NL: Hi everyone. My name is Natalie Ledwell and this is The Inspiration Show. Today on the show, I have a special guest who’s written a book called “The End to Upside Down Thinking”, which is talking a lot about how our consciousness is not exactly what we think or originates from where we think it does. So it’s going to be a very juicy conversation today but before I introduce my special guest, I just want to remind you that once the show is over, don’t forget to click the link below this video so that you can download the free ebook version of my bestselling book “Never In Your Wildest Dreams”. So please help me introduce my special guest, Mr. Mark Gober. How are you Mark?

MG: I’m well. How are you Natalie?

NL: I am fantastic. I think I’m finally over the jet lag which is great.

MG: That’s great.

NL: Blue skies today. It’s fantastic. So I eluded to the title of your book, your new book that’s out. But it’s interesting that you write this book because brain science is not really your background. So can you just tell our viewers a little bit about your story and how you got to write this particular book.

MG: Sure. So I’m often asked when people hear my background, how did you end up writing a book on consciousness. So I’m a partner at a firm in Silicon Valley called Sherpa Technology Group. We advise tech companies on their business strategy and innovation. Prior to that I was an investment banking analyst with UBS in New York during the financial crisis, so again, nothing really to do with consciousness. And prior to that, I was at Princeton University where I was captain of the tennis team. So very busy with sports and I studied Psychology and Economics and Judgement and Decision Making. So again, not really consciousness per se. But it was about 2 years ago that things changed for me and I should go back to college years for a minute. I almost decided to major in Astrophysics because I had big questions about the universe and who and what we are and what are we doing here. So I think the big questions have always been there but it wasn’t until about 2 years ago that I came at things through a different angle when looking at existence and meaning. And it happened kind of randomly. I was listening to a health podcast and a woman came on who talked about psychic abilities and working with energy and talking to people who are deceased. And I never heard this before and it certainly didn’t change my life listening to that one podcast. But that one podcast led me to listen to two more podcasts. One in particular called Healing Powers. The woman’s name is Laura Powers, who was the psychic I initially heard. She has her own podcast so I said, okay, I’ll turn that on when I drive San Francisco down in to the Peninsula and I’ll just leave the podcast on. And I heard enough people who were describing similar things. Oh yeah I have these psychic abilities, I used to work in business or law or something. And these are people who are independently describing the same thing. And that’s when I said okay, what’s going on here. Something kind of clicked where I said I can’t reason that all of these people are delusional or that they’re all lying and they are not colluding behind the scenes because they are totally separate. So there is something going on in our reality that I was not aware of. And that’s when I started to look at science behind all of this and ended up for about a year, researching, non-stop, outside the office, outside of my day job with Sherpa. Because I wanted to understand what is this reality that I’m in because once I understand the reality that I’m in, that will inform how I act and behave in the world because that’s ultimately how everything works. And as I told friends about some of the research that I was doing, at first I was very afraid to tell people about it. I mean psychic abilities, talking to dead people, reincarnation studies, I mean these were not things that ever came up in business discussions. But eventually I became comfortable enough with the research to just start talking to people about it. And I got very positive responses and people said that it was shifting how they look at their life over time. They would say Mark, we had that dinner a few months ago and I’m still thinking about some of the things we talked about. So I heard enough of that where I said okay, why don’t I just try to put my thoughts on paper because before then I had no plans of writing a book. Let alone a book about consciousness. So it was over a few weekends in July of 2017 and one of them was 4^th of July weekend, four day weekend that year. I basically channeled my inner investment banker and didn’t sleep almost for four days and just wrote and finished a big chunk of the book that weekend. So I came out of July 2017 with a book that is now out.

NL: Right. So it’s really interesting how someone like yourself who’s such a conscious logical thinker can get sparked by something as ethereal as consciousness. And thank God that you did, believe me, you know, when you were saying that you know you heard about people that talked to dead people and I mean, in my line of work, that’s a Wednesday, you know. I’m like, I always talk about how I lived in California and I’m like oh God, I know people that can communicate with animals, you know, the whole bunch of things. But for you, it was this wonderful spark that your logical brain went “No, let’s really dive in to this and see what it is”, we just go, oh yeah, that’s true. You wanted to explain it which is awesome. So you specifically make a reference to upside down thinking. So what is the myth or what is the preconception that you’re actually turning on it’s head from what you’ve discovered through your research.

