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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio. Okay,

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Speaker 1: welcome back to Coast to Coast. Let me tell you

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Speaker 1: about our guest. Nick Seneca Gentle is an award winning

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Speaker 1: thought leader, author, philosopher, professional speaker, transformation catalyst, leadership futurist,

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Speaker 1: and educator, develop original thinking programs and powertools, and possesses

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Speaker 1: the way of ensuring pioneering organizations, leaders and people across

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Speaker 1: the planet transforming themselves, their problems and our world. He's

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Speaker 1: also the co founder of the Sustainable Innovation Leadership Development

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Speaker 1: and personal transfer transformation company called Switch On. A couple

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Speaker 1: of his books include Switch On and Spiritual Atheist. Nick

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the program, looking forward to this. Thank you

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Speaker 1: so much, me too. How did you get involved in

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Speaker 1: what we would call the phenomena of the supernatural, deja vous,

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Speaker 1: near death experiences and things like that when you seem

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Speaker 1: to have a very practical, somewhat scientific background. Well, great question.

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Speaker 1: I mean I noticed myself getting information about the world

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Speaker 1: that I couldn't explain easily from a young age, but

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Speaker 1: I kind of pushed it aside because I was very

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Speaker 1: wedded to a traditional scientific view of the world. But

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Speaker 1: I actually got more and more into it professionally by

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Speaker 1: my work as an innovation consultant and creative consultant for

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Speaker 1: large companies and anyone who does innovation work. So what

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Speaker 1: I mean innovation, I mean helping companies develop new products,

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Speaker 1: whether a new radio show or a new business digital

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Speaker 1: app or something. You start to get really interested in

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Speaker 1: where did these ideas come from? So you're in a

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Speaker 1: room with twenty people and suddenly have a breakthrough which

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Speaker 1: makes a sense of everything, and it's kind of working

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Speaker 1: on different levels, and suddenly everyone goes yes, that seems

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Speaker 1: to be the answer, and then you start to think, well,

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Speaker 1: where does that come from? And anyone who does that

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Speaker 1: kind of work long enough, whether you're an artist as

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Speaker 1: in a painter or a sculptor, or an artist in business,

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Speaker 1: you start to get very curious about the source of creativity.

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Speaker 1: And that's sort of the big sort of stepping point

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Speaker 1: for me. But there were other breadcrumbs along the way,

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Speaker 1: strange what young will call synchronicities, strange meaningful correspondences that

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Speaker 1: I only realized were breadcrumbs when I look back, and when, Ah,

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Speaker 1: I've been given breadcrumbs to follow the whole journey. And

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Speaker 1: when you started probing this, when did you begin to

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Speaker 1: realize there's something to this, that maybe near death experiences

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Speaker 1: are happening, Maybe there is dejah wo, maybe there is precognition. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of a long journey because I had to

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Speaker 1: first challenge my own core philosophy, which has anyone has

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Speaker 1: ever tried to do? That is actually quite difficult to

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Speaker 1: do because we don't believe it's a philosophy. We believe

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Speaker 1: it's just the truth. So Hugh, just don't believe anything

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Speaker 1: other than what science can tell you. Then you don't

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Speaker 1: even believe that's the set of assumptions or ideology. But

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Speaker 1: luckily I studied philosophy of science during my science training,

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Speaker 1: and that discipline teaches you that science doesn't progress within

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Speaker 1: one paradigm. It progresses through different paradigms as indifferent ways

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Speaker 1: of thinking about what the scientific data is telling you.

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Speaker 1: And so I started to question my professional slash philosophical assumptions.

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Speaker 1: But I was also going through my own personal breakdowns

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Speaker 1: and burnouts at the same time, which I believe are

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Speaker 1: also part of the way what I would call the

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Speaker 1: universe helps you rethink yourself is to give you really

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Speaker 1: difficult personal situations. And between the two of those personal

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Speaker 1: situations and what I was doing to heal myself and

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Speaker 1: my own professional and philosophical thinking, somehow within that a

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Speaker 1: few years, an alchemy occurred, and then I had a

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Speaker 1: profound transformation in both myself as a person and my

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Speaker 1: role in the world as a thinker and doer. And

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Speaker 1: then from that lots of stuff came very quickly philosophically,

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Speaker 1: emotionally in my personal life, in my corporate life that

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Speaker 1: made stuff that makes sensive at all. Tell me about

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Speaker 1: the tonal ritual atheist. It wasn't the first title for

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Speaker 1: the book, but it seemed to really capture people's interests.

