WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Death from Astral Projection 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:06.640 Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. 0:00:06.880 --> 0:00:10.080 Jerry's here to Dave's here in spirit. It's short stuff. 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:13.800 But we're all on the same astral plane. Man, we're 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.400 all here in spirit. That's right. We're tethered by the 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:21.880 silver cord mhm. But otherwise we're just floating around checking 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:28.280 things out. Sure, um, Sure. The reason Chuck's talking like that, 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:32.479 everybody's because we're going to investigate one of the weirdest 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:39.240 occurrences in the annals of UM, both traditional yoga and 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:45.440 UM the New Age movement. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:47.880 put it like that because I think that's pretty accurate. Really, 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:51.320 that's right. We're talking about a man named Robert and 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:56.320 toast Chick. And this is a gentleman who uh it 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.279 was in his late twenties in the mid seventies. He 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.280 lived in an arbor, Michigan. He was, by all accounts, 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.039 a good dude. He was pretty chill. He teached yoga, 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:15.600 teached he taught yoga and why w c A, he's 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:21.040 a vegetarian. He uh was a practicer of kata, te 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:25.639 former marine. Just seemed like an all around good dude. 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:30.440 Very much into esoteric yoga, which is to say, a 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:33.760 large focus on the mind and spirit. And one of 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:37.000 these people that really got into like, Hey, I'm really 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.600 going to start studying with yogis and I'm gonna travel 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:42.560 to India and I'm going to take up fasting and 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:46.120 meditation and give up a lot of my material possessions. 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:48.800 Like went all in on this. Yeah, and he didn't 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.880 just show up in India, you know, eat some like 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:55.960 paneer plock paneer, hang out for a few days and 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:58.200 then come home, like he actually went and studied under 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.680 the yoga master angar Um. So like he really really 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:05.400 was into yoga in the seventies. Like this was not 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.200 the nineties or the two thousands. This is the seventies 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:10.720 when it was like, you know, not the most usual 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:13.160 thing you would find somebody who had traveled to India 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:18.280 to study yoga. Still, so, um, he came back from that, 0:02:18.520 --> 0:02:20.680 from what I can tell, a fairly changed person. And 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:23.800 like you said, he was really interested in esoteric yoga 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.840 and in particular astro projection. And I found a contemporaneous 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:31.440 article which I just used on purpose, um from the 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:36.600 Detroit Free Press in and they called astro projection, astro 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:40.760 projection all one word, and they yeah, they said, it's 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.920 kind of like the Jetson's version of it. But then 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:46.200 they they used it more than once, so apparently they 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.320 thought that's actually what it was called. Um. But with 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:53.760 astro projection or astro projection, I guess, um, if you 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:57.280 if you take it on face value, UM, it's kind 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:01.200 of easy to explain. And that is that when you 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.880 meditate in a certain way, one technique is to focus 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:08.960 on the line between um sleep and wakefulness, and like 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:11.120 really focus on that and try to actually stay in 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:17.440 that space. Um, you will your spirit, your soul will 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:21.600 leave your body. And in that state, your conscious mind 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:24.880 is conscious taking in all of this information and all 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.520 of these sights and sounds and and things. But you 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:30.320 can go anywhere, not just in the world, not just 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:34.040 in the universe, Chuck, but in different dimensions and planes 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:38.680 of existence entirely, all while your soul is still connected 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:41.760 to your body. Right. Yeah, And that's that's the key 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:44.520 that waking consciousness, because it's not like you come back 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:47.440 and say, boy, I really I think my soul left 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.120 my body, but I have no memory of anything, Like 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:55.360 it's floating around metaphorically speaking, and uh, taking all this 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:58.320 in and bringing it home with you. Uh, they have 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:02.920 like in this delusive dreaming because there are some similarities there. Um, 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:06.080 but the the whole key here and I kind of 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:09.120 joked about it earlier, that we're all attached and tethered 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:11.920 by our silver cord. That's what it's called. That's sort 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:16.440 of like an umbiblical chord. When you're astral projecting, that 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:20.760 keeps you, uh tethered like an astronaut to a spaceship, 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:23.160 so you just don't get stuck out in the astral 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:27.000 plane somewhere. Yeah. Um, it is possible for your silver 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:31.120 cord to sever apparently. Uh. One tradition is that when 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.480 you die, like when you're born or when you're conceived 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.440 ice I should say, you're you're the fetus. You as 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:40.360 a fetus is connected to your spirit through your silver 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:43.800 silver cord, and then as you grow in age and everything, 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:46.719 you stay connected. And then finally when you die, the 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:50.240 that silver cord is is separated, so your soul is 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:54.240 separated from your body. Um. But it's possible too for 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:59.000 your silver cord to become accidentally or inadvertently separated. And 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:01.560 that is not something that you want to happen, because 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.400 in this plane of existence, that means that your body 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:08.799 is dead, your spirit is never coming back. It's permanently untethered, 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:13.640 which means it's permanently and forever lost in the astral plane, 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:16.000 in the spirit world, and it will never be able 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.359 to find its way back. And there's a lot of 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:21.200 people who believe in this stuff, who believe that that's 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:25.640 exactly what happened to Robert Antosh Chick, and they actually 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.280 make a pretty good case if you really dive into it. 