Episode 11:

Scott Ohlgren is our guest, and he talks us through how a specific and planned experience based on teachings from the Tibetan Book of the Dead led him to the realisation that his soul was eternal. We also hear from a podcast listener about her experience in the Akashic records and how the past life revealed explained something about her driving skills.

Scott Ohlgren is the owner and formulator of Synaptic Scientific, a manufacturer of a plant-based nutraceutical product called Cognition™ . Scott has a long interest in natural foods as medicine going back to the mid-70s, and a particular love of cognitive herbal formulas. After travelling around the world, including a 6-month stay in the Coolum, Queensland area, he returned to the US and graduated from a natural foods school in the ’80s, and wrote three books on the diet-disease/diet-health connection that sold 80,000 hard copies in print.

Website:  https://synapticscientific.com/

Welcome to the Infinite Life Podcast with Katische.  In this episode, we have a very special guest today and his name is Scott.  Scott Ohlgren.  Is that how you pronounce it?

yes 

Perfect.  You got my name correct immediately with not even knowing who I was on the podcast recorder and I was so impressed because “Katische” is not an easy name to actually pronounce you know sight unseen, so that was just like “this man gets a million bonus brownie points already”! So thanks for coming on the show today Scott.  And for listeners in the last episode, Scott left me a voice message on the podcast recorder, and I tell you it made my day, because he basically gave me a thumbs up for the work that we're doing in this podcast and for I guess encouraging people to think about the continuation of life and the eternal nature of our soul and our soul's journey, so thank you for that Scott.

Scott let's start with why did you feel that you wanted to give me some encouragement? What is the background to contacting me and what it is about your story that you think it's important for other people to think about, you know that the fact that they might not die and it be the end when they get buried or cremated?

Look, good question.  I'm not. I naturally would not I don't listen to a lot of podcasts about past lives.  It's I don't even read about it that much anymore but I think it could be a couple of things number one I'm 65 years old now and it really is true that as you get older you start to have a sense of even a stronger sense of where am I holding back because you know at some point none of this is going to matter you know.  Are there things that are they're important that you need to talk about? 

And I think the second thing is the - what's occurred in my own country and you know it might be the political landscape here the strong black and white divisions that have been occurring that shocked everybody you know in my own country here and then of course on top of that why not throw in a pandemic and all of the twists and turns that that has done.    But when I saw your and I saw what you were doing and then I saw some of the things and then just your whole being and I just thought god this is the this is what the world needs-  is what is missing to me,  is that sense of bigger than one's own physical body, one's own egocentric point of view and then it just made me reflect on why am I different in that way you know and I thought about my own powerful experiences 40 years ago, even longer.

And I thought and the people I hang out with, that have had a similar extraordinarily expansive past life kind of vibe to them and that once you have that experience, in a very visceral undeniable sense, then everything changes.  And I will say it's interesting we were talking a little bit about religion before we popped on because you had been one of your past   interviews was with a Mormon person I'm actually very I wouldn't say ardently anti-religion

But it bothers me, any kind of fixed set of rules, that don't allow you to think outside of that box. I have my whole life been fascinated by cults and cult thinking and how it happens and why it happens and to whom it happens and then the process of getting out of it and what cult thinking is.  I wish there was a better term. I'm sure there is, but it's basically any kind of entrapped cosmology that has it that part of its cosmology says you are a sinner if you think outside of this cosmology or you're an idiot,  when in fact once you have an experience of past lives and something that occurred to me before this lifetime and I think is even occurring in even beyond this, then it those types of boxes that are classically designed like a religion are they they they make they're upsetting because you, they stop asking the questions and somebody up on high with a certain type of robe or generally they're the old men you know which really pisses me off, you know they're the ones telling you and wagging their fingers saying we know what the 10 rules are.  We know what the six rules are and the tenets here and all and that stuff has always upset me deeply and it actually is why I think what has been happening in my own country the last few you know six-seven years has been more upsetting because it has that vibe it has all of the earmarks of cult thinking right.  

People trapped inside of a certain way of thinking that-  oh it's only white black right wrong and then unaware of their own thinking process, so all of that is is what has been on my mind and my own work my own design work in strong plant medicine, nootropics nutraceuticals that has been my career for the last few decades, well somehow when I saw what you were doing I realised this is helping what I'm trying to do.  This is part of the solution. It's about returning to the awe and having that awe experience somehow, this is so much bigger than what you think-  because you can't think I don't think in the trapped mind when you've had the experiences that you had.  You can't.  You have that more that sense of awe and wonder around the mystery of life because it came it had so much depth before me and so much step afterwards so that's a heck of a long answer to that question.

Now tell me this feeling about religion.  I just want to dive into that for a second because I can tell you my perspective,  but sometimes when you have a really strong interest in say like that cult-like framework and the person looking at a situation thinking this is crazy this whole religion thing and religions are becoming undone as we speak but did you have a strong family upbringing in religion that has made you then as an adult think oh I don't agree with what I was taught or do you think that you had a role in a previous life that was in a strong religious context that has made you in this life go yeah no religion's not for me in this life.