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Speaker 1: It's like, how does that work? So Spiritual Atheist is

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Speaker 1: a philosophical memoir. I call it of my life from

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Speaker 1: about the age of fifteen when I became an old fashioned,

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Speaker 1: hardcore scientific atheist. Actually during a sermon I was asked

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Speaker 1: to give as a fifteen year old in a synagogue,

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Speaker 1: and it includes up to my journey and sort of

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Speaker 1: my breakthrough out of atheism into what I now call

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Speaker 1: spiritual atheism. As I specual atheists is a way of

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Speaker 1: saying that I believe there's a philosophy that anyone can

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Speaker 1: have that allows for both a real belief in science

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Speaker 1: as a great way of understanding the world we see

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Speaker 1: outside us, and spirituality is a great way or the

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Speaker 1: best way of understanding what happens inside us. And I

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Speaker 1: mean by that spiritual practice, medication, etc. Etc. And that

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Speaker 1: you can bring those two together within us, and not

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Speaker 1: just that. It even goes further to say, until we

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Speaker 1: bring those two together, the spiritual and the atheistic, the

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Speaker 1: science and the consciousness, the mind and the matter. Until

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Speaker 1: we bring them together, we can't fully thrive either in

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Speaker 1: our own lives or in our lives as professionals and leaders.

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Speaker 1: And that's really the rub is that we need science

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Speaker 1: and that we also need the study of consciousness internally

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Speaker 1: together to understand the one universe that we're part of.

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Speaker 1: Can you be an atheist and believe in the supernatural?

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Speaker 1: It depends what you mean by believe in the supernatural.

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Speaker 1: And the word supernatural I find interesting as well, because

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Speaker 1: I've definitely experienced a whole range of synchronicities, deja vus,

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Speaker 1: information coming to me that I shouldn't be able to know,

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Speaker 1: and for me, that's a sort of lived fact. Then

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Speaker 1: you can go into science and go, well, there's actually many,

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Speaker 1: many cases now documented of all sorts of uncanny experiences.

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Speaker 1: So that's scientific fact. And but my philosophy that I

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Speaker 1: put into this book, it says, well, do we have

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Speaker 1: to believe that somehow supernatural or maybe that's just how

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Speaker 1: nature is. Maybe nature has a connectivity within consciousness that

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Speaker 1: is different from the way that we see connectivity happen

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Speaker 1: in matter, like in balls touching each other in traditional

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Speaker 1: scientific materialism, And so maybe we don't have to even

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Speaker 1: think about the supernatural at all, which as a natural

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Speaker 1: skeptic gets my you know, racist my hackles, you know,

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Speaker 1: you know, magic and and darkness and all these sort

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Speaker 1: of things. But if you go a hoold in a minute,

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Speaker 1: if consciousness is separate from matter but still always connected

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Speaker 1: to it, and that we know consciousness seems to have

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Speaker 1: a fluidity of it, and we seem to be able

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Speaker 1: to pick up on other people's consciousness but also consciousness

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Speaker 1: in different times of future and past, maybe that's the

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Speaker 1: interior connectivity that science will never be able to fully

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Speaker 1: understand from its world, but it can certainly understand where

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Speaker 1: it happens, and it can take a create evidence of

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Speaker 1: where these things happen, And so maybe we don't have

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Speaker 1: to think of it as supernatural. Maybe that's just what

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Speaker 1: nature does. Nature is connected in our interior mind, in

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Speaker 1: our hearts and minds, in a way that you can't

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Speaker 1: see in a microscope. Do you have any doubts at

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Speaker 1: all that the topics that we're going to talk about tonight? Exist?

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Speaker 1: Have you? Have you concluded now that this is all real?

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Speaker 1: I do have doubts that some of the things purported

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Speaker 1: to be you know, SUPERSI or SI phenomena might exist,

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Speaker 1: because I think it's very easy to go from what

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Speaker 1: I recall a fairly well thought empirical experience, like a

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Speaker 1: new depth experience. Absolutely, we've seen them occur. We can

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Speaker 1: we can model them, you know, we can. We can,

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Speaker 1: we can take records of them. And then there's a

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Speaker 1: it's a but a hop skip and a jump to

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Speaker 1: then a kind of a worldview that that I think

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Speaker 1: distorts those experiences into a into a different way. So

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Speaker 1: I think there's a very fine line between what I

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Speaker 1: recall a sort of naturalist or expanded sense of nature.

