击碎记忆冠军现实的秘密遥视实验｜尼尔森·德利斯The Secret Remote Viewing Experiment That Broke A Memory Champion's Reality | Nelson Dellis

What is going on here? This is wild. I was just minding my own business, being a memory guy, winning championships, breaking records, teaching people. It had become my career. I got on the call with a guy and right off the bat he said, "Have you ever heard of remote viewing?" And I was like, "No." I must have sounded so dumb. I didn't know. Then he asked me, "Have you heard of the Stargate program?" And I was like, "Yeah, I think I've heard about this." Maybe I went down some rabbit hole one night on YouTube, but it never really stuck with me.

He then started to go into what it means and what remote viewing is. My first instinct was like, "Okay, this is a scam. He's going to start asking me for money or something."

Yeah.

But he didn't.

There are more chapters to this journey. You guys eventually go to Monroe Institute. You do the Gateway Retreat. You have some, let's just call them very interesting experiences.

Yeah. When I got there, I one of the first days I said to a person that I had made friends with and I said, "Hey, before we go to our little CHEC unit, she was in an upstairs room. I was in the corner here. Write down a four-digit number, put it on your desk." And the goal being to go and try to float over there and see it. And my whole session was around trying to perceive that number. And I remember the first like must have been the first 30 minutes.

I'm just nothing. I'm very relaxed. It's like I and I almost like relaxed and let go of this expectation. And that's when I started to see like things that ping my ears where I saw kind of a wall and then it opened again and I was looking at a desk, a wooden desk

And I could see this card, this note card that had four digits on it.

Nelson, you're truly one of the most brilliant and impressive minds I've ever encountered. And I know that you're going to reject that, which makes it even more true. but for people that don't know, man, you're a multi-time US memory champion, but on top of that, you've become interested in a lot of things that I am like very very centrally interested in. the psi, what's going on with consciousness itself, all of this stuff.

And in particular, you have this like insane story about becoming interested in remote viewing. So, it's going to be a fabulous conversation, man.

Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on your show. It was a pleasure getting to hang with you recently on Chris's tour. but yeah, thanks for the compliments. and yeah, I would love to dive further into that. for your audience, where where do you want to start?

Yeah. No, it's truly well deserved, man. I think we have to start with remote viewing because also for people that don't know, you and Chris are really good friends. You've been friends for I don't How did you guys meet, by the way?

Yeah, I mean that's part of this whole story, too. I mean, I had

Dabbled with remote viewing already before Well, no, no, it was after, but it plays a part into Chris and I getting closer. But, I he you know, he's a magician. He's interested in the mind. so, he was

I don't know how he found me, but he was looking for something about memory. You know, a lot of magic tricks involve a memorized stack. a Mnemonica stack is a very common one where it's just like a fixed order that magicians all use. And, you know, however you get it memorized is up to you. But, nobody has a technique for it. They just take as long as they need to memorize it. There are other stacks that have like a kind of hard to notice, but an order that help you memorize it. But either way, I think he was interested in memorizing for real quickly cards. So, he found me on Instagram and reached out to me.

And it was a funny story cuz I had a friend growing up. Well, he wasn't even a friend. A close friend of mine, a female friend had a boyfriend who was terrible to her. and his name was Chris Ramsey. So, I had to hang out with a Chris Ramsey like

20 years ago. Never liked the guy, but she was, you know, she couldn't get out of the relationship. So, when I saw Chris Ramsey in my inbox on Instagram, I was like, "What the heck does this guy want?" Like, my god. but it had a check mark next to it. So, I was like, "What did this what has this guy been up to? He's like,

Yeah,

Crushing it." No, it was the puzzle guy. So, I didn't know Chris, but I had definitely seen his videos and I was like, "Oh my god, my channel was just starting,

Kind of gaining some traction." I was like, "Oh, this would be amazing if he wants to work together." And he did. He wanted to learn from me. We did a couple videos. He flew me up there

And that's that's where it all started.

That's funny. Doing the repair work, resurrecting the good name of the Ramsies of the Chris Ramseies. But yeah, no, I ask because early on in Chris's channel, your guys' collaboration is actually what turned me on to his work in general. And that series that you guys did on remote viewing and going to Monroe Institute

Really lit a wick within, you know, my wonder because so so this was very early on in the days of Chris's channel Area 52. You know, it's become well known as this massive podcast now, but early on it was all centered around these big investigations which were essentially like these documentary deep dives on different subjects. And the one that you guys collaborated on was remote viewing Monroe Institute and sort of a I guess sort of an amalgamation of psi stuff.

There's just an overwhelming amount of evidence that says that this is a real thing.

I am the former operations and training officer for the Department of Defense Stargate program.

My name is Joseph McMoneagle. I was the first one recruited for the Stargate program. It was another kind of like crack in my reality and it's like I really don't know anything.

I fully believe what he is telling us. I got to rethink my world view now.

My unconscious has been doing something I have no idea. But now it's about ready to go.

That is a psychic disincentive right there.

I don't if that's true. What does that mean about the universe? But it primarily revolved around out of body stuff and remote viewing. And your story, man, about how you got sort of like recruited in this weird sort of like gray market way to start doing remote viewing is just so wild, dude. So, please tell that story.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I'll share that story and then weave it into how Chris kind of played a part after that. yeah, I was just minding my own business being a memory guy. I had been doing it at that point when I got into that when was that was yeah about 10 11 years I've been doing memory training you know nothing supernatural about what I do just practical memory training and thinking in my mind and you know storing information maybe that's paranormal to some extent we can get into that later but I never thought that you know it's just like we all have memory this is just a very structured, organized approach and that's what I had been doing, winning championships, breaking records, teaching people had become my career and over the years there's been people who approached me to documentaries you know to speak to groups, schools, companies and then there's always kind of like curious projects that have come at my footstep

My doorstep and for example like joining a card counting team. That was a fun experience. I wanted to get a group, a rag tag group of memory athletes and have them

Learn blackjack count card counting techniques and use memory techniques to have an extra advantage. so I'm always open eared to things that people might approach me for for the use of memory that I might not even think of. So that's I'm I'm saying that because that's this is what that was. there was a Facebook group that I'm a part of where they posted a very not cryptic but just very vague post about, you know, side work for a memory athlete that there was a firm or some company looking for a couple memory athletes to do some part-time work.

That's literally all it said. And I don't even know if I remember the name that had posted it. I was just curious you know like a side gig part-time memory stuff. Like how hard could it be? That's kind of cool.

So, I just typed my name in as a comment and then I got my I got an email back from someone saying, "Yeah, when can you talk blah blah blah where where they think at that point they told me it was an investing firm and or trading firm and then yeah, I got on the call with a guy who right out the bat just said, you know, have you ever heard of remote viewing?" And I was like, "No, I must have sounded so dumb."

You know, I just like I'd know. I didn't know. So he then further kind of explained he's like or questioned me, "Have you heard of the Stargate program?" Then I was like, "yeah, I think I'd heard about this." I don't know where I'd heard about it. Maybe down some rabbit hole one night on YouTube or something, but it never really stuck with me. It wasn't anything that I took seriously.

He just kind of wasn't interested in as

Like, "Oh, wow. That would be cool if it was true, but I don't believe it."

But anyways, he then started to go into what it means and what it was and what remote viewing is. And I was really like, my first instinct was like, "Okay, this is a scam. He's going to start asking me for money or something. Invest in me and go through this pro whatever, you know, something."

Yeah.

But he didn't. he was like, "We will pay you." you know monthly and then they were going to train me how to remote view. They had a coach, they had hired a coach, a memor a remote viewing coach

And they were going to have me work for a month every day. and there was another memory athlete involved too.

Actually a good friend of mine. We discovered that we were both kind of working on this thing and I'll talk about him later because he's interesting.

Anyways, we worked Yeah. So, sorry to interrupt. Has he come out to be like publicly that he was part of this as well?

No.

Okay. So, yeah, he's from

You could probably guess what country, but you can guess. He's from a country where they are very by the book very rigid and and stuff like this does not does not work that way.

And I think his reputation also he was very concerned about it whether it got out. So he, you know, made sure that I didn't share and I haven't shared. but

Wow.

Yeah. He didn't have the same experience I did. He was very good. Apparently his results were better than mine. But he and we talked about it a lot, but he always said, you know, it was just luck, you know, confirmation bias, you know, he or you know, small sample size. He just

Yeah.

I was like, okay. Anyways,

That's really interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. So ultimately I worked for a month with this guy. and then the what we were training for eventually was to remote view or do associative remote viewing for daily tasks that would be for predicting the market. you know this this trading firm was owned by some guy who I never met honestly. I never even talked to him. I was talking to his underlings and they must have had a lot of FU money that they wanted to like try different things with and they had a team of remote viewers who I didn't meet. I only knew my other memory athlete guy. I guess the other people were not memory athletes

From what I understood. but we were joining that team and what they would do is they would collect we would each do a session before the market. I forget if we did it before the day ended for the next day or be must have been that I wasn't too involved in like how my results were being applied. I just did the task. but they would pool our results kind of to get more you know,

And this was like a few years ago now, right? Like this wasn't just like if they're like why are the details foggy? He's a memory champion. He should remember exactly how this went. It's probably something. Yeah,

I just wasn't I was just wasn't brought in the loop. Like I did my task. I was going to be given a portion of the of the earnings. but it became very clear that this group was not very organized cuz I never saw any of the results like I kept asking like can I see have we started earning you know like how are we doing and how are we doing as a group? how am I doing? And I got information about how I was doing, but not necessarily the group.

So, and it actually fizzled out pretty quickly. I remember that year I ended up going to Everest in May. So, I started training. I trained for the month of February and then we started doing these weekly tasks. I think we did three a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. something like that. And then it

We didn't say this already, but Nelson also climbs mountains. I love to climb mountains.

Yes. So I was on an expedition that year and still kept it up. I was really into it.

I should back up a bit in a moment just to talk about my experience there. But I was really into it at that point and didn't want to stop and thought I was part of something kind of life-changing for me that I discovered this thing and was starting to kind of believe in it. but then the tasks started being less regular, the communication got worse, and then it just no no silence, like nothing. and there ended up being something that happened

With the CEO of the company that I don't really want to talk about because it was

Kind of

Yeah,

Like legal stuff, right?

Legal stuff. Nothing to do with remote viewing or anything, CA, nothing like that. It was just like u he was involved in some shady stuff.

