Father Nathan Castle: It was before we had televisions on
walls, but it was like that, and it got right up close to
me, and inside the picture frame, something like a video
played of a car from the late 1950s, the kind with lots of
chrome and fins on the back.
There was a young man sitting on the radiator of it with
the hood open, and he had not been in a collision, but for
some reason, he burst into flames on the engine of a car
and was screaming as he died.
Rod Bland: My guest today is Father Nathan Castle, who's
a Catholic priest of the Dominican order and author of
several books, including the one I'm reading now, which
is Afterlife Interrupted, Helping Stuck Souls Crossover.
Father Nathan, welcome and thank you so much
for coming on the show.
Father Nathan Castle: Great to be with you.
Thanks for inviting me.
Rod Bland: All right it's fun actually, I'm really
enjoying reading your book.
And what I'd like to do is to start with your early years.
Can you tell us a bit about what it was like
growing up for you to the point where you decided to
study to become a priest?
Father Nathan Castle: Sure.
I'm I'm 67 years old.
I was born in 56 and I'm from Southeast Texas,
right on the Gulf coast.
My parents are Catholic folk and my dad had two
siblings, two sisters who both became Dominican nuns
and first grade teachers.
My mom was a great woman.
She and she was not only a religious person, but you know
how some people say they're spiritual, not religious.
She was both and she really taught me how to move in the
spirit, how to pray and talk to the saints and so on.
So I was raised in Catholic faith that was not just about
rules and regulations, but was really very spiritually
grounding from the beginning.
And part of that comes into this conversation about
the afterlife and souls and so on, is that I was
taught very early on that we were all kind of dual
citizens of earth and heaven.
That by our nature, we are God's children.
We belong to God.
We're here for a while on the earth and after
our deaths, we'll go home to our heavenly home.
I was taught that when people die we can
pray for their good.
We can help them advance or progress or something.
And so I went to sleep most nights doing that.
So I've been at this for really 60 years,
Rod Bland: All right.
Father Nathan Castle: more than that.
Rod Bland: That's a long time to be praying for people.
It takes, that's a lot of commitment.
It's something you just said then about knowing that.
No, it wasn't knowing, it was that we're dual
citizens in, here on earth and also in heaven.
It's one of those things that's, even though I've
not, don't have direct experience of that, it's one
of those things that I've always felt like was true.
Some things you just have a inner knowing about them
and that's always been the basis for my fascination in
anything that's not to do with our actual physical reality.
Father Nathan Castle: I had a really good advantage,
a nice head start, but you know how, have you ever been
around little kids that are fascinated with dinosaurs?
Rod Bland: Oh yes, I have a nephew who is autistic
who is very fascinated with dinosaurs, yeah.
Father Nathan Castle: That I'm much older than wherever
the, however that got started.
But in my childhood, I was fascinated with
pirates and I had a record player and a little book
that had pictures and I couldn't even, before
I could read, I could play the records.
The records lived inside little sleeves
inside the book.
it was Peter Pan and that involves pirates.
And there was a picture of an island with a should like you
live in the South Pacific, an island with a palm tree and it
had a broken boat and a crab and a dotted line with an X.
Well, of course, kids learn early on that a dotted line
and an X on a map means that's where the treasure's buried.
My mom taught me how to make the sign of the cross that
Catholics do, where we touch our forehead, our heart, and
shoulder to shoulder, making a cross over ourselves.
And she said, she asked, what letter does that make?
When I was still learning the alphabet.
She wanted me to say X.
And she said, yes, X marks the spot, and right in the middle
is your heart, and that's all you have to do is knock on the
door of your heart because the treasure is buried inside you.
God, who created you, placed himself inside you.
And if you want to talk to God, you just make
the sign of the cross.
You knock on the door and you talk.
You just say, God, I want to talk to you.
So I was doing that really early on.
Rod Bland: Interesting.
And at what point obviously growing up in a Catholic
family and surrounded by those of that faith, was that
sort of what made you decide, okay, I'm going to become a
priest or did that come later?
Father Nathan Castle: It did come later.
I went off to college and studied sociology.
And, my parents raised me with the idea that I be
anything I put my mind to.
Did you grow up that way?
Rod Bland: I did, yeah, I grew up in the bush
in Western Australia.
We were miles and miles from any other person and you had
to become so self reliance and doing, being able to do,
to put to any challenge, to take on any challenge was
something that we learned from a very early age, yes.
Father Nathan Castle: My parents didn't go to college.
They were, they graduated high school in, I think
1939, just on the cusp of the Second World War,
and they didn't have that advantage, but they made sure
that their five children all had a college savings fund
the first week of our lives.
I think my dad went from the delivery room to the bank
and created a college fund.