Yeah, I think I think I think it's more the latter.  I think it is actually the latter.  Yes.  In other words, I didn't have a strong religious upbringing.  I'm here in America if you come from the midwest a lot of the midwestern states are kind of they're more Lutheran methodist which are pretty kind of considered “hey everyone we should all get along” kind of religions and they're very loosely structured, but even at and I came from a very small farm town a population 2100 people. okay, We weren't farmers, but it was you know very very very there was everything was far in between we were maybe 25 miles outside of Milwaukee Wisconsin so it just had a small town very small-town feel to it and I wasn't exposed to anything alternative at all.

So everything was really in the back of my mind that going this isn't there's something off here.  I want to explore something further and I still have a very strong memory of my mom, she we lived right next to the methodist church and my mom you know having us go to Sunday every day and I just hated it hated it,  hated it and I was not a radical kid like you know or real you know against my parents anything.  But in eighth grade, they have something I think called confirmation.  It's sort of like in that church.  I don't even know exactly all what it meant, but I remember, you know for every Sunday, me going “god mom I hate this” and she said, “okay well look at the end of eighth grade here which is getting real close you can make a decision you know and if you go to this you know go to that confirmation the pre-confirmation stuff and at the end of it you don't want to do you you can do you don't have to do that”.  and oh my gosh that was the first time because I remember that meeting with the minister or Pastor or whatever they're called and eight you know eighth grade, what is that 12 years old and I'm sitting with arms crossed and he says so okay you know you're ready and I said no, this is it, I'm done.

So even back then, and soI do think it is has something more to do with way before I got in here because I actually think and I've had you know friends who know me well say “you were probably one of those abusive people that was a priest or something you know way back they're telling people what to do”.

And I might agree with that. I don't have a memory of it, but I think that's part of a lot of past lives. One of the last thoughts as you're dying is, never again. you might say never again.  Never again.  

Yeah, and what about then, when you were because you left a message on my on the podcast recorder that you came to Australia and you travelled wildly, did you also travel to different countries that exposed yourself to different religious beliefs? Like did you go to India or anywhere in Asia to help with that awakening process in terms of understanding that there are multiple points of view about the world and what god is? Who God is? What is God called? like and the introduction to the belief of reincarnation?  Did you get exposed that way, or how did you get introduced to the concept that perhaps life might go on?

Well you know, it was never a real foreign idea.  it wasn't something I ever thought well. I'm really against that.  It's just, I didn't have a real physical experience of, you know a real  embodied experience of it until later on.  I came from a family of five kids and I was the second oldest and I don't know what was in our genes but we all were travellers.  We were all, we couldn't wait to open the gates and get the heck out of dodge and my sister did it literally the day after she graduated.  She was two years older than me and we all sat and wow that is so cool and I followed her my brother followed me my sister followed me my younger brother I mean we all just scattered to the, you know the four winds and me in particular.

What really gave me soulless growing up and you know not being a sports guy and being kind of shy was travel books and I locked on to those things like they were food, like they were medicine and I thought that's who I want to be.  so I didn't know how I was going to do it but I dropped out of college real quickly.  I mean my dad, you know, graduated in 1974. You basically back then, you either work in a local factory here, or you go and get a college education.  That was it.  Those are that was kind of the either-or.  

It was never, it was never said that way but you kind of figured that out.  And my dad had an engineering degree but he quickly switched over into whatever he was, you know business he was in or whatever he was working for.  He was good at the sales part, so they would send him out and he would come back and we would wake up at two o'clock in the morning as my dad was driving in you know “wow where'd you go?” you know and back then, of course, he's like “yeah I went to Indiana”  “I went to Ohio” “you went to Florida'' you know and that's like whoa.  

And for those you know well you guys know now but I mean it would have been like I don't know you travelling to say, Brisbane. whoa you know far away or you crossed the Nullarbor desert whoa you went to Perth and so that was what it was and I was just like oh that's who I want to be.  But I quickly realised I couldn't understand college at all and so I dropped out and I started working at ski areas and things like that.  

And then I got an opportunity to become a learn carpentry, in what was I guess kind of our version of the “outback” which is Wyoming and Wyoming and Montana are like the wild west.  They still are.  They still are even now, you know.  They're not that populated.  It's really you know it's kind of though it's the cowboys out there.  And I loved it and I learned I picked it up really quickly.  I bought an old house with help from  my dad at 20 years old.  

I mean an old house. this is you know like it's falling apart -fixed it up year and a half later I had enough money to do what I had been wanting to do since I was 16 years old-  would just travel around the world hitchhike around the world back then that was the way so that's what it was I got really deep into travelling so it wasn't so much I was looking for religion, I just wanted- I loved people, I wanted to be in front of different types of people. I wanted to see as many types of people as possible and that's kind of how you know I got it started getting exposed to different groups.

Interesting you mentioned Australia because I hadn't thought about this, but I actually met two kind of new agey type of groups while I was out there in Australia and I was open to all of its but I also could see, you know while I was in these workshops and things like that that it wasn't really like I wanted to join them, it was just interesting being around people that were exploring their minds you know, and this and so I was like yeah let's do that let's.  let's so, yeah.