Super scary.

And I think he went to prison. So

Wow.

I wanted to back the way.

I mean it sort of makes sense that if you're doing like really weird

Attempting Yeah. below the belt potentially unscrupulous things to try to you know get a get an advantage in the market. Maybe you're also open. I mean, there's a big chasm between various different things, but but we won't we won't get into that.

But it wasn't a like he I got paid. I got paid in crypto, which I still have. but they paid at least during the training. I never got any money from the earnings on their fund. But I was told that the fund that

We remote viewers were working with was 1.1 million.

So it was sizable,

You know. which was why it was enticing. But who knows? Maybe

That's what it grew to or that's where it started or

That's what it started. That was the bankroll or whatever you want to call it, however you want to position it. but my experience going through it, you know, the first thing I thought when I signed up for this because my wife was like, "Don't do this. This is a waste of time. It sounds like a scam." I was like, "No, no, no. They're going to pay me." And she was like, "Yeah, sure. Sure. There's going to be an ask. It's going to be you paying them."

Yeah.

And you're doing something that doesn't even exist. She doesn't really believe in that stuff. Neither neither did I. But then we you know I did a few sessions and I was just like you know what if I get paid which I think I will be cool make a few bucks and then I'll have a cool story you know like how wild that I got pulled into this and you know whether it's totally bogus or ends up being something cool. but I remember the first few sessions just being like this is so ridiculous like I'm pulling [ __ ] out of my ass. That's what it feels like, you know, that

I kept asking him like, "What am I where am I getting information like out of out of nothing, you know?" And he's like, "Yeah, that's precisely it." And you know, all this this paranormal woowoo jargon that I was just like not prepared for. but I went along, you know, and did everything that he told me. And then I started to get little hits here and I'd of course fight it and be like, "What's going on here?" you know, is he setting this up subliminally and I'm getting them right? He's leading me to these answers and, you know, or maybe it's just

Confirmation bias or just like actually just luck. but then I started to get hits that were just too impossible to explain away. not that I would get everything right, but I was pretty good. I think my success my hit rate was like 58% or something like that. and then in remote associative remote viewing, you know, you're basically choosing between two outcomes and two images that you're remote viewing and then judging yourself which image outcome A which represents outcome A or outcome B

Which then translated behind the scenes to the market or or the specific stock going up or down, right? A binary case.

And I would get it right 58% of the time. you know, if you're truly guessing, it should be closer to 50. was the sample size high? I mean, we didn't really get to do How many did I do? I mean, it must have been when we're actually doing stuff, you know, I worked through like June or something. So, it was three or so a week, you know, it wasn't many. So, you know,

Let's let's back up just a little bit and bring people up to speed on the differences in these different kinds of remote viewing because I think what most people imagine is, you know, there's like the sort of coordinate remote viewing sort of military tasking or you're trying to view or get information from a distant source.

And that is one kind of remote viewing and that's what most people know of. But also alongside that in the project Stargate days, which again, why not? Let's back up further and talk about that for a minute. there's this formerly classified program started in the 70s at SRI, Stanford Research Institute, under these two physicists, Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ. Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, the story goes, eventually start collaborating with this psychic named Ingo Swann. And this guy, Ingo Swann, essentially helps them develop this technique of psychic spying that they later call remote viewing.

Psychics, who were referred to as remote viewers, took part in a wide range of operations from locating hostages kidnapped by Islamic terrorist groups to tracing the paths of fugitive criminals within the United States. Now, in the world of remote viewing, one name stands out. Ingo Swann.

Ingo Swann claims to have used this astral body to travel to distant planets. He tells us how it feels to travel in this energy body.

This individual was instrumental in the development and advancement of remote viewing as a technique and helped bring it to the attention of the US government. Swann, a renowned artist and psychic, is often credited with developing the first systematic approach to remote viewing in the 70s. He had already gained some fame for his psychic abilities and was approached by scientists at SRI to participate in the research on psychic phenomena.

He soon began to work with Dr. Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, two of the leading researchers in the field of parapsychology. It was at SRI that Swann developed his unique approach to remote viewing, which he called coordinate remote viewing,

That they later call remote viewing. And there's actually I've I've found us some interesting history lately that shines a light on groups that were probably connected to the US intelligence apparatus doing this before this, which is very interesting.

Yeah. you probably actually have heard of this because you said you started to read Phenomena by Annie Jacobsen, but early on in that book, she talks a lot about this guy Andrija Puharich or however you say that name.

Dude, I've been talking to this guy Greg Malloi on the show. once one episode that's out, another one that's about to come out.

And dude, he he was essentially doing remote viewing in these weird like he'd put people in the Faraday cage.

Yeah. get get them in a hypnotic state or in a very slow brainwave state and query them with questions oftentimes trying to get them to access information from distant places or out of people's minds. and he is so he's a documentarian who has a documentary coming out on Puharich and he said that there's just a library of tapes and recordings of just insane stuff like hypnosis channeling sessions, remote viewing type stuff. And I asked him, I'm like, "Dude, do you think you are sitting on some potentially classified stuff?" And he's like,

"Yeah, 100%." and we both just laughed because it's it's just insane like how he stumbled into all this information. But the thing the bow on on all of this stuff is

The standard story if you it's even in phenomenon I believe is you know Puharich is doing this stuff before this SRI crew invents remote viewing

And but he's around and they're aware of him and he's sort of in the orbit. He ends up collaborating with Geller. they also sort of distance themselves from Uri Geller because you know he has this very

We'll just say controversial reputation as both a stage magician and somebody who claims to have actual psychic abilities. Y

But they distanced themselves from him. There's actually footage of Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff at in Austin with Puharich and Uri Geller. which is Yeah. So so there's more connections there than they want to admit. And Greg also uncovered I think an invoice or a receipt from SRI of them paying to Puharich. So it's actually it's more connected than people think. But but anyway, sorry for the for the for the sidebar, but but anyway, so that's sort of the story is in the 70s you have this protocol called remote viewing that gets developed and it's extremely controversial at the time, but it does well enough that it persists for like decades. And basically every intelligence agency uses them and their team to try to get intelligence.

Seemingly it goes from this small group at SRI into the army's hands under the DIA later and keeps going for for years and years after that. That's where you get these people like Joe McMoneagle, Paul Smith, etc., etc. So, so that's sort of the setup and along the way there are multiple kinds of remote viewing and multiple kinds of protocols developed. So, the one you're talking about is associative remote viewing. C can you explain a little bit how that how that works exactly?

Yeah. and I should even mention that like, you know, I think I think what Ingo Swann did that popularized remote viewing. I mean, it just gave some kind of extra sensory perception a name and a

Right protocol like a list of steps to do it to hand over to someone and teach them. and I think from that as it kind of permeated through different departments and programs, you know, there's different styles of it. and even today if you find someone teaching remote viewing there's probably different approaches but generally it's the same idea you know that you're obviously coming up with intuition thoughts from your intuition and painting a picture you know through without kind of naming things descriptive things. So you know people do it in different ways. The guy that taught me, I think he came from Ed May or Ed Dames.

Ed May or Ed Dames. Yeah. Not Ed. Not Ed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ed May. Someone else.

Yeah. And so he came from a different kind of branch of that.

Some poo poo that way, others, you know, find it the same. What

It's funny, but it's all it's all kind of the same. But anyways,

Yeah, and we should sorry sorry to interrupt again, but we should after this we should sidebar into Ed Dames because he passed away recently.

He did.

And yeah, he did. and to your point, yeah, he's a very controversial part of this school of remote viewers. And you and Chris actually met him, right?

Or was it just Chris?

No, no, we went together. He was he was the first

Person we got a hold of that agreed to spend time with us. And yeah, we spent a whole day and a half with him. great nice guy. Had some crazy wild ideas.

But we all do.

Well, well, he's known as the guy who had an obsession with anomalous or esoteric targets.

That's true. Yeah.

Yeah. So when he was at Fort Meade with all these other remote viewers, he would often be like he he would try to have them he would task them when they weren't doing anything like try to remote this

UFO thing that happened, try to remote view

You know the Ark of the Covenant, try to remote view all these distant planets and stuff like that, which

Is super interesting.

Yeah. Like why not, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. But yeah, but then these guys who were more results-oriented and sensitive to the idea that your bias, your desire is going to start to contaminate the results obviously. And plus, you're never going to get the feedback on whether this can be real or not. Yeah.

Yeah. You see, you don't know. You know, like true remote viewing, you get feedback like are you correct or not?

It contaminates the results, obviously, and you're never going to get feedback on whether this can be real or not.

Yeah. You see, you don't know. You know, true remote viewing,

You get feedback like are you correct or not? And I mean, even according to Ed May, he thinks that all you're doing is just seeing that result in the future. so if you don't get the feedback, you're not going to be able to remote view well or at all.

But yeah, so the associative remote viewing is a way to take this remote viewing protocol but apply it to things that could happen in the future. and there's ways to do it for situations that don't have just two simple outcomes, but that's the easiest. I'll give you some examples later about doing it for things that are more than binary, but you know, so things like sports betting is a great example.

Whether a team wins or not, whether you know a player hits their the their expected points or not, you know, or if the stock goes up or down. and the way it works is that there's a tasker like there would be in any remote viewing task where they you know choose a task number and it and some well see this is what so sometimes these are set up differently where it's ideally even the tasker would be by not

Right they wouldn't know

Would they be blind right to what the actual result or the target is but they would assign it. but in associative remote viewing, you have a task number where the remote viewer will do the task will try to remote view like they usually would. But behind the scenes, there's two outcomes, outcome A and outcome B. And I think I was never a tasker, so I I've only done this kind of

By myself to play around with associative remote viewing, but I kind of just have ment I say mentally out loud, or out loud on paper, what outcome A is, you know, team A, team whatever wins, and what outcome B is, they lose, right? Or the other team wins. And then there's some randomizing of some image for each situation that the remote viewer doesn't doesn't see. And they do their session and then afterwards they're revealed each photo and ideally an independent party will judge based on a myriad of factors some kind of scoring system how accurate your session was to either photo A or photo B. And whichever one scores better, that's your your prediction, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so to just sort of try to summarize what you said for myself and for for everyone else. So, you would get a tasking which is a meaningless thing that represents

Yeah. something get a number six

Right

To eight digit number

And then with associative remote viewing the way you turn this into a binary is there are two predetermined images or objects or something that are different from one another. So let's just say I choose a ball and I choose a pencil like two very different shaped things. Unbeknownst to Nelson or whoever the remote viewer is, the pencil represents the market will go up. The ball represents the market will go down.