So I just knew very early on that I would go to college
and I would become something.
And they instilled in me that I could become just about
anything that I wanted to be.
But once I was in college, I had a spiritual experience
at 18 right before leaving home to go off to college
that persuaded me if I needed any persuading that
it was all real and that God was near me, loved
me, was paying attention.
And I began to think this is the most important
thing that I could think of spending my life on, but it
was really after college, four years later, that I
really had to get serious about the specifics of it.
Would I stay Catholic?
For one thing, I went to a Presbyterian college.
Many of my friends were not Catholics.
But anyway, I did decide to try out the Catholic
system and I ended up sticking around.
It'll be 44 years next week that I joined the Dominicans.
Rod Bland: Wow.
The spiritual experience that you spoke of then,
would you mind sharing a little bit more about that?
Was that the one where you were with your friend
and you were seated
Father Nathan Castle: At the Grand Canyon.
Rod Bland: Yeah, at
Father Nathan Castle: No, it was even earlier than that.
I had I, I grew up in a household of five kids.
I was the middle it was a busy household and
I grew up without feeling like I knew my dad at all,
even though he was there, but he worked really hard.
He had, he worked on ships and was asleep
in the daytime a lot.
And anyway he and I just didn't mesh somehow.
And my older brother and he had a very strong bond,
and I just felt that's just the way it was.
There wasn't anything to be done about it.
And right before going off to college, I was invited
to go on a retreat at a Catholic college campus
center near my home.
I didn't want to go, but I was not exactly forced into it.
Pretty close.
A lot of my friends were going, and I capitulated
and went on it.
And I thought it would be about prayers,
sacraments, commandments.
I'd been Catholic all my life, so I figured as
long as we stay to those things, I'll be fine.
But when we got there, the people leading it said, the
theme this weekend is what do you think about your parents?
I was really angry at my father and hadn't spoken
to him in about five years other than pleasantries.
I was not impolite.
I just shut down.
He hurt me and I nursed a grudge and I I just, you know,
it's not that uncommon for teenagers and parents to have
a difficult time communicating and I just closed down inside.
And then on this retreat they asked us and people
started telling the truth and I had never seen
that depth of sharing.
Have you been in groups where people talk uninhibited
about their personal lives?
Rod Bland: Yeah, I actually have a very similar
story to the one I think you're about to tell.
But,
Father Nathan Castle: These people who looked as just
to be as ordinary as could be started talking once
they knew that they had the full attention of others
and compassionate listeners
And tell their stories.
And so when it was my turn, I told my story about
how my dad had hurt me.
It was all over report cards.
I had our Catholic school closed when I was going
into the eighth grade, which it was in a K through
eight school and it just blew what it blew up.
It went away and I lost my whole community that I'd
had since kindergarten.
And I was, I felt thrown into a school of 900 kids that
were always saying the F bomb.
I thought they were talking about forks.
And I didn't forks are pointy and I thought maybe
they're talking about jabbing somebody with a fork.
They're so angry and they talk about forking you.
And I didn't know why they were so angry,
but I came home.
I was, I had my growth spurt later than most kids did.
And I couldn't climb a rope to the top of a gym in a physical
ed class and I got a B in PE, A's in everything else.
And I came home on report card day, and my dad just said,
is report card day in it?
And I said, yes, sir, it is.
And he said let me show you.
And he flipped past five A's to a B in PE, and all he said
was, what happened in PE?
And on the outside, I said, I couldn't climb a rope.
And on the inside, I said, fork you.
And I went to my room and sat on the edge of my bed
and just shook and made the tears run on down
the inside of my cheeks
In Texas, big boys don't cry.
And so I just, I was just furious and angry
and wanted to run away.
And I decided, you know what I'll do?
I have to stay here five more years.
I'll be so perfect, they won't need to parent me.
I had two brothers and two sisters, and I thought
they're very busy people.
If I just never give them a reason to pay me any
attention, that'll be my plan.
And I pretty much did that, and I had a little brother
who obliged by needing a lot of parental attention.
it was working just fine until I went on this
retreat, like a month, two months before graduating
and going off to college.
This thing opened me up, and I told the truth.
And I said, I need to talk to my dad and I don't know how.
I don't want to leave his home in what I felt was pretty
much a once and for all event.
I knew that I'd only come home as a visitor
and that was true.
So I just thought this was a life moment that
needed to be done right.
And I tell these people that and I said, I
don't know how to do it, but I know I need to.
Anyway, they brought in a priest and said, anybody
want to go to confession?
And I hadn't done that in years, but I already
did the hard part, all I have to do is repeat
it and shorten it a bit.
And the priest gave me absolution and I went
to communion at the mass that concluded this thing.