I want to ask you because you said that you were in Coolum which is on the sunshine coast yeah now not far from Coolum is something that is where I had my first past life revelation which is Chenrezig Buddhist institute.  Now that started in about, I think it was 1974. Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe came from Tibet of all places to establish an institute in Australia and so would have been pretty radical back in 1975- 1980.  I think they've been around for 10 or so years and it's still running today.    To see Buddhist monks, Tibetan ones of all, on the Sunshine Coast and I was wondering if that happened to be by any coincidence?

Do you remember the name of the town that was in? Was it like Maroochydore? so much not far at the Buddhist Institute set up in the hinterland just near Maleny. 

yeah but I don't know if you know they might have done that. I hadn't been in touch with them.  But you know there were a lot of everyone I was bumping into the type I was looking into were kind of you know they were spiritual seekers so it was just really being exposed to a lot of it.

In fact, when I landed in Perth I I wound my way down through Africa and ended up spending a year in Africa and then when I finally and in fact, I was trying to sail from South Africa over to Perth and then you know someone said, “whoops no the winds don't go that way you know unless you go down to the roaring 40”.  But I still went 92 days out on a 41-foot sloop out around Madagascar and those islands reunion Mauritius gosh the Comoros, the Seychelles north.  I mean we went all around those islands but eventually you know we got back and I was like okay we can't do it that way.  I'll just fly you know they do have planes, Scott.  So I flew over to Perth and then immediately headed down south.  I didn't know anybody but I was headed down south because they said that it was really beautiful down there in Margaret River. 

yes, Margaret River- beautiful there. 

Oh my god, I saw the largest sea creature ever saw my life down there while I was snorkelling out to this break where I would body surf with these other guys that I had met.  It had to have been as I don't know 17-18 foot manta. oh okay well yeah oh my god.  It's still I that bit that was that Manta Ray that stayed in my dreams for years and years and years.  It was that powerful of an experience.

Anyways while I was down there I bumped into some Sannyasins, I think this is what they were called.  Which was a part of a group with whom I don't know. They eventually imploded, quite badly a few years later, but at the time it was like cool these are interesting people, they're all wearing orange clothes.  And I thought yeah, so but that wasn't really, you know, I wasn't looking for religion and I wasn't looking, it was just more interesting to be around people like you and I are you know, it's just interesting people who are open-minded and things.

So that was really the start of that exploration.

So how long after you went travelling did this first understanding of a past life come? Was it the travels kind of sort of set the scene of opening the mind and exposing you to new people and new cultures new ideas that facilitated perhaps the brain to go to start shifting into open? or how did it happen for you? Tell us your story.

Well, one of the last jobs I had before I started that trip was to work at a ski area and it was back then they did night skiing which was actually really really cool. They probably still do night skiing some places in the world. But it's really neat. It's like it's a whole different experience you know, they light up with giant,  you know very bright lights and you and it but you're in the mountains at night.  

So anyway, that's when I would work oftentimes and there was this guy that was you know, remember I'm in my early 20s, but there was a guy that had just gotten back from his own three-year trip and he was like an adonis to me. I was just like, oh I got to hear this guy's stories and we ended up working together just he and I,  we would open up the ski shop and I would talk to this guy Carl and I became like this interviewer and I think he was a little stunned at first.  Like you know, “Why are you asking me questions over?” and I really unpeeled his trip and I was like you know and I didn't have a microphone but it was like, “ and then what happened” and then “what did you do”, “no go back to that”,  “how did you do that?”  “How did you get over there?” and “What did you do here?” and “How did you get through that border?” and “Where did you find that?” and you said you were you got a job how did you get a job I thought you needed to be you know you had to work permit and he was out there I mean he went into places that you were not supposed to be able to go but he was that kind of a guy.

But through that experience and through that winter we had four months together.

You know every night we'd sit, once we got everybody's, you know skis all prepared, we'd have like three hours, where no one would come into the shop.  Well, I remember at one-time “how did you how did you, why aren't you,  you know you come from Nebraska the farmland how come you're not a farmer? how come you're not an engineer? how come you're not? and he said, “oh well it was a couple of powerful experiences”.

 okay 

and he was, you know, 12 years older than me and basically, he told me about a book that had been written a few years ago.  It was called “the Tibetan book of the dead” or was the translation of the Tibetan book of the dead by, I think the writers might have been Timothy Leary and a few others.

 I wasn't so much into reading the book.  I wanted to know what his experience was and he said basically in there he says through the use of psilocybin mushroom that was his thing and it lays out a pathway to do it. and I at the time I was like really I was a pretty straight-laced guy you know in high school. and oh that makes a lot of sense and I was kind of suspicious at first of it because I thought well you know I thought I thought that those experiences would be like getting drunk and they weren't real they weren't you know they all they did was all to you and then you know you saw colours and okay well how useful is that?

And it was really through Carl's explanation deep detailed experience of the way he, the way that book described to him and how you do it and basically, it was this way of basically the whole thing was about experiencing your so-called death and I remember asking, you know thinking,  “Why would anyone want to experience your death?”

