"I Just Knew It Was Jesus"

0:03 From the time that they pronounced me that was a good 45 minutes They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart my heart stopped and I could see people screaming and crying But I didn't realize that was actually my physical body because I was somewhere else The only thing that I could feel if you can imagine Absolute love and peace there wasn't anything else to be felt. I was greeted by people I had known in the past I'm back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home. Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death, everybody. And I'd like to welcome our very special guest today, Chase Schuyler de Mayo, PhD. How are you, Chase? I'm great. I'm great. I'm glad that you had the PhD because I'm tired. I'm tired from going to school. I need a break. So I think I'm done with titles for a while. Well, you deserve the credibility for it. So way to go. Hey, everybody is going to I know they're going to love you and they're going to love your story. This is one of the best. And I've actually been trying to get Chase on the show for a long time now.

1:16 So thank you for reaching out to me this time. And it all worked out. Anyway, before we jump into your story, I would love a minute or two if you we could get to know you. So tell us a little bit about Chase. Yeah, I'm a dad, a veteran, and I get to share my story about dying. I work full time in radio, so it's important I always mention that because I share my story. I always say my story is always going to be free. I don't have a book. I don't offer services. I don't have clients. I don't charge to speak. It's just so important to me. As we get further into my story, I share that, you know, for so long, I kind of wondered. why I got to come back. And I feel like this is part of my gift that I get to come back and share my story and always keep it not behind a paywall for you to hear what I went through. So that's a quick snippet of me. I'm here in Orlando, Florida. I was born and raised here. I got to travel around for the military. And I'm sure that we'll get to a little bit of that in the story as well. But I'm just honored to be here. And I'm just honored that I get the opportunity to still be alive and get to share with people like you. Family, you have children? I just met one of them. Yeah, you met one of them and the other one was being held.

2:27 So I have an almost four -year -old named Declan and then I have a five -month -old named Lachlan and my wife Sarah. She's from Australia. We met working on a cruise ship and she is awesome. So we have little half American, half Aussie babies terrorizing the house, probably in the background every once in a while. So which accent are they gonna come down with? It's funny, because of the show Bluey, I think my son's picking up more of the accent from the TV show than he is my wife, which I don't know if she likes that or not, I'll have to ask her. Oh, that's funny. What did you do on a cruise ship, by the way? I was the DJ, and I got to train the DJs. It was really cool. My wife was a performer, so she was a dancer and singer in the shows, like the Broadway -style shows. And I went on to be a DJ. I just wanted to kind of get away and go backwards in time and not have such a serious job. I got to float around like a pirate for a few years and play music for people every five, six day cruise. And it was, it was incredible.

3:22 I mean, I got the best thing in the world out of it. I got my wife and kids. So certainly no regrets doing that. It was all worth it. All right. Let's go back to the time when you were in the air force and that fateful day, I'll call it because it had a lot to do with the rest of your life. Tell us what was going on. How long had you been in the air force and what was going on with your health that led up to this? Yeah, so I joined the Air Force in 2006. I'd known since seventh grade, so I knew early on that the military was for me. My grandfather was in the military. My great -grandfather served in World War II in Iwo Jima. So it was just one of those things where I was just kind of everybody knew that I was going to join. So I left right out of high school in 2006. pretty much said bye to everybody, sold my car, because I was never coming back. You know, planned to do 20 years in the Air Force and just kind of be a lifer, as they say in the military. And so I went through training and I was going to school, basically training to be an Air Force Green Beret.

4:19 It's called a SEER instructor. And I got injured, not a crazy injury, just a little bit, you know, of like my knee kind of ruptured out, which sounds gruesome, but we see football stars. getting that injury and coming back, you know, and playing like months later. So not the end of the world, but they decided ultimately to reclass my job. And so I got the pick and I got to be a journalist. I always loved writing. I liked photography. I liked design. I liked marketing. So very, very lucky or blessed. You could say that I got to be reclassed into being a journalist. That ends me up in Langley, Virginia. Loved it. Got to work with. really cool things. And, you know, if Jeopardy came on base and wanted to interview the pilots of the F -22 Raptor, I got to be there.

