Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Man, Welcome back to Coast to Coast, George Nori with you.
Speaker 2: Phil Webster is an author. His book is called Letting Glow.
Speaker 2: He's an actor, spiritual seeker, and after living abroad and
Speaker 2: traveling the world for twenty years, he returned to his
Speaker 2: native England back in twenty seventeen and embarked on an
Speaker 2: acting career. At the tail end of the COVID nineteen pandemic,
Speaker 2: an unexplained event coupled with a devastating loss sent him
Speaker 2: down a completely different path forever. We'll talk about that.
Speaker 2: His debut book, Letting Glow, documents his journey into the
Speaker 2: mystical and helps us connect with our highest states of intuition,
Speaker 2: realigning the connection between our thoughts, consciousness and authentic selves,
Speaker 2: and ultimately searching for proof that we survive physical death. Phil,
Speaker 2: Welcome to the program. How are things out there in London?
Speaker 3: George? Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll get here in the middle of a great sum
Speaker 3: of what.
Speaker 2: Was this tragedy that occurred after COVID, Well, so we went.
Speaker 3: Through the pandemic. I guess we don't really need to
Speaker 3: elaborate on that. We've all heard enough about that. So
Speaker 3: I've been based in London for the last few years,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, and my mom lived on a place
Speaker 3: called the Isle of Wight, which is an island of
Speaker 3: the south of the UK, and we've been through all
Speaker 3: the lockdowns, and you know, I was following the government
Speaker 3: guidelines and keeping away and then I would go and
Speaker 3: see her when it would get lifted. But essentially she
Speaker 3: was pretty much on her own for the most part
Speaker 3: of the year. And she was seventy six years old
Speaker 3: and reasonably good health. You know, she had a few
Speaker 3: age related health problems, like her high blood pressure and
Speaker 3: a few heart issues, but I expected to her to
Speaker 3: be around for a while. So I hadn't seen her
Speaker 3: at this point for a couple of months and due
Speaker 3: to again through lockdowns and stuff like that, and we
Speaker 3: went through Christmas of twenty twenty and it looked like
Speaker 3: there was a light at the end of the tunnel
Speaker 3: in terms of COVID and all that stuff, and anyway
Speaker 3: I spoke to her. I would speak to her a
Speaker 3: couple of times a day FaceTime, called stuff things like that,
Speaker 3: and on this particular day, I called her quite late
Speaker 3: at night, it was like nine thirty, ten pm something,
Speaker 3: and I must mention as well that this place where
Speaker 3: she lived was very rual. We didn't have any other
Speaker 3: family there, and I kind of knew everyone that was
Speaker 3: in her media, you know, in her vicinity, like natives
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. So I called her this particular night,
Speaker 3: and actually after the call actually leaned into the screen
Speaker 3: I saw a man leaning again on the other side
Speaker 3: of the screen, which kind of, you know, shocked me
Speaker 3: because again we were in a lockdown. So I was thinking, well,
Speaker 3: who's this guy? And I saw him long enough thought
Speaker 3: I could describe him. He had thinning, gray hair, glasses,
Speaker 3: kind of gaune looking face, probably in his late sixties,
Speaker 3: I would say. And then as she kind of moved away,
Speaker 3: he went out of shop and I said, well, I said, well,
Speaker 3: who's that and she replied who's what? And I was like, okay, well,
Speaker 3: I just saw someone, you know, who's the guy? And
Speaker 3: she said, no, no, that there hasn't been anyone here
Speaker 3: all day. And it just threw me off, you know,
Speaker 3: because I mean I saw the guy and at the time,
Speaker 3: my mind wasn't really going to the supernatural around for
Speaker 3: my bad. I hadn't really there hadn't really been my
Speaker 3: interest for many years. I was living a very sort
Speaker 3: of practical life and I saw them interrupted her and
Speaker 3: I said, but mom, okay, I just saw someone, so
Speaker 3: you know, who was it? And she's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: there's no one here, and she kind of just sort
Speaker 3: of started telling me about her day. And another thing
Speaker 3: I could always tell when there was someone with her,
Speaker 3: because her whole demeanor would change. She would just speak
Speaker 3: a lot more politely, and she would kind of put
Speaker 3: on his airs and graces, you know, and they used
Speaker 3: to kind of drive me nuts. You couldn't get a
Speaker 3: straight conversation out of her. And then I just thought, well, okay,
Speaker 3: I guess I was mistaken. And we spoke for another
Speaker 3: forty five minutes or so, and I thought, okay, well
Speaker 3: that was odd, but it didn't make sense. And then
Speaker 3: the next morning I got a call that she passed away.