It'd be like, you know, killing yourself and going “well what's valuable in that?'' But what it is, is the death of the ego, the death of what you, of a way it feels, as if you are dying and then what is revealed to you in that process.  And he was an extremely brave guy, he's still alive, I'm still in contact with him, but he had and I and as a as a young man that I mean what that can do for a young man is to meet someone else who is mentally and psychically and spiritually strong is I suppose,I'm not into sports, but I suppose it's like the effect when someone who's into sports meet someone who's a what a quarterback or a big you know a football player or basketball player whatever it is.  

It had that effect on me.  It's like I want to be that, I want to be that brave, to do what he did through that experience and his telling of the story was so impactful to me, that I thought “okay one of these days I when it's right,  I'll know”.  When it's right, I just feel it, I'll do that experience of you take, a what's called a “heroic dose” of these mushrooms.

I didn't know where to get them you know, but you light a candle, you do it in them when it's starting to get dark, and you do it in a quiet setting.  You know it's context, it has to be real set up.  You put on music and then a candle and then you put a mirror in front of you and basically you're staring at your eyes over the tip of that mirror and it was a whole thing and I remembered every single detail of it.  because I never had the contact, in fact I  lost contact with Carl for 12 years after that, this is pre-internet, so you know it's like well yeah.

You lose addresses, you lose a phone number, it's like -well there's somewhere in the earth but i don't know where.  I knew, I think he's in Nebraska.  I could, he had a weird spelling of his last name . I misspelt it anyways.  I got back from that three-year hitchhiking trip around the world.  I'm completely, I'm completely different and I'm realising, oh and while I was there while it was out there one of the things that it really got turned on to was the whole natural movement and especially around food.

I'd always had kind of an inkling that but that was it was actually in Australia, this is interesting, i never thought there was going to be an Australian connection here,  okay but while I was there I met people who were who taught me that-  look man you're the the diet.  Disease, diet, health connection is it.  Sure there's movement, there's breathing, there's you know you gotta stay fit, but that's basically it and I came from a world that had no you know I was McDonald's and bologna cheese, you know white bread. That was a revelation. So when I got back, I went that's the direction I wanted to go. I don't know how to do it, I don't go to school or what but anyways that was what I was starting to look for. and so when I got back the economy had gone the heck,  you know, so I couldn't make money or anything, so I ended up back in a small town in Colorado and I started running.

Oh, when I was in South Africa, I met a friend who was an ultra marathoner and I'd never run in my life. I mean, I remember the first time we went off and ran. I had what are called the keds high tops. you know that's what I was travelling and you know there's like, flop flop flop there was no running shoes, none of that. But I went out and he turned me on and I actually ran a half marathon while I was living in Durban, South Africa.

When I got back, I wanted to pick it up again and so I gotta, anyways I got a job at a restaurant. Understand, you know, I mean there was nothing going on. I'm 27 years old. I'm going oh my god look at me, I'm broke again and like how what do I do?

And there was no work to be found, but I had all these skills that i developed and then one of them was walking into you know a place of possible hiring and saying you need to hire me.

And that's what I did.  So I ended up after four or five months, running this restaurant on this ski area and during the night I would go out for these long runs. It was during that time that I thought, you know I'm ready to do that experience that Carl taught me about.

So you know how it is, you got to find someone who, like “do you know anything about these mushrooms”? I found someone and I set it up and I proceeded to do it.

And it and had I not had that education, I get totally why people bounce against it and come out and all it does is frightening. Because you are faced with your worst fears, that you've ever seen. the whole purpose of that book, of that technique, was to learn how to see fear as nothing but an illusion.  And so you're looking at your eyes, you're looking over this candle, this plant is allowing you to access things that we normally can't see as a normal human being. 

You know if you look at the electromagnetic spectrum, you know we if you ever do when you look at the entire spectrum, it shows and you know it shows it starts with I forget ultraviolet and it goes all the way up to radiation or whatever and then it shows right in the middle this tiny 1 16th of an inch what you know like a centimetre and it's like visible light to humans.

ah yeah i i always loved that 

yeah because right there you just go oh are you saying that my perceptions as a human may not be the be all and all to you know existence and that's kind of what the plant does.

Yeah

The plant allows you to crack open that tiny 16 of an inch and it starts to do this and as it does this, you are made aware of dimensions and light and dark that you are not able to perceive.

Well imagine, the first time a human experiences that, it can completely put you into fear. I mean, I mean talking, you know that kind of fear, like you've ever been in like on, you know like a roller coaster. You come over and there's a part where your entire limbic system says you're dead, it's too late, it's, you're gone. You know and your life flat it's that type of fear and that was happening from the moment that it started to come on.  okay so if you didn't, if I had not had Carl's modelling, what psychic bravery is and what spiritual bravery is, I would have completely freaked out.

But it's a breathing technique that is so simple. You just breathe. You just have to bring yourself back to breath and you're constantly looking at your eyes, because your eyes are the only thing that don't change.

yes everything else and and

you have to forgive me.

No you're right.

Of course as I'm telling this story, I start to you know myself, you relive it.

