Ray Catania: And I'm like, no guys, I'm fine.
I'm, I'm absolutely fine.
I feel great.
In fact, did anybody see the light?
Did anybody hear the voice?
And they start looking at me and start thinking, well, you
know, is this guy on drugs?
What is he talking about?
So I shut that up right away before I wound up in the
wrong hospital where the one where you can't get out.
Rod Bland: My guest today is Ray Catania, an author,
a metaphysical teacher, and he's a near death
experience survivor.
Ray, welcome and thanks for coming on the show today.
Ray Catania: Rod, I can't thank you enough.
I am honored and grateful to be here today with you.
Thank you.
Rod Bland: Oh, you're most welcome.
So, I'd like to start with some background of what your
life was like growing up, and then can you tell us about
your near death experience?
Ray Catania: Sure.
If we go back to the beginning, uh, my childhood,
unfortunately, wasn't, um, you know, perfect.
It was, a home that was let's say angry.
A lot.
And there was a lot of anger as well as arguments
and things of that nature.
Um, sometimes it would put me in a position where I
would try to hide and get away from the things that
were transpiring actually.
And when I did that, um, I would isolate myself for hours
at a time, sometimes as long as five or six hours where I
would just, um, you know, kind of be in a meditative state.
I don't know that at the time, of course, but I'm just kind
of staring at the blank wall.
And when you do this seven days a week, six hours a
day, you can start to see the energy that makes up the wall.
And this will come into play later.
Um, as I get older, I sort of push the envelope, if
you will, when it comes to my own safety and I acted
out in a, in a self sabotage type way because I came
from chaos and coming from chaos, that's what I learned.
And when you learn that, You repeat it, right?
So I'm repeating what I see now as, as I'm getting older,
if there's no chaos around me, I feel uncomfortable,
which is strange in that, in those moments, that was
perfectly normal for me.
So I would do things to put myself in a place of
where I could lose my life.
Um, and I would up the ante and up the ante and, uh,
see how far I could push it.
And it was at the age of 20 when I had my actual NDE.
There was a fire in my home.
I was still living at home with my parents.
The kitchen was directly below my bedroom.
And what had happened was is the stove was leaking
gas and the gas was leaking up into my room.
So I was inhaling the fumes of the gas.
We don't really know how many hours, but it was many hours.
And in the morning, my mom came down to just turn
on the stove and I guess there was some sort of a,
uh, mini fire explosion.
It was nothing that was really big or harmful to the house.
There was a very small fire that I think my father
said he put out right away.
That wasn't what affected me.
What affected me was the gas that was rising.
Uh, for, for hours.
And I was breathing that in, not knowing.
So the fire trucks and the police come to the house and
I hear all this commotion and I go to get out of bed.
And this is when I noticed something is seriously wrong
because I cannot move my legs.
I couldn't get my head off the pillow.
It almost felt like my head weighed a thousand pounds and
it just wasn't going to move.
And I couldn't yell.
So I know that I've got to get out of this bed.
I know there's something seriously wrong with me.
I don't know what it is.
Furthermore, I don't know what's happening downstairs.
So one of the parts that worked was my right arm.
And what I did was I grabbed the edge of the
bed and I pulled myself to try to get out of the bed.
And each time I would pull, I'd make it a few inches
and then I would Go back, I would pass out and then
they would make more noise downstairs and it would wake
me up again and jolt me and I, I would, I was like, I
got to get out of this bed.
I'd pull myself a little bit more and
then I would pass out.
The third time I knew if I didn't get out of this
bed, I was going to die.
So I pulled with everything I had, I got to the edge of
the bed and I began, I fell out of the bed face first.
But before I hit that floor, I did not feel myself
ever hitting that floor.
I never felt pain.
I never felt the, the impact because by that
time I was already out of my body and I was looking
down at it from the corner of the room and I was
looking at my lifeless body.
Colors were more vivid.
It, the room was completely, um, more vibrant, if you will.
And there was this tremendous cone shaped white light,
um, that was shining on me.
This light contained in it an energy that I cannot explain
to you, but I can tell you it was so euphoric that I never
wanted to leave that light.
There was no pain, there was no suffering, there
was nothing but euphoria.
At the end of the light was a being, I don't know male or
female, I'm not, I, I don't know, uh, they said it's okay
to come into the light, right?
It's okay, come into the light.
And so I did.
And each time I got a little bit further, I felt
more euphoria, I felt more relaxed, I felt better, um,
I felt fully encompassed.
In love, as strange as that sounds.
And at this moment, I'm still able to see what's
happening in the room.
My father comes in and he scoops me up from the floor
and now he's screaming for the paramedics.
You get upstairs.
My son, my son, get upstairs.
And he's distraught.
Now we didn't have a great relationship to
say the least, however.
In that moment, I saw another side of him that I thought was
what I always wanted from him.
I probably one of the few times he hugged
me was the time when I was dead on the floor.
And I think that that is what made me ask the being
if I could go back.
Rod Bland: Hmm.
Ray Catania: And I said, I can't leave my dad like that.
I can't leave my dad like that.
The next thing I knew I awoke.
I was not in that room anymore.
I was on the living room floor on my back and the paramedics
had all their equipment and they were working on me.