5:03 The local news and magazines, they always wanted to talk to pilots because it was so cool. And so I got to work with them as like a public affairs officer. So everything was going great until I had to reclassify and retrain shooting an M16 rifle. So often you obviously have to requalify to make sure you're capable to at least shoot a gun. It got really hard for me being able to kneel down because of the surgery I had on my knee. And they basically said, hey, you've got to go get this checked out or you can't stay in the Air Force. So I knew my time was kind of coming up. I knew that maybe my Air Force aspirations and goals and dreams were maybe going to come to an end, which was really hard for me. And I just kind of sunk into, I think, the first real depression maybe of my life. I got really just kind of down on myself and thought this was supposed to be my life purpose. This was my goal. Join the military, you know, be in the Air Force forever. And it seemed like maybe my body wasn't cut out for it. And that was really hard for me. So now we're looking at, we're in April 2008. And I started showing up late to work, maybe not taking it as seriously as I should. You know, I regret that now, of course, but I was a young kid just thinking, you know, what are they gonna do? Fire me, right?

6:16 You know, they can't fire me. I'm gonna get booted out. So my supervisor had a key to my dorm room because I lived on base. And one morning she thought she was gonna catch me sleeping in and instead I was completely passed out in my dorm room. And that was April 1st, 2008. And that's really where my near -death experience started. They rushed me to the hospital. You know, I was right on base, so a couple minutes away, and hooked me up to every equipment possible. They started doing blood work. They started giving me an IV. They wanted to check, obviously, if I hit my head. I was young, and I was in really good shape. So they, of course, thought, you know, is he taking supplements? Is he on drugs? Is he drinking? You know, what would cause this young guy to be passed out? And they ran every test. And so the nurse came back in. She fiddled with my IV. And they basically said, if we can't find anything wrong with you after this chest x -ray, then we're probably just going to send you home. And maybe you just had a little fainting spell and no big deal. So as I lay there, she walks away to go get this mobile chest x -ray.

7:17 And that's where everything kind of got. That's where I started dying, right? Everything got really blurry and hazy. time seem to slow down, but get faster at the same time. And then alarms start going off. You start hearing the beeping. It was almost like a cartoon where the nurses and doctors start like sprinting by, you know, they're like, they almost are running so fast into my room that they can't even stop. And so everybody starts crowding around me. I kind of confused and you know, they're shouting and it's so interesting because like I remember them shouting. But I also remember that there was like a stillness in the room. So you have alarms blaring and things beeping, my confusion, their confusion. But it's really hard to try to put into words how chaotic and calm it was at the exact same time. Did you actually flatline, by the way? I did. Yeah, I sure did. And that's the hard thing is that I actually saw it happen. A gentleman laid to the left of me, sat to the left of me and started stroking my arm and saying, everything's going to be OK. you know, the air is going up into your vein and it's gonna hurt but everything's gonna be fine. And he was stroking my arm and like really nice while everybody was kind of on the right side of me, you know, kind of crowded around the bed looking and medical terms that I didn't know at the time. And I tried to look over to the gentleman because this was so calm.

8:41 Like I could plainly hear his voice while everybody else was kind of screaming in the hospital noises. And I just couldn't turn my head to the left. And it just felt like somebody was stopping me from looking over to my left. And I kept trying, sure enough, this pain in my left arm. Every time I share my story, I can almost feel just a small little morsel of the amount of pain. It was just excruciating. What happened was air went through the IV when the nurse kind of fiddled with it. And it was just slowly, it felt slow to me, slowly going up my vein, you know, to stop my heart. It was awful. It was painful. And by the time I could finally turn my head to the left to see who was, you know, calming me and stroking my arm, there was nobody there.

9:24 And there was no way that somebody could have been there because, really, the curtain of my room was right there. I mean, there is, you know, like a one -foot gap. So I look over to my left and I see nobody there, and then I kind of look up and I watch the screen completely flatline. It was... I knew what it meant. You know, I was at least coherent enough in that split -second moment to go... That's not good. You know, that's not supposed to happen And then I was also confused because I was so vividly hearing this gentleman stroke my arm And he was talking to me and comforting me and there was just there was nobody there nor was there like I said room For anybody to be there. Do you mind if I hop in and interrupt you every once in a while? Please do because I'll just ramble Okay, because I like to ask questions. So please yeah, there's somebody stroking your arm. You look there's nobody there So in your mind, have you figured out who that was?