I'm sure you have as you start to talk about those experiences. Everything lines up again and you're starting to see that you know everything comes into focus and it is that that that the first time that, all of oh my god, my eyes are, they they they are continuing through all the illusions, somehow the optic nerve allows you to see, it's the one stable thing of the experience and everything else is just illusion. It's the perceived roller coaster. It's the perceived boogie man. It's the perceived, oh there's death.

Oh there's this there's a horror monster, there's everything around here that it's almost as if there's a part of the human mind is, that says you shouldn't go there because you're not going to be able to handle, it so what I'm going to do is put a boo.

And all of that and it's very real it feels very real to you, but by stare by breathing and looking into your eyes and your eyes become the windows of this, not only your soul, but the whole thing and so you have this extraordinary dichotomy between, its, it's hard to say because you fall in love with your own eyes.

You know because, it's because you're seeing that be also the amount of self-love that pours out of it. that's really one of the first things that happens.

And I don't know if someone had asked me before, that you love yourself, like oh yeah I'm fine I'm cool, I really would have said it you know. I'm like yeah, I'm cool, I like myself.

But when you feel that kind of self-love, if that's where all of a sudden you start to feel like this is bigger than me and yet I'm it, and yet it's bigger than me, and but I'm, ah you know…

And you put it all of a sudden as the boogeyman and the whole what's fascinating too, is that at any time one particularly strong negative emotion comes up, it's really easy to suddenly, “what's that” and you look away and then you get caught up in the fear.

And you know, like I would lay down, and it'd be like, you know, I was absolutely in a catatonic state of fear, and then I do hear Carl's voice saying “that's where you just take a breath and come back up.”

and I mean it would rock 

I mean so anyways

These are five-hour journeys.

okay 

wow that's intense

Yep you would think like, oh I'm really tired, I gotta take a break.  No, you have so much energy to do this. it's the only thing that matters for your life right now.

And I did a series of these trips.  As he had said, you do a series- like one every two weeks, three weeks and you do them like four, five, four, five of them spaced out over a few months time.

And that's really where, I mean, you leave those experiences completely changed you know. You may not be, I mean it's not like you’re God.  I figured out life it's not that, but you're left with an awe and a deep, deep respect for whatever it is that we're involved with. And in fact, anytime someone then comes and tries to tell you, like this is again my irritation with your religion, is when someone says, oh here let me tell you how it is, I just want to punch him in the nose. Let's go, you are so arrogant. 

You've lost how big this is. You, none of us, none of us, none of us can grasp, really, the whole big picture, but that that's not the objective here. It's to look around and see all of our fellow humans as part of like, wow, look at this and then suddenly, you know, if it hadn't happened before, that the tone of your skin, that you know, the color of your skin, becomes as idiotically stupid and irrelevant, you know as a as picking up one grain of sand on the shore and picking up another. And that's really what it turns you into is a citizen of the world, and so you know you ask me why I wrote that note to you that's why.

So when you went into this experience, because, I have to give it to, you following instructions and doing things precisely, you know a lot of people can have ideas that they want to do something but they'll like do step one and then I'll get sidetracked and not come back do step two three and four. So huge kudos to you that you followed the instructions and you did the experience.

And you know did it at a time when you trusted that you knew what you were doing.  It wasn't like a whim on a Friday night, I'm gonna do this now like…    it was an intention that you had said a long time before and so you waited for the right timing to do it.

And in this experience, when you experience, that you were not just of this body, of this suit, is that, did in that session then is that when you got a glimpse of who you were in another lifetime? and is there anything there that you're comfortable in sharing with what you experienced in terms of?

Because I do past life regressions for people, we go on structured journeys to find root causes and root lifetimes that impact upon or have impacted upon current experiences and why people are the way they are. So when you went and you saw other versions of yourself looking back now, were you shown other versions of yourself that explained something to do with who you are right now? Or were you shown yourself in another lifetime or lifetimes, do you think, purely to show yourself that you have existed before?

Good question.

I remember Carl or the book saying, that the minute details, which is really a human desire, you know I'd love to know, you know, why does two plus two equals four, you know, we like that exactness.   so, I totally get it. I'm the same. I like to understand why things are the way they are. There's sort of a not a caution, but saying, don't get caught up in that. Just like don't get caught up and why did that image of this horrible scary thing come from this angle, instead you're just constantly being brought back to the purpose of the trip is to just face these as, Huxley said “these doors of perception”.

And that's really, that's really where I got. Oh my gosh. With this feeling like, I'm coming up against my death, I'm coming up against, I'm going to die, oh my god, I'm dying, I'm dead, oh the sadness, the missed opportunities and everything announces the whole thing. You're staring at the eyes and you just do this and you're experiencing all of it and then suddenly you're on the other side.

And it's really like there's one of my favourite movies, a comedy with Bruce Willis. it's a futuristic thing god what is it called, oh he's like he it's oh I can't oh the fifth dimension the fifth element the fifth okay there's a comedian a black comedian there who's like the plays a character but anyways, there's one scene where everything's being shot up and he's screaming and he's going and then screamed his last and last all dust settles and he's still screaming and then he kind of looks around like “well I guess I'm done screaming”.