So he does his remote viewing session. And again, he doesn't know he's supposed to be either viewing a pencil or a ball. But whatever his impressions are sort of closer to, right, is what is what you end up choosing or whatever the person behind the scenes ends up taking your choice to make. So if he draws something long and skinny that's the that's closer to a pencil so that means market will go up. If he draws something closer to a ball that means the market goes down or the sports team loses or whatever.

Is that essentially right?

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah. And you know sometimes the the results wouldn't favor either or and sometimes you just count it as a pass you know because there's nothing really convincing. you know, we had a threshold of what percentage, you know, from the scoring would favor one or the other. You know, if it was like over 70% scoring wise for photo A, then that's pretty confident that it's a in this case, but if it was like 50/50,

We would just say or even like 51, you know, 49 say like no, never mind. That's why we have numerous viewers because

That inevitably happens and you know we want to keep rolling the ball for each

Trade. So, you know, just because someone has a pass, hopefully the whole session isn't for the group isn't terminated, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. So, at what point, you know, you mentioned your skepticism going into it. You mentioned you believe that you were 58ish% accurate, but you have this friend who who you also respect who's also a memory athlete who is not convinced.

Yeah.

That this was anything real. So at what point do you start coming around to the idea that there might be something to this? That these psi capacities, these ESP capacities, are probably real?

Yeah. I should be very clear that I'm still not 100% convinced.

Yeah,

I'm more convinced than not that there's something there, but I it fluctuates, man. I go through ups and downs, you know, and it's obviously tied to my results, you know, like when I miss a lot, it's kind of like what am I doing, you know? Like this doesn't feel like anything, but then I get a hit and it feels like almost like a download. like like I wouldn't say it's 100% like I'm not blindly like this is a thing.

I'm I have a high confidence that there's something going on but it fluctuates and it varies depending on how my results are how my life is going.

Yeah.

You know because I never allowed room for this kind of stuff growing up. I've always been very matter-of-fact and materialist. you know it only started to come into question when I agreed to do this program and started to have these results and couldn't explain these results and if I allow for remote viewing to be real what does that say about everything that I've built my whole worldview in my life so it was a very confusing challenging part of my life to deal with that but interesting you know like I I think at the root of everything I've always wanted to find the answer to the meaning of life and why we're here and consciousness and having what I thought was the way things were questioned. I think it's great. It's very welcome to me to think like that.

So but there were some sessions I had mentioned before that really like gave me goosebumps and those were some of the pivotal moments that made me shift from kind of like ah this is some quackery you know to wait there's something here to

What is going on here like this is wild you know I think I shared this on Chris's and I first deep dive on on remote viewing where it It was a picture of a whale breaching.

Mhm.

And you know it was just a regular one of our training sessions. He gave me a task number.

I started doing the multiple steps that he had taught me. and by that point I was a few weeks in. So we were pretty deep. It wasn't just very surface level descriptions and a light sketch. It was many levels where we start with that. we do multiple sessions for multiple parts of what we're seeing. and it gets very deep. pages and pages of of notes. And this one,

You're kind of in the zone.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You get kind of get deeper and deeper. which is cool because at first you kind of like hit little notes of a target, but there's a lot of noise. but then you pick apart these individual hits, and go deeper and kind of recursively do that process. And in this one session, I had kind of three parts to it. One was something that was more like horizontal, wet, kind of like a landscape kind of thing.

Then another part was this life form. and then a third part was again more kind of wetness, but it was kind of like this movement rather than just like a fixed thing. so going down the rabbit hole on each one, further kind of dissecting each, I ended up describing for the animal some kind of I didn't say whale, but it was some kind of I had the words blubber breaching you know large like had I don't think I used the word fins, but had these kind of appendages popping out.

And then when I sketched it, I had it kind of like arcing this way with it's and I didn't know it was a whale when I said this. I'm just at this point I've trained myself to really not name anything and just describe and then afterwards I can look at what everything in my session and then decide, oh yeah, it's kind of like a whale. and then the surface thing ended up being, when I put it all together, kind of like a wavy ocean, you know, like an ocean surface.

And then the movement thing, watery, was like dripping mist water, you know. and then when I put it all together, it was this whale breaching out of the ocean with like a turbulent surface, ocean surface, kind of like a gloomy, damp weather, gray.

And off of the breaching whale was this kind of mist dripping that you could see in the photo. And when I saw that photo after I drew my sketch, it was I think I shared it. it's on my website as well. but to me, you know, and I after every session, I had always I was always told to score it out of 10, like how I feel about it. And I was so hard on myself, I'd give myself a one, maybe half a point out of 10 most times.

Sometimes when it was like actually a good session, I'd probably say three or four, but this one was the first where I was just like, you know, I said seven. I think I even said seven and a half, which,

You know, it's basically a 10, you know. Yeah. could there have been more? And was there was there noise that wasn't correct? Sure. But there was so much correct with it. And of all the things it could have been and those details that I got, there was no way it was anything else but me actually connecting to

Yeah.

This whatever it was, you know.

Yeah, dude.

So, at this point, you haven't seen the photo at all,

Right?

This is your drawing. We have the what looks like water. You never called it water, but what looks like water and waves. something coming out. we got things coming off it and then we have this dripping

Nature setting in pleasant weather. I was off there

With two distinct things in the image. One is a life form of sorts, breaching, with movement in and out. A second thing is more wet and sticky, falling from up to down.

It was a whale breaching.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You and you have your sketch.

Yeah. And to me that was worthy of something being it was worthy of me stopping to say something is happening here.

I mean that's a borderline ontological moment right because you

It's one thing to consider a possibility it's another thing to experience something very strange and reorienting for yourself. I mean, we we'll get into this like later on in the conversation with other anomalous things that we've or I'm not I'm not sure if you've exactly experienced, but I believe you've experience some form of and when it happens, it's just so insane that you have this moment of like, holy [ __ ]

Even though I have never experienced that in my life up until now, at least unequivocally, I think we all have like weird premonitions or like kind of borderline precognitive dreams or whatever,

But when it really happens like I am purposefully trying to do something like this and boom, it it happens in a way that just defies all the odds. And yes, you can make some sort of like law of large numbers kind of argument and odds, but but when it actually happens to you, that is deeply unsatisfactory. like like I think it's like you know somewhere deep down when it's when it's probably not that and when it's something that's truly strange and like I said ontologically reorienting.

So I'm also curious you know like what for also for people that don't know the procedural

Elements of this you're you're not sitting there in like a meditative state you know with your eyes closed and not moving. You have a piece of paper in front of you. you're you're sort of like scribbling down impressions, right? And drawing shapes and giving overall summary gestalt sorts of ideas and then you're kind of drilling down into something that that feels correct or something to that effect, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Like when you were doing this particular target,

Was there a point where you really settled in on, like,

You know, aquatic life form sort of thing or or was it sort of just like the impressions were were drawing a circle around this thing that started to make it obvious? Yeah, at that point I was getting better at not getting too excited that I was like, "This is the aquatic marine life, whatever." and really just describing, you know, and trying really to remove myself from painting the picture in my mind. because I found that my results would be better when I would do that, not guided by, you know, my logic, the logical side of the brain. which is hard and I could even later on when I was more experienced it's not like I could do it perfectly some days better than others and who knows exactly why I could focus better on that than others but I wasn't meditating you know it wasn't like I'm in some lotus pose or anything with some

Music in the background no it's just you know me with a pen and paper analyzing my thoughts and as the weeks progress. This is why I think it also elevated the connection to this process and this this ability for me was how similar it felt to when I sat down to memorize something

And recall information. I sit down with a pen and paper, I write it out from memory and it's almost a similar feeling where I'm reaching for information. You know, granted the difference is I've placed the information there myself by thinking about it in a in a memory technique way, but the feeling of kind of like downloading it from where I placed it really felt similar to how I would download information from wherever this was coming.

The only difference again is that I don't know where I'm downloading it from in a remote game session in a in a I mean you could argue that for the memory like yeah it's in my brain but I don't know where it is. It's it's in a thought that who knows where it's actually coming from but there were a lot of similarities in the feelings that I got in the process that felt a lot like memorizing and recalling and accessing memories from the brain.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, that reminds me that there are, you know, have you do you know of Angela Ford or Angela I think she goes by a different name too, but that's escaping me right now. But but anyway, yeah, like she she's an example of someone who when she does her sessions, she's another she's another Stargate remote viewer, by the way, but she for people that don't know, she was

Much more outwardly New Age-y and open to the idea that I am using other intelligences, spirits,

Guides, whatever

That will give me this information.

And she was one of the best remote viewers of the group. And apparently she kept getting all these tasks over and over again because of her success. But early on they were very much trying to confine her into the, you know, the coordinate remote viewing box and being like, no, you don't do it this way. You have to do it our way. We don't want to be doing like woo magic [ __ ] We want to be doing like, you know, the

This method like that's a bad look for us. We don't want to, you know, especially when we have to show our results to higher ups that are not directly involved.

But, but I have to wonder,

One, I'm already open to the idea that there are disembodied intelligences that our minds can connect to. too. I wonder if whether there are or whether there aren't just having that mechanism can somehow improve your outcomes because now you have this theoretical

This this theoretical mechanism for how that information is obtained. Mhm.

So maybe it's almost like an egregore or something if you if you're familiar with that idea. Like you're you're almost creating

This external thought form like a virtual machine or something that can access information from somewhere else that can then give you the information. I don't know.

Yeah. I don't know either. But I mean the reason I don't think we talked about this why people were reaching out to us in the first place, memory athletes specifically, was there was this theory that because we had such highly trained visual capacities, which is all memory technique is, that we would be better at this. And so the downloads or the int intuitive stuff that we pull would be heightened and clearer because we can see things in our mind better.

I don't know. I've talked about it with the other memory athlete and it was like, yeah, I mean, we're seeing stuff and it's very overwhelming and clear for us, but

That's how we do our our thing, our our our skill

In the memory world. So, it seemed obvious to me. I'd be interested to hear from other remote viewers who learned it, you know, what they're how they describe what they're seeing, you know.

Yeah. On a related question, have have you always had the capacity to visualize things sharply or is that something that you had to hone through the memory work because I'm someone who I have I do not have a good ability to do that normally.

