remarkable. I mean, you know what the last three words of Steve Jobs was on his deathbed. Wow, wow. Oh, wow, wow, wow. Yeah, it's those that's so I get chills when I say that like, it's like, it's amazing that in God I mean I've I've have people who are in a family who work in hospice and deal with literally seeing death around them all the time. And you can't see you can't be a witness to so much of that. Without asking the question or two, you just can't? He can't.

David Maginley 40:44
On that note, did you see the New Yorker cartoon of God introducing Jesus to Moses? And he's saying, Moses, or introducing Steve Jobs to Moses says, Moses, this is Steve, he's going to upgrade your tablets.

Alex Ferrari 41:02
That's genius. Yeah, that's absolutely brilliant. Now, it'd be one thing I wanted to ask you. And I've heard you talk about this before. And I'd love to hear your opinion on it. The resurrection of Jesus. Was that or could have that been taken as a near death experience? Or in your opinion, from your studies in your research? Or is it a resurrection?

David Maginley 41:32
I don't think it's a near death experience. I don't see how it. it jives with that. I do think it was a mystical apparition as many people have experienced with angels, right. The majority of people as they're dying, will see their welcoming party. Right, it begins in lucid dreaming. And then, as the days and hours approach, they will see their welcoming party looking as real or more real than the other physical people in the room. I think that the resurrection of Jesus was a actual manifestation. But different than this body, you know, interesting little clues in it. Mary, when he appears to Mary, she wants to embrace them. And he goes like, well, you can't touch me yet, because I've not yet ascended. There's something weird about that. What's he talking about? Right? Can't touch me. So it's not this kind of body. And then he's doing weird things like he's appearing and disappearing, or he's passing through doors. The disciples are locked away in a room, but he just walks appears. So I think, by location or you know, some sort of manifestation of a different type of form. Yeah. I don't think the resurrected body was like our body.

Alex Ferrari 42:59
He wasn't he didn't zombie out is what you're saying? Yeah. Yeah, he wasn't walking around like a zombie at that point. No, it wasn't the physical body that was walking around it.

David Maginley 43:11
Astral body. Right,

Alex Ferrari 43:13
Right, something like that. And again, if you go back into the Vedic texts, you hear about by location, constantly, you know, with Yogi's and high Ascended Masters who can be at two places at the same time, and, and things like that. So it seems like that would be more make more sense. I was just curious to hear your point of view on that. I'm curious about because you I know you love talking about or dived into quantum physics, and how science has meaning spirituality? Can you talk about from a point of view of someone who's had a near death experience? And who has studied the quantum physics and those theories of simulation theory and, and the, you know, the illusion in Maya, and the and from the point of view of someone who's actually had a near death experience? D, what do you think about how it's all coming together now? Because quantum physics has been around for about 100 years, but really hasn't made any major jumps. Since then, essentially. But people are starting to, you know, like, I think there's some I think there's some Japanese quantum physicists who prove that they said simulation theory is mathematically possible, and more likely probable, that our universe is, is a hologram and illusion of some sort, which is what they've been saying since it's 5000 years ago, Maya,

David Maginley 44:38
And that was the conclusion of Stephen Hawking and his final paper that was posted just after his right we live in a simulation. So it's simply about that, it's a bit changed. It takes time to to change culture. science itself progresses One funeral at a time. All right. Max Planck said, that's one of the fathers of quantum physics. Look at that electricity, even though it, it goes way, way back, it took almost 50 years for it to be adopted into industry, right? Difficult to change your ways. We're talking about an entire paradigm shift. And yet, the nature of reality, and progress, both on the evolutionary scale and in the human scale is exponential. Right? The changes between 250,000 years ago to 50,000 years ago, didn't feel like there were any changes, they were so small and incremental, it would take probably decades or hundreds of years for viral mutations to occur. But that rate of change is exponential. And now it takes just hours for viral mutations to occur. Our growth and adoption and intelligence, bringing in writing and art and mathematics and science, if you look at the rate of change checkout, Ray Kurtz wheels worked on this integral, the Law of Accelerating Returns. So Chris, we don't doubt that AI. We pass the knee of the curve back in the 80s, or 70s. And it's, we're rocketing up. So the rate of change and adoption of quantum theory and spiritual technologies is going to continue to accelerate and expand and now we have artificial intelligence that's just on the verge of becoming, you know, I don't know, I don't know if we can say awake. But, you know, general AI is rapidly layering, aware. Yeah. Aware. And with that, people will be augmented and then integrated with the cloud. So there, I think there is a merging of science and spirituality, because it really is about consciousness and connection. The problem isn't science. The problem is scientism and material reductionism died right 100 years ago. But the religions have failed to keep up.

Alex Ferrari 47:29
No doubt my friend.

David Maginley 47:33
It's not part of our theological training. But we it needs to be so I could see theological training, but bringing in quantum physics and the nature of consciousness, but you don't need to wait for the church to do it. It's already happening. Your program is evidence of that. The groundswell of the appetite for this is huge. So it's, it's happening all around us. I expect by 2050, the second reformation will have occurred, the merging of science and spirit will have happened, the studies in consciousness will be exponential, augmented by AI. But I also worry about all this because with this technology, we can destroy ourselves, we're wrecking the planet. And while poverty rates are decreasing, education rates are increasing. The disparity between the very rich and the very end, the rest of us is continuing to expand. And I'm totally ignorant of what those high levels of power are doing with the world. Part of me wants to say stay ignorant of that. Thank you very much. And just do my sacred work. Here and now.