Speaker 3: So the whole thing, I mean just took on a
Speaker 3: different meaning for me. And you know, obviously, through the
Speaker 3: initial sort of stages of grief, it wasn't my go
Speaker 3: to concern, but it was kind of sitting at the
Speaker 3: back of my mind for some time, and after a
Speaker 3: couple of months I kind of started exploring the possibilities
Speaker 3: and definitely started learning more about spiritual practices.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you went through that, but it opened up
Speaker 2: the door for a lot of other things, didn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. It's a very strange one, you know, because
Speaker 3: obviously I'd rather my mom was still here, but my
Speaker 3: life has just taken a completely different direction now, and
Speaker 3: and it's almost as though a parting gift from her
Speaker 3: in a way.
Speaker 2: What kind of acting have you done?
Speaker 3: Oh so ill? He's the word acting very lightly when
Speaker 3: I when I was flat on myself. So this was
Speaker 3: something I've lived aboard for a long time. And I
Speaker 3: came back to the UK and I thought, all right,
Speaker 3: what would I really love to do if I could
Speaker 3: sort of tap into my old itself or something like that,
Speaker 3: you know what, what would he be proud of me doing?
Speaker 3: And and I've always been obsessed with movies, so acting
Speaker 3: seemed like a logical way to get into that industry.
Speaker 3: It wasn't really out of a need to perform or
Speaker 3: be seen or anything like that. But I went to
Speaker 3: drama school in my early forties and then very quickly
Speaker 3: got a few roles. You know, I would kind of
Speaker 3: walk on and deliver a line and then walk off again,
Speaker 3: and then that scene would get cut and then But
Speaker 3: you know, that's kind of the fast couple of years.
Speaker 3: But but it's been fun. I've had a lot of
Speaker 3: great experiences and met and worked with some amazing actors
Speaker 3: like Stallone and you know, Beneedictum about things like that.
Speaker 3: So it's been, it's been, it's been. It's paid the bills.
Speaker 3: But I must admit the last couple of years now
Speaker 3: my direction is sort of is very much leaning away
Speaker 3: from that, and you know, towards kind of the whole
Speaker 3: thing that I've wrote about.
Speaker 2: What got you to write in Letting Glow?
Speaker 3: What What? What prompted? It was essentially that experience with
Speaker 3: my mum. You know, after a couple of months, I
Speaker 3: was actually working on a movie. At the time. I
Speaker 3: was working on one of these big Marvels superhero things.
Speaker 3: Doctor Strange Too was the movie. Yeah, And I was
Speaker 3: kind of oblivious to her, to be honest, you know,
Speaker 3: I was. I pretty much started on a movie like
Speaker 3: two days after my mom passed, and I've been waiting
Speaker 3: for this for a long time. There was a good
Speaker 3: stretch of work, and you know, work had been pretty
Speaker 3: quiet through the whole pandemic. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do it and it will keep me
Speaker 3: busy and and and I pretty much didn't speak to
Speaker 3: anyone for two months on the set, and then one
Speaker 3: day I told her. I told a young lady the
Speaker 3: story that I just told you, and she said, well,
Speaker 3: obviously that was a spirit guide or you know, your guide,
Speaker 3: or your mum's guide, or somebody letting you know that
Speaker 3: she was about to pass. So that and she she
Speaker 3: suggested that I asked the sign. So I did ask
Speaker 3: for a sign, and they started coming kind of thick
Speaker 3: and fast, and very quickly. One thing led to another,
Speaker 3: which seemed like coincidences, but in hindsight, I looked as
Speaker 3: though it was some sort of I don't know, there
Speaker 3: was some symmetry to it. And then I started learning
Speaker 3: about mediumship, and yeah, I just thought, I'm going to
Speaker 3: document this journey and see where it ends up. So
Speaker 3: the book is kind of my personal journey through grief
Speaker 3: and then opening up to spiritual practices, and then the
Speaker 3: theory of the reader could take the journey with me.