Yeah. I've I think I've always been pretty good at being able to visualize something, you know, say elephant, I can picture an elephant and imagine it, you know, in pretty good detail. I'd never really thought about that since until I started dabbling in memory techniques. But as a memory coach, I had there's a spectrum of people who can see better than others. But the interesting thing about memory techniques, when you're in the flow zone or flow state of any sport, right, you don't know what's going on.

You're just doing the thing and it flows out of you. It's easy. There is a flow state for competitive memory. You know, like I memorize decks of cards every single day and I apply a process. I know what I'm doing. I've done it a million times, but I still have to apply a process. It's not like I just stare at the cards and they just get absorbed. I have to do a thing. but there are days where I do the thing and I almost feel like I'm not

A part of it. I'm just going through the motions and I'm I'm I'm watching on stand like I'm a what do you call it bystander to the process of my brain doing this thing and it's a weird feeling because in those moments when I'm almost the most not a part of it

Is when I do really well. like I've had some of my best scores when I have felt that and it's like I remember finishing memorizing a deck of cards like that and being like I felt like I don't really I don't I don't think I applied the process. I don't think I even what did I don't think I pictured anything or or took the time to picture anything. It was just almost like complete automatic process with feeling just feeling stuff.

So you know when you talk about what is visualization and can people do it? I think the first thing people think is like, can I see the thing in my mind? I say a thing or I'm trying to describe something, can I see it? But in the mind, like seeing doesn't really encapture capture the whole thing. It's

Yeah,

Built out of so many things, connections, feelings, all sensory information, not just seeing. So when I say I see an elephant, yeah, I can see the contour, the colors, but I can also imagine myself on a safari and the dust kicking in the air, the warmth in the air, the smells, the tastes, how I feel, you know? And so I think when we're going really quickly through a deck of cards, there's no time to sit there and picture every single detail and visualize it in that sense of the word.

We're kind of just feeling it. and that's the crazy thing when I teach memory techniques. start with saying, "Hey, close your eyes and picture this, all the senses, blah blah blah." But when you want to get fast, over time, a lot of that [ __ ] just drops away and it's like, what are you left with? I don't know.

Yeah, dude.

So when someone says, "I can't visualize, so can I memorize?" Well, I don't know. I say I don't think it matters. I think ultimately when you're able to do it almost automatically subconsciously, you're not really seeing anything, you know? It's super it's really just a knowing.

I don't know. It's it's it gets really heady when you talk about it like that. But yeah, we we should come back to this topic later because I think where you're starting to go here is you're saying that there's a there's a point where the snake almost eats its own tail between what what's considered to be mundane prosaic memory stuff that we quote unquote understand because we we do it and there's a method for it and then this psi stuff that's more murky and we don't really know how it works.

It sounds like you're saying that there is this state of mind that can be achieved where it's almost like you are reaching some space outside of the meat suit that exists in this sort of platonic mind realm

Or something. and when you access that state, you almost have this enha you have this like enhanced capacity beyond the normal or something like that information.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's it. and I think that's what's brought me closer to this craft of remote viewing and this world of the paranormal because it it feels like even with memory that I think there's some I think information exists outside of us and all our brain is doing is it's a read-write head, you know, just like you put a cassette in to a cassette player and it's just reading stuff as it goes by and it can write stuff to that thing. But you know the information is not in the cassette player but our brain I think is like the cassette player you know

And there's different cassettes out there that you can load and write to this this tape this magnetic tape that has all information of everything you know around us and and maybe that's that's just what consciousness is you know that substrate that we all kind of tap into from time to time, but there's also like a version that is encased, as you said, in this meat suit.

Yeah.

Yeah. No, that's what I think as well, for sure. I won't go on another like lofty onlogical esoteric rant right now because I do want to like continue your your story and your experiences with this. Did you So, other than that like first really big hit that started to make you think, okay, that I really can't explain that away. That was a pretty [ __ ] uncanny moment right there. did did you have any other sort of anomalous or unexpected experiences?

Like sometimes remote viewers who are within these programs will talk about almost type experiences where they almost for a moment feel like they're in the target

Like they're having like sensory, you know, input like they're smelling things or suddenly they'll get tastes or they'll get

Other impressions like that.

I've heard that and I never experienced anything like that. my my while sometimes it would be very clear what I was seeing in my mind and it would hit me and be I'd be very like confident in it. It never resonated with me when I heard people describe remote viewing as something that like pulled them in and their whole body was enveloped by the scene and they were there. I've never felt that. I think different people have different ways of experiencing it. but for me that was never it.

But I think it's definitely affected my life since then. Just I think by the mere fact that I it's opened the door to what I believe is possible. So I've had a lot more synchronicities in my life, kind of crazy things that I can't explain that I think there's a something going on. and I don't know if it's because I'm just noticing them more because I'm open to it or if it's happened to me more because I've tapped into something, you know?

Yeah.

Hard to say.

Yeah, dude. I think it's always hard to say, especially if you're being epistemically

Humble and honest with yourself. You always have to look at multiple sides of things. You have to know when you're giving into confirmation bias. you have to know when you're you know

Dismissing the things that don't fit into your preconceived notions or desires like that. That's always a part I think of

Trying to be on a on a straight and narrow path toward the truth or or or just being in reality, you know, even if you're not obsessed with reaching some sort of massive onlogical truth because that can be really really thorny territory. I was just saying this in the podcast that I put out recently is that or may this actually might be in the p the only the patron part of it that I put out, but I was talking to that Chase Hughes guy. I don't know if you know him, but he's big in the sort of like behavior.

Oh, yes. Yes. I've seen a couple He was on Joe Rogan.

Yes. Yes. Anyway, yeah, but we we were talking about the idea that when people are on these paths toward wisdom, they expect, oh, I'm I'm going to arrive somewhere, right? and often times that's not what it looks like. It's this much more circuitous path toward like having really more questions and reconsidering things in a new way and just having all of these new possibilities fractal out that really don't get you to some giant answer.

They they just open up these vistas of possibilities and new things to consider. And I think that for me is what this whole quest has done. and and if I may be so bold, I think that's what it should do. I don't think it should lead you into some, you know, super certain state of mind where now you think you know how reality works. I think I think that's a massive massive trap that's going to lead you into incredibly authoritarian territory.

Yeah. Yeah. I struggle with that. cuz it's like I want to believe and at times I'm like, "Wow, there's something here." But then the next day I'll be like, "But wait, it could be this." And it's it's interesting. A friend of mine Debbie, I don't know if you met him last year at Syame. He was kind of my plus one.

We've been friends since college. We study physics together. And you know in recent years I've shared with him these stories and he's been he's way more interested in say UFOs than I am. I'm pretty interested but he like he's almost Chris level knowledgeable and deep into it and you know he came with me to SI games last year. He came with me this last year and you know we had this weird feeling at SI games where we're like we want to believe this stuff and sometimes we do but we sat here and we're just like questioning everything you know like and even this year we went and we're like let's just enjoy this as if it was real like let's just suspend belief and be like a lot of people are at this conference where they just are like in awe of everything and man, we just couldn't do it. We couldn't do it. Every

You shouldn't like Yeah.

And I don't I don't I don't think I want to, you know, it was just like a fun exercise, but like we were so critical about everything. And

I think rightly so. There were a lot of things that were questionable there.

But and this is sorry to interrupt you. I just want to get this in because if people think we're being unfair, like this is no shade to

To Syame or to Hakee or anybody who's who's running it. It's just that when you're in this realm where you have all these people and they have all this stuff that they want to be true and people are operating from various intentions, various purities like it's just you can't it's a lot to sift through and it it can't all be true.

Yeah. Yeah. And Yeah. No, Sai games is great. I love it. I thought it was a great event, but you know, there's some things I thought that to me and my friend was very clearly nothing special or B just luck or a total sham. But everybody in the audience by and large you know is like, "Wow, yes, this is it. This is wow." Clapping their hands like cheering them on like this is

And I just I just couldn't do it. and maybe that's maybe something that's holding me back. You know, somebody could argue that's a limiting belief. but you know, I think I think ultimately with all this stuff, it's it's your own personal journey, man. Like I' I've never I've never been on I haven't even talked about it on my YouTube channel, even though I want to, but I would never stand there and say like this is not real.

This is 100% true. I think everybody needs to make their own connection to it or not. and decide for themselves whether they want to be all in, all out, partly in the middle. because you won't know until you just whatever you feel, you know, like through your experiences that you can't believe something based on what somebody tells you when it comes to this stuff, I think.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And you know, all of that said that there are more chapters to this journey of yours that do get into some pretty some territory that I think previous versions of yourself would be like, "No, there there's no possible way that's true." and for for what I'm thinking of specifically is it doesn't this doesn't stop at remote viewing for you guys. You guys eventually go to Monroe Institute. You do the Gateway retreat. You have some, let's just call them very interesting experiences.

Yeah.

Throughout the course of that retreat. but before we go on to that, if there are any other specific remote viewing stories

You want to tell, feel free. We don't we don't have to pivot.

Yeah. No, I mean the whale one was the the turning point. I had other sessions that I scored pretty highly after that. because it came I don't know I feel like once I had that openness to it fully at that point a lot more came through. Not that I hit everything but I had a lot of good sessions but nothing I would say were incredibly more profound than that one. you know the next big thing was that it I after the whole program kind of fizzled out and the dude went to jail I was like yeah I'm going to I'm going to chill on this. and then later in 2021, I was like, "Oh, that was let me see if I can get back into it." And I started reading a lot of books about it.

And just kind of diving into the literature and I was like, "Oh, there's something here." And I actually reached out to the guy who was my point of contact there. We remained friends and he was kind of just doing his own thing with sports betting and remote viewing. and I took part in some of his somewhat regular challenges and kept stats for myself and then just kind of he eventually went and did his own thing and I kept on doing some of the sports betting.

