I Died for 20 Mins & Had Two NDE’s (Remarkable Near Death Experience) with Rob Gentile

Rob Gentile 0:00
In that place, I remember thinking, you know, if I hurt myself, I hurt everything connected to me. But if I love, the light spread.

Alex Ferrari 0:21
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 show Rob Gentile. How you doin Rob?

Rob Gentile 0:56
I'm doing great. Alex, thanks for having me.

Alex Ferrari 0:58
Thank you so much for coming on the show. Brother. I really appreciate it I, I was made aware of your book, quarks of light, a near death experience the story and I'm fascinated with your story. We've had a lot of near death experiences on the show before but every one is different. And everyone has unique. I mean, there are some common some common elements. But how they affect the soul that's going through that transition is different for everybody. And I think we can pull ideas and we can pull lessons out from everyone's experience. So my first question is, what the hell happened, sir?

Rob Gentile 1:37
Bad luck that's what happened.

Alex Ferrari 1:39
Or good luck, depending how you look at it.

Rob Gentile 1:41
Well, good luck in the end, for sure. But you know, when it happens, of course, you think is bad luck. Sure. So I'll start with how it all began. So I'm originally from from Western Pennsylvania Pittsburgh area. And in the steel industry, I grew up in the steel business and worked in the mill and a lot of my family still back there. But anyway, I live in North Carolina now. But I had had some bone spurs on my neck from sports injuries when I was younger. And there is this famous doctor that is in Korea, that came from Korea, he's in Pittsburgh, and develop this new technique where they go in through the front of your neck, and they drill out these bone spurs. So they just go in and make a small cut. They move your esophagus aside, they go in, they drill these things out, no big deal. You're in the hospital one night and you into released. I went up there had that done. And this was this was in January of 2016. So four days later, I came home and had a massive heart attack in my bed at around 11pm. Oh, that's good. Yeah. So in retrospect, now, we know we know what happened is that through a blood clot or a piece of plaque broke off, they're not exactly sure. But it went right into my Widowmaker. And both are everything stops. So I didn't know what was going on my wife. We have a special each child who has a seizure disorder. And you know, it's 11 o'clock at night, you're asleep. All of a sudden, there's all this screaming in the house and it's me screaming in pain. Don't remember any of this. So my wife my wife runs down the hall to check on Maria and she's fine and you know, she's confused turns on the light and airy and flopping around in bed like a fish screaming. Don't remember any of that. She calls the ambulance and thank goodness the hospital's like three miles away from our house. So neighbor comes over to watch Maria wheeled into the emergency room. And they know that I'm having a massive heart attack. So they hooked me up to give me some whatever it is that they give you blood thinners and things to to calm me down. Some middle the night they call the cardiologist. He's not in the hospital. So my wife and nurse are in a room and she says hey, look, you know, we've got him. gotta calm down. He's okay right now until the cardiologist gets here. And he's stable. Soon as she said that is my wife says now and I detail that in the book. It was like a moment from the movie The Exorcist. All of a sudden, I sprang up off the gurney from my waist up like somebody grabbed me by my shirt and just pulled me forward with great force. So I'm unconscious. I spring forward like this. My eyes pop wide open. And I scream out the name frosty. I scream out frosty and I collapse backwards on the gurney. Boom, I flatline code blue rings out through the hospital and in Russia team of doctors to start working on me. Now, before the doctors take my wife out of the room, my wife turns to the to the doctor who is now a very good friend of mine a little beautiful in One woman named Dr. Patel. And she turns to Dr. Patel and says, Look, you have to save my husband. We have a special needs child. And she's not going to make it without him and I can't do this alone. So she takes my wife out of the room, my wife drops to her knees, starts praying out loud to God saved me. And Dr. Patel starts working on me. Well, Dr. Patel and her team did everything I'm talking about, you know, the paddle shocks, store injections into my heart with the needle of epinephrine. sternal rubs the whole thing. I was flatlined for 20 minutes. So during that period of time, you know, the cardiologists finally arrived Dr. Patel, for some reason, she should have called it long ago. Because you know, after a while they think your brain dead so but she kept on working on me, something compelled her to continue to work on me. And she obtained a slight pulse. Dr. Bosch welcomes in the cardiologist puts a pump up through my thigh signs the blockage puts two stents in my heart. But it was too late. I'd gotten into cardiogenic shock. Another doctor comes in who's a friend of mine now Dr. Carson comes in incubates me, I'm on the fence, and I slip into a four day coma. So that's how it all began. Thanks for asking.

Alex Ferrari 6:27
Thank you for allowing me to rehash my entire wonderful time I had. So you so you were so they say anything over what five minutes? Seven minutes, your, your vegetable, right or something along those lines?

Rob Gentile 6:41
All right. You know, I don't know. You know, Alex, I don't know what that timeline is. But I know 20 minutes. It's like,

Alex Ferrari 6:46
You're mush at that point, if you're not getting if you're not getting oxygen to your brain, technically, and again, I've heard this story play out a few times in the show. But scientifically, if that happens, the brain is pretty much mush if you do come back here. You're a vegetable. So So now you're in your your four day coma. What now what happens when you're in your coma?

Rob Gentile 7:09
Well, so as you say, they think that I'm probably brain dead. So and I don't know how this works, but they send in neurologists during this four day period. And ironically, one of those neurologists world famous Dr. corbeil Dr. John Renault Corby, who happens to be my daughter's neurologist, my daughter has Rett syndrome, very rare. He but he comes in as well to see if I'm brain dead. But you know, nobody can really determine that. My oldest brother drives down from Pittsburgh, I was raised Catholic, equals a local parish priest, parish priest comes in, gives me my last rites of the Catholic face. It's called extreme unction. You only get it once in your lifetime. So he comes in and joins me with the oils because me my last rites, everybody goes home. And on the fourth day, my doctor says look, tells my wife we can't wait any longer is four days now we're gonna take out the vent if he starts breathing on his own, but we'll see. We'll see what we got, you know, so, obviously, I start pulling the tubes out, I started choking. And, and here I am. So I go into recovering. The first person that I see is Dr. Boswell. But my event still kind of like unconscious. He's like shaking me, you know, how are you feeling? Who's a Sikh by the way? So he's got this purple headdress on looking up at this guy. I think I think I'm, you know, watching a movie. I don't know what's going on. Everything's still blurry. But my wife comes in and she's the first one that enters the room. And she says I'm talking like a child in this high pitched rush, you know, voice it was frosty it was frost to your brother for us to he came to me. You have to believe me. You have to believe me. And she's like, calm down. I know. I know for us, he came to you. I said, What are you talking about? She said right before you flatline you came, you came up on the gurney, sprang forward, screamed out Frosties name, and then collapse backwards, and then boom. Flatland. So give me a little bit of history there. So frosty is the nickname of my my wife's brother. And unfortunately frosty had passed by suicide seven weeks prior to the night that I died. Okay. So frosty lives in this small country town he was living with his parents at the time, which is about 35 miles south of where I live. And he had it was around Christmas time and frosty was going through a divorce. He was living in the upstairs bedroom of his parents house and you know, frosty had had some issues. He had some drug addiction things going on but had been cleaned for like five years. But you know, end of the year and he had his own business serving beer. This and his, you know, trying to figure out how to pay college his daughter's got one child of her bills and less stuff going on. So he said he went out to try to blow off some steam, you know, got got some kind of drug that drove him mad for like 40 minutes and came home and, and unfortunately took his own life. So it's mother calls me in the middle of the night, she said, come down here, please and go up into the bedroom and try to find a note or a journal or something that would give us a clue as to why frosty did this. So I did, I went up into that bedroom seven times, you know, pick through a rather gruesome scene, unfortunately. And finally, on the seventh trip up, I did find a journal, which I've given to the family. And so but anyway, so my wife said, Tell me exactly what frosty said to you. And frosty said to me, I've made a big mess out of things. But I want you to go back and help clean things up. But tell my parents, I'm in a good place. So that was very curious to me. And having been raised Catholic, you know, the whole in I'm 62. So back then it was a mortal sin. And, you know, you went to, to, to hell, your soul was condemned all these things. And so that was like the first big paradigm shift the spiritual shift that took place in my mind that hey, something's not right here. I mean, hell, it's not a good place, you know?