Alex Ferrari 48:56
You're a curious soul though.

David Maginley 48:59
Yeah. Do I do carbon look guys questions?

Alex Ferrari 49:03
I do think that I think you are saying it very, very clearly with electricity as a as a as an analogy to our this conversation is that it takes forever for things to change, especially, you know, people were fighting for lamp oil. You know, me and Rockefeller was still like, no, no, no. lamp oil is the way it's this electricity thing needs to go away. Because there was like, there's a lot of money. Same things happening now with oil on electric cars and combustible engine. It will take we've had electrical, electrical cars since the late 90s. We had the technology

David Maginley 49:38
It's one date dates to the 30s.

Alex Ferrari 49:42
That's right. Yeah, you're right. I forgot it. I mean, like, exactly. When I first saw it in my lifetime. It was in the 90s. But yes, I There are patents for electrical cars in the 30s. But they've been squashed. But I think that everything is going to be I think we're right now and I think it would agree with it. We're going through a major shift and in everything consciousness, the world, the pandemic, everything that's happening is a massive shaking of the edges sketch of the world, there will be, I think there will be a reset. And I think what you're talking about in regards to the economy, and the rich being, there's going to be a massive economic reset some, it can't, it can't continue like this, you can't have trillionaires. In there, people who can't eat, like, that's not something that the world will accept. There's a there's a tipping point, I think, at one point or another,

David Maginley 50:38
But every act of creation is first an act of destruction, it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Yep. So I look at with that I looked at studies in urban resiliency. And what they found was, if you have everything you need, within a two kilometer walk, then you'll be okay. Let that two kilometers circle, be your community, build the strength of relationships, that will be healthy and robust in the face of wider economic and global catastrophes. So that changes urban planning, transportation, resource allocation, agriculture, goes to vertical agriculture. I really took that seriously. And I live close to the hospital, I walk to work, I walk to downtown I, I hardly ever use a car. And I build the relationships in my neighborhood and in my community, very high quality of life as a result.

Alex Ferrari 51:45
This event that doesn't for everybody listening to learn from this. I have to tell you, this has been a very enlightening conversation, to say the least David, it's unlike most of my near death experiences, because we went deeper into the meaning of life and, and reality itself, which is generally something we don't talk about on these kinds of shows. But it's something that I am getting more and more into. And I think it's something that really needs to be talked more about. Because people are hungry about this. And the crazy idea of of simulation theory. We're now science is going on and it's not that crazy.

David Maginley 52:26
It really wasn't. Yeah, and I want to encourage your your viewers, don't lose hope. Yeah. Because the in the end, love wins, right. And love is not an emotion. Love is the highest state of consciousness. And we are all on an exponentially accelerating path that's embedded in evolution, to become that to wake up and be that practice where you're planted. Let love be your spiritual practice. And trust that you make a big difference in the world. With the people, you're, you're around. That's the ripple effect. And be serious and creative and have fun with it. And hang on. I know it's a wild ride, but it ends well. So keep shining, keep shining, the world needs your light, keep shining.

Alex Ferrari 53:30
And just like birth, you know, it's gonna get a little messy. But it's okay. I'll have good habits. I'll get some hot water and you'll move on. Don't panic, and don't pay, it's gonna be fine. It's all going to be fine.

David Maginley 53:49
It'll be okay.

Alex Ferrari 53:51
David, I want to ask you a few questions. Ask all my guests. What is your definition of living a good life?

David Maginley 53:58
Realize that you're the product of your life. So be kind, be gentle. And be able to distinguish what's your homework and what's their homework? Do your homework love.

Alex Ferrari 54:19
How do you define God?

David Maginley 54:22
God is the ground of being the love which is the underlying consciousness from which reality emanates

Alex Ferrari 54:31
And what is the ultimate purpose of life

David Maginley 54:35
To grow up in the evolutionary process of becoming mature human beings, right and then to wake up this way towards that which you are, you are a sacred one of a kind manifestation from a realm of pure consciousness dimension of absolute love. You're never separate from that. So waking up from it moves you from the material realm to the causal, the subtle, the astral and the non dual, check out integral theory and then go down the rabbit hole.

Alex Ferrari 55:15
And where can people find out more about you and the work you're doing?

David Maginley 55:19
Sure. Well, I hope it's never work. I never want to meet you at my work.

Alex Ferrari 55:24
Exactly. Not a good place to be children.

David Maginley 55:29
Come to my website. So it's Davidmaginley.com. Maginley is MAGINLEY. And there you're going to find resources and interviews and speaking engagements and all the requisite stuff. I've got a great book out called Beyond surviving cancer into your spiritual journey, which was a best seller in Canada and it's raised 1000s for cancer patients. It's really good. So if you're going through cancer, or you know someone who is that would be helpful, but it's good for everyone. And yeah, well, there's more investigate. Be curious.

Alex Ferrari 56:07
David, thank you so much for coming on. The show has been an absolute pleasure talking to you and thank you for not only sharing your story for the work you're doing in the world, my friend I appreciate you.

David Maginley 56:16
Thank you very appreciate this too. You're doing amazing stuff and have fun with it.