And when I went to communion, I had my
own private Pentecost.
People call it different things.
Kundalini Awakening or whatever.
I had all this energy that just flowed through me.
I felt loved.
I went to sit down and my body quaked and my hands heated up.
I started crying real tears on the outside of my
face and I felt like I was starting life all over again.
And it stayed with me.
I went home and that was about a half an
hour, 40 minute drive.
And when I got home, I sat on the edge of my bed.
I'm an 18 year old.
I woke my dad up, which was one of the rules
of the household that you'd never to do.
And I just thought if I don't do it right now,
I might lose my nerve.
So I woke him up, which was difficult.
And I outlined that in my first book.
My first book is on the wizard of eyes.
You might, I don't know if you can, it's dark over
my shoulder, but it's on, there's a picture of it
on the wall behind me.
And in that book, I described this event and that I woke
him up and had a heart to heart with him and told
him why I was so angry and that I asked if he knew I'd
quit talking to him and he said, yeah, I just didn't
know what to do about it.
Which was extraordinary for him because he was a big manly
man who never admitted defeat.
And for him to say, I didn't know what to do about it was
really humble and truthful.
And so we had a conversation that and I told him I loved
him and actually all the way at the end of his life he
died of Parkinson's disease and was in dementia for
probably two years at the end.
And the week after his death he, he told me, whatever you
did that day, do more of it.
It's really important.
Rod Bland: He was referring to when you spoke to him
when you were 18 years old.
Father Nathan Castle: Exactly.
And he was, I was, I think I was 53 or 4 at
the time of his death, but he said, whatever you did
that day, do more of it.
It's really important.
So anyway, that just made me, all that happened in a
Catholic religious setting.
And so it just made me think there's more here than I
have paid attention to.
I'm going to, I'm going to pay more attention.
And then one thing led to another.
And then four years later, I was entering a seminary.
Rod Bland: yeah.
I grew up in a a very, not a religious background, so I
may ask questions that seem obvious but I'm eternally
curious about all religious faiths, all kinds of people,
so that's what I, that's
Father Nathan Castle: Fire away, that's
why we're together.
I'm, I'll answer any question you ask me.
Rod Bland: How does the process work, so obviously
going to college is part of that, getting a degree and
then to the, how did things evolve after that, I guess
you would have joined the priesthood at some point
in time and then when did something occur where you
have, this current work that you're doing with Helping
Stuck Souls, when was the first inclination that
something was going on there?
Father Nathan Castle: By that time, I was ordained a
Catholic priest when I was 29, and by that time, I was,
I've been in campus ministry most of my life,
especially after having that powerful experience
at a Catholic campus center for college students.
That's what I've done.
I'm at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and school
is just starting next week.
I don't, I'm not employed here, but I'm still living
on a college campus.
That's been my life.
And I was at Arizona State University, which has
about, at the time, it had about 50, 000 students.
It was a very big job and I was on a retreat with a
number of people in the...
In Arizona, we're a desert and it's hot but if you go
north, it's mountainous and it's, it gets cooler as you
go to the higher elevations.
We were up at a, we were on a retreat and I was the, I was
helping to give the retreat.
But I was asleep on a Friday night when we
had just gotten there.
And in the middle of the night, I had a dream that
was, I was playing golf with another priest and we
were finishing the round.
Do you know the phrase, the 19th hole?
Rod Bland: I have heard of it, yes, where you go to have
Father Nathan Castle: It's the bar.
It's where you go have drinks after a round of golf.
Golf is 18 holes.
The 19th is the bar.
We went into the 19th hole.
And in the dream we walked into a silent auction.
Are you familiar with those?
Rod Bland: Yes I am.
So you, there's nobody's putting their hands up.
It's all written down.
Father Nathan Castle: yeah, it's mostly you walk around
the room and there are objects lying on tables or whatever,
and there's a sheet next to it, and you're having
cocktails or something, and you walk around, and
you bid on objects, and if you're really interested
in something, you have to keep going back and checking
it because somebody else might be overbidding you.
Anyway, I was at this silent auction and I looked
across the room and saw this ghastly piece of art
on the wall, and to my partner I said, look at that
god awful thing, who would donate that to a charity?
But it was so compelling, it was horrid, but I needed
to see it more clearly.
I walked toward it and it moved off the wall and
began moving toward me.
It was before we had televisions on walls, but
it was like that, and it got right up close to me, and
inside the picture frame, something like a video
played of a car from the late 1950s, the kind with lots of
chrome and fins on the back.
There was a young man sitting on the radiator of it with
the hood open, and he had not been in a collision, but for
some reason, he burst into flames on the engine of a car
and was screaming as he died.
And I woke up.