Speaker 2: Is the title Letting Glow sort of a takeoff of
Speaker 2: Letting Go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, you know, I you know, it starts with
Speaker 3: my mom passing with the story that I just told you,
Speaker 3: and then by the end of it, I learned so
Speaker 3: much and the help so much as well, particularly around mediumship.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's kind of a play on that.
Speaker 2: What have you learned about the other side at this point, Phil.
Speaker 3: I've always I've always kind of used to be on
Speaker 3: the fence with it. When I was a kid, I
Speaker 3: was very much you know, as a lot of us
Speaker 3: are into into ghosts and this and that, you know,
Speaker 3: and then as I got older, I kind of got
Speaker 3: are more practice call, you know, sort of daily life
Speaker 3: took over and I sort of put those things to
Speaker 3: the side. But since writing this book and then learning
Speaker 3: about medium medium ship myself, and initially watching mediums work
Speaker 3: and getting messages, then it it's been undoubtedly, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, this is real. You know, there's there's
Speaker 3: no sort of question in my mind from some of
Speaker 3: the messages that I've received myself on mediums and then
Speaker 3: watching them work with other people also, and then learning
Speaker 3: about being one myself and actually given people evidence also,
Speaker 3: I mean I'm very much of the early stages of
Speaker 3: my development. I'm not officially given readings or asking for
Speaker 3: anyone anyone for any money or anything like that. But
Speaker 3: the initial you know, readings that I've been given. Again,
Speaker 3: these things come out of the blue. I don't know
Speaker 3: what I'm giving to a person, and I've had confirmation
Speaker 3: out to confirmation, so there seems to be something to it.
Speaker 2: You have ignored a lot of spiritual signs your entire life,
Speaker 2: talk a little.
Speaker 3: Bit about Yeah, definitely, So that's that was it again,
Speaker 3: And I sort of I keep going back to the
Speaker 3: original story. But but as I opened up to this idea,
Speaker 3: that really prompted me to look at other things that
Speaker 3: had happened throughout my life. And it seemed that every
Speaker 3: few years there would be something like this that would
Speaker 3: come up and I would ignore it. You know, I think, okay,
Speaker 3: well that was odd.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I feel that when a lot of us have these
Speaker 3: experiences that they're they're there, you know, and you know
Speaker 3: it happened, but sort of the again, your logical brain
Speaker 3: takes over and the next day you're thinking, well, what
Speaker 3: was that or did that really happen or you know,
Speaker 3: and we sort of question it, and and that's what
Speaker 3: I've done for years. But it was seemed that every
Speaker 3: five years or so something would pop up. I mean,
Speaker 3: when I was a kid, there was a lot of
Speaker 3: paranormal activity around the house. And again as I got older,
Speaker 3: I thought, did that really happen? You know? And then
Speaker 3: also as a teenager, I experienced astral projection, which I
Speaker 3: purposely invoked at the time. And then again years went
Speaker 3: by and I kind of questioned it, and then I
Speaker 3: sort of started piecing all these together, and it seemed
Speaker 3: like again every few years, something was kind of tapping
Speaker 3: me on the shoulder. And then it almost seems as
Speaker 3: though I was, without sounding too grandiose, somewhat destined to
Speaker 3: go on this journey.
Speaker 2: The subtitle to your book, phill is A Guide to Intuition, Spirituality,
Speaker 2: and Living Consciously. Tell me about the intuition portion of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that, you know, we all have these
Speaker 3: moments of intuition, right, so you know, you talk to people,
Speaker 3: We have instances where you can walk into a room
Speaker 3: and say you can cut the air with a knife,
Speaker 3: or you get a gut feeling, or we can't quite
Speaker 3: put our finger on it, and we all have these
Speaker 3: these terms. But as soon as you start using words
Speaker 3: like clear sentience or clay audience and then people kind
Speaker 3: of look at you like enough for those same people
Speaker 3: would agree that, you know, they've got a gut feeling
Speaker 3: about something. So I think, is it just a question
Speaker 3: of semantics. We're essentially talking about the same thing, and
Speaker 3: I think when we tune into it, and then life
Speaker 3: definitely becomes richer. Through learning about mediumship, I'm beginning to
Speaker 3: realize that you're kind of gone with the first thing
Speaker 3: that comes well than over questioning everything, you know, with
Speaker 3: all the force that come in, I believe that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: when we sort of tap into our intuition and become
Speaker 3: comfortable with it, things seem to flow a lot more comfortably.
