Part Two: Vincent Tolman Died in a Dairy Queen Bathroom at 25 — He Was Gone for Over an Hour and Came Back With 10 Messages About the Afterlife

Summary

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Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown: Part Two — Vincent Tolman Died in a Dairy Queen Bathroom at 25 — He Was Gone for Over an Hour and Came Back With 10 Messages About the Afterlife

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Episode Overview

In this riveting continuation, neuroscientist Mayim Bialik and co-host Jonathan Cohen sit down with Vincent Todd Tolman to dissect his near-death experience (NDE): being declared dead at 25 and returning with profound insights into the afterlife, consciousness, and healing. Vincent recounts intensely sensory visions of another realm, describes spontaneous healing and psychic phenomena, and unpacks the psychological aftermath of his return to life. The conversation weaves together science and mysticism, focusing on the intersection of trauma, consciousness, spiritual guidance, and the broader meanings of existence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Deepening the NDE: The Oneness Experience

[00:34–07:03]

• Vincent shares his vision of cosmic unity, taught by his guide Drake:
  • “Drake said that we’re all fingers on one hand. All of us... Even animals and plants and Earth.” — Vincent [00:41]
• The metaphor of the “pointed finger”: Negative judgment is always self-referential; positive energy uplifts all.
• Vincent enters a realm larger than physical comprehension, feeling unconditional love from sentient grass, flowers, and water:
  • The grass “would speak. Every blade had a voice or a thought at least... and I could hear them say, because you’re you. Because you’re Vinnie.” [02:40]
• Sensory overload: Taste, vision, sound, and emotional vibrance far exceeds anything on Earth.
• Healing by water: Water finds “little cracks, these hyper fractures, these tears. And they were repairing it.” [07:04]
• The energy of a spiritual hug: “Our two energetic bodies can come and become one for a second... it became 8x, it became 8 times power.” [09:29]

2. The Moment of Return & Medical Miracles

[14:33–19:12]

• Vincent hears his brother’s prayer and suddenly awakens from a coma:
  • “At 1:11 in the morning? I woke up.” — Vincent [14:37]
• Waking was traumatic: “It felt like hell. Even my negative life review wasn’t as bad as this. It was really bad.” [14:46]
• Physical aftermath: Rips out medical lines, panics from claustrophobia.
• Medical impossibility: Vincent had no brain activity and was clinically dead for over an hour.
  • “Every doctor that I’ve studied it with tells me the same thing. They tell me there’s got to be a factor we don’t know about.” [19:46]
• Discussion of studies and potential physical factors, none of which explain his full recovery.

3. Corroboration and Skepticism

[24:35–27:40]

• Mayim presses for external verification: Did any physical-world evidence corroborate his account?
• Vincent: Could not recover records; EMS and hospital records were limited due to liability and incomplete paperwork after his revival.
• Tolman’s personal journey from skepticism: Sought out dangerous jobs post-NDE, driven by a desire to return to the afterlife, believing “this was hell.” [28:56]
• “Being here after there, that’s hell. That’s why we can’t remember it. If we could remember, we wouldn’t stay here.” [28:56]

4. Living With New Abilities & Psychic Phenomena

[29:48–49:00]

• Ongoing communication with spiritual guides, seeing the deceased (“I’m seeing dead people everywhere. And I’m seeing them as if they’re alive.” [29:49])
• Fears he’s losing his mind, influenced by neurologist’s warnings: “Don’t believe what your brain is filling in the gaps with.” [30:21]
• Meet wife Andrea, the first person he shares his full story with (“She was the first person I shared my story with. And I did it to try to scoot her off…” [31:48])
• Re-experiencing NDE memories: “All the experience, it came in one flash. The entire thing dumped into me.” [35:26]
• Early psychic phenomena: Sensing events before they happen, discerning lies, receiving guidance to help strangers.
• “On Earth, when there’s angels, that’s what it is. It’s like real angels working through us.” [45:24]

5. Navigating Mediumship and Spiritual Interaction

[49:00–56:17]

• First encounters with mediumship and guidance from spirits; suspicion gives way to acceptance through repeated evidence.
• Family reunion revelation: At a presentation about his ancestral town, sees his guide Drake’s image and learns Drake was actually his great-great-great-grandfather Charles Kazar.
  • “Do you know who Charles Kazar? Can you tell me anything about Charles Kazar? And her response was, ‘Oh, you mean Great Grandpa Drake?’” [52:05]
• Drake’s afterlife duty: To “welcome those who are loved by God... and guide them to where they want to go.” [52:39]

6. Trauma, Dissociation, and Survival Skills

[57:54–66:35]

• Vincent recounts severe childhood abuse, learning to dissociate—perceives “friends” (angels) helping him survive torture.
• “You’re not in your body. You’re watching your body like remotely. And you’re surrounded by all these beings that are full of light.” [59:54]
• Healing old wounds: Revisiting traumatic memory via meditation, realizes the arm that saved him was his own — a blend of quantum, energetic, and physical healing.
• Mayim highlights that trauma-induced dissociation creates a conduit for spiritual receptivity, echoing the experiences of others with NDEs.