I still do it to this day just personally to just gather data stats, you know, and look at the numbers. I live in a horse racing town here in upstate New York and so every summer we have horse races every day just down the street and I'm a part of a group where every week we I don't really bet sometimes I do but it's more just to see if I can guess the winner and so that's something I do a lot again just to

Get more opportunities to get more data and put it all together. so that's been an interesting I've had some interesting experiences there. And then me getting back in touch with Chris, you know, we were on a podcast with his buddy, Wes when they had a podcast together and remote viewing just came up because I shared this story with him

And he he was like, "Tell me more." I was like, "Chris, I'll teach you." You know, and next thing we know, I'm up in Montreal working at his u his teaching him remote viewing. and then it spurred this whole channel for him and we found ourselves talking to some of the classic remote viewers and

Ending up at the Monroe Institute, you know, because we went to go see Joe McMoneagle, you know, at some point he was like, "You should come and do the Gateway." And we're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." In my mind, I was like, "I don't know if I'd ever take a week off to do a meditation retreat." But they then had a year and a half later a retreat specifically for content creators and invited Chris. he was able to get me in there too.

I couldn't go the exact same time I went a couple weeks later, but that opened the door to that which was a whole other thing. Yeah. and for people, these two topics are very closely related a lot of the time like they think the gateway process has something directly to do with remote viewing and it doesn't really like but if you if you do the retreat I want to say there's like one meditation where they sort of dabble with the idea of

Distant perception but by and large you're really just going into these deep states of meditation where interesting things I think inevitably do arise just because we at least 90 I think even if you're a meditator

Still no

Because I don't think you're getting most people who are meditating I don't think if you're doing like 20 minute a day mindfulness thing I don't think you're ever going to get to the levels of depth that you can get to doing the meditate the Hemi-Sync meditation so many times a day I mean you're doing it three like three to six times a day 40 minutes to an hour at a rip usually. and I've said many times a lot of times you're quote unquote clicking out or falling asleep. that's not an abnormal thing.

But to me, that's actually where you need to go to start to see the degrees of cognitive or or mental novelty that can arrive in the mind because I think the special area is that hypnagogic state, man. Like if if you can maintain just a little bit of metacognition when you're right on that border, really weird [ __ ]

Starts to flow into your mind. And so often for me, I've had this feeling like I think that I am glimpsing external information right now. It's like a lot of times I'll hear it as sort of like they call it like clairaudient

Like chatter almost like I'm listening to a radio station,

But it's but it's meaningless. It it's like it's like if you just creeped in on some 70-year-old dude's phone call or something like you're not going to have any context to know like what they're talking about, right? Yeah.

So, so for me it's like that sometimes where I'll be really close to sleep and I'll just be getting weird stuff that I can there's I could never make attribution to or verify. But but I think when you get in those states, if I had to guess at what's happening, I think you're you're the ego and the normal sense of self has become so quiet. the external facing senses have become so quiet that you start to tap into something much more subtle that may be like non-locality or may be some sort of disembodied perception or something like that.

So, so I had a lot of that. not just there, but I mean sometimes just laying in bed at night having that weird stuff. Not anything that I'm in control of or that I could ever test. Yeah. But but but how did that

What happened for you during the retreat by and large? Because there there's sort of one main moment that you and Chris have talked about that I definitely

Would love to hear that story again. But but what about just the more kind of you know day in day out meditative weird kind of stuff bubbled up for you if you can remember?

Yeah, I never really meditated much in my life. I mean depends what you define as meditation. Sometimes I'd say like my memory practice is my meditation. You know, I'm sitting there trying to process numbers and focus on creating these images and you know, I don't want any distractions. If I think about something else, I got to come back to what I'm focusing on otherwise I lose time in this event to memorize numbers and the goal of the event is to memorize as much as possible. So training my mind to focus on one thing and that space is kind of like meditation.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. So but I never been the kind to sit there, close my eyes and say oh you know and that's kind of what I expected at the Monroe Institute. I remember when I arrived it was such a quirky group of people. I think I was one of the last people to arrive and everybody was already chitchatting in their little groups and I remember texting my wife being like, I don't know if I need I should be here.

This is not for me. Like I'm not this kind of folk. And then I gave it a chance of course and within minutes I realized as I started to share my stories like these are people who want to hear these stories. I was like, "Oh, no. These are my people." You know, like

But

Yeah, I mean generally I think when you take the time to spend time with your thoughts and your mind something unexpected will come out of it cuz in the day-to-day rat race like when do we actually do that? You know, there's so much noise, other things that our, you know, our radar is perceiving, things we see, the noises we hear. You don't really get an opportunity to sit there in dead silence, in pure blackness. you know, with these sound waves that are in tune with your frequencies to explore that. and I think naturally something will come out. And that's that's what I was hoping for.

You know they promise not they don't promise but you have this expectation that you will go out of body and that's the main focus but that was like a small part of it for me really

But yeah when I got there I one of the first days I think day one

When we were just doing some of the early focus levels I said to a person that I had made friends with real quick that you know I wanted to try something this is very much like me that I need like proof you know before I can fully dive and I said, "Hey, before we go to our little CHEC unit," she was in an upstairs room. I was in the corner here. write down a four-digit number, put it on your desk, so I can see it. if the goal being to go and try to float over there and see it.

And my whole session was around trying to perceive that number. And, you know, part of it was just there's no way this I'll just guess whatever. But part of me took it seriously. Like I was like, "Okay, let me really see if this there's something here." And I remember spending, you know, each time you're in those CHEC units, it's about 45 minutes, maybe longer.

And I remember the first like must have been the first 30 minutes, I'm just

Nothing. I'm very relaxed. Like I

Yeah, most relaxed week of my life.

100%.

You know, I have four kids and it's non-stop. So I don't really get much time to rest like that. But nothing was coming to mind. And I remember little visions here, but nothing. It felt like just noise. and I remember at one point just being like, whatever. Like, this isn't going to happen. I'm just going to And I almost like relaxed and let go of this expectation. And that's when I started to see like things that started to like ping my ears where I saw kind of a wall.

Things were black for a second. I started to see splotches of things coming through the black and one seemed like a wall. And I remember seeing my hand kind of touch it and then it closed off again. And then I remember it opening up again and seeing kind of the wooden corner of a frame kind of looking down at a floor and there was some stuff on the floor there. Couldn't tell what it was. And then it closed off again. And then it opened again and I was looking at a desk, a wooden desk.

And it was kind of at this oblique angle which I couldn't really move around. I didn't have control over that. That was just like a fixed shot. And I could see this card, this note card that had four digits on it. And three were very clear as if like the first the nearest one, which was the last one, was like too close to the lens. It was out of focus. So I saw 173 and then I wasn't sure if it was a four or a six. and I remember there were a couple other objects on the table, but I couldn't tell what it was.

It wasn't the focus. And I was like, I think this is it. I think this is the number. and I woke up and I remember writing it down immediately. And then I'll never forget the moment running out of my room and she's coming down the stairs from her CHEC unit and I turn my paper to her and she shows me the card and it's it's not the exact same number. It's 173, but the last digit actually I forget. I have to check my notes, but I think she had the six. I had a four.

Yeah,

But in my in my mind I was like I saw that is this the same handwriting, the same paper, the same digits, you know, off I couldn't see that last one and this one I didn't get it right. So it was that was another moment that kind of stopped me in my tracks and

I think I really needed that because after that moment it just like opened up my belief gates you know and the rest of the week so many other things happened and just came out that I don't think would have come out as easily if I hadn't had that experience. So, I wonder if it was some higher version of myself, something like saying here, give him a little bit of that extra paranormal sauce to get you going, you know?

Yeah, it's so No, dude. It No, that's such a mind-blowing story. And to be able to come away with data like that is such a rare thing, even if it's not 100% true, because it's not it's not just the numbers, right? It's the other for you at least. It's the subjective aspects of seeing. Yes, that is the object I saw. That's that's like what I saw in that

Extended state of consciousness. Like it looks the same. All of that kind of stuff is more data for you. And you're not

Doing this to try to convince scientists and you know skeptics like this is your own experience. And the value of something like that for those purposes, I think, is immeasurably massive. So, so that's that's incredible, dude. And I've never had anything like that. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm very lucky and happy that I had that experience because it's

Been very pivotal in my in a lot of things that have happened to me after that. one thing I'll add to that story just to further con that further convinced me that something was happening there because after we had a little break at some point, I was like, can I can I see your room? Like, I just want to see cuz I saw some other aspects that

I don't know if they were just random things or stuff related to what where I was, you know?

And we go there and the table was the table. The most interesting thing to me was remember I saw kind of the bottom of the frame and stuff on the floor. it was the edge of her little CHEC unit. And the funny thing is we had just gotten there the day before and most people were still packed in their bags, you know, or slowly getting things out.

But she had [ __ ] everywhere.

Yeah.

And she said to me, she's like, "That's the way I pack. I get to places and I just like throw everything on the floor." So it was like for me to have seen that you know specifically for her was unique right that and

Yes

Even on the table I had said there were other objects and she was still breastfeeding so she had her pumps

And paraphernalia on the table.

Was her baby there?

No, no, no, no. But you know when

She just brought it for fun?

No, but you when you're breastfeeding you want to keep pumping.

Oh, you got to keep it going. Yeah, you got otherwise keep it flowing.

Yeah, exactly. I wouldn't know women hate that because you're dumping the milk which is like

You know

You sells man and it's a lot of effort to make it.

So dude someone there had to I mean someone at Monroe Institute would have

Yeah. I don't know maybe she put it in I don't know she put it in the fridge and kept it and took it home. I don't know. but anyways, it it was a surreal experience and having that extra layer of kind of like, okay, this was very specifically this was awesome. I don't know what I was doing. I don't know if I never felt like I was out of body, like I left my body, floated through the ceiling. I never got that. I was like instantly there

Seeing those things. So, I don't know if that's remote viewing. I don't know if that's a version of out of body. I don't know. I don't know what it was.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think the name is less important, right? The only time I think that stuff's important is when you're trying to understand is the phenomenology I experience the same as this other person, right? Like that's that's when naming becomes helpful because then you know, okay, this is probably a specific capacity or technique that I can train or whatever. but yeah, to your point of the difference between that going out of body, I think again you start to if you play in these realms more, you realize that there are these other aspects of consciousness that are either extremely maybe they're vestigial, maybe they're just incredibly weak and undeveloped because we don't even recognize their existence. like some tiny muscle in some part of your I don't know some part of your anatomy that you absolutely never even know exists till you do some weird exercise and you're like oh my god like I don't even know what that is that's sore right now it's

It's it's kind of like that maybe but yeah did I ever tell you my obbe story

No not personally I think I caught it in bits and pieces but I'd love to hear it

Well I've I've told it so many times but I have to tell I have to tell you this because it for me this was one of those ontologically reorienting moments because again you probably have gathered what my disposition is probably most people listen listening know I'm open-minded I think there's value in these directions incredibly fascinated with western esotericism eastern esotericism all of that stuff and within the history the corpus of those writings stuff about subtle body stuff stuff about it sounds indistinguishably similar from the kind of stuff that purportedly goes on at Monroe Institute happened to Robert Monroe whatever.