And it was kind of curious, because Melanie, who told me that what was going on at that moment, is that she was screaming to me, no, no, no, no, no, don't go to frosty don't go to for us to stay here with me. Because, you know, in a way, I've read it over and over again. And my wife actually has experienced that I've experienced that with my mom during her passing, that spirit comes to welcome you and ease your passing to the other side. That's very, very common. So she thought that frosty was coming to ease my passing into the spiritual realm was kind of interesting. She was just like pleading, you know, for me to stay there with him. So that's the first thing that happened coming out of coma. Now, there wasn't another experience that I had, which was really interesting. So on the second day, coming out of coma, I didn't know it was Dr. Patel. At the time, this lovely Indian woman walks into my room, and she pulls up a chair and sits down and she introduces herself on Dr. Patel. I'm the one that was working on you that night. And she got very emotional, I can't tell you how many times I'm most lost you and this is what we went through. And my arms were paralyzed at the time, by the way for like three or four days coming out of coma. So she reached down and put her hand on mine. And she all of a sudden got very emotional. And she started talking about her father, I thought that was very odd. She said, You know, I have to tell you something. My father and I were so close. He helped me get through medical school. And we almost knew each other's thoughts. Every time I was thinking of him, because vice versa. And we were incredibly close in spirit. And she said, all he was looking for was to see my first child. And she said, I was pregnant with my first son. And he just couldn't wait to see my son's face. But then unexpectedly, he had an aneurysm. And he died six months before my child was born. And she said, you know, ever since then, Rob, I've lost. I've lost faith. And I'm a very spiritual person. I'm Hindu. But I don't believe that stuff anymore. And, you know, I've been very bitter about that whole thing. She says, But you know, seeing you here alive against all the odds, there's no way you should be here. Just gives me hope that maybe just maybe, you know, there's something more out there. And it was in that moment that the puzzle unscrambled and I began to put things together, because a male spirit had entered the room while Dr. Patel was working on me. And I kept hearing over and over and over again, keep working on him, don't give up you can save him. Keep working on him. You can save him. And it struck me in that moment that it was Dr. Patel's father encouraging her to continue to work on me. And interestingly enough, you know, Alex, I couldn't tell her in that moment because I'm thinking Hey, okay, this is a second day coming up, como I'm still trying to figure all this stuff out. She's gonna think I'm crazy. So I let it go. And I didn't tell her. It was a year later that I met her at the hospital that I told her that story and it's like now every year since, you know, we get together on her father's birthday, and talk about that. So it was her father speaking through me, even though she didn't hear him, you know, prompting her to continue working on r&b So now she knows that her father is always with her. Which of course, you know, we're spiritual beings first having a human experience. So why do we find that to be such a, you know, an uncanny thing, we really should think of it as being something, you know, usual instead of unusual. So that was my first experience my first nd.

Alex Ferrari 15:22
Okay, so that so that was so you didn't there was no tunnel of light. You didn't go into the other side during this first NDE none of that stuff happened?

Rob Gentile 15:30
None of that stuff happened. No.

Alex Ferrari 15:31
Okay, so that's so that's the first near death experience and you had but you did see the spirit of your doctor's, or the soul of your doctor's father come in. And he basically helped bring you back, because he's the one that kept telling her Hey, keep working on her.

Rob Gentile 15:46
Yeah, so two things happen there, which, which I think, kind of prepared me for what was coming kind of prepared me for my most profound near death experience when I almost died again. And it was frosty that, really, this shift happened in me, you know, I'm sitting there. I mean, look, I knew that my whole my whole life had fallen apart, my arms were paralyzed, I didn't know how I was going to take care of my daughter with special needs. I mean, I could never go back to work. My whole life just unraveled, everything was falling apart. But all I can think about this frosty telling me he was in a good place. That really intrigued me. And this whole thing of, you know, hearing Dr. Patel's father speak. So that was, that was enough to just, you know, lying there, I knew how catastrophic everything was. And I knew that I maybe I'd never recover, and that my life was over. And, you know, how's my wife gonna do this take care of my daughter? Will I ever work again. But I was so intrigued by those two spiritual experiences that really opened up my mind, my soul, and it was my first kind of like, awakening.

Alex Ferrari 16:59
Yeah, there's always that one thing that happens to you in your life when you when you finally in many people call it the awakening, when you that thing, and it could be anything, it could be once a relative dies, it could be a car accident, it could be, you know, a child being born, it could be 1000 Different things that, that get you to open up, and I understand that the world is more than what you see. And that we are not we're not just this, this, this meat puppet that we're walking around with no man No, no, because if it is when it's a waste of space and time if this is this is always that's always that's always the way I looked at it. And I'm a fairly logical guy. And when it comes to spirituality, I've always known something I always felt something was always instinctual. It was never it's never proof of anything, you know, tangible I was raised Catholic as well. So I was first first grade I was like, you know went home I'm like, there's a hell I'm terrified. Now can you imagine first grader telling you about your your first year existence you're gonna view if you eat meat on Friday, you're done. I'm like, why? So murder. So murder and eating meat on Friday, mortals. You don't go to do you don't go to church on Sunday going literally in trouble. It's a I had I forgot who it was. I think I had a priest or a rabbi on and they actually checked and went back to the, to the website, it does find out if it's a mortal sin, but now it's still a mortal sin if you don't go to church you know, you update some things. But that's still it's murder, and not going to equal playing field. That's why even as a child I was like, this does not make any sense at all to me it just it just didn't it didn't connect. I was like, How is this? How is this a thing? How can you know how can a loving father treat their their their children like that? It doesn't make any sense like I have a McDowell father never treat my children like that would do everything in my power to protect them and and to make their life better and even if they make mistakes. I'm not gonna like Oh, didn't make your bed today. Well, that's the end of you. Like do that so

Rob Gentile 19:22
Well maybe that's maybe that's why confession was created. Right? So

Alex Ferrari 19:26
That's the other thing you're like so clear, it all cleared up. It's like a wiping of the hard drive every Sunday you know whenever you go in and you're like, so again murder, go in, say a couple of Hail Marys about how fathers. You're good. So it just it didn't it didn't even make any sense to me. Okay, so you had your first near death experience. So what led to this, which was not too far after that way?