And I came out of it and I was like, guys, what, whoa, what
are you, what are you doing?
What are you doing?
And, and they're talking like, you know, get
the ambulance up here.
We got to get this guy in.
We got to, and I'm like, no guys, I'm fine.
I'm, I'm absolutely fine.
I feel great.
In fact, did anybody see the light?
Did anybody hear the voice?
And they start looking at me and start thinking, well, you
know, is this guy on drugs?
What is he talking about?
So I shut that up right away before I wound up in the
wrong hospital where the one where you can't get out.
So I just let them do their thing.
Um, Oh, it was, I was more concerned with the fact that
I had urinated all over myself because apparently that's what
you do when you die and I was more embarrassed about that
than anything else and I'm trying to tell them about the
light and the voice and I'm like, guys, really, I'm good.
I'm good.
And they're like, no, you're not good.
And they took me away.
So, and I try to tell my mom this happened.
She was clearly in a state of denial.
I come from a Christian background and I rebelled
against that because of the things that transpired.
And I chose that I was going to be an atheist.
And that's what I was at the age of 20.
Um, so I proceed to tell her and she says,
that's not what happened.
That's not what happened at all.
That nothing like that happened.
Now, when the book came out, I had a heart to heart
conversation with her in which she admitted not only that
it happened, but it actually happened three more times on
the way to the hospital that I had to be resuscitated.
Um, now I understand, I have no resentment because
if Your child died on your watch, that would be
traumatic enough to put yourself in a state of denial.
There's parts of my tra traumas that I don't remember.
There are certain segments that are
blanked out, if you will.
I just can't recall them.
And I'm sure those were the really bad moments, and this
was one of those for her.
But, um, it was just last year or two years ago at
the age of 82 when she said, yeah, I, I do remember that.
It was the scariest moment in my life.
So.
wHen I returned from the hospital, the feeling goes
from euphoria to like a bomb goes off inside your body
because all the little aches and pains that you have that
you kind of discard your brain just pushes them aside.
Maybe you broke something many years ago and it didn't
heal properly and now you have a little arthritis when
it, you know, acts up when it rains or something like that.
Well, all those little pains are magnified by 10.
And it feels literally like your body just blew up and
it's the most painful thing.
And all I wanted to do is go back to the light.
I never had that relationship.
My father, I was looking for.
Now I have the pain.
Now I have the emotional distress.
All my traumas are back.
What the heck did I choose this for?
I want to do over.
I want to go back to the light.
So at the age of 20 not fearing death is not a good
thing for a 20 year old.
Um, so I would put myself in more and more
precarious situations where I could potentially die.
And every single time I was in a situation where I could
die, there was the being who told me how to get out of
that particular situation.
Instance, I started working for some pretty bad people.
I didn't fear death.
One time there was a shootout in the bar and I hid under
the bar and I was hoping that nobody remembered I was there.
And the being says, side door, side door, side
door, side door, side door.
I can't get to the side door.
They're going to see me if I go to the side
door, but I've learned to listen to this being.
So I go out the side door and I run, and I
ran down the corridor that you have to run to.
And I went out the next door right there.
And my car was parked there that night.
And in all the years I had worked there, I never
parked my car there.
I don't know what made me park there that particular night.
There was another time when I was very young.
And I was swimming in the ocean and the undertow was
pulling me back, pulling me back, pulling me back.
And I couldn't get out.
And I, and I'm trying to wave to the lifeguard and he's not
seeing me cause he's looking completely the other way.
And I'm about to go under and I'm thinking, this is it.
This is it.
I'm starting to panic.
My heart starts to beat.
The being, calm down, take your time, swim on an angle
and take as much time as you need to get to shore.
It's the undertow that took me out.
I would never have known.
To swim on an angle and that's how you're
supposed to get back.
But apparently that is correct.
And that's what I did.
I just relaxed and it took me a long time to swim to
shore, but I got there alive again, um, I've probably
had eight or nine of those instances where this being
has been there for me.
so I learned just to listen to them or her or they,
um, they've never presented themselves in a physical body.
I believe them to be a spirit guide, um, above fourth realm.
If we, if we're going to call this one the third,
because most people do, I'll go along with that.
Here's the third realm.
The next one's fourth.
I believe they're at the next level, which
would be the fifth.
And that's, I think, where your spirit guides come from.
They have a shape of more of like an orb and it's
just a circle of energy.
Not quite a circle, but more of like an orb.
And I'll tell you more about how I know that later.
So basically I'm going through this life, not caring if I
die, not worrying about if I get, I just want to get back
to that light, but I'm not going to take my own life
because You know, when you do come back, you have this
liberating feeling where many of the things that
you worried about before just become so benign.
They don't really make that much of a difference anymore.
You don't really care.
You learn to not care.
And, It was a couple of years later that I moved
out and I was getting my first apartment.
And I remember I was all psyched and it's
going to be great.
We're going to have parties.
We're going to have chicks and this is going to be awesome.
And what happens is I could see energy before, but now
I cross over, come back.
Well, they came back with me.
And when I came home to that apartment, that apartment was
already filled with people.
I don't see them with my eyes.
I don't hear with my ears because then
I'd be schizophrenic.
It's all here.
It's third eye, but this room is filled and I
can see the lines going across the white walls.