Well, that's kind of how it is. is that you're experiencing and then all of a sudden you go through this door and you're so caught up in I'm dying, instead, this is death and this is over, this is everything, it's done, life is hard and then you look behind you and you realise it's a perception.

It's a door of perception, that's all.  It is so that was really the purpose of it and as you're going through these multiple doors of perception it was very easy for me to all of a sudden see a soldier uniform, and then seeing my face in there and it would have been and of course there's a part you just goes stop the movie. yeah, what year was that? What's your name? What did you do? Did you? Were you a bad person? or Are you a good person? Did you shoot anybody? you know.  Did you treat people nice? Well I mean, I wanna know and you just learn to just keep going and what started what happened for me luckily, was the feeling of like it goes on forever.  Hey, I remember I remember a number coming through and going this is 1800 lives I have just seen and, I can't even stop.

I basically am all of it. I'm all of it.  I'm every single one of these things.   And i could have you know like reeling through a you know like a tape or something, you could stop and i could have lived in some past life and really learned the whole thing and I could you know well I think one of the things to you you you figure out without getting too entangled in it is that, you know you've been a bit a little bit of Jesus, you've been a little bit of Hitler, and oh my gosh, you know, and never again you know, and I don't have any specifics of things were I was like a bad person, but there was this sense of like, you don't go through this scot-free.

Little joke there…

I don't know if you guys use it, you don't go through it, you know, just you know you you got here through that, yeah so it doesn't matter.

That's the whole self-love thing, is the forgiveness that comes flooding through you, that you know, like it can choke me up, even now. It's almost like we need another term for self-love because it sounds narcissistic.

I Know it does, doesn't it?

yeah self-compassion is probably what we're really talking about with a forgiveness element because

Like you said, to be where you are, you have had to have dense difficult lifetimes, easy lifetimes and phenomenally spiritual lifetimes. you can't have any of those without each other. 

oh oh oh this is so good, because one of the places that i saw much of humanity getting caught up in, is being the “victim”, because at some point we were the victim.

Yep

We were horribly persecuted too, to an amount that we can't relive, because it's so bad, we were persecuted horribly, at some point at some point.  It could have been anything, as a little newborn that took its first breath and persecuted, it could have been you know 30 years in a jail, it could have been torture, it could have been anything. It doesn't matter, but what this experience allows you to do and the work you're doing with people, is allow you to, you're not that any more. 

That's right you're not that and I think for me, what created the urgency for me was covered because suddenly, like no time other in my lifetime, this time around, have we collectively experienced a fear of death so great, that it stopped the world. We suddenly have a virus that is killing people and no matter what your beliefs are, on anything to do with the pandemic, take all the all of the side discussions away, it's a virus, which makes us question, who we are, how we lead our lives and what the heck happens if we die from it.  Because that's the biggest fear - I'm going to die from the coronavirus and I will not exist.

And there's just this massive collective grief associated with the facts of that

And for me, so this is part of my processing the last two years of life- to not to diminish anybody's grief because the virus is also a virus which attacks the lungs right.

The lungs are how we process grief.

So it's to say, I see your grief. This has been a time like no other, but if the possibility is there, that you are ready to hear this message, then I want to let you know, that should anything happen to you right now, you will go on.

And I'd say that, not to diminish the tragedy of dying, a mortal death of COVID, but to tell you that it's okay, we'll see you again.

Will see you again you'll see yourself again yeah yeah and hopefully with even fewer constructions and constructs and limitations and blocks and beliefs and you know with more of the openness and awe that is possible out there without labels without trying to box it to without you know one of the 1800 lives that's right yeah that's you know there are plenty of plenty of lives and    

Tell me, so you did this exploration and I know from your message that this changed everything for you, tell me how it changed things for you in terms of what you did with your life from an interest perspective and passions and I guess I know that it turned into a career interest for you?

yeah yeah that's very interesting.   A lot of those journeys, you don't tend to, there's so much that goes on, that people say, do you remember everything? In a way you remember it all but the details are difficult-  like speaking of constructs. They're difficult to put into the construct known as language or you know visualisations, but there were a few and one of the most impactful ones was the first time that I experienced a death.

Actually and it may have been the first one I don't know but it was where I felt like you know. 

I just, because, what happened is, I fell over from the weight of the sadness of death.

And I had music in the background that I'd set up.  This is of course back in real cassette tape time, yeah back in the 1700s and there was you know had this really and it was beautiful music.  To this day if I hear one of the songs, I can still go “oh god that's still a beautiful song to me”.  They were all that was the other thing Carl had said. He said you can't have music with words in it, because words will trip you out. It has to be the language of the universal, which is music, without construct in it. 

So that's in the background and I remember I was, I had fallen over, and I was, it was, like a different kind of a weeping that I'd ever experienced. I could just feel hot tears dripping and I could feel that this is it, and then I, I'm dying and I watched my body. I watched, then muscles, I remember seeing the bones and I remember, you know I'm watching everything just go and the sadness of that, And then all of a sudden I just heard wind.