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:30.279 And I say, we take a break and then dive 0:05:30.320 --> 0:06:00.359 into it, chunk, let's do it all right, it's Robert 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:04.200 and so's chick. That's hard to say. It's hard to 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.680 spell as well. It is whenever you have s c 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:14.039 I'm sorry s z c z y k. I'm not 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.000 seeing any any vowels in there, so that makes it tough. No, 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:19.800 but we got the ant to park down path. Yeah, 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:24.000 that's easy. So. Uh So Bobby A was living in 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:26.880 a house. He had a couple of roommates and it's 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:30.560 June of seventy five, it's a Sunday, and he says, hey, listen, 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.800 I'm gonna go and uh meditate and try an astral 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:37.599 project in here. So you know what that means, roommy's 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.680 I'm tying the the Forever scrunchy on the outside of 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:44.240 my I'm hanging it on my door knob, and that 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:48.200 means do not come in at all, do not disturb me. Please, please, please. 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:52.600 So the roommates were like, whatever, man. And several days 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:56.040 go by, and it becomes Tuesday, and one of the 0:06:56.120 --> 0:06:59.840 roommates finally says, it's been a few days. He has 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:02.120 not come out of his room. Maybe we should go 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:05.599 in there, open the door, and there he is dead 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.400 on his back, but still in a meditative pose. Yeah, 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.520 he's got his thumbs still between his fingers, I think 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:16.440 his index and middle finger. UM. And the medical examiner 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:19.840 who showed up shortly after UM said that he had 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:22.840 a serene expression on his face, but he was in 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:26.320 fact dead and if you examine the body, which they did, 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:29.000 they were like, I don't see any reason he died. 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:33.080 Once they can conducted in autopsy, things got even weirder 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:37.240 because the medical examiner said there was no evidence, no 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.720 trace of anything that might have killed them, no injury, 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:46.320 no disease, UM, and there was such a dearth of clues, 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.880 he said, normally. In the Detroit Free Press, the medical 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:53.960 examiner said, normally there's something that provides some clue. Even 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.040 if it does, it's not like directly pointing at the 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:58.800 mechanism of death. There's something there that I can at 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:02.240 least make a guess. He said, there's nothing here, and 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:04.600 I have no idea. I can't even make a guess 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.200 at why this guy died. It's a total mystery. He 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:10.280 was the picture of health. They even brought in Quincy, 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:13.960 and Quincy, and Quincy had no idea. And if you 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:16.640 don't know who Quincy has just asked your great great grandparents. 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.080 That's not nice. Uh. His stomach had food in it 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:27.920 that was undigested, which would seem to indicate that he 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:31.920 died not too long after the meditation on Sunday, except 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:34.760 food would have been moved through if he had waited 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:37.480 till Tuesday to die after like a three day sash. 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:44.280 And so they said, well did this guy die for meditation? Um, 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:46.840 The medical examiner said, well, that's an interesting idea. Let 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:50.080 me look into that. UM. Not so much interested in 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:53.839 astral projection, because I'm not sure I believe in that stuff. 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:58.000 Because I'm a medical examiner, but there have been reports 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:03.800 of yogi's all over planet Earth that try to um 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.440 regulate and change their heartbeat, like usually slow it down. 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.320 I seem to remember they were like like, on, that's 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:15.280 incredible and stuff. In the eighties there were yogis who 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:17.800 did tricks where they said they could like slow their heartbeat. 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:22.960 Here's the thing, there's never been like super verified accounts 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:26.360 that this is possible to do like with great success 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:29.400 and regularity. I think they there was a yogi once 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:33.240 who did slow his heartbeat for a few seconds. Um, 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:35.880 we're not saying it's not possible, but they just haven't 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:39.320 studied it and proven that a human is capable of that. Yeah, 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:41.640 and I have actually seen a couple of studies that 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.600 do suggest it as possible. But yes, the the it's 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:47.760 not really it's not definitely been disproven. But it also 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:50.120 there's not a whole bunch of support for it necessarily 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:54.160 amongst scientific study, right, But it was enough that it 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:56.640 was enough of at least a rumor or an idea 0:09:57.000 --> 0:09:59.920 that that was a line of thinking that the meta 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:04.480 Colo examiner followed and he posited that it's possible. Robert 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:07.520 in this this meditative state where he was trying to 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.240 ast really project, which, by the way, is considered a 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:15.320 really dangerous um type of meditation among yogi's in the East. Like, 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:18.079 this is not something that you do lightly um And 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.280 having trained and studied in India, Robert probably would have 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:23.480 been a better candidate to do this than the average person. 