I could see the little movements out of the corner
of my eye and I can feel them pushing my insides.
Well, needless to say, I could not sleep.
I had the worst case of insomnia That I've
ever had in my life.
So I turned to drugs and alcohol like any other
smart 22 year old would do and really abused
any product I could that would put me to sleep.
And so I did not hear and see them anymore.
Told no one because no one's going to believe me.
Nobody believed me about the near death.
No one's going to believe me about this.
In just one time I was on the phone with one of my
friends and I said, Hey, I think my house is haunted.
Click.
I called him back.
I said, why'd you hang up on me?
He goes, I didn't hang up on you.
I said, okay, well, I don't know what happened.
We're on a landline now.
This is back in the days of landlines.
And I said, Well, uh, what I was saying was, I think
my place is haunted, Klik.
So they would mess with anything they could that was
electric in that house to maintain my focus on them.
I think I'm losing my mind.
I'm trying to hold on to these atheistic beliefs.
You know why?
Because they're easier.
I don't have to process this stuff.
I don't have to overthink it.
Uh, I can just put it in a box and put it away.
So what I do with my NDE, since no one believed
me anyway, I said, well, the light that came
through the white light was probably the sun.
I probably fell on the floor on a sunny day.
The light came through the window.
I was stoned out of my mind from breathing in the
gas for hours and hours.
And that's, I hallucinated and I chalked it up
to that, it away.
But now this insomnia, these.
Beings is getting a little harder to deny.
I've left that place in 10 months thinking I'm
going to get another place.
It's going to be different.
It's going to be great.
We're going to have parties and we're going
to have chicks and it's going to be phenomenal.
And I move into that place.
And don't you know, the exact same thing happens.
It's not the place that is haunted.
It's Ray.
Ray's haunted.
I could go to Siberia.
They're going to come with me.
I don't know what to do with this.
Nobody else can see it.
Nobody else can hear it.
I'm the only one.
I must be out of my mind.
More drugs, more alcohol, more drugs, more alcohol.
That's the only way I can turn it off because I don't
know how to deal with it yet.
So as I approach the age of 30.
I get married and I have two kids.
Now I have a reason for living and it's not me.
It's them.
I have these two tiny humans that are counting
on me to carry them through the rest of their life.
So I checked myself into rehab.
Um, I, I drive, I drove myself to rehab literally
and just gave them my keys and said, don't let me out.
Um, I went back to college.
I got my degree.
I got a good job, quote unquote, in New York City.
Um, after that I got an even better job.
I worked my way up the ladder again.
And I had sort of a relationship where it was
like, okay, I'm not going to mess with you guys.
You guys don't mess with me and let's just all get along.
And that was fine for a while.
So I got divorced maybe three years into the relationship.
It wasn't very long.
The kids were very young and, um, it was a long
time before I dated again.
It's a very long time, but it was about in my late forties.
I'm at the top of my game in my career.
Um, aside from the fact that I have these beings
that pop up every now and they're not as intrusive
now, they know I'm not going to talk to them maybe.
So they're, they're just not as intrusive or I
learned to live with them.
I don't know which, but I decide that I'm going to join
one of those internet sites where you meet a partner.
And I'm viewing the different sites, choosing which
one I'm going to join.
And when you do that, uh, they show you some examples
of the women that are on the sites that are in your
area to try to get the guy to spend the money.
Right.
And so I'm clicking around and I I'm on this one
site and there she is.
I mean, she just popped up and I was like, Oh
my God, that's my wife.
That's my next wife.
So I joined the site and I sent one email to
her one and one only.
And I told her, I said, hi, I'm Ray.
You're my wife.
You don't know it yet, but this is how it is.
And luckily she found that funny.
I said it in a more comical way.
Of course, she replied, LOL, you're out of your mind.
I was like, yeah, I know.
Um, but we started dating and currently we're married.
We live in this house and, um, it's a pretty, pretty good
story, but it's when I meet her that things take a change.
And it was probably third or fourth week.
Into our dating when we just begin getting serious.
And she says to me, what are your spiritual beliefs?
And I said, I don't think I have any, I have no idea.
And she says, Hmm, that's interesting.
She says, you know what, for your birthday this
year, I'm going to buy you a spiritual clearing.
And I'm like, okay, great.
Uh, we're going to have cake.
I hope.
Because I don't know what a spiritual clearing is.
I don't know what sort of thing this is or what it
entails at this moment.
She's like, listen, you don't have to show up.
You don't have to do anything.
She's going to call you, tell you when she's going to do it.
Just don't book any important appointments
on that particular day.
and don't make any big life changes.
That's what they told me.
I said, okay, I'll do it.
So I'm at work and the lady calls me and she says, okay,
I'm going to get started.
I'm like, okay, great.
Don't book any appointments.
Don't do any life changing things.
It was like, I'll try to avoid that.
Thanks a lot.
Click cake.
So She does the clearing and sure enough afterwards as she
warned me, I started to feel a little woozy and I mean woozy
like to the bathroom woozy, like almost like I felt like I
had a drink, but I haven't had a drink in almost two decades
and I'm like a little wobbly and I said, um, I left work
and I said, I got a headache.
I'm just going to go home and lay down and
this is on a Friday.