Rob Gentile 19:49
The second one? Well, you know, look, so I wake up, they tell me, Hey, look, your heart's destroyed, party's over. And the only way you're going to survive is get heart transplant. But problem is, are too many hearts around. So good luck with that, we'll send you to a couple of places. But hey, before you leave, here's what we have to do. Because you can't even get up and walk around now. So they put me in this, they put me in this defibrillator vest, which kind of looks like, you know, a Kevlar vest, a policeman where, and what this thing does is every time your heart starts to miss a beat, or get weak again, which mine was barely pumping, this thing shocks you back to life. So talk about PTSD, right, so just, you know, every time so so I've got this battery pack on my right on my right shoulder in powering this vest. And then they put a port in my chest and cut me open, they put a port in my chest, and then they put this medicine, which is also you know, I got a battery pack on my left shoulder, which is pumping this medicine on my heart every 60 seconds, it's dripping this medicine called mill rhythm, which is my doctor said think of it as like STP for the heart. It makes the heart pump, but it starts the clock ticking. So you start running out of time because where's the heart out really fast. So I looked like the sideboard creature from rubble got home several times I got this stuff, you know, this one's flashing This one's pumping, making the sound burnt or expertness medicine. So I started I started on this quest to in the book I called seeking a new heart to find a heart. So I go to Duke University here. You know, I go to to another clinic in Charlotte, I write these guys in Florida stem cell research, I start searching all these transplant places all over the country. Everybody's telling me the same thing. Hey, good luck, man. Get in line. You know, we got all these people waiting for a heart. So. So anyway, so I'm running out of time, and go to one, one clinic and they said, look, here's what we're gonna do. There's this thing called the Elven, we drill a hole in your heart, literally drill this hole in your heart, we put this little pump in there. And all it does is like circulate circulate the blood to make the heart pump the blood through the body, and you have strokes and all kinds of infections and all kinds of problems. But hey, it's gonna keep you alive for a little bit in the hopes that a donor heart comes,

Alex Ferrari 22:23
Can I stop you for one second, because I have to ask you this question. You know, because I haven't experienced this have experienced this in my life. So I want to, I want to hear what you think. Yeah. When you understand that the clock is ticking on your life, literally, when you said the drips, there's like you're gonna burn your heart out by doing this. It's kind of like you're, it's like you're putting knots into your into your engine. And it's going to run you're going to run faster, but that engine is going to blow much quicker. And it's not going to have the same kind of mileage as it does if you were just normal, put normal unleaded in into the engine. So psychologically, what is this doing to you? Like, as just a human being like, I know you're in search of a heart and that basically, your only purpose in life at this point is just to stay alive? What does that feel like for people listening to understand?

Rob Gentile 23:13
It's like getting, it's torture every day. You're tormented. You're just tormented. You're running out of time. You start thinking about that, you know, here's what you really start thinking about, which is a great question, Alex, by the way, what have I done with my life? What did I do with the time that I had here? How many people have I helped was a good man that I did I have I've done the right things to my wife and daughter, to my family to the people that I've met in my life that I developed any kind of spirituality if I evolved into a better person you know, we get we all get caught up and I'm still caught up in we all are, you know, we get caught up in making a living, paying the bills, trying to figure out what our purpose is in our life. We want to fulfill that purpose. You know, we want to most people want to be the best they can be. So you know, you this was like this. This clock is ticking is pounding in my head and I hear it every 60 seconds burn. I think squirt on my heart. I'm running out of time. When's it going to blow? Oh my God, that's all done.

Alex Ferrari 24:24
It's like a Chinese water torture.

Rob Gentile 24:26
It's Chinese water torture. Yeah. I've never been waterboarded they'd be like getting waterboarded like every day or every

Alex Ferrari 24:32
Every 60 seconds. Yeah.

Rob Gentile 24:35
Umm, it's it's a torturous thing to to go through. So you really have to draw strength from your inner being every second of the day to kind of like get through this. But you know, I could tell you, it's this. It's this downward spiral because you can't sleep. You have no appetite. You know, so you can't say you can't sleep. You know, that's like I mean, you're sleep deprived. We're getting more paranoid, you know, you're running out of time. And so you're just, you know, you're full. You're, your entire focus is on. How do I find the heart? How do I survive? And that's all you think about. Everything else goes by the wayside, right? Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 25:18
So, okay, good. Thank you. I just want I just want people listening to understand what that feels like. Because hopefully most of us listening don't go through things like that. But it's, it's fascinating to me on a psychological level, like, what is happening to the person going through that? And I'd imagine that's what it would be like, but like, you have the added is that like, someone told you this, and you're like, You got six months to live? That's one thing. But you're like, No, no, you literally hearing a 62nd reminder. Every, every, every minute of every day going. Like it's like literally a talk. A clock ticking. Yeah, in the back of your head right there. So that's an intense experience. And how long were you searching?

Rob Gentile 26:01
Oh, so I did not. I did not land in Chicago. Until April. And obviously, you know, it's kind of interesting. I was admitted to the University of Chicago medicine. On April 20. The day my father died when I was five years old, but it was kind of like another message, hey, I'm with you. It's gonna be cool. Just hang in there. So there were a lot of I talked about this in the book. And I've coined this phrase, I think that coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous, when we're when we really think about this. And we really open ourselves up to those spiritual possibilities. And we look back on these quote unquote, coincidences, they're really not, you know, we're getting these spiritual promptings all the time. It's just that we're so distracted by the vicissitudes of life and making a living and all these crazy things that, you know, we, we don't, we don't really be leave room for these things to enter, but they're there all the time, you know, reminding us of who we are that we're spiritual beings having this experience. And if we open ourselves up, and we find that place, that's why meditation is so important. I was lucky because I learned how to meditate early on, because I was in martial arts when I was in high school, which is where I got the bone spurs. But I learned how to meditate in silence myself, which is what I do every morning, before I start my day now try to connect to that spiritual space that, you know, that place where we all come from. So yeah,

Alex Ferrari 27:35
So continue with your source.

Rob Gentile 27:38
So what happened was, is that couldn't get heart anywhere, this LVAD thing was presented to me, I told my doctors here, I think I'll just go take a walk on a beach and die naturally, because you're not going to drill a hole in my heart, and put this pump in there, I researched that less than 30% of people that get the LVAD. Don't make it to heart transplant. So I didn't want to go down that route. So I call my boss and this is kind of like this crazy, you know, Hollywood moment story. I work for a privately held company based out Chicago. I'm a sales engineer for a steel company. And I call my boss up and I said, Look, I gotta resign. I can't find heart. So, you know, thanks for everything. And he said, Well, we'll wait, wait, we before you done that, before you do that, let me talk to the owner of the company. I said, Okay, well, I don't know what that's going to do. But I didn't realize that the owner of the company is a is a philanthropist. And he sits on the board at the University of Chicago Medical Center. So he calls me up two days later, and he said, hey, Ron, I heard about your situation. And he said, don't do anything yet. Let me let me just make a couple of phone calls. And I'll get back he calls me up and says, Hey, you're gonna get a call from this doctor at the University of Chicago and just listen to what he has to say. And then tell me what you want to do. I said, Okay. This guy calls me. And he's Dr. Uriel. And there's a story about him, too. So. So Dr. Uriel calls me up. He's the head of the transplant team, or heart failure team in Chicago, and he says, Hey, if you come here, I promise you that I'll I'll transplant you within three to four months if I can't find if you don't have any other big problems, like cancer or some of this other stuff. I said, Man, you got a deal. So my wife and I were on a plane two days later, we worked at University of Chicago medicine. So I walked through the door and Dr. Uriel sees me and he says, Look, I have no idea how you're walking around. But you know what, we'll take it from here. So what's curious about this is there's a there's a, an Indian doctor, a world famous Indian doctor, their doctor driven and transplanted over 1600 people, including his own wife. And he approaches me and he said, Look, here's the deal, you're not going to make it. So I've been working on this experimental heart pump. Now for like 15 years, and he said, I'll tell you what it is, it's called the new pulse. And I'll put a little slit in your chest and I'll fish this balloon pump down through your aorta. And out the left side of your body will drill a hole. And there'll be this titanium disc will sit behind your ribcage, and there'll be wires coming out, which is run by an iPad attached to this pump. It's about the size of the lunchbox. And he said this pump will pump your heart until a donor heart arrives. And I said, Wow, that's fantastic doctor said, How many people have had this thing? And he said, well, that's just it. Outside of one guy who had it in like 24 hours, and he got lucky, because the donor heart showed up, he said you would technically be our first clinical trial, because we've only tested this thing on on cows and pigs. So he said, but you really don't have choice. So I said, Where do I sign man? So I signed up for this thing. He said, because we need we need three weeks of data to prove to the FDA that we can move forward with with clinical trials. I said, I'm in. Yeah, so I signed up for this thing. best thing that ever happened. This pump is being used all over the country now. And actually people are going home with it. While they wait for a heart. Wow. So So yeah, it's really really cool. Cool technology.