7. Life after NDE: Purpose, Guidance, and Predictions

[67:12–74:00]

• Life feels like a blend: “Now it’s like heaven, hell, paradise, and school. It is each day a little different.” [67:12]
• Continues to experience mysterious healings and receives guidance on physical health.
• Advice for the living:
  • “Anyone who’s listening to this and you’re triggered, move on. I don’t share my experience to try to convince anyone of anything... I share my experience like a PR campaign for heaven and for who we really are.” [68:50]
  • “We have to bring love everywhere we go... and that will be heaven on earth. And that’s coming.” [69:54]
• Vision for humanity: Earth is “in a shedding phase,” preparing for a collective vibrational shift and eventual spiritual graduation.
  • Future will see people reconnecting with spirit and relying less on technology.
  • Nonverbal, telepathic communication and lost spiritual abilities (e.g., levitation) will return, but only after collective growth. [72:57]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Cosmic Oneness:

  • “Whenever we point our finger at somebody, we’re pointing three fingers back at ourselves, but also pointing equal blame to our source.” — Vincent Tolman [01:18]

• Upon entering the afterlife:

  • “As soon as I did, it went back to that same feeling I felt when I had that Life review. And I felt this overwhelming love pour over me.” [02:58]

• On spontaneous healing:

  • “The water was not just healing my energetic body, it was healing what was going to go back into my flesh vessel and that would have to heal my physical body.” [22:50]

• Describing the trauma of coming back:

  • “Waking up felt like hell. Even my negative life review wasn’t as bad as this.” [14:46]

• Corroboration and Skepticism:

  • “Number one, the medic, transportation, they wouldn’t give me anything. They wouldn’t even give me the medic’s name.” [26:33]

• Relationship with guide / ancestor:

  • “She brought up the name Drake. That was the very next time I had ever heard that name before him telling it to me.” [52:16]

• Advice for listeners:

  • “I share my experience so that we can reconnect, draw together, find solutions and stop focusing so much on the problems.” [69:20]

• Blending quantum and metaphysical:

  • “There’s a commingling, there’s a quantum weaving between all of this, what we can perceive and what we experience and what we think are all reality.” [65:13]

• Mayim’s closing reflection:

  • “Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers, grow, grow. Everything has its own angel, even a blade of grass.” [73:02]

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Important Timestamps

• [00:34] — Begins describing the afterlife visions and sensory experiences
• [07:03] — Healing by water and the energetic hug goodbye
• [14:33–14:46] — The moment of waking up in the hospital
• [19:12] — Medical unlikelihood of survival after prolonged clinical death
• [24:35] — Discussion on external evidence and skepticism
• [28:56] — Emotional aftermath; desire to return to the afterlife
• [35:26] — NDE memory returns “in a flash”
• [52:05] — Revelation: Drake is his great-great-great-grandfather
• [59:54] — Childhood abuse, angels, and dissociation
• [67:12] — Describing life after NDE: blend of heaven, hell, paradise, and school
• [69:20–69:54] — Spiritual explanation for sharing his story; vision for humanity
• [73:02] — Closing with the Talmud quote about angels and grass

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Tone and Language

The conversation is deeply personal, raw, and spiritual. Vincent’s direct storytelling, emotional vulnerability, and candid revelations are balanced by Mayim and Jonathan’s scientific curiosity, skepticism, and empathy. The mood transitions from awe and wonder through pain and confusion, to hope, meaning, and the call for unity and healing.

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Summary: Ideal for New Listeners

This episode of Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown is an immersive journey through Vincent Tolman’s extraordinary NDE and his struggle to make sense of the supernatural and psychological after returning to the “flesh vessel.” Listeners are treated to vivid scenes from the afterlife, discussions about trauma-induced spiritual skills, the challenges of skepticism, and a vision for humanity’s evolution. Whether you are a skeptic or a believer, the conversation offers rich terrain for contemplation on consciousness, healing, spiritual guidance, and the possibilities that lie beyond death.

Transcript

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Foreign.

[Maya Bialik]

Hi, I'm Imbialik.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

[Maya Bialik]

And welcome to our breakdown. Welcome back to our conversation with Vincent Todd Tolman. At the age of 25, he was declared dead in the bathroom of a Dairy Queen. But he was not dead. He had an incredible encounter. Came back with 10 lessons and an entirely new perspective on reality, consciousness, and what our purpose is here on Earth. We're so excited for part two of our conversation with Vincent Todd Tolman.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Break it down.