So Friday it begins and here's what begins.
This man comes to me.
This is unlike any of, this is not floating energy anymore.
This is an actual man that I see here, not here.
And he comes to me with a message and he says, I
effed up, I made a mistake.
You can help her.
I cannot.
Don't know who he is.
Don't know who the message is for.
I have absolutely no idea.
He proceeds to repeat that message probably
every hour on the hour on Friday into Saturday.
It's every half hour.
And by Sunday, I can't function.
It's every just a couple of minutes.
I don't know exactly what it was, but I could not function.
I could not drive.
I couldn't do much of anything without seeing him right
there over and over again.
So I'm, I remember the moment I'm in a store paying for my
goods, paying for my stuff.
And I took out my card and I don't know what I did.
Maybe I just froze or whatever.
And the woman behind the counter says, sir,
are, are you okay?
And I said, definitely not.
I am not okay.
And I went out to my car and I sat in there for a moment and
I said, okay, so this insanity that I've been fighting
off my whole life is here.
This is the, this is it for me.
So I started thinking about getting my affairs in order.
I had a will drawn up at a DNR because I'm going
back to the light and my brother had all that.
So I just wanted to call him and make sure he had
the stuff, you know, and because I'm preparing for
the end, I want to make sure my children are taken
care of everything else.
Now I have this woman I love and I have to tell her, I
guess here's the kicker.
She is by trade, a doctor of psychology
and neuropsychology.
By trade.
That's her day job.
I'm going to tell this woman I hear people.
I see people.
She's going to just run for the hills.
Well, I'm crazy anyway, so I may as well just tell her.
So, she can get on with her life and maybe she
can recommend somebody to me that can help me.
So, I figure that that's the way it's going to happen.
And I begin to tell her the story and I say,
this man, he's just, he's there, he's in front of me.
It's like right here.
I can't not see him.
And he says the same message and I give her the message
and I, and I said, he's a big stocky guy and he's got
a mustache and a beard thick and he's got thick black hair.
And she says, Oh, well, that's probably my dad, silly.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
She goes, well, I've been to mediums and my dad comes
through and he's like, they've all told me he's very,
very strong and powerful.
And I'm like, what's a medium?
What are you even talking about?
She goes, listen, you're probably a psychic medium
and you don't even know it.
I used to make fun of that stuff.
I would, I would be the first one to crack a joke if you
told me that that was real.
And I'm like, that's not the response I was expecting.
I thought it was going to be, here's a number to Dr.
So and so, never call me again.
That's what I was expecting, not what I got.
And I said to her, I said, but the picture on the mantle,
isn't that your father?
And she said, yeah.
I said, well, that doesn't look like him.
This guy I said was big husky, had the beard, had
the mustache, had the hair.
And she's like, well, the picture you're looking at
was from 20 years ago or 20 years before his death.
So that's even longer than 20 years ago.
She goes, here's what he looks like on a day to day.
And she shows me the picture.
And I'm like, oh my God, you know that guy?
She goes, that's my dad.
And in that moment, I don't know what I felt.
I felt all these different emotions in a way.
It was good.
I was relieved that I'm not insane, but at the
same time, then what am I, what is happening to me?
And it, and I feel like I'm way back in that
apartment when I was lost and distraught and turned to
drugs and alcohol because I didn't know what else to do.
So she says, let me, there's a medium coming to town
and her name is so and so.
She's very, very well known.
Um, let's make a couple of appointments with her.
You can sit with her and you could tell her how you
see things, how you feel things, and you guys can
just kind of chit chat.
And I'm like, yeah, let's go.
That's good.
I'm thinking if I make it that long, but here's the thing.
As soon as I give her the message, it's gone.
He's gone.
Because that's what I was supposed to do.
I was supposed to deliver the message.
I did not know that.
But as soon as I did, he's gone and I feel great.
I'm back to this like mini high vibration,
euphoria feeling.
So I get more messages, however, and I give them
to her and she always seems to know who they're for.
And she, she knows the people.
And I remember this one time because I'm still
not buying this yet.
Okay.
I'm just still not believing it a hundred percent.
And this guy came to me and he gave me a lot
of personal information about, um, his death and
it, and it was supposed to be delivered to his wife.
And I gave it to her to deliver.
But at the end of the message, he said this to me, he said,
Remember the silly shoes.
I don't know what that means.
I don't know what any of the message means actually.
And I give this to her and she has dinner with the woman
and I said, whatever you do, honey, don't tell her it's me.
I don't want anybody to know I'm this psychic thing,
whatever you called it.
I'm, I don't want the neighbors finding out.
There's no way they're going to think I'm nuts.
Everybody's going to think I'm nuts.
Just, just say you heard it.
You, you talk to somebody or something.
She says, I will, I will.
And I said, by the way, if she says anything
about silly shoes where she understands what that
means, I'll be a believer.
So she takes the message, delivers the message.
Next day I see her and she says, Oh my God,
Ray, you don't know what you did for that woman.
She needed to know that information.
She needed that closure.
And I was like, okay, great.
What about the silly shoes?
Because that's all I wanted to know.
And she goes, Oh, the shoes that was hysterical.
She said that was their first date and he wore
the most ridiculous shoes.
And that was a running joke through their entire marriage.