I've had to, at different times in my life, keep
a pager on my nightstand if it was my turn to
respond to an emergency call at a local hospital.
Most priests have had to take their turn doing that.
And so if that happens, you might be in a sound sleep
when the pager goes off and you suddenly have to rouse
yourself and talk to the nurse's station and get the...
Patient's name and then the room number or whatever.
It was like that.
I felt like I was called in an emergency way to help a
man who was burning to death.
And so I woke up and said, Hello, I'm Nathan.
I will help you any way I can.
I prayed for him right then and I said in the morning I'm
going to meet with a partner and we'll figure this out.
So that's how it started.
In the morning, there was a woman on this retreat who
had been a prayer partner of mine and I knew her to have
uncommon spiritual gifts.
I said, could we get together at a break and pray about
this and see what we might be able to do to help?
She had what I call the gift of prophecy,
of prophetic speech.
It commonly gets called channeling in other circles.
But in the Catholic Church, that word is radioactive.
It upsets people.
I don't use it, but she had that gift and we prayed to St.
Michael the Archangel and Holy Mary and surrounded
ourselves with protection.
And she said, whoever this man is, he really
wants to talk to you.
Is it okay if I let him?
I said, yes, it is.
So she allowed him to speak.
And the first words he spoke were, who the hell does he
think he is taking me just when my life was getting good?
You're probably familiar with that story because you
told me you started reading
Rod Bland: I have yeah.
It wasn't clear who he was speaking through when I
first read that that he was speaking through your your
Father Nathan Castle: my partner.
Yeah, speaking to me through the prayer partner.
I also have that gift, but it wasn't manifesting
hardly at all 27 years ago.
Now it's common, but that I knew that I had it
because it had happened once before when I was
at the Grand Canyon after graduating college, but it
lay dormant for a long time.
But anyway, that's what happened and we learned
that he had died in 1960 when I was four years old
and we said what is it that, why are you here?
What can we do for you?
What is it you want?
And he said, my wife she's an old woman now.
I've been watching her since I died.
Now she's an old woman in her sixties.
She's dying of cancer and I want to greet her
when she passes, but I can't the way I am.
I said, oh, okay, now at least we have our marching orders.
And I said what have you been doing for the last 40 years?
And he said, nothing much, just watching my wife.
And I said it sounds like now you want to be in a big hurry
to be ready to greet her.
So I'm probably going to have to push you.
People don't normally like being pushed, so if I push
too hard, you can push back and tell me to stop.
Just know that I'm only trying to serve you, and
we'll figure this out.
That was this assignment, how to help a man who had been,
he was, he was so mad at the world, he was mad at God
because he was taught that the reason that people die
is because God takes them.
Heard that?
Rod Bland: Yeah, I think it, depending on people's
beliefs or as they grew up, I often hear that,
that term used, yeah,
Father Nathan Castle: and for him, that made God
a body snatcher, and it made him like a tyrant.
Nobody asked me to have my, I didn't ask to be
burned to death in a fire.
Who the hell does he think he is?
So he entered the afterlife angry and desiring to
isolate, except he wanted to be able to watch his
wife and he kept it, he kept tabs on her over the years.
For about 40 years, so we, we had to break the problem
down into component parts.
And we did that and it's described in detail in the
1st afterlife book, but we were able to help him get
what he wanted in the end.
He just, I had to tell him.
I think the problem is that you're just a caveman.
Every time you talk about it, you sound like you own
the exclusive rights to her.
She's loved by other people besides you.
I think if you just calm down and take your place
among a few other people and be a gentleman about
it, I think you'll be fine.
And that's the way it turned out.
He was able to greet her in the end.
And then finally when it was time to say goodbye.
I said Ray, it sounds like you got what you
what you came looking for.
But I said, now that you're an afterlife greeter and
you know how to watch people before they die, would
you keep an eye on me?
And when it's my time to die, would you be
there to greet me?
And he said, why, sir, I would be most honored.
Just look for the perfect gentleman.
So we call that chapter Ray the Perfect Gentleman.
Rod Bland: yeah, I enjoy that part of the story.
So what do you think it is that how, let
me rephrase that.
How do the people who contact you through your dreams, how
do you think they're chosen?
What is it about them that, that makes them
a candidate, let's say?
Father Nathan Castle: I only have a clientele,
I guess you could say, who died traumatically,
violently, suddenly.
Shootings, stabbings, drownings, lots
of car crashes.
Once in a while a medical emergency that caused their
death quickly, but mostly not.
Mostly non natural, sudden violent deaths.
And once in a while I'll get people that had some
trauma that happened to them during their life.
That kind of broke their soul and they might have
lived on for years, but only as a kind of a shell
of their former self.