So I'm open-minded to it but that's one thing and actually experiencing it is a totally different thing just as we were talking about before with the remote viewing. So I'm on the last full day of the retreat.

So you've we've done all the focus levels. I had had a bunch of more subtle things happen kind of like I was alluding to before, but nothing where I'm like, "Yeah, I'm about to go out of body." I I did feel like I was succeeding in feeling the waves, right? Because they train you to try to feel this

The waves of the sort of subtle body or non-physical whatever going through. I did feel that. I would often feel this almost kind of rocking sensation during the meditations

But never felt like I had any control of it or like yeah this is definitely my subtle body about to lift off or anything.

Yeah.

So we're doing I think it's the longest meditation of the whole retreat. I think it was called superflow where you're going through all you're going 10 12 15 21.

Yeah. I love that one.

And then Yeah. I love Yeah. I was so relaxed. I felt like I think the way that I put it in my little journal check-in afterward was I felt like I was on some kind of just lazy river just floating just almost like weightless relaxed not weightless like I was going out of body but just so relaxed

And I and because it was so deep into the retreat I had sort of

I think I had relinquished any expectations of wanting anything. I was just like

Last thing on my mind is yeah I'm gonna go out of body in this retreat in this meditation.

So they also do this and I think this is the only time they do this. They just drop the tone out into complete silence in that meditation as well.

Yeah.

And I completely I want to say two-thirds of the way, maybe halfway, I completely clicked out. Just faded into nothingness. But then after that, dude, one and only time I've experienced this, I was lucidly present in a different room. Like just like this felt totally real. There was nothing abnormal. There was nothing supernatural about it. I just felt like I was standing in some room and I was looking out the window at sort of like a wooded scene.

And to this day, I'm confused about that because I don't know if this was at Monroe Institute somewhere because there are a lot of places like that. Yeah.

And it felt kind of 70s. Like the room it felt the room itself felt sort of like beige and kind of 70s vibe.

So you didn't recognize it, but it had a familiar feel.

Yeah. Not not even familiar like I knew where it was, but in hindsight it's like this could be

Somewhere at Monroe Institute, maybe. But I don't know. Yeah.

But then, you know, as one would, I started questioning like, I don't know how I got here. Like, why am I in this room? What am I doing? What's going on? And then once I continued that train of thought, I remembered, no, I'm in the CHEC unit meditating. And then as soon as I thought that, I'm back in the CHEC unit, but the waving sensation was going insanely strong. It was like a humming like vibratory electrical like kind of feeling almost. And it was it was crazy strong.

So crazy that I was like, "Whoa, I'm like feel like I'm phasing here. This is wild." And then I tried to physically move, like physically sit up because it was so strange. And as I did that, I just had a full-blown liftoff. And it just like started rising up

Cartoon level of like exactly what you think it would feel like, man. It's just like you feel like this weightless mass of vibratory humming almost like a watery almost like electrically charged water or something and you're just like like it it just felt like that immediate terror takes over like it's not it's not a rational oh just get you know just get it's not like that. It's completely like there's something deep deep inside of you that knows this is not cor this is not right.

It it I've likened it to you know, imagine you don't know what water is and someone just chucks you in the water and you don't know how to That's what it feels like. It's just

You're totally just shocking not fluent in whatever you're doing.

Yeah.

So, I'm freaking out, but I also have enough presence of mind to think, turn over, look at yourself, do the confirmation thing.

Yeah.

But meanwhile, it's totally dark. I don't you know this is the other part of it is like I've done ayahuasca retreats I've done heroic doses of things. So I was curious to see like if I could go out of body this is one of my curiosities before the retreat. If I go out of body would it seem familiar? Would it feel psychedelic? Would it feel like oh there's this fractally stuff revealing itself to me? I don't know the answer to that for sure because but also I was struck by how it still just felt like I was in a dark like a dark room.

It didn't feel like I was gaining these abilities to see through stuff or anything like that.

But I had the undeniable sensation of I have physically

Or non-physically or subtle body lift off type thing.

And I could it was just like this heavy awkward thing. It did still feel like the outline of a body, but then I started freaking out because I couldn't get control of it. And I started literally just calling for help. Like, please, please help me. Please, some anything. Please help me. Cuz I could not figure out how to get back in. And it was scary. And it didn't even last that long. Like maybe a minute or two.

Okay.

But once I started that help me, help me. I felt the sensation of sinking down again. And then I just eventually reemerged and it felt like I had just gotten out of like a car wreck or something. Like my heart was racing and I was like, "Holy shit." And I just like sprung up out of bed out out of the CHEC unit. I just left the meditation early and I just went downstairs to the

For the people who haven't been to Monroe Institute. There's like a living room sort of area where you do the debriefs where everybody sits down and shares. And I was just pacing around and I was just like shaking my head just like what the [ __ ] What the [ __ ]

This is real.

Yeah. And then I just sat there and waited for everybody to come out and everybody was like, "Dude, you look pale." And I'm like, "Yeah." And yeah, so I shared the story and everybody was just like, "Holy [ __ ] that's crazy." And I

And I I again preempt this as always to not try to make myself sound special. I absolutely feel like I slipped on a banana peel into that state. Just somehow wound up there. But I w up being the only person on that retreat who had the full-blown thing like that. and I still to this day don't know why. I don't feel like I was particularly good at it or or it it hasn't happened again since. So yeah, that was the experience and it's it's one of those things where

I definitely rank it amongst the most holy [ __ ] That's not like a that's not like a maybe. That's not like a, oh, I can see how you would think you went out of body. It's it's it's very visceral and very like you either did that or you didn't do that.

And I'm not saying there's there's other there's not other stuff because I think there are other kinds of extended cognition or seeing non-physically beyond what you can see with your senses or sense with your senses. But those are it's different. It's different than that. Like that's that's a specific thing that one can have happen to them.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting and you're left kind of thinking sometimes like is this just my imagination? And someone might question you and say like you just imagined it or you dreamt it, you know, but in the experiences I've had and it sounds like you like there's a difference like you can it it it feels real, you know, like

You can I don't know, it just feels very different. I don't know how else to put it, but it's not the same.

I agree. I agree. And I think the real difference here is there's a there's some kind of division in the mind that I think is there for a good reason, right? I think normally if we have a dream or if we maybe even, you know, because Monroe famously says we're going out of body every night kind of kind of thing, which I don't know if I agree with, I don't disagree. I just don't know. But maybe the only real difference is we don't we're not metacognating when we're in that state normally.

We don't have the ability to be like I'm Nelson. I have four kids in a what we're just we're existing in this more subtle state of consciousness or or maybe it's like a an astral state or a I don't know what the best vernacular is for it but it seems like there's some technique or mode of awareness that one can cultivate or discover or whatever where you can metacognate in those states and you can actually remember the stuff and experience the stuff

With the ego still online and I think that's part of it and I think that's part of what Hemi-Sync is doing because it's literally trying to bring the right and left hemispheres into resonance

And normally I think that's a you know waking consciousness from my understanding is a largely left hemisphere kind of thing like that's where the ego lives that's where the I first I do this then I do that the logical kind of

Mind mainly exists and maybe that's just what it is. Maybe it's as simple as that. I don't know. But but I think there is there's something there for sure.

Yeah. [gasps] It's crazy, man.

Yeah,

That's a cool story. Very interesting. I hadn't heard that before.

It it is. But it's it's also definitely a great example of how it just opens up so many more questions, right? Like it it's it's a real step. It's a real like, yep, I'm I'm I'm about about as sure as I can be that was real in a in the same way where if a guy just like ran in the room and like kissed me on the cheek right now and I was like, "What the fuck?"

You felt it and you saw it.

It would be the same level of reality for my perception at least. so I don't know anything else other than that though. I don't know if that then vindicates everything in Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Monroe and whatever this guy says on YouTube and right,

You know, it's it's it's one of those things, but it yeah, it's it's super fascinating and I think all the time about trying to go

Back deeper into that world and I would like to go back to Monroe and explore

More more things for sure. did did you try to I mean, I guess with your lifestyle, it's probably really really hard because you have you have the family, you have the memory stuff. It seems like you're just an incredibly busy person, but did you try to continue the meditations afterward at all?

I did. it fell off just cuz life got in the way and I just didn't have the time to sit and lay there without distractions. It's like even if I had the time, inevitably someone's going to knock on my door and be like, "Daddy, wipe my ass." You know,

It's like, "Okay." And even if they don't, like knowing that potentially could happen just totally disrupts any relaxation. I'm just in that phase of life right now. But there have been times when I did have, you know, I'm traveling. I have nothing to answer for at this moment. And I would do it or I do it on a plane.

Yeah.

And it's something that I come back to, because I

In that week, man, it's all you're doing. And that's not real life, you know. but you see how powerful it can be when you focus on one thing and don't have any distractions. So, that I think adds to the ability to have these experiences. but it's nice to know that's there. and what it took to get there. And if you can make a portion of that happen, you know, you can access a little bit of it and that's that's nice enough.

So yeah, I've used it from time to time. I honestly credit that what I learned at Monroe for how I won the 2024 US Memory Championship.

I remember before the final event it's me and it's three of us in the finals. we have to we're about to go out in like 10 15 minutes. we get a little break before we have to go on stage and memorize a bunch of cards and it's for the championship. And I remember being so nervous because I was like I had one last when my fifth time in 2021 and that was like I'd been aiming to win five times. I did it.

I was done. And then I had a feeling like and this was the same year that I did Monroe. So there was like a calling that came to me where I was like I think I got one more in me. but at that point be I'm like finding myself in the finals. I was like, there's a lot of pressure right now, you know, like if I [ __ ] this up, like how embarrassing, you know, like and why did I even bother coming out? And that premonition was wrong. And but anyways, I just wanted to escape. And I remember going to I did a whole focus 21 thing.

Oh wow.

The whole a fast a fast one. cuz that one's slow if you listen to the whole recording. But I had practiced a couple times kind of getting to there quicker and I remember being so calm and I don't know in your retreat did they ever have you do it outside without the binaural beats?

