Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Speaker 1: Jerry's here to Dave's here in spirit. It's short stuff.
Speaker 1: But we're all on the same astral plane. Man, we're
Speaker 1: all here in spirit. That's right. We're tethered by the
Speaker 1: silver cord mhm. But otherwise we're just floating around checking
Speaker 1: things out. Sure, um, Sure. The reason Chuck's talking like that,
Speaker 1: everybody's because we're going to investigate one of the weirdest
Speaker 1: occurrences in the annals of UM, both traditional yoga and
Speaker 1: UM the New Age movement. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put it like that because I think that's pretty accurate. Really,
Speaker 1: that's right. We're talking about a man named Robert and
Speaker 1: toast Chick. And this is a gentleman who uh it
Speaker 1: was in his late twenties in the mid seventies. He
Speaker 1: lived in an arbor, Michigan. He was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: a good dude. He was pretty chill. He teached yoga,
Speaker 1: teached he taught yoga and why w c A, he's
Speaker 1: a vegetarian. He uh was a practicer of kata, te
Speaker 1: former marine. Just seemed like an all around good dude.
Speaker 1: Very much into esoteric yoga, which is to say, a
Speaker 1: large focus on the mind and spirit. And one of
Speaker 1: these people that really got into like, Hey, I'm really
Speaker 1: going to start studying with yogis and I'm gonna travel
Speaker 1: to India and I'm going to take up fasting and
Speaker 1: meditation and give up a lot of my material possessions.
Speaker 1: Like went all in on this. Yeah, and he didn't
Speaker 1: just show up in India, you know, eat some like
Speaker 1: paneer plock paneer, hang out for a few days and
Speaker 1: then come home, like he actually went and studied under
Speaker 1: the yoga master angar Um. So like he really really
Speaker 1: was into yoga in the seventies. Like this was not
Speaker 1: the nineties or the two thousands. This is the seventies
Speaker 1: when it was like, you know, not the most usual
Speaker 1: thing you would find somebody who had traveled to India
Speaker 1: to study yoga. Still, so, um, he came back from that,
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, a fairly changed person. And
Speaker 1: like you said, he was really interested in esoteric yoga
Speaker 1: and in particular astro projection. And I found a contemporaneous
Speaker 1: article which I just used on purpose, um from the
Speaker 1: Detroit Free Press in and they called astro projection, astro
Speaker 1: projection all one word, and they yeah, they said, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like the Jetson's version of it. But then
Speaker 1: they they used it more than once, so apparently they
Speaker 1: thought that's actually what it was called. Um. But with
Speaker 1: astro projection or astro projection, I guess, um, if you
Speaker 1: if you take it on face value, UM, it's kind
Speaker 1: of easy to explain. And that is that when you
Speaker 1: meditate in a certain way, one technique is to focus
Speaker 1: on the line between um sleep and wakefulness, and like
Speaker 1: really focus on that and try to actually stay in
Speaker 1: that space. Um, you will your spirit, your soul will
Speaker 1: leave your body. And in that state, your conscious mind
Speaker 1: is conscious taking in all of this information and all
Speaker 1: of these sights and sounds and and things. But you
Speaker 1: can go anywhere, not just in the world, not just
Speaker 1: in the universe, Chuck, but in different dimensions and planes
Speaker 1: of existence entirely, all while your soul is still connected
Speaker 1: to your body. Right. Yeah, And that's that's the key
Speaker 1: that waking consciousness, because it's not like you come back
Speaker 1: and say, boy, I really I think my soul left
Speaker 1: my body, but I have no memory of anything, Like
Speaker 1: it's floating around metaphorically speaking, and uh, taking all this
Speaker 1: in and bringing it home with you. Uh, they have
Speaker 1: like in this delusive dreaming because there are some similarities there. Um,
Speaker 1: but the the whole key here and I kind of
Speaker 1: joked about it earlier, that we're all attached and tethered
Speaker 1: by our silver cord. That's what it's called. That's sort
Speaker 1: of like an umbiblical chord. When you're astral projecting, that
Speaker 1: keeps you, uh tethered like an astronaut to a spaceship,
Speaker 1: so you just don't get stuck out in the astral
Speaker 1: plane somewhere. Yeah. Um, it is possible for your silver
Speaker 1: cord to sever apparently. Uh. One tradition is that when
Speaker 1: you die, like when you're born or when you're conceived
Speaker 1: ice I should say, you're you're the fetus. You as
Speaker 1: a fetus is connected to your spirit through your silver
Speaker 1: silver cord, and then as you grow in age and everything,
Speaker 1: you stay connected. And then finally when you die, the
Speaker 1: that silver cord is is separated, so your soul is
Speaker 1: separated from your body. Um. But it's possible too for
Speaker 1: your silver cord to become accidentally or inadvertently separated. And
Speaker 1: that is not something that you want to happen, because
Speaker 1: in this plane of existence, that means that your body
Speaker 1: is dead, your spirit is never coming back. It's permanently untethered,
Speaker 1: which means it's permanently and forever lost in the astral plane,
Speaker 1: in the spirit world, and it will never be able
Speaker 1: to find its way back. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who believe in this stuff, who believe that that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened to Robert Antosh Chick, and they actually
Speaker 1: make a pretty good case if you really dive into it.