You know I'm in a room and I'm in a mountain.  You know small, actually it was a really cool house and I was in this peak place and you know I'd set it up with candles and all that, but I was the only one there.  And I heard wind that I'm sure was in my head or something, I don't know.  But it was just this really, you know and you know how wind is when it's when it's going like across a field, it's an extraordinary noise. It's really, really one of the most beautiful sounds to me, that we as humans can hear, is just that sound like that.  And I heard that and then all of a sudden, I saw right as if it was right there, the you know the carpet itself was where I was, was wheat.

Now I think you guys grow wheat in Australia?

okay, well wheat fields and not in Wisconsin, but I've you know seen movies and I've been out to you know Nebraska and where they grow wheat. But wheat's an extraordinary looking plant. Especially when it's when it's fairly grown, it can still be green everything but it's, it's got this beautiful movement and it was really one of you know humans first foods when we started to get out of you know, I don't know the hunter and gatherer, you know we beyond being when we were just running around with spears and you know that it was really one of the first that we started to but and it never held any meaning to me. You know wheat. I was like yeah, I eat bread, you know that was kind of it. 

But there was, it's what woke me up. This message felt like “the answer is food” “the answer is plants”, “the answer is botany”, this is, “this is how you make beautiful human beings”.  And I was just in shock. I was just, it was such it was such a pure tone and pure message to me, that I remember going, which was really cool, because I, as I took that breath, I went “that's just like the way a baby, you know comes out, they're not they're not using their lungs, that's really weird that's…” 

I've actually never seen it and it's one of those like, on my to-do list like- please someone let me be there looking over the shoulder when a baby comes up.  I want to be there so I can watch that baby go like what? How the heck does that work? How does that work? Oh yeah! yeah they're breathing through their belly button and then what” and 

That's the way it felt. I'm like ah, and I took this breath and it was a breath of awe.

And by the way the word awe to me and that state of awe has forever held a huge, huge reverence to me.

If you've ever watched someone watch fireworks or something when they're going, that to me is something humans should do more often, is experience moments of awe.  My wife actually does it when she's around   trees. It's quite amazing to watch. She sees trees differently than the rest you know. A lot of people, like me, I love trees, but she's like you know.

And so there I was and taking that first breath, of what new life, and seeing this message come to me that was, so not in like gentle, it's just this is the key, this is the key, and from that I you know, I remember sitting up.

You know, I could tell the experience was coming down. Now I mean, I was still full in it, but I was like out. I was out, you know the candle in the mirror? I saw that and I thought I'm done. I've got it and now, how do I? You know, 

But the one thing that kept in my mind was that help people understand that connection because that's how you make really really good human beings.

And that was my, that's been my career ever since.

I, you know again this is back before the internet, so how do you find the schools that teach the diet food/ diet connection? And there was only two that I found at the time.

And I wrote, you know, there was magazines, like you know “new age magazine” or you know botanical, anyways, there was one there was and I was like, that's the one I'll go there.

And I was in Boston, and I don't know, a month later, I sent off a check for my first semester and then when that ski area ended and I quit my jobs and everything like that.  So I went off and studied that for nine months and I basically have been in it my whole life.

My… that was back in, was back in 83 84. okay and so yeah that's that was my, you know thing.

I don't know if it has to be that way for everybody.  I don't think that's the point.  I don't think it has to like, I think going back but that was mine and yes that's that's my career now and in fact what I've been doing since 2006 was learned it, was creating formulas that are now known as “nootropics''.

Nootropics are any set of compounds or compounds or plants that increase some aspect of cognition.  It can be focus and memory and loss of mental fog you know that.  It can be motivation, but it can also be a lessening of anxiety and a lessening of depression and that's what these plants can do.

And in fact my story about the pandemic was deep, deep frustration of “like what are you doing Scott?” You've got to, you know, this is the thing, that this is the only tool you have Scott to help in this area that we're talking about.  Is go back, but this time, go back.  It's going to be better and that was the phone call to my MD botanist friend that I had met when I was doing it earlier, like 10 years earlier and I said,  “I want to get back into it” and he says well in a in this sweetest Indian accent, eastern Indian accent, I don't want to imitate it, because I would be bad at it and it probably isn't appropriate to do it, but you know you, can just people listening to us can imagine, he just said in this sing-songy voice says “well your timing's very good because there's a there's new technology out there that makes these the plant extraction 10 times to 15 times stronger than anything we were doing back when you were first doing it”.

And that's what propelled me so that's what we did during the pandemic.  Because we created what we really believe is the most potent, nootropic, cognition brain tonic, plant-based, vegan formula out there and it is really really taking off like a storm here in the states. 

We just launched it on September 1st.

Okay great and because I've been to the website but the listeners haven't, can you just leave us the name of your website and then it just gives a description of the product so that after the people have listened to finish listening to the podcast they can go and have a little bit of a read about it.

Yeah and my name is unique. I'm the only Scott Ohlgren in the known universe except if you go back to 1800 lifetimes, I bet you always use that name again. They'll find me no matter what because the name is kind of long, unfortunately, it's “synaptic scientific” and synaptic scientific.com is my website

And synaptic of course, is the synapses, in the brain.  And we have one product, one very, very, potent product called “cognition” and we actually ship all around.  We've got we've got quite a few, I say quite a few you know, I've got a dozen maybe people that we ship to in Australia. 