Alex Ferrari 31:28
So okay. So all right, so now now you're at the Chicago now what when does this magical heart show up?

Rob Gentile 31:36
Well, here's what happened. And I don't want to give away too much in the book. But I'm not, you know, I'm just to let you know what the story is. So what happened was, is that they did find another health issue in me, which was a surprise to me at the time. I'm 56 years old, healthy guy working out all the time at this, you know, freak accident, I end up here. They find this other health issue. After Uriel comes in with about five doctors behind him he needed an emotional support. He said, Robert, I have to tell you something, I can't transplant. So it was a form of cancer. So he said, Look, he said because you're going to be on immune suppressants the rest of your life. And you know theory is is that on immune suppressants, this cancer will just explode in your body and hearts are in such short supply. The federal government won't let us waste one. So he said it's the LVAD or nothing for you. So I wrote him this in passion text when he left when he left my room and you know, all this other stuff. So he said, I'll tell you what I'm going to do if I find one other person that has your condition in the country. I'll I'll put in a request to create a special category for you. And we'll see if we can transplant you I said Okay, great. So in the meantime, while he's doing that, I'm getting weaker and weaker. I'm about 174 pounds. Now Alex, I had atrophy down to about 132. I look like a skeleton, my brother and my oldest brother described me as a wizard, old man with a voice of a child. I mean, I just didn't, I didn't even recognize myself. And so what happened was, is that one night, that night, I was on the eighth floor of the University of Chicago medicine, I had this room that face Lake, Lake Michigan, and I'm just tired of fighting. You know, I've been sleep deprived from 20 years of taking care of my special needs child and I've got all this going on. I've been taken off the transplant list, I've got cancer, all these things are going on. And man, I just, I'm ashamed to say it but that night, there was this crazy storm that came out of nowhere, it was just the wildest thing, the storm whipped up off the lake. And all of a sudden there's lightning and you know, these dark clouds moved in and on the eighth floor, it's like you're like in the middle of the sky. And water is just smashing against the window. And I had like these, these, this life review these moments of the things that I was most ashamed of and afraid of and I became like this magnet. You know, I was drawing in everything that as much negative energy as you can. I'm just like a rod for negative energy man, or all these things are flashing through my mind. And I just gave up and I just cried out, do with me what you will. And as I surrendered myself, and I've learned that this surrender, surrender of the ego surrendering oneself is a very powerful thing. I've learned this in retrospect. And when I surrendered myself, that's when I was taken up. And that's when I had my second and most profound near death experience. And here's the way I describe this. It's hard to articulate eastings. But the first thing that I saw is that I found myself standing in the middle of nowhere. There I was standing in the middle of nowhere. And it's almost it was almost like looking outside an airplane window on a crystal clear day, you know, you're in the air, you're looking out the window, all you see is blue, you see everything, but you really don't see anything at all. There's nothing there. And that's what the first part of my experience was like, I'm standing in the middle of nowhere, I don't see anything. But then I looked down, I could see myself in my atrophied body and my green hospital gown with the new pulse, pumping my heart, all the IVs coming out of me all the stuff that's going on. And at the same time, I could see myself standing in the middle of nowhere, perfect and hope. And I'm there. And I'm saying to myself, What is going on. And then, out of nowhere, I begin to hear much like I heard Frosties voice and Dr. Patel's voice, I begin to to hear things, because in that place, at least for me, I know everybody has like, as you mentioned early on, everybody has a different experience to me. In that place, the five senses have have no functionality. In other words, I couldn't feel anything, I couldn't smell anything. I didn't see angels, I didn't see Jesus Christ, I didn't see God, I didn't see anything like that.

All I can say is it was it was almost as if I was connected to the vast wisdom of the universe, all of it without words, it was almost as if my the grains of my being made of sand. And someone picked them up and just threw me into this strong wind, and scattered me across this infinite timeless space, which I could not understand what it was. And I began to, you know, God expressed concepts to me that I wholly understood in that place, I began to understand things like I am omnipotent. This is your real identity. This is the power behind all things. This is divine source. And as those things began to come into me, and I began to understand that I was in this place, which I call the ethereal in the book, amiss in this ethereal space, it was almost as if, if I had a question about anything, all I had to do was think about it, and it was answered. And I began to say to myself, Wow, it's so simple. Everything here is we're all connected. We're all one, it was this message of unity and oneness. And I, you know, this curious thing happened to me, I, I saw a life review of the nurses that were taking care of me, but only the nurses that I had made negative assumptions about, which was incredible. I'm looking down. And I see nurses coming in and out of patients rooms. And I see the ones that I was most critical of, and the ones that I have made assumptions about. And you know, we all like to think that, you know, we're not prejudiced, and we don't make assumptions and negative assumptions about people. But we do. And I saw almost like looking on multiple television screens, the wildest thing, I began to see their lives in a regression of events. It was almost like we know how cartoons are created, you know, you sketch each image of the of the character, and then you flip those pages at high speed and creates movement. Well, their lives are going backwards in time. And anytime there was some kind of watershed event, something like abuse, or a per personal choice, a poor personal choice, or a or a bad accident, or something like that. The film would stop just for a millisecond to give me a glimpse of what had happened to that person. In about time this thing was over. It painted a portrait of who that person had become, and why. And I thought to myself standing there, how could I ever judge these people so harshly?

And then I saw my own life review, which was really tough to watch the things that I was most ashamed of the mistakes that I had made in my life. And in that moment, I knew that I had to forgive myself. I forgave myself and I had never felt so free and unburdened. And I knew that, you know, as human beings, we can only act on the information that's available to us at the time. I mean, that's just just the way it is. That's like the things but I will do at 62. Now, you know, I would never consider going at 16. And, you know, we make these decisions in our life. And it's, it's an evolving process. And hopefully we're, you know, we're evolving towards something greater, something better all the time. But that was the first part of, of my experience. And then one of the most incredible things happened. And this is what the book is named the quirks of life, I began to see, and this is the only way that I could describe this. It was almost like this web of lights appeared. And it was almost as if it was, it looked like this vast network of twinkling lights, or quarks of light sparks of light, that bind us all. And it was like this beautiful tapestry, woven hanging on the ceiling of the universe, and it stretched into infinity. And the way I describe it is, it's kind of like, it's kind of like a neuron in the brain. And we know from science class, you know, the neuron has a nucleus, and then it has tentacles and dendrites and they weave together. And that's, that's what how our brain functions. I've learned that plant functions that way, a solar system, it all functions that way, it's the same design. And these, these quarks, by the way, are made of length. And quarks are the smallest building blocks of matter. And they combine to create infinite possibilities in the universe, these quarks of light combine to make a person a tree or plant a dog, it really doesn't matter a solar system. And I knew in that place, that this web of lights that seemed to just expand into infinity, that each one of those little nucleuses represented a life, that little spark of light, each little cork of light, was a life. And when I, when I saw that, I realized that that's how we are all connected. And in that place, I remember thinking, you know, if I hurt myself, I hurt everything connected to me. But if I love, the light will spread. And it's kind of like a new in that place that this light inside of each of us is this divine energy that we're all born with. And it connects us and binds us all. Both animate, and inanimate objects are all made from the same stuff. And I remember thinking in that place, Wow, it's so simple. This is the only way the Creator could have designed this same formula. Same stuff just creates out of the same. It's, it's all about like, and there was this universal language spoken throughout this web. And that language was love. Love is the basis for all of it. Love, and light, and God are one. That's what I learned in that space. That's what I believe.