MG: Okay. We’re going to go deep very quickly with this. So this gets back to the start of the universe. The upside down thinking, it has a special name in science and philosophy. It’s called materialism. And it is basically this chain of thinking. It says that the universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big event, it’s called the Big Bang in science. And it filled the universe with physical material that we call matter, like physical atoms, that’s why it’s called materialism. And when you have this big universe filled with physical matter, you’re bound to end up with reactions between those pieces of matter, we call that chemistry. So we started with physical matter, now we have chemistry. You have enough random chemical reactions that leads to a self-replicating molecule like DNA which leads to Biology. Matter to chemistry to biology that leads to the evolution of a human being that develops a brain. And from the brain comes out consciousness. And when I say consciousness I mean, our awareness and our subjective inner experience. It’s like our mind. So right now, you and I are speaking and your listeners are watching this, we all have this subjective experience of being aware and being alive. What is that? That’s what I’m referring to as consciousness and it’s not physical. So the upside down thinking what I’m calling materialism, it says that matter creates consciousness through a brain and what I’m arguing in the book is different pieces of scientific evidence which suggests that that is not true. And instead of saying it’s matter creates consciousness, it’s the other way around. That consciousness comes first and we can leave everything we know about material physics, chemistry, biology, even neuroscience, but consciousness is just put in a new place as being a fundamental basis of reality. Existing beyond space and time. So that means when the physical changes, the consciousness itself hasn’t left. So when the body dies, the consciousness hasn’t died. And the consciousness is located effectively everywhere. So psychic abilities and non-local consciousness, all of those things, all of a sudden, they are not paranormal anymore.

NL: Right. Yeah, I mean, like I said in my world we go, “Yeah okay, that sounds right”. So let’s talk about what you mean by consciousness. Are we talking about like the collective consciousness? Are we talking about God? Like, how would you describe this?

MG: I think different people have different names for it. How I think about it is the underlying field, if you will, of reality. And there’s an analogy that I think can really help from Dr. Bernardo Castro which describes reality as being like a stream of water where water is consciousness. So that’s what I’m describing and each of us were part of that stream but we’re like individual whirlpools. I’m one whirlpool and you’re another whirlpool. And so we have these individual experiences where it seems localized but we’re fundamentally part of the greater stream and the water is representing that consciousness. So that’s what I’m referring to as being the basis of reality and people can call it energy or their different religious terms for it or consciousness. I think it’s all the same thing.

NL: Yeah. So what I hear you saying is that we are all the one thing. Like we are all connected.

MG: Yes. So that is definitely where I am now coming out. I certainly didn’t before I began my research. I though we were separate and individual consciousnesses, individual minds. But as Erwin Schrodinger said, who’s one of the great quantum physicists, he said, “In truth, there is only one mind”. and that is what I’m referring to. Even though we have these localized personal experiences we kind of almost have an amnesia and blinders on to the broader reality and that allows us to have more personal experiences and learning.

NL: Right. Okay, so having this revelation or having this realization I should say, how does this change the way that we look at anything. How does it change the way that we look or that we live our lives?

MG: I think it has a massive impact. And I can say that from personal experience because I used to think that materialism was right. And that means when the body dies, because the body and the brain produce consciousness and the consciousness is gone. So there are no memories anymore. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to come up with meaning in life if you think that’s it. Because then it’s just a matter of collecting as much as material stuff as you can during your life and then it’s over. And it doesn’t really promote collective behavior and altruism as much. Where as this idea that you and I are speaking of, of kind of a collective consciousness and a broader stream that connects all of us. That has big implications for how we treat one another. And if you are me at the level of consciousness then I have a real incentive. Thinking about business, there is an incentive, it’s rational to want to help others. So I think that’s a big flip. But I would love to talk about one of the phenomena, one of the many I discuss in the book that gets to your question. The near-death experience. I mean I wish this were taught in school and I love, Natalie, that you are working on education systems because I think someone like you, we need people like you informing our education systems. But the near death experience, I can’t believe I didn’t learn about it. These are instances were people are sometimes, they are completely brain dead. They are in cardiac arrest and they are having a lucid memory of hovering over their body and having what’s called a life review. And this is really important if it’s a real thing where people experience their whole life in a flash. And they are feeling the feelings of how they affected people. Oh wow, I shouldn’t. and they are judging themselves. I treated that person poorly. But in some cases, they experience that through the eyes of the people that they affected. So let’s say Bob was really mean to Jane in his life and Bob’s life review during his near death experience and possibly this is what happens when we die, he is feeling those feelings through Jane’s eyes. And feeling the pain. And then he comes back in to his body after the near death experience and his life is changed. He says no, it’s not about getting the fancy car, those are okay things to allow me to do things in life but what matters is how I’m treating people. So that is a huge thing, especially when we look at the issues in the world today. If that’s the reality we’re in, where it’s really about how we treat one another because we’re the same, that has profound implications for how we live individually and how we live as a whole society.

NL: Yeah. Well, that’s the thing, I mean, if the world had more empathy and compassion, it would be a completely different place. You know, and what you talk about is people having that experience viscerally so that they actually know exactly what that’s like. So what are some of the like the psychic phenomenons and things that you were researching for the book? And was there anything that really kind of surprised you that sort of jumped out?