So, we ship bottles there and that's what it is.

And it's basically a mix of eight active ingredients.  Seven of them are ayurvedic plants.  So all of the plants have been used for hundreds of years and they all have really nice studies that have shown their effect on cognition in some way.

Then we just put them together, in a really nice mix, what we call a “stack”.  That's what they say in the Nootropic world.  We've got this really nice stack.  It's a very strong formula.  It's quite bitter, you know like, a strong bitters, but those who have been used to Chinese herbs or you know herbal medicine, it's got a very strong taste.

We softened it with a bit of orange and lemon and you know a little bit of but there's no sugar in it or anything either, it's extraordinarily clean.  There's no artificial preservatives in it.  It's really quite stable.  It took us a lot longer than I thought, you know.  That's what R&D is all about.  But it's really nice and I mean you know it's really quite extraordinary.

And how do you take it is it you're straight you know you just yeah it's in in a top oh that one's let's see this one just squirt it into your mouth yeah exactly it's just 

okay 

So for people who are used to doing say taking things like flower essences or something like that or a homoeopathic formula they're used to sublingual.

Correct and for that matter, you know sometimes you can mix, as you can with those, a lot of those things, mix it with tea. I oftentimes will put it into a teaspoon so I know how much I'm seeing because sometimes doesn't you know it's kind of vicscous, it's kind of thick.

yeah yeah 

And so I put it into a spoon and then I chase it with some lemonade or some orange juice or some citrus but some people to write in and say it works really good with my morning tea.

okay 

so you know, yeah and it's just once a day or twice a day yeah once or twice.   I have some older folks, who say i take two p  ps every couple of hours and wow is it you know so if you know everyone plays around with it differently it depends you know we're all different.

Interesting, because I know for example,  I have used Copaiba essential oil, to really help with cognition and periods of peak concentration for myself.  I have experience with taking it every couple of hours, just because it was something that I just really wanted to chow down on and do so that's interesting that the older people who really wanted to have a enhanced cognitive experience have tried taking it more frequently.

so yeah 

And in fact where nootropics really started to take hold in the world culture was in the silicon valley. You know, coders, those type of, you know knowledge workers, that had the focus for hours, that you know you wanted something like even, just that.  I mean as I just took a couple and I can already feel the sense of focus. Like I want to get it done and so it's really popular with those with those girls Joe Rogan you know, who's got a huge podcast, he does Nootropics, he's never tried mine I don't think but.

There you go that's-  you need to see if you can get a podcast to come on joe yeah and.

What about then, for say if you're going to do something like a meditation session or something like, that is, is it appropriate or is that too is it is your mind not the right situation for it?

I find it is, but everyone's going to be different and where that was really where I thought, yeah it's okay to say, that was you know, what I mean,  I travelled in Tibet and not like to do a “big spiritual journey”, but one of the things that they do, is they drink their green tea before they meditate.

I thought yeah yeah, just a little bit, just to get that mind, “okay, here we go, we're going to be tuned in, sharpened up, here we go”.

So this doesn't have any caffeine, but that gives you an idea.  The caffeine is actually a classic nootropic and they, it is useful in the right amount, small amounts to just centre the mind. Yeah.

Perfect okay, so I will link in the show notes, or in the comments for the YouTube version of this Scott's website- so you can go and have a read about his product and give it a whirl.

So this has been a really truly fascinating discussion. I could sit on here with you for another hour or two and just chat.  I've purposely tried to be quiet because there are so many things that I could have just gone off on attaching and had a good discussion with you about but I was like no, I just want to hear Scott's story. We can do that another time. So thank you so much. is there anything else that you would like to leave listeners and viewers with as a thought, an impression, or anything that you'd like to urge them to consider?

Yeah and again I've never said this to people because it was always maybe was because I was so anti you know structured, spiritual aspect but I really think what many people in the world are missing right now is exactly what you're trying to turn them on to and that is you are more than this body and this mind and you want to have that experience in this lifetime, you want to have that visceral experience of “oh my gosh I've I have”.

And even when I you when I left you that message, I'm even the constructs of before and after this lifetime don't even do it, because then that makes them think well okay was it the 1400s and you mean I'm going to be here you know when it you know in the year 4 000 you know it's nothing it's bigger it's just you-  just want to have that sense of like this goes on and has been going on and I'm a part of it and we're all part of it.

I would just implore listeners to get a hold of you Katische and have them help you. I use plant medicine to do it, but as you know there are so many other ways.  I mean Roxanne, my wife, looking at trees, she has that sense of the awe, and I've been here and this is huge and it goes on and this is important. So I would encourage people, especially those suffering from fear, anxiety, doubt and all that, because you don't need to, you don't need to.  it's actually pretty cool what we're involved in here.

And if you have fear, the moment that you can realise, that you are not your emotions and your thoughts and therefore you are not all of the things that hold you back, that you are from the pure field of potential, you are pure consciousness, you are source, you come from everywhere all at once, you can be anything and everything. I think that gives you this immense freedom to just be and allow, yeah allow whatever needs to unfold to, to unfold.

Well, thank you. I will end this episode here. So thank you to all the listeners.