Once in a while I'll get that but most of the time
they've all been through trauma of one kind or
another when they pass.
Their trauma is too large.
When you go to funerals, have you ever heard people talk
at funerals about what they hope the joys of heaven are?
And you're, we're hoping that Jack is up there with all of
his card buddies or whatever.
That people have some idea that there are joys that
people are now free to pursue.
Not if you're, not if you died suddenly, violently,
tragically, and you're a mess.
You might not want that.
You might just be angry that you died.
So some of them need a kind of a team of people
to assist them at the front end for a while and help
them calm down, heal a bit.
And then there comes a time when they're, I think
of us as the discharge staff at a medical center.
Have you ever had to be overnight in the hospital?
Rod Bland: Thankfully no.
Oh, and one time, one time,
Father Nathan Castle: yeah, I've been very healthy too,
but I know that if you've had surgery or whatever,
and you have different follow up therapies and
medical appointments to meet and so on.
There's maybe a social worker whose job it is to help
you get all packed up and ready to leave the hospital
and make sure that you understand your medications
and follow up detail.
I feel like we're like that where they're brought to us
and they show up in a dream.
I've had some of them.
I used to ask often, how did you find me?
I quit asking because I got the same answer
just about all the time.
One of them was, I don't know, somebody brought me here.
One time it was, your light was on.
One lady used to shop, catalog shop from big paper catalogs.
Growing up in the outback, did you have to do that?
Rod Bland: Yes, that was the only way we could get stuff.
Father Nathan Castle: Yeah, when I was
growing up in the U.
S., there were two companies that had really big catalogs.
Sears and J.
C.
Penney.
And this lady was from about the 1950s and she
used to catalog shop.
And so when it was time for her to make this crossing
thing, they said, there's lots of ways that you can do this.
Why don't you sit down here with this catalog and page
through it and see if there's something that appeals to you.
And she turned a page and I was on it.
And she said, oh, look here, there's a Catholic
priest that does this.
I think I'll pick him 'cause I was a Catholic.
That's what she told me.
Rod Bland: It makes sense.
I have a good friend of mine, Nicky Alan, who's a
psychic, and she has had that described in the same way.
It's like she has a light, and her light's
on, and that's what brings people towards her.
So it makes sense.
Perfect sense to me.
So I wanted to ask you, oh dear, I lost my
train of thought there.
Oh, that's right.
So when you have the dream and given that these are
all somewhat traumatic ways that people have died, how
do you experience that?
Is it like first person, third person?
Are you detached somehow?
How do you,
Father Nathan Castle: That's a great question, Rod.
You must, you're a podcaster.
I imagine you probably are a storyteller too.
Podcast is storytelling.
It really depends on the point of view that a
storyteller or a writer takes.
For example, a lot of the deaths that I've been witness
to were in automobiles.
Sometimes it's the driver who died and so they'll
have me behind the wheel of the car and they'll show
me a truck that suddenly crosses the center line is
about to hit them head on.
Other times I might be as though in a helicopter and
seeing it from above and watching cars crash into each
other almost like they're toys or the size of toys.
Maybe I'll be on the sidewalk next to a thing.
So it really depends on the way a person tells a story.
Once in a while they'll especially in the car crashes,
what that they're merciful in that they don't make me suffer
and they don't terrorize me.
They do what they can to make their point without it
being too graphic or gory.
But they helped me understand that this is not my experience
and it's not a normal dream.
And I call them a contact dream.
I make the distinction between having a dream
or receiving a dream.
For me, having a dream is my own psychobabble, like
the golf game that I was talking about earlier.
Receiving a dream is the part where there's violence
and circumstances that I've never been in, falling
off a cliff or being shot or something like that.
Rod Bland: And do the dreams themselves, apart from the
fact that they're events you've not had any experience
with, do they have a different essence about them as well
that makes them distinct from your everyday dreams?
Father Nathan Castle: They do.
They just feel different.
I don't know how else to put it.
They and very often they have a little, they can have a
perplexing quality because I'm still receiving it.
I had one last night and it had in it, dreams can be
either very short or they can feel like they're very
long and but yeah, there's a texture to them that
that is somehow foreign.
In fact to me, you're a foreigner you're on the other
end of the globe in Australia and I'm in the United States.
Sometimes I get it, most of the time I'm dealing with
people who died in the United States, but not always.
I'll get an inkling that I'm in Iraq, or I'm in
South America or something, and usually that ends
up being borne out.
I'm in some place that I've never been, but the
person that's showing me their death died there.
Rod Bland: Can you tell us about one of those experiences
where you've contacted someone from another country that has
Father Nathan Castle: I can, and and this, the
book that you're reading is the first book of two, and
there'll be another one out in that series this fall.