10:21 No, it's I don't know who it was. I would love to guess, but I know guessing won't do my story any justice, right? So I have no idea who it could have been. It wasn't a familiar voice. It wasn't like it wasn't a family member. It was just I know it was a gentleman just based off the voice and and the calmness that he felt while he was kind of rubbing. He was just sitting there just rubbing my arm saying it's fine. This is going to hurt. Everything's going to be OK. And I assumed it was, you know, a doctor or a nurse telling me, you know, hey, something bad is happening. But of course, all the doctors and nurses were over to my right, you know, concerned about trying to figure out why my heart was stopping. And they didn't know about the error in the line, did they? Not at the time. No, you know, and of course, like, of course, the nurse didn't mean to do it. Probably nor did she know that she did it, of course. So I hold no ill will towards her. I'm sure she felt bad enough. But, you know, I just think Genuinely, I think that this was what was supposed to happen. I was supposed to die in a controlled environment in order for me to come back. So unfortunately for the doctors and nurses, I think that I feel worse for them than myself that they had to watch me die, even though it was probably pre -planned and supposed to happen that way. All right. Well, I'm sorry I had to interrupt. So keep going and I'll just interrupt now in any way, but go ahead and keep telling your story from there. So I watched myself flatline. I watched the nurses and doctors. I so vividly remember their faces of me dying.

11:49 That's one tough moment for my near -death experience. Everything else was really beautiful, but that was tough to watch the reaction on other people of somebody dying in front of them. And I think I kind of keep that with me in my pocket to remember, you know, what suffering looks like and what suffering looks like through somebody else's eyes, I should say. But in that moment... I experienced extreme, extreme bliss. Like, it felt like ice pouring out of my chest. The coolest feeling you could ever imagine. Just this amazing, freeing, gravity -defying feeling just in my heart and in my midsection here. And it just felt like light, if you could quantify what light feels like. Not the sun, because the sun is hot, but just this incredible, incredible feeling of joy kind of pouring out of my chest. And I felt my body kind of gravitate upwards. I can't say that it was like a tornado heading up. It just felt like a lifting feeling, like you're no longer being held by gravity. So I started floating upwards and I remember hearing, it just felt like bells and chimes and whistles, just like this pleasant, not music, but just this really nice feeling. almost like if you take an elevator up in a fancy building and you hear that elevator music. I kind of got a little bit of elevator music, so it was nice. I don't think at that time that I thought, oh, I just died. I saw myself flatlined, but it happened so quickly from seeing myself flatlined to seeing the reaction of the

13:22 nurses and doctors and then my body going upwards that you didn't really have time to go, what's happening? What's going on? You just kind of... went with the flow and said, okay, so here I go. And my body was floating upwards and couldn't see where I was going, but I was happy and I felt like I was being surrounded by things that I really couldn't see. You know, I don't know if it was angels. I don't know if it was loved ones. It was just a surrounding feeling like, hey, you're not alone and this is nice. And before I knew it, I ended up in the most incredible garden you could ever imagine. The most beautiful Martha Stewart quality garden. It was beautiful. It was like purples and blues and greens and colors that we don't have here. It was stunning.

14:04 It was so bright and beautiful. For me, it was really vivid because I remember my feet sinking into dirt. And I personally, I hate the feeling of feet, my feet in dirt. I'm here in Orlando, Florida. And so you don't really walk in the dirt here because we have fire ants. So that was like a big thing for me. I just remember because in a dream, you don't really feel right. If you feel something, you normally jump up and you're awake. but I remember my feet sinking in and feeling the grit of the dirt in between my toes and going, oh, this is real. This is really happening. And way up ahead, I mean, we're talking a few hundred yards up ahead, I see a gentleman and a little boy. And before I know it, I'm right there. I didn't walk. I don't remember flying, but I just remember being. seeing them far away, and then immediately I'm just a few feet away from them. There's this little blonde boy with curly hair, and he's just running away.