And then out of nowhere, one of the most profound things that has transformed my life occurred. So in this temporal world, my daughter, Maria, she has Rett syndrome, it's a lot of nasty things rolled into one. She doesn't talk, she doesn't walk her feet herself. She presents like severe autism, cerebral palsy, all these things rolled into one, she can't free herself from from wringing your hands, she constantly riots her hands. And it's a it's a, it's a very difficult thing to struggle with. Even now that I know where our spirituality comes from. But seeing it here in temporal world, is a challenge on a daily basis. But in that place, and again, you know, there's no language, their language, or I should say, our communication is kind of like, at least my experience was it was kind of like telepathic, and synchronicity at the same time, all you had to do was think about something and you have you certainly, so I'm standing there in the middle of nowhere, I'm connected to this web. And here comes Maria. My daughter comes, she appears to me, perfect and whole. And she had this light emanating through her. And it's not the kind of light that you and I can see. It's not a light bulb. It's not sunlight. It's not anything. It's that divine spiritual light and animates all life. It is just beaming through her and she's standing there. And we've never had a conversation and I asked her In that place, I said, Maria, I've never, I've never heard you say my name. I've never heard you say, I love you, dad. I haven't met your mother. And I've taken you everywhere. And we don't know what to do for you. But we don't know what to do for you anymore when you suffer. And she said, three words that transformed my life. I said, What can I do for you? And she said, Just love me. And when she said, Just love me, I cried out in the theory of space. And I said, I never want to leave this place. And when I said, I never want to leave this place, I found myself back in my hospital bed. And that was the end of my experience.

Alex Ferrari 45:51
Oh, my God, Rob, that's such a profound, such a profound experience. It's, it's unlike any of the other ones I've heard. So that is definitely a unique one. You didn't Did you die during that process? Or you were just still in this state of this kind of odd state that allowed you to kind of go to this place?

Rob Gentile 46:17
Yeah, I didn't you know, right. Before that, I talked about it in the book. Right before I surrendered, my heart went into tachycardia. And the nurse rushed into the room. And she said, there's no reason why your heart up and tech cardio what's happening to you. And she put I think, magnesium or something in my IV bag. And then she left the room. And that's when I had that dark night of the soul where I started remembering all these things. And all these things started coming to me. And then I surrender. So I didn't it wasn't like the night I flatlined, I can tell you that. It was a completely different experience. So it was a kind of curse myself, when I said, you know, I never want to leave this place. Because I ended up I ended up back at my bed. But I could tell you this much, I after that experience, I really didn't care if a donor heart came or not.

Alex Ferrari 47:19
Because you knew where you were going.

Rob Gentile 47:20
Not only that, I know where I was going. But I also knew that even though like I said, and I deal with it on a daily basis, that I have to watch my daughter suffer here. I knew perfect and she was perfect in whole. And you know, there's a smart that she does when and we've been through some tough stuff these past 25 years. But there's this smirk that she gives me, particularly when she's having seizures or crazy stuff was going on. And I saw that smirk when she came to me and said Just love me. And I knew that that was the clue that regardless of what's happening here, the best part of her this untouched. Alright, so she's perfect there. And you know, who would want to come back right to this. I mean, I knew that I had to come back. To share my story. I knew I had to come back to help my wife and Maria safely to the other side. I knew I had a lot of things left to do. But in that place, when I found myself back in my bed, I really didn't care about the heart.

Alex Ferrari 48:32
Right, exactly. It's fascinating how it's, the more that I talk to people who have near death experiences and the more I do this show I kind of things start becoming clearer and clearer about what is on the other side. What are we are truly what I asked those questions constantly of everybody. Because there's so many people searching I think that there's so many things happening right now in the world. That is really testing us all. Yes. But if we have an understanding a little bit bit clearer understanding without dogma, without fear and anger, there's a peace I, I walk around knowing walk around with a knowing in even though I haven't had a near death experience, or have you know, I just walk around with that knowing in my mind and it helps me get through the day. This is not easy. This is not that this is not easy. And we are arguably in some of the best, the best one of the best countries quote unquote, easiest countries to be living in the world. We have water we have roof over our head, we have food, as much food as we want to eat whenever we want to eat it. We could literally eat 24 hours a day seven days a week if we truly wanted to, if we had to. So we are one of the richest countries in the world. So there are many other things People who are having much, much more difficult times than than you are I have. And, and even with all of that there's still so, so difficult to just get through the day, sometimes.

Rob Gentile 50:13
You're right.

Alex Ferrari 50:14
Let me ask you a question. So you did eventually get a heart, and I don't want you to give the whole story away. But you did eventually get a heart do you have? Do you think that there is a spiritual connection with the donor of that heart, because that is such a miracle? That there has to be some sort of, I hate to say the word but karmic connection of like, you know, Bob, Bob's heart, Bob's like, Okay, what's your purpose, you're like, I'm gonna go do my thing. But really, I'm here because I promised Rob, that he was gonna go through some stuff. And in this life, I was gonna help them out. What do you feel is your spiritual connection with that donor,

Rob Gentile 50:58
By the way, you're pretty close, you're close there, you're starting, you're getting

Alex Ferrari 51:02
I'm already I'm not even I'm not even an intuitive or a psychic or channel, I just have a feeling?

Rob Gentile 51:08
Well, let me tell you, there's, there's science behind this. And I really dig into this because it was driving me crazy. But so I really dig into the science behind this in my book, what a lot of people don't know is that the heart has a brain. Now, when we think about it, we go back to basic physiology. You know, the heart is the first thing that develops in the mother's womb, it's the heart that develops first because the heart has to pump the blood and the oxygen to other parts of the body so they can develop, especially the brain. So the heart develops its own brain. And they've actually send you tons of articles on it, they've actually located those cells in the heart. So the heart communicates with the brain first, it's not the other way around. And the heart communicates with the brain in four ways. Basically, it communicates neurology and neurological, neurologically, it communicates bio physically, it communicates through pulse waves. And then most interesting, it communicates through electromagnetic waves, much like a cell phone. And so as we develop, the heart stores a lot of our preferences, music, emotions, food preferences, all of these things it has to do, as these guys communicate. The only reason why heart transplantation works is because so me, you know, when you cut somebody's heart out and throw in the garbage can, and you put somebody else's in there, the only way that this works is is because the heart has a brain and it finds new pathways to get to the sky. Okay, so somebody else's heart is stored with those those memories. And, you know, I find myself from being directed by this person, more than you want to believe emotionally. My wife laughs at me about certain food addictions that I had the first two years like I'm not a junk food guy, but couldn't get enough m&ms. So he just like a crazy, it's like a crazy thing. You're one of the women we talk about all the time on my floor that got a heart like eight months before me. She didn't know what the heck was going on. She came out of right out of heart transplant she would drive was driving the nurses crazy on the floor, craving chocolate milk, and she was making these nurses go like to, you know, the the floor above and the floor below to get chocolate milk. She couldn't get enough couldn't get enough. She was lucky enough to meet the parents of her donor, a young woman who had died in a car crash. And she asked them the question, she said, can I ask you a question? What was what's the deal with the wizard does your daughter like chocolate milk and they were like, oh my God gave me she was addicted. We had to keep like three gallons of chocolate milk and refrigerator. So So you know, we this is something that of course has taken years for science to understand and prove out instead of just, you know, anecdotal stories that you hear from other transplants, but I can go on all day about those stories. So it's kind of interesting that and I'll give away some of this.