Speaker 2: Was there ever a time in your life where you
Speaker 2: doubted where you are today?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Definitely. I think through my late twenties, pretty much
Speaker 3: off in my thirties, I kind of developed a very
Speaker 3: cynical attitude towards life, and there were definitely periods of
Speaker 3: time where I was thinking, Okay, there's nothing to any
Speaker 3: of that. You know, we're just this lucky accident that
Speaker 3: you know, as a just as biological thing that's walking
Speaker 3: around and we live and we die and I and I, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I sort of developed that attitude through probably the environment
Speaker 3: that I was in. I was running bars and miccups
Speaker 3: for a while, and that whole thing comes with a
Speaker 3: bunch of cynicism, I think. But gradually, as I as I,
Speaker 3: as we came to where we are now, I've sort
Speaker 3: of started somewhat slowly opening up to it again. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I have no doubt now that it's absolutely more to
Speaker 3: this than what we see.
Speaker 2: And you confuse doctors because originally they diagnosed you with psychosis,
Speaker 2: didn't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, so this is a whole other thing. And
Speaker 3: again just going back to ignoring things. So a few
Speaker 3: years ago, around that period of time that I just
Speaker 3: mentioned in my thirties, I was living in Helsinki in
Speaker 3: Finland in northern Europe, and I woke up one morning
Speaker 3: and around this time, I was again running by the clubs.
Speaker 3: I was probably partying a little bit too much. I'm
Speaker 3: probably a little bit too old to be doing that
Speaker 3: as well. That's that point. But I woke up one
Speaker 3: morning and it wasn't any particular special morning. I wasn't
Speaker 3: really I wasn't hungover or anything like that despite all
Speaker 3: the stuff going on around me. I remember having this
Speaker 3: thought of time being nonlinear, and I'm sure we've all
Speaker 3: had this thought, and I'm definitely not the first person
Speaker 3: to talk about it. But all of a sudden, something
Speaker 3: something switched. It was as though people talk about connecting
Speaker 3: with the moment of now, and it was just something
Speaker 3: just shifted in my consciousness and as though I was
Speaker 3: suddenly outside of myself observing my thoughts, and it was
Speaker 3: I can't emphasize how overwhelming it was, to the point
Speaker 3: of being almost terrifying. It was suddenly now, you know,
Speaker 3: And it was like now, now, now, all the time,
Speaker 3: I couldn't just suddenly switch off and think what I
Speaker 3: was going to do later that day or what I've
Speaker 3: done the night before. And it was as though I
Speaker 3: was suddenly trapped in this moment of now, and I thought, okay, well,
Speaker 3: this was it was too much, and I remember thinking
Speaker 3: it would go off, I could walk it off. But
Speaker 3: it continued, and it continued for a few days, and
Speaker 3: I just couldn't, you know, just drift off and sort
Speaker 3: of go into autopilot, and and it was making my
Speaker 3: work suffer. I was trying to explain the fans what
Speaker 3: I was going through, and they rightly looked at me
Speaker 3: like I was possibly nuts. And eventually I went to
Speaker 3: see a doctor and I said, okay, I truly feel
Speaker 3: like I'm kind of losing my grip on reality. And
Speaker 3: they use the word psychosis, which just amplified the terror.
Speaker 3: And this kept going on. So it was going on
Speaker 3: for months. I went to see another doc. Survey started.
Speaker 3: He met anti anxiety pills just didn't touch its sleeping pills.
Speaker 3: And eventually, and probably towards I would say, the six
Speaker 3: month mark, and not to take this down the dark path,
Speaker 3: but I was thinking, well, if this is the way
Speaker 3: that my brain's working now, then I just I'm not
Speaker 3: this doesn't work for me anymore, you know. And I
Speaker 3: ended up going to see a psychiatrist, and thankfully he
Speaker 3: was the one person that seemed fully equipped to deal
Speaker 3: with whatever it was I was going through. And he said, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: So this.
Speaker 2: Is he picked up on that, didn't he?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Immediately he said, he said, you're you're having an
Speaker 3: awakening and I was like, okay, well, well what's that?