15:00 He thinks he's running away from this gentleman in a robe, and the gentleman in the robe is, of course, letting him think that this little boy is getting away, and his arms are kind of behind his back, and he's smiling and laughing, and this little boy is just having the time of his life. Silly, goofy, cheeky, thinks he's being naughty, but not really naughty. And he's free, like the, you know, as I tell you the story, like my chest is like, my heart's booming out of my chest, because it's just, it was this beautiful interaction of what every child should experience, right? And that's just the freedom of being themselves and being happy and not worried about what's happening later that day, not worried about how they're gonna, you know, pay their rent. This little boy was just gleeful, right? And before I knew it, the gentleman in the robe turned and looked at me with this big smile on his face.

15:53 And I was like, that's Jesus. Immediately. And I always say when I share my story, I grew up in, you know, like a Catholic household. My parents would convince me that if I sat still and didn't cause a ruckus in church, they would take me, you know, to get a sandwich afterwards. They would have to bribe me to be good in church. And that was kind of my experience. You know, I got baptized. I went through confirmation. I did all the good stuff that you can do in church to be a good... church kid, but had you asked me the night before April 1st, what happens if you die tomorrow? I certainly would not have said I'm going to go meet Jesus. I'm going to go float up in heaven. I mean, I had no prior thoughts about death. I didn't I don't think I really at that age took that seriously. I didn't care. Maybe maybe that's a good thing when you join the military to not have that fear, but but I share all that to say that I. I thought maybe I would see Elvis, you know, in heaven.

16:45 I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect to see Jesus. And what was important for me, too, was he looked nothing like what I grew up seeing. You know, when I walked into a Catholic church as a kid, you see a gentleman in long hair and usually, you know, a beard sometimes and in the worst possible physical day of his human life, right? Like, he's frail, he's beaten. And this was such like a young, vibrant man with like short brown hair, big beautiful smile, big green eyes. But I just knew. I mean, I knew 100 % that it was Jesus. As if like, Eric, you and I have met this time and then I see you next week and I'm like, oh, there's Eric. It kind of blew me away that I was standing face to face with him. But before I could really like take that in and question like, hey, Jesus, you know, I looked over and I realized that the little boy was me. And I didn't connect the dots until then. I had light, light hair back then and curly hair and just way different. And I started to kind of take in what I was seeing. You know, I'm watching myself as a little boy be happy as can be, not taking life seriously, enjoying himself. And then I'm watching him interacting with Jesus. And that's when I realized, like, oh, I'm in heaven now. This is what it is. This is what's going on. And I had this beautiful interaction. We didn't talk. We didn't talk like you and I are, Eric, and we didn't share words, but I just felt like I was getting this wealth of information, or a reminder of information, I should say. I don't think I was learning anything

18:17 new. It was kind of like, hey, you're taking everything, you know better. You're taking everything so seriously. You know you're supposed to do this. You know you're supposed to do that. Like this is the way. And I was just sitting there kind of like taking the information and going, yep, yep, you're right. You have heard me talk about OneSkin over the last few months for their best -selling skincare. I use it. I love it. Now they've applied that same OS1 peptide to a scalp serum that actually works where hair health begins to nourish from the root. So your hair looks and feels better over time. And like their skincare, they have the clinical studies to prove it. Six months in, people saw a 43 % increase in hair thickness. In fact, just three months in, 75 % of customers saw visible hair growth. Whether it is stress, hormonal shifts, or just getting a little older, hair changes can happen to everyone, men and women. I just started using it and if it works half as well as their skincare, you are absolutely going to love it. And of course we have a deal for our listeners. Born from over 10 years of longevity research, OneSkin's OS1 Peptide is engineered to support your hair to look visibly fuller and thicker at any age. For a limited time, try OneSkin with 15 % off using code roundtrip at oneskin .co And then very vividly, right at the end of