And now I'm just, now I got to believe this.
I told her I would believe it if he said anything
about the silly shoes.
So we go to see the medium and I sit with her and
I said, hi, I'm Ray.
She said, she looks at me and she goes, Oh, you're that Ray.
And I was like, Oh, what Ray?
She goes, just tell me what's going on.
Right.
And I said, well, I'm losing my mind.
I'm crazy.
I see things.
I see.
People, they sometimes talk to me and I see things on a, what
looks like a movie screen.
And, and she's like, tell me about that.
How does it start?
How does it begin?
What happens first?
And I proceed to tell her about the vibrations and this
and this and this leading up to the, the screen.
And she said, she stops me and she goes, that's exactly
the way I see them too.
That's how we all see them.
And I was like, okay.
And again, a little relief, not much because I still don't
know what to do with this.
And I tell her about two other types of premonitions that I
have and she says, this one's clairvoyance and this one is
this and that one is that.
And she's like, that's really rare that one
guy has all of these.
And I'm like, you know, I don't even know.
She goes, women, yes.
Men, no.
And I was like, I kind of get that because my wife can
do 46 things at one time.
I can do two, you know, I could chew gum and walk.
I'm good.
Um, so.
Cool.
She's telling me you're, you're the real deal and this
is not necessarily what I want to hear, but it's better than
I'm nuts, I guess, so I wanted to exchange numbers with
her and she acted, you know, she's like, Oh, I don't know
where my business card is.
And so I just, you know, kind of left my
tail between my legs.
My wife goes in next and she comes out and she
goes, are you excited?
Are you excited?
And I say, excited for what?
And she goes, she's going to work with you.
You're going to be her mentee.
She's going to be your mentor for the next year.
And I'm like, she didn't, she didn't want my phone number.
And she says, yeah, well, she doesn't take students
anymore, but she's making an exception for you.
And she saved my life because she.
Proceeded to tell me her story about how her parents
did not believe her and her parents put her in
a mental institution.
thinking she was schizophrenic.
So she's been fighting this, trying to explain
that she's not crazy for most of her life.
She totally knew where I was coming from.
And she taught me a lot about how to control this.
And there were moments when I said, you got to
tell me how to make the stop, make it go away.
I don't want this anymore.
This is not a gift.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
I don't make it stop.
Just make it stop.
And she goes, give it two more weeks.
And if you still decide you want it to stop.
I'll help you do that.
I don't even know if there was a real way to make it stop.
She just wanted me to calm down.
So I worked with her for a year and she did, as we
progressed, really made me feel more confident.
Um, she did help me turn it off and turn it on.
And she taught me how to meet my spirit guide, the
guide who spoke to me, the one who saved my life
over and over and over.
And that was an amazing moment.
I mean, meeting him, her, they, whatever, was like, The,
one of the greatest moments.
It was like, you know, uh, meeting Elvis or something.
It was just, I, I just wanted to, to hug him,
saved my life so many times.
I want to, why, why did you do it?
I'm, I'm not special.
I'm, I've never done anything good for anybody.
Why?
And he hands me a piece of paper, not a piece of
paper, a pad, And a pen.
And I, I guess I got to write it, write a book.
He's telling me I got to write a book.
And this is how the first book comes to be the
atheist in the afterlife.
And it's a story of me going from atheism
to being a believer.
And it's that relationship led me to the next mentor
in my life and the way we found each other.
is another crazy story because it was my birthday weekend.
It's one year after the year that I had
met my first mentor.
Um, We go away every year for my birthday and we do this all
the time now because something crazy always happens.
And we went away and, um, while we were away, she took
out a picture of her dad that the medium drew of her dad
because he's a spirit artist.
I looked at the photo and I was like, Oh my
God, that's exactly the way I see your dad.
Just like with that shirt on.
It was like a distinctive shirt for
that era when he died.
So there's no mistaking that shirt, the beard,
the mustache, the hair, the whole thing.
And I was like, who is this guy?
I have to meet this guy.
And so we looked him up on the internet and it turns
out he's a pretty big deal.
And he's the guy who teaches a lot of the people that you may
see on television, although he's never been on TV himself.
He has no desire to be.
He is the teacher of the teachers.
And I'm like, he's never, you know, this, I don't
know what's going to happen here, but we get to
his website and it says.
Now taking applications for a two year mentorship
program with Medium Joe.
The deadline to apply is February 15th.
That's my birthday.
She says, are you going to do it?
I said, am I going to do it?
I said, if there's, if any of this stuff is real, that's
a universal intervention.
I think now I'm talking like everybody else.
And she says, great, this is great.
So I submit my application and it doesn't stop there.
They send you back another application and you
fill that out and then a bigger application comes
and you send that back.
And it's a long drawn out process because, and there's
an interview as well.
They want to know undeniably.
That you are the real deal or you cannot get in.
This program costs thousands of dollars to get into.
And I figured after a while when I didn't hear
from them that I just wasn't the real deal.
And this is, you know, I'm going back to denial.
This is all in my head.
And um, but I sent an email to his assistant and she
said, listen, bear with, bear with Joe because there's
hundreds of applications.
I was like, wow.
Okay.
And I did.
And I remember the moment I got the email that said,
congratulations here.