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Speaker 1: So picking up on past experiences seems to me absolutely plausible.

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Speaker 1: Picking up on the future in the moment seems absolutely

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Speaker 1: plausible to me. But I believe there's a there's a

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Speaker 1: I believe the system is designed to help us rather

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Speaker 1: than um for it to be used to serve us

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Speaker 1: as in a sense. So for me, it's like, ask

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Speaker 1: not what you can do with super psychic abilities, but

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Speaker 1: ask what super cybrities can help you do to serve

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Speaker 1: the world. And as soon as we get into people

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Speaker 1: trying to leverage these powers for sort of magic and

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Speaker 1: power over people, I think we've lost lost the path.

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Speaker 1: And that's a really important distinction. Tell me a bount

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Speaker 1: your thoughts on deja vu and how this fits into it. Next,

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Speaker 1: some psychiatrists will say that deja vu maybe a medical

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Speaker 1: situation temporal lawb epilepsy. But those saints psychiatrists, by the way,

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Speaker 1: I was a medic on the path of being a psychiatrist.

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Speaker 1: Ah okay, I came out of that that world view.

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Speaker 1: I mean, some psychiatrists in the seventies and eighties were

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Speaker 1: still claiming that the yoga and the states you can

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Speaker 1: access to yoga were psychotic states. So we've got to

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Speaker 1: always remember that there is a way of speaking about

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Speaker 1: all of these experiences. In the experience that I've had

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Speaker 1: regularly of being at one with my universe, you know,

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Speaker 1: the experience of spiritual enlightenment, there's a way of dismissing

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Speaker 1: all of it by saying it's just an exotic brain state.

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Speaker 1: In fact, not just that, as a psychotic brain state,

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Speaker 1: and there's something wrong with you if you experience these things,

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Speaker 1: including you know, the dream stakes we all go in

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Speaker 1: and out of every night and every morning. So there

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Speaker 1: is a that's the way that scientists like to diminish

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Speaker 1: people who study consciousness by saying, basically you're nuts nuts

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Speaker 1: or there's a medical issue or something like that, I

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Speaker 1: mean exactly, and there probably can be. There's probably a

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Speaker 1: fine line between someone who spends a lot of time

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Speaker 1: in these states who then loses the ability to function

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Speaker 1: in this world, in the material world very easily. And

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Speaker 1: I know people who are very they hang out a

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Speaker 1: lot in the you know, in the dream lands of

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Speaker 1: various different different ways, and they do find it hard

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Speaker 1: to live in this land. And then maybe a way

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Speaker 1: that suddenly becomes over the threshold of a of something

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Speaker 1: we call a disease. And there's now some research that

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Speaker 1: show that people who hang out who are very imaginative

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Speaker 1: and very creative and access that part of their brain

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Speaker 1: and that part of consciousness in a very extreme senses,

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Speaker 1: that is psychosis. But that brings up a really interesting

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Speaker 1: idea of what does psychosis really mean? Is it actually

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Speaker 1: wrong or bad? Or is it just a very extreme

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Speaker 1: state that we can all get to and those people

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Speaker 1: find it hard to come back into this world? Is

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Speaker 1: sure God factor in any of this? Nick? Well, there

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Speaker 1: is and there isn't so for me. God in the

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Speaker 1: spiritual atheist philosophy or worldview, God is the living, dynamic

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Speaker 1: adaptive system of intelligence and complexity. That is, we are

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Speaker 1: all part of in every moment inherently and that and

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Speaker 1: this is the important bit that can guide our action

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Speaker 1: in the moment by giving us information, whether through deja

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Speaker 1: vous or synchronous to any of these other forms, that

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Speaker 1: can help us move ourselves towards a state of thriving

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Speaker 1: if we can spot the signals, and that includes deja vu,

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Speaker 1: that includes um you know, possibly may include information from dreams,

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Speaker 1: sure the universe saying here, pay attention to this today.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

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Speaker 1: one am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am

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Speaker 1: dot com for more