Speaker 1: And I say, we take a break and then dive
Speaker 1: into it, chunk, let's do it all right, it's Robert
Speaker 1: and so's chick. That's hard to say. It's hard to
Speaker 1: spell as well. It is whenever you have s c
Speaker 1: I'm sorry s z c z y k. I'm not
Speaker 1: seeing any any vowels in there, so that makes it tough. No,
Speaker 1: but we got the ant to park down path. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's easy. So. Uh So Bobby A was living in
Speaker 1: a house. He had a couple of roommates and it's
Speaker 1: June of seventy five, it's a Sunday, and he says, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go and uh meditate and try an astral
Speaker 1: project in here. So you know what that means, roommy's
Speaker 1: I'm tying the the Forever scrunchy on the outside of
Speaker 1: my I'm hanging it on my door knob, and that
Speaker 1: means do not come in at all, do not disturb me. Please, please, please.
Speaker 1: So the roommates were like, whatever, man. And several days
Speaker 1: go by, and it becomes Tuesday, and one of the
Speaker 1: roommates finally says, it's been a few days. He has
Speaker 1: not come out of his room. Maybe we should go
Speaker 1: in there, open the door, and there he is dead
Speaker 1: on his back, but still in a meditative pose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got his thumbs still between his fingers, I think
Speaker 1: his index and middle finger. UM. And the medical examiner
Speaker 1: who showed up shortly after UM said that he had
Speaker 1: a serene expression on his face, but he was in
Speaker 1: fact dead and if you examine the body, which they did,
Speaker 1: they were like, I don't see any reason he died.
Speaker 1: Once they can conducted in autopsy, things got even weirder
Speaker 1: because the medical examiner said there was no evidence, no
Speaker 1: trace of anything that might have killed them, no injury,
Speaker 1: no disease, UM, and there was such a dearth of clues,
Speaker 1: he said, normally. In the Detroit Free Press, the medical
Speaker 1: examiner said, normally there's something that provides some clue. Even
Speaker 1: if it does, it's not like directly pointing at the
Speaker 1: mechanism of death. There's something there that I can at
Speaker 1: least make a guess. He said, there's nothing here, and
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I can't even make a guess
Speaker 1: at why this guy died. It's a total mystery. He
Speaker 1: was the picture of health. They even brought in Quincy,
Speaker 1: and Quincy, and Quincy had no idea. And if you
Speaker 1: don't know who Quincy has just asked your great great grandparents.
Speaker 1: That's not nice. Uh. His stomach had food in it
Speaker 1: that was undigested, which would seem to indicate that he
Speaker 1: died not too long after the meditation on Sunday, except
Speaker 1: food would have been moved through if he had waited
Speaker 1: till Tuesday to die after like a three day sash.
Speaker 1: And so they said, well did this guy die for meditation? Um,
Speaker 1: The medical examiner said, well, that's an interesting idea. Let
Speaker 1: me look into that. UM. Not so much interested in
Speaker 1: astral projection, because I'm not sure I believe in that stuff.
Speaker 1: Because I'm a medical examiner, but there have been reports
Speaker 1: of yogi's all over planet Earth that try to um
Speaker 1: regulate and change their heartbeat, like usually slow it down.
Speaker 1: I seem to remember they were like like, on, that's
Speaker 1: incredible and stuff. In the eighties there were yogis who
Speaker 1: did tricks where they said they could like slow their heartbeat.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, there's never been like super verified accounts
Speaker 1: that this is possible to do like with great success
Speaker 1: and regularity. I think they there was a yogi once
Speaker 1: who did slow his heartbeat for a few seconds. Um,
Speaker 1: we're not saying it's not possible, but they just haven't
Speaker 1: studied it and proven that a human is capable of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I have actually seen a couple of studies that
Speaker 1: do suggest it as possible. But yes, the the it's
Speaker 1: not really it's not definitely been disproven. But it also
Speaker 1: there's not a whole bunch of support for it necessarily
Speaker 1: amongst scientific study, right, But it was enough that it
Speaker 1: was enough of at least a rumor or an idea
Speaker 1: that that was a line of thinking that the meta
Speaker 1: Colo examiner followed and he posited that it's possible. Robert
Speaker 1: in this this meditative state where he was trying to
Speaker 1: ast really project, which, by the way, is considered a
Speaker 1: really dangerous um type of meditation among yogi's in the East. Like,
Speaker 1: this is not something that you do lightly um And
Speaker 1: having trained and studied in India, Robert probably would have
Speaker 1: been a better candidate to do this than the average person.