20:06 this incredible exchange, he said, don't forget, your job is to bring back light, laughter and love. And the laughter part, I felt like he italicized laughter. I remember the laughter part being so important, because I think growing up, that was my thing. I'm one of many, many kids in my family. And everybody had their thing. We had my super athletic brother, and we had my incredibly smart brother, and my, you know, sports savvy sister, and my really kind sister. We all kind of had labels growing up. And mine was just, you know, as the baby of the family, I just tried to be goofy to get somebody to laugh. You know, that was kind of my goal. And so growing up, people are always like, hey, you know, you can make people laugh. So when he said that, it felt personal, like it didn't just seem like go back and spread love and, you know, you're on your way. It felt like he knew me and he knew a strength of mine. And so before before I could even, you know, say anything else, he just said, it's time for you to go back now. And I just smiled and said, yeah, I know, I know it is. And that was it. There was no goodbye. There was no grand ceremony. There was no. horns and trumpet, nor was there any like physical feeling of, I want to stay or please keep me here. It was like you clocking out for work and saying like, yep, I'll see you all tomorrow. That was it. Before I knew it, I was back in my body. There was no thud or thump or anything dramatic. It just felt like I was back in my body. So I start to slowly open my eyes and you kind of think it's, you know,

21:37 when you have like an incredible dream. close your eyes again you're like okay just one more minute just give me one more minute of that and I realized that this wasn't a dream so I opened my eyes all the way and I'm in a completely different room I'm not in the same room and very quickly because I could see the window there's nobody walking by I was not hooked up to anything I had no cords on me anymore no equipment it was kind of like really dim but there was a bright window out the side and nobody was walking by in uniform. At the time, everybody was wearing still like, we call them BDUs. So if anybody's a veteran, you're like, wow, he was in the military a long time ago. But we called them BDUs. Nobody was walking by in BDUs. Started calling out like, hello, hello, hello. And a nurse came in and she looked super confused. She was like, let me go get the doctor and just ran out. And within, I don't know, maybe a minute of time passed, you know, the doctor came walking in and he just looked completely baffled. Your classic like scratching the back of his head going, I don't know what to say. He said, I'm gonna call the Air Force base. We're gonna send you back to the Air Force base and they can talk to you and go from there. And that was really it. So you were at the morgue, were you at the morgue? I was off base about 10 minutes away from the base in a civilian hospital in a dark room. So I was not in unless that room was the morgue room, which I didn't ask. There was a there was a phone in the room. So I don't know if they typically put phones in the morgue. It was a hospital in

23:08 Hampton, Virginia. Yeah. I'm just trying to piece this together because he looked shocked. You had nothing connected to you. Did they think you were dead and just sent you on to wherever or one of those long -term care facilities or something for people that are never going to wake up? Did you ever get to the bottom of that? What was it? I'm so glad you asked that because I promise you I'm not a conspiracy theorist. So the Air Force sent me off base to pronounce me dead, right? They didn't want an airman to die on base, which is, unfortunately, that's like kind of standard procedure. I mean, you even have theme parts here in Orlando that will try to... transport somebody off so they don't they don't end up in the news right so no hard feelings there but you know I ended up it's the next closest er so it's 10 minutes away it's right down the road from one of the base exits and I can picture it how you know you would drive it basically I don't know if it was a morgue it wasn't freezing cold so you know unless the AC was off that day but I was I was completely unconnected but what's interesting though to share that part is that was April 1st that I flatlined. And when I called my friends, it was April 2nd. So I don't know how much how long I was dead for. I don't know if it was 30 minutes, if it was a couple of hours. I don't know, but it was daytime the next day. So from April 1st and then I woke up April 2nd. I don't think I was dead for, let's say, 24 hours, but I just really didn't have a concept of how long I was in the Air Force Hospital. And then when I called my friends, but I called my friend. Luckily back

24:41 then I memorized phone numbers. Now we don't do that anymore. Just tap the name and the phone, but I called a friend and I said, I'm starving. I just died. I really want to go to Chick -fil -A. And they said, okay. And so my friends picked me up. I didn't even go back to base yet. And we went and had lunch and I did what any teenage kid probably at that time would do. I went on Facebook and I posted me in my hospital with my hospital band on and said, It's the day I basically died and I knew I was healthy. So I kind of made a joke out of it and and that was it. I told my friends what happened and I'm sure some of them believe me. I'm sure some of them thought I had lost my mind. I want to come back to the incredibly beautiful stuff. OK, I'm not I'm not going to ignore that, but this is kind of blowing me away for so let me just make sure I get it. So the Air Force must have thought you're beyond saving at some point. sent you to another facility where they would declare you dead, officially, because you had no IVs, no nothing hooked up to you. Now, you're not April fooling us, right? Because this was April 1st. You know what? It's the worst and best April fool's joke, too. Every time that I share this story, I'm like, yeah, the irony that it happened on April 1st is not lost on me. I woke up completely unconnected to anything. No equipment on me.