MG: Yes. So in the book I discussed a number of phenomenon. My reasoning is that if any of these are real, again to try to appeal to the logical mind of people who are not familiar, if any one of this is real, we can explain it very well by a transcendent consciousness that is before matter effectively. We can’t explain it well if consciousness comes from the brain which is the conventional view. There are number of phenomenon I discussed, one is near death experience, but in terms of psychic abilities, non-local consciousness, I would say the one that sticks out most is called remote viewing but I’ll go back to that in a second just to give your listeners a sense of what else is there. Telepathy is one. So actually science behind mind to mind communication. So if somebody, you think of somebody then they call you, there are some science that suggests that that’s a real thing sometimes. Psychokinesis which is the ability for the mind to affect physical matter. It has profound implications for health and just how we live and the effect of our intentions. Precognition which is the ability to know or sense the future before the future happens. Again, if consciousness is beyond time, it’s like there’s a way for consciousness to reach forward or backwards in time. Which is totally a mind blowing thing.

NL: Well that’s if time is linear. But that’s another conversation.

MG: That’s a whole big conversation. What is time? But yes. I also talk about animals that have these abilities as well and the research behind that. But I’ll go back to remote viewing which I mentioned before. This is the ability to perceive something with the mind alone. That means the eyes are not seeing it. I’m here in California and I can see something in Europe that’s hidden in a safe for example. There are people who’d have this abilities. It sounds completely crazy when I first tell people about it. I would have said it was crazy based on the materialist view of consciousness’s stuck in my brain, then yeah, it’s impossible. But if we switch our perspective it’s possible. What shocked me the most? So I’ll go through maybe a few pieces of evidence with regard to remote viewing. And what shocks me is the fact that there are so many independent pieces that are credible. One is the US government has run a more than 20 year program on this. And when I pulled up the CIA’s declassified documents, which are in my book, in T”he End to Upside Down Thinking”, they say, I’ll give a direct quote, “Remote viewing is a real phenomenon”. Okay, that’s one.

NL: Period. (Laughter)

MG: Period. That’s one line in the document and they go through why they think that is. The president of the American Statistics Association was asked by Congress and the CIA to look at this and in her report, she says, “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established”. Okay, that’s two. Princeton University. I had no idea there was a whole, a lab for 27 years being run by the former dean of Engineering, Dr. Robert John. The lab has been shut down but it was running for almost 30 years. They say that remote viewing is real. They ran over 600 trials. Former president Jimmy Carter said that remote viewing was used to find a downed Russian bomber that was lost in an African jungle. Remote viewers were able to see it with their minds. So those are just a few examples but when you put them all together, it’s very hard for me as a logical person to reason that they’re all lies. Even when they are kind of disconnected and it’s independent people, so that I think has shocked me is that there’s so much and that I didn’t know about it and that we don’t, I mean, how is this not on the news all the time. I don’t get it.

NL: Yeah. Well that’s the thing and what you’ve done is you’ve scientifically explained a lot of what we understand or feel or know to be true. So if you are just taking the wo out of womb right? (laughter)

MG: Right. And maybe someone with my background, maybe that was needed because my background is from the logical perspective so I really wanted to appeal to people who think logically. But also I think there are many people who have these experiences but don’t necessarily know how to talk about them. And so many people have come up to me since I’ve gotten in to this work and they say, Mark I’ve had this experience but I haven’t been comfortable telling anyone about it because I can’t really explain it and people will think I’m crazy. So I’m hoping that the book and the work that I’m doing around it will help those people feel much more comfortable about their experiences because they can be profound and life changing and people shouldn’t be afraid to talk about them.

NL: Absolutely. So darling, we’ve run out of time. But if people want to connect with you and get their hands on the book, where can we send them to do that?

MG: My website which is my name. MARKGOBER.com has information on me and my book, An End to Upside Down Thinking, which is also on amazon, barnes and noble, and many book stores. And in the next few months, I also have my own podcast coming out in which I interview the scientists that I talk about in my book. So you can hear them discuss the studies that they’ve been running.

NL: Awesome. Wonderful. Well Mark, thanks for joining me today darling. It’s always great chatting to you.

MG: Always great chatting with you. Thanks for having me.

NL: Wonderful. So guys I encourage you to either click the link below this video or the banner to the side to go directly to Mark’s site and please let’s share this video. Let’s get the word out there and you can do that by clicking the facebook and the twitter share buttons on this page. Then finally after all of that is over, don’t forget to click the link below that so that you can download the free ebook version of my bestselling book Never In Your Wildest Dreams. So until next time, remember to live large, choose courageously, and love without limits. We’ll see you soon.