It'll be Afterlife Interrupted, book
Rod Bland: I think I'm probably about a quarter
of the way through.
Father Nathan Castle: In the second book, there was a man
who who showed me a dream of, I, I felt like I was a Muslim
man at prayer in a bunker like room without windows and
there was a machine gun fire.
I was with other men and we needed to decide you know
how the Muslims don't, they Pray separated by gender.
Rod Bland: I didn't know that.
Father Nathan Castle: They do.
The women pray in one place and the men
pray in another place.
They were in Baghdad during the war and their
mosque had been bombed.
And they really had no proper Imam.
Some of the elders, he was a businessman, Nadi is his name,
had to step up and reorganize the congregation and find an
alternative place to pray.
They chose a windowless warehouse for security,
but the women were across the street in another
place when they heard this machine gun fire.
So he decided he couldn't bear thinking that his wife and
daughters might be endangered, so he went out into the street
and saw people bleeding.
And he turned to his right and saw a ten year old girl
with a machine gun with two men pointing guns at her head.
Forcing her to shoot at him and kill him and she did.
He died because of that and then we worked with him and
it was, he was very sweet.
He said, I would never have thought that
I would be talking.
First of all, he didn't speak English, but
that didn't matter.
He said, all I'm doing is forming my words and
they're coming out in your language and he said I
would never have thought I would be doing anything like
this at all, but certainly not with an American, a
Christian, and a priest.
I was about as other an alien as he could imagine.
He said, I would never have thought this was
going to be my life.
But I said here we are.
Let's let's figure out how to get you where you need to go.
And I used to ask them, can you think of anybody?
I said, you, the reason you've come to me is your
team deems you ready to move on to a next afterlife
level where you don't need as much, healthcare.
Apparently you've healed to the point where you're ready
to take on new adventures and you just need to move
from one plane to the next.
That's what we facilitate.
In the end, for him, I used to ask them, can you think
of anyone who loved you, who died before you did,
who you know loves you?
And would it be okay if we invite them forward?
After a while, we didn't even need to ask anymore.
People started showing up.
And in his case, if you remember a little bit of
geography from that region of the world, the Tigris
and the Euphrates rivers run through it, and it's called
Mesopotamia because it's the land between the two rivers.
He said that part of the world that we lived in would hardly
be habitable if it weren't for the two big rivers, and
almost everything we did depended upon the rivers,
and all of our festivals were somehow linked to the rivers.
He said there'd be different.
Instead of having a parade down main street, we
usually had floats that floated down the river
with different holiday themes attached to them.
So when it came time for him to cross a parade of floats,
started drifting in and he said, the space that I then
has, it's the water's rising and there's now about a foot
of water that I'm waiting in enough that floats can
be supported by the water.
And in his case it was a decorated float with
his father and other family members on it.
And he said, it's time for me to go now.
My father's beckoning me to get on his float and
we're going to float away.
So that's what happened with him.
And then he's ended up coming back and helping
another Iraqi child who died.
I have that happen sometimes where somebody is an alumni
of the process and they return and help somebody else.
Rod Bland: That's fascinating.
There's have you ever read any of the books by Bruce Mohen?
Father Nathan Castle: No, how do you spell the last name?
Rod Bland: It's M O H E N.
Father Nathan Castle: M O H E N.
Rod Bland: Yeah, he's a graduate of the Monroe
Institute, which I'm sure you've probably heard of
and they did some things that were quite similar as
people, because everybody takes their, I guess their
mindset, they seem to, we seem to take it with us.
Father Nathan Castle: We do.
We definitely do it by experience.
Rod Bland: And that can hold you in a certain place and
he, especially like with you, people with traumatic
experiences the earthquake, the the bombing that was in
Oklahoma and they would help people move a bit further
and often there would be, loved ones who had already
passed and others and I thought, wow that's, it must
be such a rewarding thing to be to participate in.
Father Nathan Castle: It really is.
I've been I wasn't public about it until 2018,
because I was still a pastor, usually a pastor in a campus
church, and many of them were very large congregations,
and staff, I had about 20, 21 staff members, and all the
fundraising, and five services every weekend, and lots of
retreats and service projects.
I was a really busy guy.
I was just afraid that if I went public with
this, it would be too upsetting or jarring.
I just thought I can continue to do this on the down low
and there'll come a day maybe when I'll go public with it.
And I decided when I was about 60 years old, that
it was time to do that.
Rod Bland: And what's the general reception been like
from people who have learned about this other work that
used to be on the down low?
Father Nathan Castle: It's very gratifying.
For, there are sometimes people who disapprove many
people who are disapproving are polite about it.
And just don't want to hear any more about it.