25:59 in a different city, technically, right? I was off base in Hampton, Virginia and years later. So I know we're going to get further along kind of what happened after my near -death experience. But an important note is I wrote the hospital when I said, you know, I don't want to share this story publicly until I can prove it happened, which for anybody listening, if you've had a near -death experience, you don't need proof. But I did because I'm very scientifically minded and I didn't want people to go, oh, he's crazy. He's making it up. So I went through all of my medical records. I pulled all my military records. You know, I went, I even reached out to like the national center. I forget the name, the national center of like military information. And I wrote that hospital and they wrote back. There's no history of a patient being in this hospital.

26:43 However, about two years later, when I lived in Hampton, Virginia, I had gotten in a car accident and went to that hospital and there's a whole lawsuit thing. I got rear -ended and I used to have records saying that, you know, I went to the hospital for basically scrapes and bumps and bruises from the airbag deploying. So I had been a patient in that hospital before afterwards. And when I wrote the hospital, they said that patient by that name has never been here before. And it was written on a sticky note, so like super unofficial. So again, not a conspiracy theorist, but it's obvious that there was some coordination there to just hopefully make sure that this story didn't necessarily come to light like it has. All right, we're recording this in the month of August. I just want people to know this is not an April Fool prank. This is not a Chick -fil -A ad. Not at all. This is unbelievable.

27:34 Okay. Well, some of this is going to go unexplained and that's okay. I can deal with that. Holy cow. Couple of questions. First of all, when you remember when the doctors, nurses were working on you, And you talked about being able to see their faces and kind of the terror because you were dying. Do you feel like you were? I mean, a lot of people have told me, oh, they were up in the corner of the room seeing their body and all these things going on. Was that you or were you more looking up at him or how did that? I was in my body still. Yeah, I was still in my body. I was still very aware because they were above me. The gentleman to the left of me and then the screen, you know, the monitor to my, you know, my upper left up here. This is where the monitor was. The gentleman to the left of me was here, and all the doctors and nurses were all looking over me. So I was still in my body.

28:26 And I will say, like, even how vividly I remember those moments, I was very aware still. The pain was excruciating. Maybe the worst pain I've ever felt in my life, a feeling that the air go up my arm, but then also feeling on that same arm somebody come for me and, you know, kind of stroking my arm. So... All of those emotions and reactions felt just incredibly real. I mean, as as real as the gentleman that wasn't there to my left, it felt like obviously the doctors and nurses. Everything felt like I was kind of handling not to quote that that quote or that movie, but it was everything everywhere all at once, you know, is the best way to describe it. OK, now let's clarify one thing. You also talked about after that, your body going up, OK? Most people would say my spirit or my consciousness went up. My body was left there on the bed. Why did you use the term body? Because it was still there in the hospital room, right? Yeah, you're right.

29:23 I say body because I remember the feeling of my feet in the dirt. Like I still felt like myself. I still you know, I didn't have a mirror, but I was still chase. I still felt like I was in my physical. I had arms and legs, right? So. When I landed in that garden and I felt my feet touch, the only explanation I can have is that my body, my body rose up and came back down. So obviously, people can interpret that how was it my soul, you know, or just was it my mind picturing that I had a body. But how I can differentiate how real it was for me was that feeling of my feet being in the dirt, which was my first actual sensation besides kind of that joyful, gravity -free feeling. So knowing that I had legs and arms is important, I think important for me to remember. Okay, we're going to talk about this a little bit more off mic. I don't want to go down this rabbit hole too far. But let me tell you something that other people have told me and maybe this will bring a little clarity to it if you feel like you need any. I have had other people say that when they were in their spirit form in heaven or whatever they want to call it, this world of spirits. That they actually hugged other people and felt other people But they didn't feel like they were in their body Is it possible that that was what was going on with you that your body was down there? And maybe your spirit can feel things just because you're in a spirit form maybe doesn't mean that you can't feel dirt and Smell good things and all