So I have a young woman inside me who was born three months before my daughter, Maria. So Maria was 20 when I got my heart, so it was this young lady. And she also passed from suicide. And, you know, I have to tell you, somebody I'm going to I'm going to circle back on something that you had mentioned that, hey, you know, Bob's heart and I got to fulfill this thing and this all goes back to purpose. Some of the things that we've yet to understand about a spiritual, soul and all of these things that we experienced, but it took me two years when I finally met the donors father, there were we met at a Denny's. And there were all these so called coincidences that started to unravel as we began to talk and he brought her computer and you know, photos and a bunch of other things. And it turns out this girl always wanted to work with special needs children. She had a love for special needs children. And anytime special needs children were being bullied, she stepped into the fray and and protect them in high school. She was a natural born artists who never took a lesson. And my mother, I'm going to tell you the immigrant, my mother, who never took a lesson, she loved to draw and was a natural born artist, these pencil pencil sketches, which we have her portfolio, my brothers and I. And it turns out that this woman, her name is Molly, by the way, so Molly, who spells it with she ends her name with an eye and she always circled the eye as a heart, ironically, so on her gravestone as a heart, Mo ll I. Molly had the exact same, some of the exact same pictures, ironically, that she drew pencil sketched, and her strokes for the way she used black and white to tone things, just like my mother. Then to boot on the Daisy was one of her favorite flowers. So she had a daisy stem, and three daisies tattooed on her shoulder. My father's favorite flower was today's. And ironically, there's this one picture, I never knew my father, he was killed in a steel mill when I was five. But we had this big garden in our backyard back in Pennsylvania. And he would always plant daisies in the front row of the garden. And there's this iconic picture of him, of him kneeling behind the daisies in front of the garden that gets passed around in my family of my father. So all of these so called coincidences, you know, made me wonder, did Molly come out of that web where we're all connected? And what's her purpose to give me a heart to fulfill her purpose, her mission while she was here? I don't know. I happen to believe it was because now she's paying it forward through me. And she's giving me the life to continue to care for my daughter. And she's also got me speaking to a lot of different groups around the country, helping parents that whose children have passed, either via suicide or other things to give them some hope and healing. So you know, Alex, I'm, I'm, I'm all in with this stuff. Man. I don't I don't think that any of this is coincidence or anything. Woowoo out there. It's all fascinating. And it's beautiful transformation.

Alex Ferrari 58:20
Yeah, you know, for me, as well. I mean, I, I always tell people, like if you've rather you believe it or not, it's irrelevant. I could care less. It's all about what's true to you. And what makes if it connects with you, great. And if it doesn't, if it's just an entertaining story, fine. I mean, I always find the feeling that when if you if you listen to a good story, even if you just like look at it at that, you know, one level, subconsciously it's kicking him to another level, and they might be making effects on you that you won't even realize, maybe four years later, when you when you hear a good story, because it might not make sense to you now. Because you're not going through something. But like I promise you, if someone's listening to this now and starts to have that conversation, like oh my god, I you know, you've got six months to live, I promise you this story is they're gonna probably come back and listen to this story. Because they're like, Okay, now this story resonates with me more than it did when I was, you know, a beer at a bar

Rob Gentile 59:26
Well, I'll tell you what it teaches you it's what it taught me. It teaches you to think about your life from the end instead of the beginning. You know what so when we look now what I think about now every day is I think about things from the end and bring them backwards because that's what like I said that's what I was consumed the most with when that bill Ramon was pumping them in my heart and I was you know, bang bang, bang your you know, you could die any minute. What have I done with my life? What is it that I'm most proud All right, but I fulfill my purpose. And that's, that's a really important lesson that I learned. I would hope that others,

Alex Ferrari 1:00:12
I'll tell you what I mean, as I've gotten older, you start having those conversations in your head, like, you know, there's, I don't know how many more years I have ahead of me. But I don't know if I'm closer to the end that I am to the beginning anymore. I just don't know, you know, as I'm getting close to 50. So, I'm going, you know, we're with what am I going to do with the time that I have left? I feel like I wasted a lot of time, I think we all had a point, my 20s are a blur, and an absolute waste of time for my physique for my physical body. And how I was like, Oh, you're, you're in such horrible shape. No, you weren't, you were beautiful a 2020. Even in bad shape that you read about it. Your back was fantastic. Yeah, things you know, you know, I couldn't tell when it was going to rain, with by the aches and by body when I was I get it, man, we but those are the things that you start thinking about as you get older. So as you as you go through life, you start figuring out, I love that idea of looking at the end and looking back at like, Okay, what am I going to do with the rest of the time that I have left? No one's guaranteed anything other than a moment that we're hearing right now, no one at any moment, as you know, very well. It can all turn on a dime, it can all turn on a dime very, very quickly. So what do you want to do with the time you have here? So after you've gone through this experience, what is your understanding now of God? Or the creative force? That source That? Is? Is everything and it is the one that is behind all of this? What is your understanding of that now?

Rob Gentile 1:02:04
Well, that's a very broad question. But I can tell you that my understanding is in and I go into this, in my book, there's a chapter entitled all one, it's opened my mind to I, you know, all the doctors, I was really blessed with having a doctor from pretty much every world religion take care of me, I mean, everything from, you know, from, from Christians to, to seeks to Hindus to I mean, it was just crazy Muslims, everybody under, you know, under the sun pretty much. And what I found, and I researched all of those world religions, and, you know, the walls that get up between you know, that they're put between all of these and create all these problems that we're having. But if we can only begin to understand that in their purest form, love is at the heart of all have them. And love is the universal language that the Creator speaks to everything, nature. Everything is made of the same stuff. You know, here's the biggest lesson one of the biggest lessons that I learned, I tell you briefly, because when I was in that I had to live in Chicago, by myself in the apartment for a year after transplant, because the hospitals responsible for you, if something happens, you die in the first year, they can lose the transplant license. So I couldn't come home from my wife and daughter, you're at the most risk of infection. And it wasn't there that I really got into a really jacked up my meditation every day. And what I was trying to do, it was all Salih is that I was trying to get back up into that ethereal space. Sure, I couldn't, I couldn't, I could not come to terms with and I was grappling with all the things that are going on in the world, like you've talked about, and then this ethereal space where it's connected to everything. It's divine love and energy. And I had a visit from from from a guy. And I don't want to get into that because it's too long of a story. But here's what I here's what I had to figure out is that we have to learn how to see the divine in everything. And once we learn how to see the divine and everything, we don't have to leave the earth to experience the Creator. Because it's all around us. And that's you know, I wasted six months in Chicago meditating, trying to get back up into that ethereal space and then come crashing down, only to turn on the TV and see you know, all the things that are going on in the world. But when we connect with that divine love and energy every morning, and I you know, and I'm a Christian, but now I know there's more than one way there's more than one pathway to get to the Creator. As long as it's not we're on that road to understanding the divine love and energy that that is created everything. And then we shouldn't judge others paths to that source. Because as long as I'm not harming anyone, in their in that space of, of oneness and trying to seek out that source of divine love and energy, then it's okay.

Alex Ferrari 1:05:22
Doesn't say that It's kind of like speaking different languages. Just because you speak Spanish, or you speak French. You still communicate. And it's not language is right or wrong. It's just communication.

Rob Gentile 1:05:38
Perfect analogy.

Alex Ferrari 1:05:39
No, no religion is right or wrong. Yeah, there might be elements, there might be dogma, there might be things that we all don't agree with. But at the core essence of religion, generally speaking, I'm not gonna say all religious, but generally speaking, the greatest hits, the ones that have been around for a few 1000 years now. Started last week. The ones, those, they all start with love, and they're all their purpose is to connect with God, connect with source, connect with the creative force, whatever you want to call it, the universe, whatever it is, that is the core of most what most of these great old religions are about. So there's no one right or wrong. If you're born, a Muslim, doesn't make you you know, you doesn't make you wrong. If you're born a Christian, you're born a Jew, you're you're born a Sikh, or Hindu, it's all different paths to the same place. Just like communication language. It's about communication, it's slowly it's the exact same thing we're just doing at it the different ways, you know, we just, it makes, it actually makes things more interesting if everyone spoke English. Yeah, right. If everyone just spoke Spanish, or everyone just spoke French or German, there's no variety, there's no, there's no way there's no it. So if everybody was Christian, or everybody was just a one world religion, and that was what everyone knew, and there was nothing else.