Here's the, though, the integrity of this man.
So you get an idea of him.
He had hundreds of applications and this program
costs thousands of dollars.
And when I showed up to my first day of class,
I was the 11th person.
There was 11 of us.
I don't know if I was number 11, there was 11 of us.
That's all that made it.
He could have taken everyone's money and really made a nice
chunk of change for himself.
Didn't.
11 of us were there.
And I was the least experienced of all.
I, I didn't know the verbiage.
I didn't know what anybody was talking about.
I was just some guy with a natural ability that didn't
go over well with classmates.
but you know, um, it did with him and he's, I've been
with him for four years now.
It's a two year program, right?
I've been with him four years, took me 10 years
to graduate college.
So I'm like right on track with that.
And, um, you know, he's taught me so much.
I mean, he's taken me to a level of spirituality,
not just mediumship, but I mean everything.
He's like, Ray, you've been fighting your entire
life for everything.
Have you ever thought about not fighting?
And I said, well, then how will I get anything?
He goes, you're always fighting upstream.
You're always trying to swim upstream.
He goes, if the stream's coming down, the fish
are coming towards you.
Just pick out the ones you want and let
the other ones pass.
You don't have to move.
And I was like, wow, maybe I don't have to
fight for everything.
And then he taught me how to manifest using nothing more
than this, and I remember the first time I tried it
at first, I didn't try it.
Here's what happened.
I was stuck in between a rock and a hard place.
I was short 10 grand for my kid's college.
He had to, he was going away to school, living
on campus, campus.
Somehow I made a mathematical error of exactly 10, 000.
So I'm embarrassed with the school and I, there's
no way I can tell my son that he can't show up to
school in a couple of days.
I just need to find 10 grand.
So I said, maybe this thing will work and you're
supposed to do it in the morning and in the evening.
And there's a process that we do and I explain all of
how to do this in, in, I think it's in both books.
It's definitely in the second book.
Um, and I w I was doing it six times a day though.
I wasn't doing it twice a day.
I couldn't mess around.
I needed to this money.
So after six times, my mail comes very late.
It comes at five o'clock.
And I remember that my son had given me the mail and
I looked through briefly and I see that I have a
letter from my accountant and it's a big letter.
It's like an envelope because I had just filed
my taxes and I always owe.
And I'm like, you, you, you don't understand universe.
Listen, I need money.
I don't need this.
And I throw it aside and I get back to it.
And I'm like, I need 10, 000.
We are co creators.
I know this, you, we're going to work together.
I need 10, 000.
I need 10, 000 now.
And you know, I wasn't asking, I was like, I need this now.
Next day, nothing.
Again, nightfall comes around and I decide to
go through the mail and I opened this envelope that
was from the accountant.
My accountant does it the same way every year.
The first letter is thank you for your business.
You owe me this much money.
Okay.
Next one comes out.
It says you have overpaid the federal government
by 8, 200 and something, something dollars and
something, something cents.
And I read it four times.
You overpaid.
That means I get a refund of 8, 200 and change.
And I put the letter down and I took out the return,
and another letter comes out and it says, you've overpaid
the state of New Jersey 1,200 and something, something
dollars and something cents.
That's exactly $10,000, just a few dollars over.
And I wept like a child, I dropped to my knees.
It was there the first day.
It was there after the fifth or sixth time
that I had done this.
And I, I, I'm a believer.
to say the least.
And so the first book, you know, is how I got to that
position, how I, how I went from atheism to spiritualism.
And then the second book picks up where I meet my second
mentor and he takes me to higher and higher levels.
And as I'm using these Techniques that he's teaching
me because I'm a skeptic and I am a diehard skeptic.
I have to understand the science that's
behind the process.
So I go back to school for metaphysics, which is where we
take science and spirituality and we bring them together.
And I also studied physics.
I studied Einstein, Niels Bohr, Tesla,
Hubble, you name it.
I studied them all.
And I started to figure out what was behind the curtain.
What makes this work?
So I think about it and I bring it about, well,
how does that happen?
And I started to put these things together
and it works because the universe speaks vibration.
It does not speak Spanish, English, French, or any other
language that you speak.
It speaks vibration.
So when you think of thought, you must
visualize that thought.
Say it in a positive tense that that is what you want.
Never say, I don't want to be in debt because the visual is
I and debt, so you're getting more debt because that's
what you're sending out.
It doesn't speak English.
Remember, I want an abundance of money where I need 10, 000.
You say it that way repeatedly.
You envision the 10, 000 and you send that signal
out on that vibration.
The earth resonant frequency is 7.
83 Hertz.
We try to get as close to that frequency as we can
get because the earth lives harmoniously in the universe.
If we get there, we're harmonious with the
earth that is harmonious with the universe.
Now you ask, that's when you ask, that's when you
send your out your signal and you try to stay in
your resonant frequency for as long as you can.
And if you can do that.
You're going to, you're going to get what it is
that you're asking for.
It works like a cell phone.
If I dial my cell phone and I dial your number,
why do you pick it up?
It rings.
Why does it ring?
Because my frequency aligns with your frequency
and your phone rings and then we can communicate
over that frequency.
It's exactly like a satellite dish and a radio.
You tune it into the right frequency and guess what?
You get to hear the song.