We Yeah, we did this exercise where we went for a walk I think and we tried to be in focus 10 or something without the Yeah. I and I have no idea like I do think to some degree the nervous system and the brain ingrains that stuff but I if if you said hey get into a focus 10 I don't know I don't know if I would be able to do you feel like you have that ability

Not like that but I did have some awesome experiences just doing it naturally slowly just kind of imagining Robert Monroe's like words and the different steps

And I remember doing that I had one of the I was playing one of his recordings but not kind of necessarily going through the steps. There's something now at this point when I play those binaural beats like it's like a Pavlovian response. My mind kind of goes back to that and that's what happened. And I did the steps to get to where I was and I was

The world around me. I felt like the Matrix, you know, where it's just like Neo finally gets his powers and like the world like bends as he flexes and everything was like vibrating and like warping and stuff and I just felt so calm and I remember going out on the stage and grabbing those cards and you know just so smooth you know and I ended up winning. So I think a big part of that win was being able to calm myself and kind of take myself to another place. I don't know what that was, but

That's so cool, man. Yeah, that's so that's so fascinating. I mean, again, you're just such this interesting case study for all of this stuff because you're you have to be one of the only elite memory athletes to ever start to go in this realm of psi and of

Robert Monroe and Gateway. So, it's just super interesting. And so I want to come back to this idea now of like the snake eating its tail that we were talking about before because I think didn't you give a talk on this and I think I missed it at the first SI games but but didn't you give a talk on I know I know you were talking about just memory stuff in general

Right

But didn't you give a talk about this how it seems like you eventually when you get into these very still states of consciousness it's almost just like you know without doing the memory routine or or it's like you can almost

Because so after this let's get into the actual memory technique because we haven't even done that at all but

But it's a it's a process right it's a it's this process that you that when you first learn it it's clunky but it's intuitive and everybody can kind of do it to some extent within a few minutes

But when you become an expert at it I would imagine as you've demonstrated that you can do this very quickly and treat yourself and train yourself to just think like this and memorize stuff

Boom boom boom really really fast.

But from my memory, it was almost like you were saying you can almost just not do it and know sometimes. is that what is that what you're saying?

Well, that's that's what I was saying earlier when I had that experience of being in the flow state with memory where I'm just watching my mind do this thing and it's like I don't even feel like I'm participating and doing the technique and I just know what it is. like the information is given to me. It doesn't always feel like that, but there's plenty of times when it does. And I'm actually going through a time right now where I'm memorizing like I used to train just for memory competition.

So cards, numbers, names, all this stuff. But now I'm just memorizing a lot of stuff that I'm interested in like actual tables of things

For my own enjoyment. and I'm finding like because I coach a lot of people and I have to explain all the techniques like step by step, but sometimes even today I was I was reviewing some things. I'm just like I'm not applying any of the techniques that I talk about. Like I'm just looking at it and it's it's staying with me.

Wow.

And I don't want to give the impression that I'm like this tape recorder. I'm not. because obviously my brain is doing something but it's it's more of like a knowing feeling like it's just I can look at this list, organize it, visualize it, I guess, and it's there. which is wild. Like I didn't used to have that confidence with being able to memorize a lot of information like that. I used to be like, "Okay, I can do this.

I got to apply this technique and sit here and visualize blah blah blah." But now it's just like, "Oh yeah, I know the process. let me sit down and I'll have it in, you know, 10 15 minutes. so yeah, it's it's it's something that with practice has become in a way automatic. but it's I don't know. It's it's such a head [ __ ] to to think about like what I'm actually doing anymore. Yeah. I try not to think about it because then I psych myself out. And to be clear, I'm I'm gesturing toward the idea that you're somehow gaining knowledge

In a way that is almost like non-local or in a way that it's like

Sure. 100%. I mean, I'm saying without Okay, I was going to say I Yeah, I don't want to say I don't want to imply that's what you're saying if that's not what you're saying, but if it is what you're saying, it is what I'm saying.

That's so fascinating, dude.

I'll just bring this up as a as an aside and as another just fascination for the conversation because I know it's not something you've dove into, but I sent it to you just because I was like, "Dude, you're an information and memory guy and you need to know that this exists."

Oh, right.

But there's there's essentially this grimoire called the Ars Notoria. And I won't I won't go down a deep esoteric rabbit hole really right now, but one of the main strains of western esoteric magic with a K is the Solomonic strain. So the the legend essentially is that King Solomon who built the first temple actually prostrated all of these or he he basically used all these angels and demons to build the temple for him is the story. Okay. And then there are these grimoires that like claim to be the actual text.

What is a grimoire?

A grimoire is like a is like a magical text.

A text. Okay.

So like the go if you look up like the Goetia or the Goetia, however you pronounce that. you'll you'll see you'll see you'll see what I'm talking about. like Lesser Key of Solomon. That's that's the one most people are familiar with. But there's all these other ones and there, you know, they have all the you have to do all these purifications. You have to do all of these rituals. You have to do all of this stuff to try to appeal to these spirits or angels or demons or whatever to like do your bidding and there are all these things that you have to do. It's like a very

Very intensive process. But there's this one in particular that's so interesting. I thought I thought it'd be interesting to you called the Ars Notoria.

Yeah. which claims to be of this Solomonic lineage and it claims to be the way that Solomon gained because he supposedly knew all like all the worldly knowledge or something like that and yeah so so anyway it's it's just super super interesting but essentially what's supposed to be happening with this text is there's a few different things and I'm not an expert in this I was just listening to something and looking at some images the other day but so for one the mechanism that's supposed to be happening is you're there are supposed to be like angelic intelligences that just give you information basically, but there are also these charts like the these pictographic charts with like words and images in them.

I'll flash them up on the screen and you're supposed to read those. And I don't know if there's literal information that you're memorizing in those charts about stuff or if it's supposed to be part of like the appeal to these angelic intelligences. I don't know. But I

Figured it would be interesting for you to like to potentially at least do a shallow dive on just because it is another one of these things from, you know, the annals of history that is supposedly a way to gain like superhuman cognitive

Knowledge and memory capacities. It's

No, I was happy you shared that with me. I haven't had a chance to go into it yet, but my first impression was, yeah, these are kind of the ancient ways that strategies that people would use to memorize things. you know, the most important things that people would want to memorize back in the day were, you know, scriptures and angelic relics or or things related to you know, the these higher beliefs.

And one of the best ways, one of the techniques that even we use, memory athletes, has to do with placing visuals for things in locations. we use memory palaces where we can visualize you know, our homes or places we frequent a lot and imagine pictures for things we're memorizing strewn about along a route through this place. And then when we want to recall it, we can mentally walk back through that place.

You know, it's easy to walk through your home in your mind and pick up the images that related to the things that you memorized in order. And back in the day, thousands of years ago, the version of that, they did use actual structures like memory palace, hence the name. I don't have a palace, but I use my house or an apartment I used to live in, but back then they probably had palaces, or the people using them had palaces, but it didn't it wasn't strictly physical structures. There's reports of memory palaces that were actual things in

Aboriginal tribes thousands of years ago. They had these things where they would actually put markers on a board shells rocks, whatever in a certain pattern and they would imagine images to help them remember storylines and traditions for their culture attached to this board. So you effectively had a pneummonic board. you would look at this thing and there's the story. It doesn't look like it, but attached to each one is a visual that helps you remember it.

So, when I saw what you sent me, you know, these are kind of artistic scrolls or whatever with text on them, I wasn't surprised is like this has probably so many layers of encoding. First of all, the actual text, which probably has some importance. how it's placed in this pattern on these shapes on this piece of paper, right? so again, I haven't dived too deep yet, but I would imagine that the locations of where those words are on the paper probably served as a way to help remember certain things

About the actual words and what they mean and I'm sure other things as well.

That makes sense. And even if we're totally wrong about this, I know for sure all of this stuff actually does have some pretty esoteric origins because Giordano Bruno is one of the people who's closely associated with a lot of these memory techniques, right? And this guy this was like a hermetic god philosopher like na kind of scientist. I mean, it's it's hard to even encapsulate him, but he's such he's an incredibly interesting, incredibly brilliant figure who was ultimately actually killed by the Catholic Church for being too crazy a heretic.

But but yeah, there's what is that book?

Oh yeah, Yates. Yeah, Giordano Bruno and the hermetic tradition. Yeah,

It's a classic. yeah, he had some I mean he's using the ancient forms of what we use today. and yeah, he's one of the the names you bring up when you're talking about ancient memory techniques.

Yeah. So, so yeah, run us through some of this stuff so people know exactly what we're talking about and the sort of power

Of doing this and before we haven't even said like some what some of these feats that you can do are there are things that sound to people like me and to everyone listening like it literally must not be possible but you've you've done these things and it's not and there's I would say there's no trick involved but I guess there there's there's kind of a

It's you can call it but in the end you remember something so is it a trick? Who cares, right? Like you're able to

You've memorized 10,000 digits of pi. You've Yeah. What are some of what were some of the big projects

In memory competition? Some of the things I've done. and some are still records. Some have been blown out of the water, but I was able to memorize a deck of cards in competition in 40 seconds. that was a US record for a while. I memorized 235 names in 15 minutes. Names and faces. I memorize I think I tr tried for 20 packs of cards in an hour. I think my end up my final score was like 15 and a half. but what else? About 97 digits in a half an hour. So almost a thousand digit number.

Wow.

Yeah. And in five minutes 300 and what was my record? 39 digits in 5 minutes was my competition record. So stuff that's, you know, when I first started, I could not do that. And if I saw someone do that, I'd be like, that's impossible. but and then yeah, the 10,000 digits of pi. yeah, I've memorized whole newspaper. I've memorized an audience full of people's names.

All sorts of crazy stuff. but yeah, it's it's just a practice, you know. it's based off of visualization, as we mentioned before. How do I take this information that I'm trying to memorize and encode it such that I can visualize it? That's often times the trick. It's like how to do that. Well, for numbers, for example, or cards, I visualize. I don't see the numbers. I don't see the cards. I see pictures that I've associated to the cards and the numbers. So, you know, I see the number I don't know. Give me a three-digit number.

441.

441. Okay. So, all the 41s are people related to my my father. All right. So, characters in his life, his his family. So, 441 is a specific cousin of mine. and so I when I see 441 or hear it, I think of that person rather than the actual three digits together. And that is a lot easier to remember than these abstract pieces of information. We remember things in the form of pictures better. Why? Because pictures can evoke all the sensations, emotional charge. and those are the things that we remember, things that are emotionally charged and tap into the senses.