I don't know, I kind of like these different aspects of things. Because I've also studied a lot of, you know, world religions, as well. And there's a lot of common elements, a lot of common elements in the great religions. But they all have a different flavor. So you shouldn't judge you shouldn't judge somebody else's path. You know, and, you know, when I was talking to somebody the other day, who, who was homeless, for over a year, said something so profound to me, was so profound. And it really, it really changed the way I look at homeless homeless people. Because now more than ever, especially live in a big city, they're everywhere. And they're always have their hands on, they're always helping. And many times, you're just like, you know, there's that judgey part of you, that goes, get a job, I got a job, why. And he said, You don't understand what that person's story is. You don't understand what they're going through. They could be there for circumstances that are beyond their, their, their, their fault, you know, and I've done that I've opened my eyes to love more. And every time I see somebody's, like, always walk out of your out of the house with five bucks, 10 bucks, some loose change something. So when that person does cross your path, you can give them something. And I the other day, I just grabbed a $10 bill, and I gave it to this, this lady on the side of the road. And when she got the $10 and I saw her face, and she started to cry. And she went back and sat on her stoop. And she like, started to cry. And like looked at the dot that the $10 put in her pocket. And she said a prayer thanks to God because that $10 to her meant so much. And to me, it felt amazing. So why is it that when we do things like that we feel remarkable? Yeah, we do things that are bad, or negative, or hurt somebody? We generally don't get that endorphin rush.

Rob Gentile 1:09:12
No, no. So so that is, you know, one of the things that I didn't have time to get into. So this, this plays into exactly what you just said, when I was connected to this web of lights, these quirks which again, represented each quirk of light represented a life. There were some parts of the web that weren't as bright as others. And those were placed, you know, when I first came back, and I'm journaling all this the other thing I did, I've been journaling since Maria got sick. So that really helped me even in the hospitals. I journaled the whole thing, so I didn't have to rely on my memory. Because memory you can't rely on your memory. So the book was even though it took me three years to write, I was able to just pull my journals out and it pretty much wrote itself but you know, those places in the web that were darker than others were where people want emanating this love and light is a spiritual light that comes through us all, when we love. You know, we're all born with a moral compass. And we all innately know the difference between right and wrong. I don't care what anybody says. So that's why, you know, when we do something negative, or light goes a little bit dimmer. But when we do something that loves, you know, we illuminate the path for others as well. Right? So then, you know, if we would all do that, imagine, what would it look like, you know, this web? So because I think it's a reflection.

Alex Ferrari 1:10:36
Yeah. So if we all, if we are meditated a little bit more, I think life would be a lot better in general. Absolutely. So you didn't mention? Missions a lot. And that's something that is a common topic I talked about on the show, because so many of us are lost. So many of us feel like we don't aren't connected. So many of us don't know why we're here. What we're supposed to do. What in your experience is a way to connect with the mission that we have in this life? Because it might take decades before you find it? Or you might figure it out? When you're five? It All? It all varies on the souls journey. But if you're in search, most of us are in search of like, what is that thing that? I'm here to do? What is your thoughts on that?

Rob Gentile 1:11:25
Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question. Because listen, I I had to die to figure this out.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:33
You went through, you weren't it wasn't just like a quick little boom, boom, boom. I call my out and, uh, you like it was a pounding.

Rob Gentile 1:11:42
Six, six months before I got Molly. So here's what I think it is, you know, we are all in and I was on another podcast a while back. And somebody wrote in and said, Well, you know, most people don't have the opportunity live in grinding poverty, they have no idea what their mission is. And that's, that's a rabbit hole. I don't want to go down right now. But for, you know, in the main, like we're talking about right now, as you mentioned, for most of us, we are we are in surgery. And it's so important, I really believe that each one of us is born with a mission, we're born with a purpose. And we have a responsibility to figure out what that is, because that's when that light shines the brightest. And how you figure that out is is that we all know innately what it is that we love, and what lights us up, you know, when we're doing it, whether it's, I mean, for some women, it's it's cooking. For other women, it's been the CEO for some minutes playing the guitar. For other guys, it's been great salesperson, whatever it is, that really, it engages you spiritually and gives you that rush. That's the path that you got to go down, and just spend your life really evolving through that process. Because that's, that's your gift. And I think this is why this is my fear my theory anyway. I think this is why we all admire the athlete, the actor, the musician, the artist, they have they know what that light is, a know what that purpose is their mission. And regardless of what happens around them, you know, they just keep digging deeper, until they perfected until they get there until they can let that light shine through them. And then everyone, you know, comes from miles around to watch them. Right. And I think that that is such an important role. Because I I've come to understand this web that I saw in via ethereal is, it's a reflection of what happens here on Earth, what we do here, it affects our spiritual life, and vice versa. In that way, it just represents that light and dark struggle throughout all time that all humanity has dealt with is the same thing. You know, that's, that's why history repeats itself. So we got to figure it out.

Alex Ferrari 1:14:13
So what do you say to people who might have an inclination or what that mission is, but it's afraid to walk down the path? Because you just said, the actor, I come from everybody in the show knows that come from the film industry. When I said I was going to be a director and go into the film business, I might as well have just said, I'm gonna run off with the circus. I mean, it was just it was just it was an insanity. So there are paths that are hard, or there's no security involved there. So what do you say to the people who like I really love playing the guitar? And I want to do it for a living but I'm afraid because I got this job as an attorney. And I've built this life up around myself, but I'm Not happy, I'm afraid to make that change that happens happens all the time. It happened to me, I took me a while before I got comfortable doing this, you know, as part of my expression of what I do in this world, but it took me a minute to, to come to grips with that the ego had to let go and all that stuff. So what do you think about that?

Rob Gentile 1:15:22
Yeah, no, Alex, you know, what, here's the thing. We have to live, we live in a we live in a temporal world, where we need the basic, the basics to survive, right? I mean, we, we have to keep a roof a roof over our head, we have children that have to be taken care of we, you know, we have to pay bills, we have to do certain things, in order to, you know, to maintain this existence. So we can continue to work on those things that we're most passionate about, you know, for the attorney who wants to be a professional guitar player, but doesn't want to leave us practice. You know what, man, he can start doing gigs at night, he can, he can find a band to play in, on the weekends, doesn't necessarily have to give up his day job until something breaks. Because you know what, I've got friends, too, that are musicians. And one of my first cousins lives in New York, he's a very successful musician, but went through, you know, 10 15 years of really, really difficult struggles to get there. But you know, what kept the job, parents helped them. So there are things that we can do, to follow our passion, follow our dream, our mission, whatever you want to call it, without just throwing all caution to the wind, you know, and we find ourselves begging on the street, right? So we have to be responsible, and take responsibility for our own actions, but it can be done. You know, I I've got friends that are entrepreneurs, who they work, they worked or their job during the day, they're eight hours in at night, you know, they put two hours aside to building their own business.