30:54 that kind of stuff. Is that a possibility? Of course, yeah. I mean, I had never thought of it that way. You know, and I'll be honest, I don't listen to a lot of other near -death experiences because I feel their pain when I hear their stories and that's hard for me. So, and I always want to keep my story genuine. I don't want to listen to other people's stories and go, oh, yeah, you know, so I'm glad that you shared that because I think there's a strong possibility that it wasn't really my human body up there. Because like I said, I didn't have a mirror. So it's hard to look at what I looked like. Maybe I didn't even look like me. I didn't I never even really thought of that. That's kind of cool. And I think it is just so amazingly beautiful that you saw yourself as a child, because isn't that the best of us? Right. When we're how old would you say that child looked three and a half, three years old, kind of like the same age as maybe my son is now. Yeah. I mean at that point life is just so innocent and so worry free. It's just so wonderful at that time that I think the symbolism of that with all this innocence in this interaction with Jesus is just incredibly beautiful. Are there any other details of that part of it that you can remember that you want to share? It felt like time stood still. It felt like maybe I was up there for an hour and then at the same time it's like two minutes of memory. Which is hard, right? Because I wish I remembered the hour.

32:19 But you're just experiencing so many new feelings and sensations or remembering so many new feelings and sensations that what I will say is, is that I am so confident that heaven is real, no matter what your version of heaven looks like. Some people go, oh, you know, you ended up in the garden because that's what you needed to see. And if that's the case, I'm fortunate because if that's what I have to look forward to when my time is up here on Earth, I am. excited to go back to the garden. Let's put it that way. I am, I'm so certain that everybody, everybody gets to experience some form of bliss that I got to experience. I don't think it was just me that gets to experience that. I'm not special compared to anybody at all. I'm just a kid from Orlando. So the fact that I got to see myself as a little kid, I think was the reminder I needed that I know better. And luckily Jesus was there to kind of look at me and go. You're taking it way too seriously. Like your life isn't over just because you got hurt, you know, and you don't get to be in the military anymore. And so I got the lesson I needed, which was a perfect lesson that I that I hope is continue to help other people. I hope you seeing that child also means that in the eternities, we're still going to be childlike in many ways where we're in awe of things. and we can run around and be a little, yeah, I hope we can be childlike. That's where all those feelings come from. There was one term that you used that was so unusual. You described the bliss as ice, feeling like ice pouring out

33:52 of your chest. I've never heard it described like that before. Yeah. You know why? Because being in Florida, it's hot as heck out here. There's no better feeling when you're playing outside as a kid. and your parents give you a bunch of ice water or lemonade or something. And it just feels, you can feel the coolness going down into your chest. And that's what it felt like. It felt like the most cooling sensation. That's the best way to describe it. It felt like ice, just the most freezing feeling, freezing with a Z. of like being free, like just shooting out, like a rainbow pouring out of your chest. I mean, there's only so many metaphors, you know, to describe it. It just gets, my jaw hurts right now from smiling because I just, I love explaining that feeling of joy that I got because there's no weight of the world. There's no, you're not being held down by anything. It was just completely freeing. It's a special feeling that I look forward to everybody experiencing. Now, I wasn't going to say I hope everybody gets to feel it. I'm looking forward to everybody someday getting to feel that feeling. All right. Let's talk a little bit about what life was like afterwards.

35:04 You were sent back with this mission. Don't forget your job is to take back. Did I get it right? Light, laughter and love. Yes. Were those the three words? Those were. So how has that changed your life? How have you been able to do that? It's changed everything. It's changed my life, my families, my friends, and hopefully other people. When I came back, I felt like I had, I was kind of energized, right? Like I had a chance. I got out of the Air Force and on my last day in the Air Force, actual last day on paper, I auditioned for like a local TV competition. I'd never grown up doing drama or theater or dancing or singing. Like that wasn't, I was like, I'm gonna be the military kid. That's gonna be my identity, you know? So no training in that, but I auditioned to be kind of the face of a local TV station, went through the process. And, you know, I kind of was remembering like, I'm going to go spread light and laughter, do all these things. And sure enough, I made it all the way. And I got to be an announcer for a local baseball team and hockey team there in Norfolk.

