I skipped forward again, and pressed play.

You have all of this experience at a soul level with light, and you bring that experience with you into this life.

Think about a river that comes down out of the really high mountains, and how the water is basically snowmelt and the higher part of the river hasn't been touched by any kind of pollution. That means the water there is really crystal clear. It shines like a diamond, it's so clear.

So if you can imagine being a water drop in that kind of river where the water drop itself is like a little piece of crystal. It's so clear, it's so full of the essence of life. As that water drop flows in the river, it's able to take in awareness of All That Is. Like, what it means to be the river, the channel, the mountains, the air, the sky, the birds, the whatever. Because the water at that point, at that level of crystal cleanliness, is existing within unlimited awareness.

When you don't get in your own way, you have the ability of that kind of crystal clear clarity. And your soul came forward into this life with all of that open. There's nothing about that that you've held back on. Some souls will do that. They'll hold back on a part of themselves, but with this you didn't. You're all turned up, you're all turned on, you're at 100 percent.

That kind of vision, though, isn't something you have to pay for or work hard for. This ability to see with that kind of crystal clarity is inherent within you. It's not anything you have to prove, it's not anything that someone's going to give you, it's not something that you even have to develop. You're more just developing your sense of comfortableness with it. It exists because you exist.

The more you get out of your own way... the more you let yourself, you know, if January 1st comes along and you feel like it's time to... I dunno... move to New Zealand, then you'll pack up and do it because it will come with that kind of crystal clear awareness which is pretty unexplainable but is an extremely powerful source of knowing for you and not anything for you to turn away from.

It was like she was conversing directly with my soul. How did she know I'd get those sensations of extreme intuitive clarity? Some people noticed I'd tilt my head to the side and roll my shoulders occasionally. It was only because I'd get bolts of energy entering the nape of my neck whenever I saw things the way they truly were: imperfectly perfect, beautiful, whole. If only I could look in the mirror and feel the same sensation running down my spine. Wouldn't that be a magical thing?

I continued listening.

Do you ever feel like you know things you have no business knowing? Like, you just have wisdom? [...]

So if you think of that wheel again, and being at the center of it... the last ten lifetimes on Earth, which go back a couple of thousand years ago overall... every time you've been here you've created, like, an energetic book. I mean, you didn't write something down. Well, maybe you did that a couple of times. It's more like you had a very clear focus to compile specific things that you've learned in these various lifetimes. And in this lifetime, they're all connected to you. Like, if you're at the center of the wheel, they're all around you with a spoke coming to you that connects you to whatever's written in that book. Whatever is described in the wisdom... you're connected to it energetically.

So the past life connnections that you have are in these energetic depositories of wisdom that you have access to, and it comes in the moment. Part of the reason why they're explaining it to you this way is because they want you to understand that you have this ability, and more importantly, in the moment, the knowing of all those different books are available to you. And you don't have to think "which book do I need?" It will just come. So it's really about allowing yourself to open to your knowing.

So your future life connection is... all of that learning from the past lives is all being funnelled in to support who you are in the future as well. You've set yourself up for two or three lifetimes in a row where you're doing very intensive work and you have a very clear intention to get from this point in this life, to another point in another life, to yet another point in another life.

And there is a way in which that just doesn't make any rational sense whatsoever, so you have to learn to cover some of that up. If people really knew, they'd probably think you're crazy. I mean, they kinda think you're crazy anyway, but... there is a level at which that's okay, but this is the serious type of crazy. This is the lock-you-up-in-a-hospital type of crazy.

Great, I thought. She knows my secret.

Sometimes I wondered if I really was crazy. Sometimes my mind would terrify me. Sometimes I'd just know things I had no business knowing. I don't know how I'd know — I'd just know. Sometimes the decisions I made — the impulses, the 'mistakes' — seemed like chaos to others but felt like order to me.

At that moment, another connection fired in my brain. I crawled over to my bedside table and retrieved the book perched next to the lamp: The Holographic Universe. I flipped through the book until I came across the passage I was after.

Some NDEers report that they didn't even have to ask questions in order to access this infinite library of information. Following their life review they just suddenly knew everything, all the knowledge there was to know from the beginning of time to the end. Others came into contact with this knowledge after the being of light made some specific gesture, such as wave its hand. Still others said that instead of acquiring the knowledge, they remembered it, but forgot most of what they recalled as soon as they returned to their physical bodies (an amnesia that seems to be universal among NDEers who are privy to such visions). Whatever the case, it appears that once we are in the world beyond, it is no longer necessary to enter an altered state of consciousness in order to have access to the transpersonal and infinitely interconnected informational realm experienced by Grof's patients.

In addition to being holographic in all the ways already mentioned, this vision of total knowledge has another holographic characteristic. NDEers often say that during the vision the information arrives in "chunks" that register instantaneously in one's thoughts. In other words, rather than being strung out in a linear fashion like words in a sentence or scenes in a movie, all the facts, details, images, and pieces of information burst into one's awareness in an instant. One NDEer referred to these bursts of information as "bundles of thought." Monroe, who has also experienced such instantaneous explosions of information while in the OB state, calls them "thought balls."

The Holographic Universe Michael Talbot

"Thought balls," I whispered to myself. I knew exactly what they felt like. Sometimes I'd receive chunks of non-linear information in my mind, as if they were being downloaded from a supercomputer.

Other times, the inner contents of my mind would leak into my physical reality in visceral ways. I remembered back to fifteen months earlier, when I was living by myself in Chiang Mai. I'd suddenly woken up from a bizarre dream. In the dream, I was talking with a boy I went to primary school with — Rick Martin. I hadn't seen him since I moved to boarding school, sixteen years earlier. We weren't friends in school, but I always thought he was nice. He was just another kid in the class. Why the fuck was he in my dream? I wondered. That's so random.

A month later, I flew to Brisbane to join the Hotdesq program. I only learned about that program because my sandal had broken one rainy day in Sydney, and I'd been trapped in the office talking to a random guy named Dave.

When I arrived in Brisbane, I met up with all the other participants in the program. Guess who was also part of my cohort? Rick Martin. He had left high school and gone on to study Commerce/Law before heading to London and New York to work in finance. After realizing how much he disliked the toxic culture in that industry, he'd returned to Australia feeling lost in his career and wanting to reinvent himself. "I realized I wanted to do something creative," he told me over dinner. "For so long, I thought I had to study this or do that. But really, I just love creating things. I never knew I was creative."

I laughed. "Rick, I could have told you that years ago. I know we didn't hang out in school, but I used to watch you draw graffiti in class. I was so jealous of how well you could draw those designs."

"Really?" he asked, as if he genuinely didn't realize his own creative talent.

He'd gone on to found a startup building virtual reality experiences that help develop empathy and inclusion in the workplace. Clients could put on a VR headset and experience the workplace from a completely different perspective: a woman being sexually harassed by a colleague, a man in a wheelchair looking up at everyone he spoke to, a woman of color experiencing subtle unconscious racial bias. Rick had experienced first-hand what it was like to be bullied and belittled in the workplace, and he'd gone on to be the change he wanted to see in the world.