Speaker 1: But it was still dangerous. And so the medical examiner
Speaker 1: positive that perhaps he had slowed his heart beat down
Speaker 1: so slowly that it just stopped beating to zero. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and after a very short while. You would die if
Speaker 1: your heart stopped beating. But also you could say, you
Speaker 1: could make a case that this would leave no traces
Speaker 1: of itself because the heart would stop beating under death
Speaker 1: under any other circumstance too, So if the heart stopping
Speaker 1: beating was the cause of death, you would never have
Speaker 1: any idea. Yeah, like it wasn't you could tell if
Speaker 1: someone had a cardiac arrest or something. It's it's not
Speaker 1: that it's just slowing down and then the and stops.
Speaker 1: So this was a theory, uh that went away because
Speaker 1: the official cause of death ended up being and I'm
Speaker 1: not laughing, but it was a bit of a It
Speaker 1: was a bit of surprise at the end of this
Speaker 1: material that you sent me when it said he died
Speaker 1: from a cocaine overdose, because it's I did not see
Speaker 1: that coming, uh, and his family didn't see that coming.
Speaker 1: As friends, his mom all said, there's no way like
Speaker 1: Robert was like the opposite of that. He was a
Speaker 1: clean liver and he was he shunned stuff like this
Speaker 1: and was really into detoxifying his body, not putting cocaine
Speaker 1: into it. Um. The only thing I'll say about that
Speaker 1: is like, you never know, like Prince Prince died of
Speaker 1: of overdose and he supposedly, you know, was devout religious
Speaker 1: individual who shunned medication and then you know, dies of
Speaker 1: a what was it? Fitting all? I guess overdose? I
Speaker 1: think yea or else it was from oxy I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that. But anyway, all that to say like
Speaker 1: something could have happened. It was the mid seventies. I
Speaker 1: did see in the material you sent that it might
Speaker 1: have been hard to get cocaine and ann arbor and
Speaker 1: seventy five. I think that's highly disputable. Well, that's cocaine
Speaker 1: in a college town. Seventy five was hard to come by, Okay,
Speaker 1: But let me defend that because that's actually me editorializing. Right,
Speaker 1: So cocaine became really popular and it reached like its
Speaker 1: first peak of popularity in the late seventies, say like
Speaker 1: seventies seventy nine, right, this is v in Michigan, um.
Speaker 1: And during that first bout of popularity where cocaine became
Speaker 1: a thing in America, it was associated with like wealth
Speaker 1: and glamour, not like ascetic living in yoga and vegetarianism.
Speaker 1: So I just put it out there because I think
Speaker 1: it actually supports the idea that he might note have
Speaker 1: done it and that it was just kind of a cursory.
Speaker 1: We have no idea, We're just going to say this.
Speaker 1: The point is is there's no explanation, Like coverage of
Speaker 1: this just drops off. After that that ruling came out
Speaker 1: the official cause of death was a cocaine overdose. So
Speaker 1: I can't find and apparently no one can find any
Speaker 1: explanation why they said that and how it was backed
Speaker 1: up and how they came to that conclusion. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: with you. I mean, I would think if you died
Speaker 1: from a cocaine overdose, there would be some sort of
Speaker 1: trace that a medical examiner would find, right, sure, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people say, well, I guess
Speaker 1: the medical examiner found cocaine in the system and determined
Speaker 1: it was enough to kill him. Either way, it's very weird. Again,
Speaker 1: it's a one a d that doesn't really jibe with
Speaker 1: any other part of this story. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it's not true. Like you said, you never can tell.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible. And if you use atoms razor, that's
Speaker 1: what happened, right. But if you don't use atoms razor,
Speaker 1: and you if you're if you believe in astro projection,
Speaker 1: you probably aren't a big fan of Vocam's razor anyway.
Speaker 1: But if you, if you believe in astro projection, then
Speaker 1: what happened to Robert and toast Check is one of
Speaker 1: the most hellish things that can ever happen to a
Speaker 1: human being, which is his spirit got separated from his body,
Speaker 1: his silver cord was severed, and his body is dead
Speaker 1: here in this plane, but out there in the astro plane,
Speaker 1: his conscious mind is forever trapped to be lost in
Speaker 1: wander forever, never to be able to come back. That
Speaker 1: is scary stuff. And also maybe still out there on
Speaker 1: the plane, though maybe he is a very happy individual
Speaker 1: and some other dimension, let's hope. So, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of astro projectors who come back and um, I'll
Speaker 1: talk about very scary places out there where souls eat
Speaker 1: other souls and it's very violent and chaotic. It's not
Speaker 1: all like happy hippie stuff. Yeah. So I want to
Speaker 1: shout out an article on medium from Nick Repasitrony called
Speaker 1: The Hades Environment definitely worth reading. It's about the weird
Speaker 1: history of astral projection. Yeah. I don't know if maybe
Speaker 1: we should do a full app on that one day. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe we will. But in the meantime, hopefully everybody enjoyed
Speaker 1: the short stuff. Neither way, it doesn't matter now because
Speaker 1: short Stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a
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