The next part to the technique is like, well, what do you do with those, right? One, imagining one thing is great, but what if you have a whole series or sequence of things? Well, then it comes down to organizing them in your mind. And the most common strategy to do that is a memory palace because you're going to take all these pictures that you're trying to encode, right, and

And remember, and place them somewhere that is already fixed in your mind. And a memory palace, a place that you know well, like your house or your office or whatever, is something you don't need to memorize. It's already there, you know, and all these techniques are doing is piggybacking off of the stuff that you already know. which is just anchoring this new thing to the old thing. So that when you want to go find the new thing, it's attached to the old thing. which in general I think is how we try to learn anything is there's things that we know in our knowledge set and then when something new comes along a new concept a new word whatever and you're like I don't you know it feels foreign it feels on the outside but when you can relate it to something you know that's when it clicks that's when you learn it that's when you understand it you know so that's why you have a good teacher who can make great metaphor, of course, right, for something complicated Richard Feynman was an

Amazing lecturer teacher and largely for that reason he could take the most complicated things and explain them in ways that people would understand that were relatable and when you do that's when learning happens so I think people understand that concept and that's effectively what memory techniques are but with a bit more practice and yeah

Yeah, do you have time to take through one or two things.

Yeah. What What do you want

How do you How do you normally start with someone when you're teaching a new student who's never done this?

Yeah. The nice thing about memory techniques is like everybody can do it. You know, I can walk the newbie noobs through an example and they can do it. which is often very illuminating for the person because they're like most people think that they have a bad memory they won't be able to do it and voila they just did it and they don't know how you know but then you know you got to practice to get faster and learn different strategies to do it for different kinds of information but yeah I can do a little example you know let's say you had a grocery list very common scenario yes you could write it down. But let's say in this world you're trying to not use your phone. and there's five things on your list.

Okay? So let's say the first thing on your list is broccoli. Okay. What would you do? Well, okay, you want to visualize broccoli. Easy enough. There's that green sprout maybe in your mind. but as I mentioned before, it's not just what you see. It's all the senses, right? Coming together and making some kind of visual for it. emotionally with movement. So, and often the emotional things they will sprout out if you make your image exaggerated, over-the-top sexual

Protest, you know? So, like tapping into kind of like the absurdity of it all will typically evoke some kind of emotional response. So, that's where I tried to go. So, I might picture not just any old broccoli, but like a life-size, you know, human-sized broccoli stalk that's just like foulmouthed. I don't know, like from New York, like

Yeah, sure.

You know, like whatever. It doesn't even have to have any reason for it, but that's more memorable. I'm trying to memorize these five items, so I'm going to place them in my house. I would imagine maybe on the front doorstep where I might enter my home, there's that big stalk of broccoli with a foul mouth, stinky, opening the door, and he's like, "What's going on,

Bro? Bro, you know,

Something like that." And then you in your mind, you walk into the house, that's the next thing you would do. And you would visualize the next item. So, let's say, I don't know, you got to get some eggs, you know. Okay, so in your living room somehow, maybe just imagine it being egged, you know, like

Thousands of eggs have been pelted all along the walls. There's eggs cracking, shells cracking, eggs and yolk and egg whites dripping from every angle and corner of the roof, the ceiling, the walls, whatever. And it smells very eggy in there. maybe even slip and land on more eggs, you know. Then maybe you take a left and there's your living room. You walk into your living room and you place the next image there.

I don't know, let's say you got to get waffles or something like that. so maybe the couch is made of like a of a big waffle. You know, you can see the grid there.

Maybe it smells delicious. Maybe there's some syrup dripping off of it. You know, it's very comfy when you sit into it. It's just like this big waffle couch, you know. and then maybe next to the living room, you go into the kitchen and you open up the fridge and the next thing is there. Maybe you needed to get some batteries, you know, and you open up the fridge and it's just a fridge filled with batteries, you know, all different sizes, like little ones, big ones, in the shape of Coke cans, in the shape of fruits and vegetables, but just Duracell batteries, you know, like the typical black and orange tube, you know, but in different sizes, all inside your fridge.

And then finally, let's say you go out after the kitchen, there's a doorway to go outside your backyard. Okay? And the last thing you need to remember is toilet paper, right? So, who knows? You can make it as vulgar as you want. Maybe there's just like a big pile of crap and it's just like covered.

Yeah. And somebody is just like, you got toilet papered and egged.

It's like high school all over again.

Yeah. So, you go to the grocery store. just memorized this list with I know it's five things. It's not a big deal, but you can extrapolate this to many, many more without much effort. But in your mind, you're standing there in the grocery aisles and you say to yourself, okay, go to my house. That's where I stored this list. What was in my front door? Broccoli. The big broccoli, right? Like it's there.

It's like easy, you know? Then what do you do? You walk into the house and oh, that's when all the drippy eggs and you fell on an egg. Eggs, right? You walk into the living room, sit on the couch. Oh yeah, that cozy waffle, right?

Into the fridge, right? Open it up, filled with batteries, right? And then you go outside, there's that big pile of [ __ ] with

TP all over it, right? And there you go. There's your list. And you can say that forwards and backwards. If I just navigate that in reverse, I got the toilet paper, the broccoli, the waffle, the eggs, and the the broccoli, you know.

Yeah. You said broccoli twice.

Yeah. Sorry. So, so the TP, the batteries I think the B word. that tripped me up. But the waffles, the broccoli,

Right? Yep.

I could say what's the third item you'd just be like, "Oh, front door entryway living room was waffle, you know."

[filler removed]

Yeah. Yeah, that's how it goes.

So, yeah, I think everybody can wrap their mind around that. But I think where people can I truly cannot conceive how you could do that with 10,000 digits of pi like like what is the what is the process like? Is it just that but really like but much more efficient or like what what are you doing to be able to do that?

Yeah. Well, it's first I need a bigger memory palace. and I need a strategy of how I'm going to encode the numbers. I have a system for memorizing numbers where I can convert them certain chunks of them. And the way I decided to do it was in groups of five. so

Every five digits is a picture. so if that's the case then my memory palace needs to have 2,000 locations, right? 2,000* 5, that's 10,000 digits. which 2,000 locations is insane. Yeah. So in my mind I was like okay what if I broke it down to 10 memory palaces of 200 locations a little more manageable and the way I approached it is I said I'm going to just use my whole city where I was from Miami and just each of the 10 will be a neighborhood.

One will be like my high school area one will be you know where the house that we grew up in. Another one will be the mall. Another one will be like the vacation house we stayed in one summer on a beach off to the side of Miami and so on. And yeah, it's just coming up with a picture and imagining these different representations of numbers along the way. And I know it still sounds hard. and believe me, it took time. but it's an easy process when I already know the images for the numbers and I

Just imagine them interacting with the environment.

So, is this just how you interact with information now kind of by default? You just like

Yeah.

Like do you So, so we were on this probably nothing tour together for a couple of days. When you like walk into a new place like one of those theaters, does your mind start just like doing that with the location? Do you just start noticing things and being like, "Oh, I could use this as a palace for that." And like like is that what you're doing kind of all the time?

All the time. And it's not like I'm going to do that. I tell No, it's just I think from so many years of practice and naturally think that way. I think that's just what my brain does. Like I look at spaces and I'm kind of already starting to catalog them and retrofit them to something that I could use as a future storage device. and you know, when I see a billboard with a number on it or somebody tells me a number, I inevitably I'm actually just seeing it as the visuals, not the actual information. you know, a lot of these numbers now are feel like a thing and have an emotional response for me because they are something else and they feel like something else and I love them or hate them or get aroused by them or I'm scared by them, you know.

You get aroused by numbers

Some Yeah.

What's the hottest number,

Dude? My wife 593,

Of course.

Yeah.

That's so funny. That's so funny, man. yeah, dude. It's just one of the things is that I think is so sad about this is that we absolutely should be teaching this to everyone. Oh, did I lose you again?

Why aren't we all teaching kids this, man? Like I'm sure you teach it to your kids, but like when I think back to school and struggling with information that just was not interesting to me, you know, as a borderline ADD person, like

I think I just struggled in ways I didn't need to struggle because I just didn't have the techniques I needed to wrangle my mind,

You know? And it's just my it's it's unbelievable to me that we've known this [ __ ] for thousands of years and we don't use it. Like we don't teach it to kids. We don't teach kids how to get control of their mind and their thoughts with techniques like this. I just don't understand.

Yeah, me neither. It's frustrating. I've I've had experiences trying to work with the school systems and different places and the at first glance I think this is incredible and they got to get it to the kids. But when it comes down to like the bureaucracy like I hit a head and it goes against the curriculum, you know, and the state. This is not how you learn. we don't memorize, you know, like and it's just I've I've I've had it up to here, you know, with with that. It's unfortunate.

Well, last thing I guess I'll say is you're doing this again. This this the fifth time wasn't the last. The sixth time wasn't the last. You've decided you're going to take another run at this.

I did. So, I didn't tell you, but I competed. It was two weekends ago. I did not win. Damn.

I came in second.

Oh, well, come out.

Yeah. It was it was a showdown between me and a former champ from 2019. He's amazing at cards. He came out of the shadows. He's a very quiet, keeps-to-himself guy. So I nobody knew what he was doing, where he's been, and he decided to compete. And it was almost a repeat of 2019, me and him at the end going back and forth reciting cards. And he's tough to beat. So he got me that time again. but I was happy with it. I hadn't been practicing much and decided on a whim to compete and I still think that I performed really well and

Yeah, I still got it considering. So, it was great.

Dude, you're such an inspiring, unique, brilliant person who just makes me feel like I have such an a cognitive micro penis, honestly. Like, I just don't

No, no, it's it's so true, man. I hear you talk sometimes and I'm like, man, I don't even know the words to say what you're saying. So, I think to each their own. You can do things I can't do and vice versa.

You're you're too kind. You're too kind. Well, dude, thanks for coming on. So many incredible stories and accomplishments and hopefully we get to we get to hang in person again soon.

Yeah, I hope so, man. Thanks for allowing me to share those stories. I don't have too many platforms where I can comfortably share it without being judged

Through my show.

No, dude. Yeah. Believe me, you're you're far from the most out there thing that's been on the show, so you're safe. Yeah.

Thanks, brother.

Awesome. Take care.