If it's off just a smidgen, you're getting static.
So you got to be on point.
And when you master the technique, you're going
to keep getting stuff.
It's just going to keep, I did it four more times.
I was like, let me go for 24.
Let me do whatever it was.
I didn't abuse it.
I really didn't.
I did it when I needed money in an exact amount.
I always ask for the exact amount.
And I got the amount.
This story is in the book too.
This is in the second book.
So I continued learning about science and spirituality
and how I could put them together and I evolved.
While I was writing the second book, I had my
spiritual awakening.
Now, I believe people have many awakenings.
I had it when I I met her, my wife, and I met her father
and, you know, there were many, many awakenings, but
the biggest one was while I was writing that second book.
And it was when I learned how to lose negative emotions.
For me, my go to emotion was anger, was always
anger for everything.
So if I was sad, I was angry.
If I was this, I was angry.
Any negative emotion was instantly transmuted to anger
because that's what I knew.
I knew chaos.
I knew anger.
And I knew I had to get rid of that.
And I started practicing techniques to get rid of that.
I started using, uh, techniques both from my
mentor, but also Eckhart Tolle, who suggests that
you take yourself Out of the situation you're in and you
look at yourself from the third person as though you're
a director of your own life, starring in your own movie
and you tell yourself what you want yourself to do.
And I did it over and over and over and over.
Even if I made the mistake, I would go back and say, this
is the way I meant to do it.
And I would visualize it.
This is how I meant to do it.
So one day something transpires where
I should be livid.
And I should have blew my top.
Nothing happened at all.
I was driving my car and it was an expensive car.
I just got it.
And I thought that was a big deal.
I don't think it's a big deal anymore, but when I bought it,
I thought it was, I thought it was a status, a symbol
stat, you know, whatever.
It was silly to even think that way in hindsight, but I
drove it into a deer and it was a snowy night and I was
upset with myself that I had done something so stupid.
I didn't feel the anger.
I felt nothing.
I felt compassion for the deer.
Who the hell am I?
What have I turned into?
It's great, but I don't recognize myself anymore.
So I get out of the car.
I don't even check the car.
I check the deer and the deer gets up and
we look at each other.
I was never that close to a deer in my life.
I mean, we were like nose to nose.
And she walks off and she's fine.
And I look at myself and I'm fine.
And I look at the car and it's trashed, but it's just a car.
In that moment, I realized that's nothing.
I'm okay.
The deer is okay.
It's just a car.
And that changed my whole perception of life.
That anger, it, it doesn't come out anymore.
That was the biggest awakening moment for me.
So I had to go back and I rewrote the book and I had
to put all the steps in that led up to having this
awakening so that I could share this with other people.
That wasn't my goal.
I walked away from my high paying job at the top of
my game, just walked off.
I said, I can't, this is not for me anymore.
I'm, I can't do this.
I am being called to help other people.
I have to write books.
You're out of your mind.
I know that already.
I know I'm out of my mind.
Don't worry about it.
I got this.
My boss said, I did not see that coming.
I said, neither did I, but no offense.
I got to go.
So I wrote both books.
I have a coaching practice that is successful and
I'm grateful for that.
The books are doing well and I'm grateful for that.
Um, and there will be a third book.
Because I have so much more craziness to share, um,
and in the books, I always try to put the story of my,
what really transpires in my life, how it equates to
a spiritual technique and then what's under the hood.
What makes that so?
Because I don't, I don't expect anybody
to believe any of this.
I didn't believe it.
I didn't believe it until I figured it out.
So how the second book came about.
You're still alive now, act like it.
The title is, first of all, live every day as
though it's your last.
Some of the things I've done now and implemented is I never
let any of our children leave the house without, I tell
them I love them, um, my wife, my kids, and anybody who I
feel that way about because I don't know if there's
going to be a tomorrow, but I'm okay if there's not a
tomorrow, but I don't want to be one of those beings.
That comes to find a medium and has to say, I regret not
saying this when I was alive because I know what it's
like to be on that side and I don't want to be that one.
So I say it every day and I just try to spread
that love to them and anybody else who wants it.
I don't know who the hell I am anymore,
but it feels really good.
It feels good to lose those negative emotions.
And they don't come and
I remember I almost ran a stop sign and, and I stopped
at the last second and this guy, you know, he, I almost
hit him and he got so mad and he was yelling and yelling
and mother effing me up and down and almost got out
of the car and everything.
And I just started laughing.
I was like, Oh my God, I used to be just like you.
Here's my card.
Um, and now I just see the world in a different light,
how it's just so simple.
And, you know, we all come from this one source to
harm another, you're harming yourself since we are all one.
That is a true statement.
I know it's thrown around a lot, but it really is true.
We all come from this one energetic source and the
realization of that and the realization of being
able to lose the negative.
Uh, qualities that I had and having these moments
it's just completely changed everything for me.
And now I want to give that to as many other people as I can.
Rod Bland: you mentioned about the 7.
83 hertz.
Is that the Schumann frequency that you're
talking about I don't Okay.
And, um, you said getting into sort of vibration with that.
Could you briefly explain to people how go about that?