Alex Ferrari 1:16:59
You know, I heard the story of Stephen King, the the great author. And I don't know if you know the story of how he got his first book written. But he was writing it on his lap, working at a think of laundry mat, I think he was at, and he had the typewriter on his lap, and he would just type out carry and carry was his first book. And after he wrote it, he was so disgusted by it, and everyone turned it down. Everybody turned it down. Yeah. And he threw it in the garbage. And he's like, I'm done with writing, I'm done with writing, it's over. His wife found it cleaning out the garbage, read it and said, you've got something here, keep going. And that they're still together, by the way. You know, and they've, I mean, so even so, you know, one of the greatest writers of his generation. Yeah, there are struggles there is there's that adversity on finding that mission. And then once you find it, maintaining in having the gumption to keep going and grind it out sometimes. But if you, but if you're happy doing what you're doing, it becomes it becomes easier, but it's everyone's path is so different. Some people just, you see, you hear these lottery tickets, stories of people who's just like, I'm 20, I wrote my first this or I did that, and I'm all of a sudden, I'm a millionaire. I'm like, great, you have a different journey and different path to work. You have other other other struggles to deal with, you know, but now I have a have a fairly profound question for you. And when I was when I was prepping to talk to you, I wanted to ask you this question. Do you have a message for anyone dealing with the loss of a loved one right now, because I know a lot of people who listen to these episodes, especially about near death, they come looking for some sort of solace, they come for looking for some sort of comfort with either someone that just lost or in the process of losing. And they're trying to try to psychologically prepare themselves would deal with the losses. That's already happened. Since you've gone through your experience. Do you have a message for these people?

Rob Gentile 1:19:20
Absolutely. And I think that the best message which you know, I've already talked about is seeing my daughter perfect and whole and having gone through this experience of losing my brother in law, and then you know, losing Molly as well. And how they've come back full circle. And particularly seeing my daughter Maria, perfect and whole and her speaking to me saying Just love me. People have got to understand that we're spiritual beings first having a human experience. And that we'll see that our loved ones again, perfect that whole will be within that most employee Certainly, they're always here with us, spiritually, they're here with us. And it's, you know, when we realize that, that we all come from the same place, we come from this divine love and light. And when we know that we're we go back to that collective, that we're back connected with that web, and we all become one again, and we'll see them again. I mean, if that doesn't give you hope, and ease your pain, ease your suffering, you know, I've been speaking to a couple of different groups, one of them was called helping parents heal. And there are there are a nationwide group, actually, they're expanding even more now. And all of them have either hired a medium in a professional medium, because I know that some people do have that gift. And they've all been able to channel, their children have been able to channel their loved ones. And a lot of documentaries have been made about that as well. And I can just tell you that that's my message, that we're all one, we come from this divine place of love and light, our art, our loved ones are ver in that space, perfect and whole. And I know that sometimes it's hard for us to wrap our heads around them, it's hard for us to grasp it when we're in this temporal world. But that veil is very, very thin. And I connect with it every morning through meditation and prayer. That's how I wrote the book. I've asked for those words to come through me, not from me, some days, nothing came out. But I can tell you that if you focus on it, and you can you find that place where you can just quiet yourself and quiet your mind and get into that space. Those those messages will start to come from you come to you, I know that you'll be able to hear your loved ones, you'll be able to connect with them. And I bet you that people who are listening to this will write in and say, oh, you know, a lot of times, spirit pumps through Wednesday of the Eve, they communicate through one of their favorite animals. They do all kinds of things to connect with us and remind us Angel numbers that they're with us. And they're they're much like Dr. Patel's father kept on pushing her to save me. Much like frosty spoke to me and said, I'm in a good place. And my daughter coming to me. It's there. It's real. Oh, we just have to learn how to connect to it.

Alex Ferrari 1:22:34
I'll tell you, I'll tell you a quick story. I've said it on the show before but I think you'll like this story. I had an aunt who died was I love this. And she was she was a close friend of mine. And she died a few years ago, two, three years ago. And I was two or three days after she passed. I had just been looking through some, some old, I was doing a project and I was looking through some old VHS and I want to put in this VHS I was just scanning to see what was on them. And all of a sudden, there was this video that I don't remember shooting when I was a teenager. And it was like when I was first directing. And I was shot this basically shot Thanksgiving dinner at my father's house. And there she was beautiful young. Having a good time my grandmother was there. People that I have lost was there. We're all there. But it was just such the timing was so ridiculous. Three days after she passed. I was shocked and I that I filmed it on my iPhone. And I sent it out to my family so my family could see because they were like, Oh my god. So it was just really profound moment that I was like, Huh. She used me to get this. It was that her being happy and eating and just you know, it was really a fun time. And I think it was a way of her saying everything's okay. I'm fine. Yeah, it was just it was just, it was so profound. I just couldn't. You just can't say coincidence that three days after she died, all of a sudden, I grabbed the videotape that I've been sitting with me for 25 years. I just happened to go through it. Three days after she passes and then happened to find that footage that I didn't even remember existed.

Rob Gentile 1:24:26
That's crazy. Like I said, like I said, Alan's coincidences are God's way remaining anonymous.

Alex Ferrari 1:24:33
Very much. So. Now, Rob, I'm gonna ask you a couple questions. Ask all of my guests. What is your mission in this life now?

Rob Gentile 1:24:41
So my mission is I work full time is same steel company that

Alex Ferrari 1:24:47
Saved your life that saved your life.

Rob Gentile 1:24:51
So, but you know, so I do this on the side because my mission is to pay it forward to tell the story I can't tell you here's here's the most gratifying part of my life. Alex, by the way, so you know, this being, you don't make money writing a book unless you're, you know, unless you're a famous author. So there's, there's, there's no financial gratitude there. But my gratitude comes from I do one of these podcasts, in the emails that I get from people. And, you know, the sometimes letters, people have mailed me books, and saying, You saved my daughter's life, she heard your podcast that pulled her back from suicide, or I can't tell you how much this meant to me. Because, you know, my my son who passed away, he speaks to me in my dreams. I mean, it's been such a gratifying, beautiful experience. And I'm just getting started, because I'm just now getting getting out there more and more COVID has really slowed me down. But there are so many other organizations that have asked me to come in and in and speak into Intel, the story. And a lot of this was from Mali, kind of pushing me forward to do these kinds of things. Because, you know, it's, it's hard to find time to do them, you got a special needs child, I got a full time job. But to me, it is so important to get this message out, because so many people are hurting. There's so many people in pain, from losing a loved one unanswered questions. Not really, we're not really believing this stuff until something happens catastrophic. You know. So that's, that's my mission, right?

Alex Ferrari 1:26:35
Now, what is the ultimate purpose in life?

Rob Gentile 1:26:37
So for me, I could just speak for me, but the ultimate purpose for me is to grow spiritually, is to learn more and more how to connect with that love and light of the Divine, how to become a better person how to evolve more in that direction. Because, you know, in the end, as you know, when I wrote the book, I kept an urn with not all of us, but partial urn of Frosties ashes, to remind me that in the end, we really do just get reduced to a pile of dust. And so that's all we are, like you said, Aren't we really are just a meat stick without spirit. So it's so important for us to develop this spirituality, but I would call it a spirituality of wholeness of understanding who we are, where we come from, why it's so important, realizing that our real identity comes from God. And when we do that, and learn how to see the divine and everything, it equals freedom, or free, no matter what happens in this life, doesn't matter how much money we earn, or, you know what kind of car we drive or what kind of position we we hold, because in the end, that's all falling. In the end, our spiritual relationship with the Creator is really all we had. That's it.

Alex Ferrari 1:28:08
And, Rob, where can people find your amazing book Quarks of Light and find out more about the work you're doing?

Rob Gentile 1:28:15
They can go to my website, it's robagentile.com. You can find the book on Amazon. Or you can find a book at any bookseller. It's now in any bookseller and the audio book as well on any platform.

Alex Ferrari 1:28:30
Rob, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing your journey and your experience with not only my tribe, but with the world and hopefully this conversation will help a few souls along the way. So I appreciate you my friend.

Rob Gentile 1:28:43
I hope so. Thank you for having me. It's been it's been a pleasure, Alex.