36:06 And then I got to work in radio and then I started DJing. And I was like doing iconic, I call it my selfish. kind of era in a sense because I wasn't openly sharing my story, but I was remembering the values and kind of the lesson from it. I started doing stand -up comedy and I even got the headline, you know, at like a legitimate comedy club in Virginia. And I wanted to learn how to dance. So I got my certification to be a ballroom dancer and I did break dancing. Like I joined a break dance thing. I got to host competitions, you know, on the microphone. And I mean, I was like living it up. People would always say like you're burning it at both ends. You know, I had a full -time job and I was doing all of this stuff It was just every day. I was somewhere doing something and Learning wasn't like sitting through school at kindergarten through 12th grade, you know learning about stuff I was just like learning all the things that had ever interested me and for whatever reason was like no I have to act too cool for that. I'm too cool to go be a ballroom dance instructor You know or I can't do a break dancing and I just I had no fear for such a long time And then unfortunately, life grabbed a hold of me again. And it was like, are you having fun? You're gonna have to settle down eventually and be a grownup. I started slowly losing all of my hobbies, just shedding them off for the reason of, no, no, this is what being a grownup is supposed to look like. You know, I'm supposed to have a nice house and a nice car and a good job and impress people and get married. And, you know, it started to take a hold of me again. It was almost like a darkness.

37:35 without sounding too dramatic. I started giving up the things that brought me joy. And I went on a retreat and it was like a mental health retreat for veterans. And we worked on all these different things like breath work. And really it was kind of like just sitting still and allowing yourself to be free and no cell phones. And when I came back, my wife looked at me in the face. She said, you look completely different. You look like a different person. And it was, I was only gone for five days. And that night is when I started. openly sharing my story, basically. It was when my life changed. So we're talking 12 years later. So that was April 2008 that I died. And then it wasn't until late 2020, you know, COVID year that I really started opening up and saying, OK, I'm going to there's a reason why I'm here now. And I've done all these fun things. And it's time to share that my lesson with the world and not worry if people think I'm crazy or if I'm making it up. You know, those those were fears. And at a certain point, I'd said. Whoever let me come back and have a second life, you know, they're gonna get it They're gonna get really mad at me eventually if I don't start doing this, you know, they're gonna they're not gonna let me come back the second time so I started sharing it and I Started learning that I had more gifts than I think I realized, you know or at least becoming more accepting of some of the gifts that I think I got from my near -death experience and I started going to school so I started school for alternative medicine in 2020. Right after that retreat, I started researching schools of things that I was personally interested in, not worried about where the college was or the fancy name of the college. It was

39:07 like, this is what I want to learn about. So I started alternative medicine school. Then I got my master's in metaphysical science and then a doctorate in holistic counseling. And there was no end goal of I'm going to and I'm gonna start charging people to counsel them or to bring them happiness. It was just, I just wanted to keep learning some more things that I loved. And I started getting my hobbies back. And I re -corrected that like kind of darker period of worrying about the car, the house, how other people perceive me. And I've never felt more free in this moment, like today with my two boys and my wife than I've ever felt. the possessions don't matter it's these like little glimpses in my son's eyes or getting to do fun stuff or making them laugh i'm very very very fortunate to to get to be here and and share what i've learned well i think this is a great way to wrap up our theme for the day is going to be shed fear embrace light laughter and love what a great way to live your life Thank you, Eric. I always want to say that I appreciate what you do. It's a labor of love. I know it's a lot of work making podcasts and interviews and chasing after people.

40:20 But, you know, without you and creative people and people who care about sharing these stories, these stories don't get out. And the cool thing is, is I'll get emails all the time about, I listen to you on this and I fix this and I'm working on this now. So without people like you, my story doesn't get out. So I, from the bottom of my heart, appreciate you. And I'm just grateful that we can be a part of of you helping other people through your story. I'll put it that way because we now have this vehicle to get it out to thousands and thousands of people for you. So anyway, Chase, appreciate you very much. Thanks for being with me today. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast. Don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button and sign up for our newsletter at roundtripdeath .com. If you want to share your near -death experience or if you have questions or comments about the show, send an email to eric at roundtripdeath .com. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.