Speaker 3: And he started talking about things like traumatic sickness and
Speaker 3: sort of rights of passes. Back in the day and
Speaker 3: he started using and he called me a mystic, which
Speaker 3: I felt very uncomfortable with at the time, and I
Speaker 3: was like, ok.
Speaker 2: Now it's a compliment.
Speaker 3: Film well, yeah, absolutely, But at the time, again, my
Speaker 3: head wasn't in this as now and I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, we'll just make this stop. And he gave
Speaker 3: me a few meditations, very sort of basic grounding meditations,
Speaker 3: and that really brought me back very quickly, and I
Speaker 3: would say over the rest of the year, I sort
Speaker 3: of slowly sort of got back to normal, you know,
Speaker 3: and rejoined the herd, got on with my work, and
Speaker 3: I sort of put it behind me. But it was
Speaker 3: a really powerful experience, and again I didn't really connect
Speaker 3: it with any sort of spirituality until recently.
Speaker 2: You know, would you say this, this mystical journey has
Speaker 2: made you a changed person, a better person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely that that experience in itself really smashed my
Speaker 3: ego to pate to pieces.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: At the time, I was kind of like living this
Speaker 3: very shallow, self absorbed life, I would say, and I
Speaker 3: felt that the ego was the first casualty. You know.
Speaker 3: I was genuinely worried for my mental health at the time,
Speaker 3: and I came out of that kind of thinking, not
Speaker 3: swelling the small stuff anymore, you know, like work and
Speaker 3: everything sort of took a backseat. And that was around
Speaker 3: the time where I came to the UK and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: what would I really want to do work wise and
Speaker 3: looked into acting and it did definitely did seem to
Speaker 3: sort of brush all of the you know, less important
Speaker 3: worris aside and make me appreciate that you know.
Speaker 2: All that God is now your second chapter you devote
Speaker 2: to the Ouiji board. Tell me about that, all right.
Speaker 3: So when I was a kid, I would say sixteen seventeen,
Speaker 3: I grew up on this place called the Isle of Wight,
Speaker 3: that where my mom lived. And it was the nineties,
Speaker 3: so we didn't really have that much to do. We
Speaker 3: didn't have any Internet or anything like that at the time.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think a few of us dabbled with
Speaker 3: a Wigi board and a friend that myself kind of
Speaker 3: really got into it and we would carry on doing
Speaker 3: it and we definitely connected with something. And once again,
Speaker 3: this is one of those things that as time went on,
Speaker 3: I thought, well, what was that, you know, But in hindsight, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think we definitely tapped into something, but I also
Speaker 3: believe that we weren't prepared for it in any way.
Speaker 3: Since learning about mediumship, I believe that intention is really everything,
Speaker 3: and what you bring to the table is what you're
Speaker 3: going to experience, you know. And I think in those days,
Speaker 3: as fragile egos and you know, angstuly teenagers that we were,
Speaker 3: we probably weren't in the best environment to start messing
Speaker 3: around with something like that. So yeah, we definitely connected
Speaker 3: with something and it was a very interesting experience, a
Speaker 3: very scary experience at the time. But yeah, I think
Speaker 3: my views on that have changed now. I haven't touched
Speaker 3: a week aboard since, but I'd be kind of interested
Speaker 3: to maybe look into that from from this new perspective.
Speaker 2: Now, I think weg boards and the wrong hands can
Speaker 2: be pretty dangerous to people, aren't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that was my experience. I didn't know
Speaker 3: what was happening at the time, and it there was something,
Speaker 3: something happened and it was out of my control, and
Speaker 3: that was very scary in itself, and I didn't know
Speaker 3: how to shut it down or making stuff and it
Speaker 3: wasn't it wasn't you know. When I'm not talking Hollywood
Speaker 3: movie kind of events or anything like that. But something
Speaker 3: was around. Yeah, but something was around, like undoubtedly to
Speaker 3: me at the time. With this knowledge, well, from what
Speaker 3: I've learned now, I would say again, I've spoken to
Speaker 3: mediums that are you know, that have been doing this
Speaker 3: for years, who were actually fine with them. You know,
Speaker 3: they're they're really about bringing the intention to it, and
Speaker 3: if you're going with with with good intentions and protection,
Speaker 3: then they can be from what I've heard, can be
Speaker 3: a positive experience. But that being said, I wouldn't advise
Speaker 3: anyone to just go messing around to them.
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