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:26.280 But it was still dangerous. And so the medical examiner 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:29.120 positive that perhaps he had slowed his heart beat down 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:33.439 so slowly that it just stopped beating to zero. Yeah, 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:36.240 and after a very short while. You would die if 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:38.840 your heart stopped beating. But also you could say, you 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:41.480 could make a case that this would leave no traces 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.280 of itself because the heart would stop beating under death 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:48.240 under any other circumstance too, So if the heart stopping 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:50.960 beating was the cause of death, you would never have 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.640 any idea. Yeah, like it wasn't you could tell if 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:57.400 someone had a cardiac arrest or something. It's it's not 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.560 that it's just slowing down and then the and stops. 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:06.319 So this was a theory, uh that went away because 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:09.400 the official cause of death ended up being and I'm 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:14.400 not laughing, but it was a bit of a It 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:16.240 was a bit of surprise at the end of this 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:19.720 material that you sent me when it said he died 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:24.000 from a cocaine overdose, because it's I did not see 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:26.520 that coming, uh, and his family didn't see that coming. 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:30.959 As friends, his mom all said, there's no way like 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.520 Robert was like the opposite of that. He was a 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:38.560 clean liver and he was he shunned stuff like this 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:43.440 and was really into detoxifying his body, not putting cocaine 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:46.520 into it. Um. The only thing I'll say about that 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:50.199 is like, you never know, like Prince Prince died of 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:57.400 of overdose and he supposedly, you know, was devout religious 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:01.640 individual who shunned medication and then you know, dies of 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:05.800 a what was it? Fitting all? I guess overdose? I 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:09.080 think yea or else it was from oxy I don't know, Yeah, 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:11.720 something like that. But anyway, all that to say like 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:16.080 something could have happened. It was the mid seventies. I 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.600 did see in the material you sent that it might 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:20.560 have been hard to get cocaine and ann arbor and 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:25.080 seventy five. I think that's highly disputable. Well, that's cocaine 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:27.960 in a college town. Seventy five was hard to come by, Okay, 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.079 But let me defend that because that's actually me editorializing. Right, 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:34.520 So cocaine became really popular and it reached like its 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:37.720 first peak of popularity in the late seventies, say like 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:43.360 seventies seventy nine, right, this is v in Michigan, um. 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:46.960 And during that first bout of popularity where cocaine became 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:49.760 a thing in America, it was associated with like wealth 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:55.679 and glamour, not like ascetic living in yoga and vegetarianism. 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:57.520 So I just put it out there because I think 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:00.160 it actually supports the idea that he might note have 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:02.559 done it and that it was just kind of a cursory. 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:04.080 We have no idea, We're just going to say this. 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:07.760 The point is is there's no explanation, Like coverage of 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:11.880 this just drops off. After that that ruling came out 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:14.760 the official cause of death was a cocaine overdose. So 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.640 I can't find and apparently no one can find any 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:20.839 explanation why they said that and how it was backed 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:23.680 up and how they came to that conclusion. Yeah, I'm 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:26.560 with you. I mean, I would think if you died 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:29.600 from a cocaine overdose, there would be some sort of 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.480 trace that a medical examiner would find, right, sure, and 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:35.240 I think a lot of people say, well, I guess 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:38.200 the medical examiner found cocaine in the system and determined 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:41.920 it was enough to kill him. Either way, it's very weird. Again, 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:44.360 it's a one a d that doesn't really jibe with 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:47.480 any other part of this story. And that doesn't mean 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.360 that it's not true. Like you said, you never can tell. 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:53.440 It's entirely possible. And if you use atoms razor, that's 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:56.199 what happened, right. But if you don't use atoms razor, 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:58.800 and you if you're if you believe in astro projection, 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:03.360 you probably aren't a big fan of Vocam's razor anyway. 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:05.920 But if you, if you believe in astro projection, then 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:08.880 what happened to Robert and toast Check is one of 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:11.120 the most hellish things that can ever happen to a 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:15.880 human being, which is his spirit got separated from his body, 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:19.960 his silver cord was severed, and his body is dead 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:22.400 here in this plane, but out there in the astro plane, 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:26.560 his conscious mind is forever trapped to be lost in 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:31.800 wander forever, never to be able to come back. That 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.160 is scary stuff. And also maybe still out there on 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:37.200 the plane, though maybe he is a very happy individual 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:39.960 and some other dimension, let's hope. So, because there's a 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:42.560 lot of astro projectors who come back and um, I'll 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.720 talk about very scary places out there where souls eat 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:48.440 other souls and it's very violent and chaotic. It's not 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:52.720 all like happy hippie stuff. Yeah. So I want to 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:58.480 shout out an article on medium from Nick Repasitrony called 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:02.280 The Hades Environment definitely worth reading. It's about the weird 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:05.520 history of astral projection. Yeah. I don't know if maybe 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:07.680 we should do a full app on that one day. Okay, 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:10.720 maybe we will. But in the meantime, hopefully everybody enjoyed 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.120 the short stuff. Neither way, it doesn't matter now because 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:18.680 short Stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:22.080 production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.440 visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:26.760 listen to your favorite shows.