Others, sometimes there are snarky remarks and
stuff on the internet,
Anybody that has an internet presence is
going to get some of that.
I should think that you've had your share of that.
I don't know.
You really just have to not pay too much attention
to that kind of thing.
And on the whole, I've been received sometimes.
It's my day started this morning with a Catholic man
who found my work upsetting.
He had just learned about it.
And he wrote me an email, but he took the time to lay out
his questions and concerns and he did it with with Grace.
But I called him on the phone and we talked for about half
an hour and we'll talk again.
And I get a lot of emails from people that don't just
have an academic interest in this topic, but whose
child committed suicide,
Or they're grieving their, especially drug that in
this scourge right now of
Rod Bland: I think we probably have it in equal
portions to what other countries like in the U.
S.
would.
Yeah.
Father Nathan Castle: fentanyl.
The illegal drugs that are coming for us, they come
up mostly from Mexico but they're candy colored and
they, one pill can kill.
And so there's a lot of grief coming from that and
so I end up doing a lot of grief counseling and helping
people I teach them spiritual practices that they can
do and I do some, I don't do long term counseling.
The subtitle of my first book was Helping
Stuck Souls Cross Over.
And using that metaphor of being stuck, I'll say
to a person that wants help from me, I'll say,
I think of myself as the tow truck driver.
I might be able to pull you out of the ditch, but I can't
follow you down the road.
I'll make 1 hour long appointment and help a
person assess a possible, a lot of times people
feel stuck because they've arrived at some certitude.
And I'll challenge the certitude and say, what if
that's not what if there's another way to think of it?
And if they're willing to shift a bit, sometimes that's
all it takes to get unstuck.
For one thing, the idea that you would be in charge,
do you have children?
Rod Bland: I've got four actually.
Father Nathan Castle: All right.
Sometimes parents who have lost a child, especially one
who was depressed or suicided or a drug death, sometimes
they feel like now they're responsible for their, that
child in the afterlife.
And they panic and feel all stress about how do
I help my deceased son?
In the afterlife and so sometimes I have to sit
with them and challenge some of that and help them
stay in the present moment and do the present good.
Anyway, I end up with a gratifying work to do
for for people that...
A lot of people are searching for some sort of spiritual
meaning and they're using the internet as the place
to look around, especially during the pandemic.
Even people that had houses of worship and communities
that they were attached to, many of them were locked
'cause of the pandemic.
Rod Bland: Yeah, I think that's true.
There are people, we're all looking for answers.
And, People are starting to question what they
know and accept other things that may other
information, other evidence.
I think this is where things like near death experiences,
your own experiences, there's no real way to prove these
in the sort of scientific sense, although I think
that's also making progress.
And, but there's this truth, there's this element
of truth that rings, something that rings true
about it, and people are, that's what they need.
People just want to have some reassurance
that it's not the end,
Father Nathan Castle: Yes.
And it's, it really isn't.
And it's not about religion, I believe
it's about metaphysics.
It's about the kind of thing that we are.
I believe that we, from the time that we come into
existence, we always will be.
And.
Do you know ions?
The Inter International Association for
Near Death studies?
Rod Bland: Yeah.
Many of my guests have are part of that, or
have, spoken at their conferences and whatnot.
Father Nathan Castle: I'll be speaking we have one coming
up at the end of the month, and we're recording this
in August, and it's, it'll be at the end of August and
the beginning of September.
I'll be speaking there, and there, there is a lot of
scientific research, and even on the campus where I live,
at the University of Arizona, there's a lot of research on
especially on mediumship here.
Rod Bland: Yeah.
Father Nathan Castle: double and triple, quadruple
blind studies to try to...
See about the veracity of the medium and the
messages they bring through.
So I'm hoping that I'm going to be in that milieu more
and more as time goes on.
Rod Bland: Yeah, it's a fascinating area.
Somebody once said to me,
there's a lot of work that's going on to try and
prove things in a, in an empirical sense of, about
the validity of things like mediumship, about what you
do and psychics, et cetera.
But I think the most important thing is what is
the impact of that information on you as a person?
Like when I, I read your story, that, that sort of
further cements the belief that we do go on after our
physical death and there is more to our life and
we're an eternal being.
Like that just cements it even further and gives me
more confidence about that.
And so the feeling for me is beneficial and positive.
I think that's the thing that's most important, whether
or not it can be proven or not, I think is secondary
to how does that actually impact your life and whether
Father Nathan Castle: Yes, and I'm happy to hear that.
If reading only a quarter of the way into my first
book has had a positive impact on you good for you.
Rod Bland: Yeah.
Father Nathan Castle: I can also teach people if they...