Ray Catania: So, uh, it's usually the very first,
uh, sign that I know that I'm getting a visit
and the vibration could be very low and deep,
or it can be very high and tingly, and I know if it's low
and deep, that it's something that's going to be serious.
or negative or bad or something that needs to
be dealt with immediately.
And the high tingly ones are more, uh, lighthearted
in, in, so to speak happier.
Um, now I'll tell you, I got caught.
A lot of mediums get caught in this trap where we react
to the negative ones all the time and we never go take
the positive ones in because we're like, well, this could
be something really serious.
What if this is like, You know, has to do with my
family or this or that.
And I, you know, you get that and it usually
isn't, but it could be.
And you let the nice ones pass you by because, well,
you know, that's what we do.
Um, which is why, you know, the news is negative.
Everything's negative.
We watch negative things on TV.
If the news was all positive, nobody would
watch it anymore, which is.
Not right, but it's the way it is.
So I learned to accept the good ones and the bad ones.
So the lows are bad.
The highs are good and interact with them, um,
to the best of my ability.
Now I had to leave mediumship.
I could not do it as a profession because it
was too taxing on me.
I had just found happiness.
I had just learned how to be happy after the
first 50 years of my life.
being, you know, anything but happy, not really
understanding where happiness came from.
Thinking it came from material things or thinking that it
came from drugs and alcohol or thinking that it came
from something that's just so minuscule to realizing
and opening up for the first time and understanding
where happiness comes from.
I find it very hard.
For me, and this is why I respect mediums so much,
it's hard to take that information that's given
to you because you have to co mingle your energy with
theirs to get the message and deliver it to the sitter.
And what happens is at this point is that stays
with me and resonates with me for a few hours.
And whatever that emotion is, whether it's sadness or
whether it's, um, regret or guilt or what have you, that
sits with me for a long time.
And I have to isolate myself from my family.
Sometimes it's even anger and I have to stay away and I just
have to wait for it to end.
And I just found happiness.
So maybe I'll go back to that one day, but for me right now,
it's more about helping people find their own spirituality
and have their own awakening.
And that's really more about where my focus is today.
Rod Bland: So you've, you've gone through quite an
evolution, especially sort of fighting these constant
messages that you were getting from the other side it seems.
What advice would you have if you could give
advice to 25 year old Ray, knowing what you know now?
Ray Catania: You know, what's ironic.
I work with a lot of 25 year olds, their parents send
them to me because they're in that college age where
they're confused about what they're going to do next.
And it, it really overloads them quite a bit.
And what I tell them is.
It doesn't make any damn bit of difference.
It really doesn't because whatever you do
today, you're going to reinvent yourself again.
You're going to reinvent yourself again, and it's
meant to be done that way.
So you can become anything.
Just don't become nothing because whatever you become,
if you do the techniques, if you believe you,
something will come from that, a door will open that
will bring you into the next phase of your life.
And a door will open that'll bring you into the next phase
of your life and whatever it is, that's what's right.
If it feels good and you love it and you enjoy
it, that's where you go.
Don't make your determinations based on what you were
told happiness is.
It's not money.
I've been rich and poor.
It doesn't make any difference.
You could be just as miserable in both boats, promise.
So go with what you, your gut, what your insides tell you.
That's where you go.
Just don't do nothing.
Take the step.
It'll lead to the next step, to the next
step, to the next step.
And inertia is the only bad thing.
You're still alive.
Now act like it.
So I see a lot of 25s and I like, I like having
them as my clients.
Rod Bland: If people want to get touch with you, Ray,
like if they have questions for you, what's the best
way to, for them to do that and just, just give
us a summary of everything you've got going on.
I know you've mentioned your books and anything
else that you have as well.
Ray Catania: Sure.
Uh, at RayCatania.
com.
That is, I'm going to roll out a new website, but you
can still go there now.
And there's a couple of ways to contact me on there.
And if you're interested in coaching with me, um, or
just, you have a question, you can go through that website
and get in touch with me.
The information about the books are up there.
Um, you can buy them on Amazon.
You can buy them Barnes and Noble.
They're actually sold in 62 countries I understand
right now in all formats.
Um, the second book isn't audible yet, but
every other format is available in both books.
And um, I would be honored and grateful
if anyone purchased it.
So thank you.
And, um, and, uh, yeah, that's, uh, I'm looking
forward to rolling out the new website and speaking
to more people and helping whoever I can because I, I,
what I have right now, what I know I've, I've got to, I've
got to give it to somebody.
I have to give it to people.
I know that's, I know that's my calling.
Rod Bland: And have you got any final message
that you want to leave with people before we
wrap up the conversation?
Ray Catania: Um, final message.
Remember, we're all one.
Remember that because, you know, when you go
back to the other side
you're going to realize that we are all connected
through this energetic life force and, you know,
do something positive for someone every day.
Also do something positive for yourself every day.
So self care is important.
Take care of yourself, do one selfish thing for
yourself every day and then do one thing for someone
else every single day.
And remember that harming anybody else,
you're harming yourself because we're all one.
We're all one.
Rod Bland: I like that as a task list.
One selfish thing, one thing for someone else,
tick both those and you're good for the day.
It's a good message.
Ray, it's been my pleasure to have you on the show today.
I really appreciate you taking the time.
Ray Catania: I can't thank you enough Rod.
Thank you so much.
My pleasure.