If they're frustrated that they wish they had psychic
gifts and could talk to their, back and forth to their loved
ones and so on, I can at least teach them how to send,
How to convey a message to their loved ones, that's
standard Catholic praxis.
How to think about where they are, because oftentimes
people will talk about the man upstairs, or they'll presume
that, that God, whatever God is at a faraway place.
And as I told you earlier, my mom taught me, no,
it's right in your heart.
All you have to do is, all you have to do is cross yourself
and say hello in there.
So I can teach people to, to at least experiment with some
different practices that are common to Catholic Christians.
Do you have any, do you know anybody that does yoga?
Rod Bland: Yeah, I used to for many years myself, but
Father Nathan Castle: All right.
Rod Bland: Here in Sydney especially.
Father Nathan Castle: yeah, sure.
And the next thing I ask is, do they want to become Hindus?
Rod Bland: No.
Father Nathan Castle: Usually
Rod Bland: None that I know of.
Yeah.
Father Nathan Castle: They're just borrowing a practice
from one of the great world religious traditions
because it looks beneficial.
And so I feel like I can be that Catholic priest
that's not trying to turn you into a Catholic, but I
can say to you, if you want to borrow a practice from
this tradition, I can teach you about how to do it.
And we have a lot of different practices and tools that I
think are helpful in dealing with life, death, afterlife,
and being connected to loved ones that preceded us, ones
that we knew in this life and ones that lived long
ago, the saints, right?
I have lots of saint friends.
I'm talking with them all the time.
I'm hardly ever alone.
Rod Bland: Yeah.
I like this idea.
This is often, I don't know very much about the
saints, but I'm learning and I'm sorry, I was actually
thinking of archangels just then as well, like Archangel
Michael, but the saints is something fairly new after,
as I've started to learn from reading your books.
So now that's a, another area of explanation,
exploration that I'd like to learn more about.
Father Nathan Castle: If I can help, let me know.
I feel like that's really my strong suit.
I have great, they're all delightful.
The saints are all all human persons who have
died and lived on.
And many times in the Catholic church, some
saint will be the patron of architecture or the patron
of gardening or something.
And it's usually because they loved that thing
in their human lifetime on the earth and they,
because they loved it, they don't need to give it up.
They just take it to the next level somehow
Rod Bland: Yeah, I see.
So if if people do want to learn more about what you
do, Father Nathan, or get in touch with you, what's the
best way for them to do that?
Father Nathan Castle: through my website, which is
Nathan, n a t h a n, Nathan Castle, c a s t l e.com.
Nathan castle.com.
There's a And the thing I don't do, or a couple
of things that I don't do, I don't do demons.
Sometimes people immediately associate Catholic priests and
spirituality with exorcism, and that's not my gift.
I don't do that, nor do I deliver messages from
deceased loved ones.
I would discourage people from saying, Would you
please let me know how my grandmother's doing?
I wouldn't do that.
But I'd be happy to listen to whatever their concerns are.
And then you and I are talking via technology all
the way across the Pacific.
It's not hard to set up a Zoom
Rod Bland: zones.
Father Nathan Castle: Yeah, yes, and many times,
and a different day.
Isn't it a different day?
Rod Bland: It is.
Yes.
It's Friday here.
Father Nathan Castle: In fact you were patient with
me in just setting up this call because it took us
a few tries just to agree upon what day and what
time, but I'd be happy to do whatever I could to help.
The thing that I ask people to do first is if
they're really interested in what they've heard, buy
and read the first book.
Rod Bland: Yep.
Father Nathan Castle: Please don't ask me to explain things
that I've already explained in detail in a book that's not
very expensive and that you could order from Amazon and
have the day after tomorrow.
Rod Bland: Yeah, and it's a good read.
I ordered the Kindle version, so it's I got it instantly.
Father Nathan Castle: And we also have all three,
all four three of my books are on audible.com.
They're all audio books that people prefer to do, that.
A lot of people do that while they're
exercising or commuting.
Rod Bland: Yeah, I'll put all those in the show notes.
And is there any final message that you'd like to leave
people with before we wrap up our conversation today?
Father Nathan Castle: I also have a podcast.
My podcast is coming up on a year old.
It's called The Joyful Friar, f r I a R Dominic St.
Dominic the founder of our order.
That was his nickname.
And I've just borrowed it to for my show, but you can find
The Joyful Friar wherever you get your podcasts.
And I would just encourage people to to keep exploring
in that direction and trust that, that they're really
not only a temporary being.
You're, we're both temporary and permanent at the same
time in different ways.
There's a part of you that will die and the essence
of you will live on.
It's just the way the universe is built.
Rod Bland: Father Nathan, thank you for that message.
I appreciate you and thank you for coming on the show today.
Father Nathan Castle: All right.
God bless you.