[Maya Bialik]

Take us from we are all one, which was the last lesson that you learned to hearing your brother's voice.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

You know, Drake said that we're all fingers on one hand. All of us. Doesn't matter what country, what religion, what race, doesn't matter who you are. Even he explained even animals and plants and Earth. It's all. We're all fingers on the Creator's hands, the hand that writes the story. And that we can't hurt each other without hurting our Creator and without hurting us. And he taught me something as the principle of the pointed finger. Whenever we point our finger at somebody, we're pointing three fingers back at ourselves, but also pointing equal blame to our source. So there's no way to point negative outwardly, but if we point positive outwardly, like, wow, you did a great job. That's bringing in positive energy. Sending up positive energy. Yeah. So that. That pointed finger is very powerful in the positive, but also very powerful in the negative to tear us down. Sure. So that was a. That was another tool that I. I learned as. As we were finishing this journey, and as we're finishing the journey, we're approaching this. This expansive place, just gigantic, like, bigger than I thought was even possible in this universe. It felt like this. This space. I can't even call it a planet because it's so large. It feels like you could put multiple suns across it, like multiple of our suns. Feels like you could put probably thousands or millions of our Earths inside of it. Easy. Just across it, across one circumference. I knew it was just vastly larger than anything I could comprehend. Anything that I think we even have comprehension of in this universe. And I noticed that I could see this beautiful landscape off in the distance. And as we got closer and closer, you know, I could. I was really focusing in on this grass. And I didn't understand yet why, but we got closer and closer and closer. And then I felt as my feet, my toes came down and, like, intertwined with the grass and stood in the grass. And as soon as I did, it went back to that same feeling I felt when I had that Life review. And I felt this overwhelming love pour over me. I felt again, just this rush of unconditional love coming into me from my feet. And the only thing I can think of is like, but why? I don't deserve this. I know I don't deserve this. And they just kept speaking to me. The grass would speak. Every blade had a voice or a thought at least. And you can hear the thought. And so I could hear them say, because you're you. Because you're Vinnie. And I kept hearing it again and again. And that's when I noticed that the grass itself had the most sweet, sweet flavor. And I was tasting it through my energetic toes. And it had this aroma that felt, like, very florally, but also very earth, earthy. And it had just all these smells that were beautiful with it. And I noticed that every single blade had, like, a tone, like a musical tone. And that all of them together were like a concert, like an orchestra. And so I'm. I'm just absorbing all of this. And it's. It's almost too much, really. Like, I'm trying to take it all in. I'm. I'm balling. But there when you ball, you just like. Like glow brighter, you know, Here when we cry, we get tears and waterworks, that kind of thing. There when you do the crying energy, you just, like, glow brighter. So I was glowing, like, so bright.

[Maya Bialik]

I'd be so bright.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And I had this feeling like, I'm so glad I'm home. So glad I'm home. And I, you know, I'd done quite a bit of recreational drugs in my life, and I noticed that right then and there, this is what we're chasing with those drugs. We're chasing one of these blades of grass, chasing home. We're smoking the wrong grass, you know, I was just enthralled by this grass. And Drake came over to me and goes, if you like the grass, you should see the flowers. And I just freaked out. I'm like, there's flowers. What? And I'm not a flower guy. I was an amateur bodybuilder working in movies and stuff here and there, TV shows here and there. I was not a grass and flowers. A flower guy. Yeah. But yet I was like, there's flowers. Yes, I want to see the flowers. And he took my consciousness and, like, put it on a flower, like, somehow made me small and put it on a flower. I was, like, running around. I could see everywhere. My. My foot touched the flower petal, it would glow Brighter. And it was like liquid lavender light with some beautiful reds and pinks inside of it. And it was just luminescent. And again, a smell, a taste, a vibration. You would even see like these rainbows coming off of everything. So there is just so many more senses that we don't have here. And it's, you know, a lot like our, our, our eyes here, how we can only see 15% of light. It's like there's a reason we can only see 15% of light. When we leave these flesh vessels, these flesh temples, we can see all light. And that's why I was seeing that glow on that medic's chest, is that's part of his light. And I was just so excited, you know, he, Drake showed me the trees. I was freaking out about the trees. I felt like they were wise, ancient billion year old souls and they were just living very slow and methodically about their existence. And then I felt this tap on my toe. I looked down, I saw this little creek, this little stream had come out and it had like tapped my toe. And I heard in my mind, do you want us on you? And I was like, yes, I want, yes, whatever this is, I want it. So the water started coming up and over me.

[Maya Bialik]

The water was speaking to you?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yes, it definitely was. Yeah. And I was speaking to it too. So we were come, we were conversing and it was going up and over my body. And you know, as a kid I had severe abuse and a lot of that showed up in my adulthood. I would get in fist fights, I would headbutt people all the time. I had put a guy in the hospital one time because he kicked me in the groin and you know, just silly things. But I would take out my, my trauma. I would channel it on any male who disrespected me, especially one that looked like my dad, you know, and here it was, this water was going in and finding all these little places in my soul, all these like little cracks, these hyper fractures, these tears. And they were repairing it. And as it went up, it wasn't until it got to like my chest. I'm like, oh, I wonder if I'm going to be able to breathe. And it came up over my mouth and I was like, oh yeah, I guess I don't need to breathe. That was the first like I even noticed, like, you don't need to breathe there. And the water came up and completed itself on the top of my head. And when it did, there was like a boom of energy like that came off the top of my head. And then the water came back down, slowly came down off of me. And I felt healed, I felt completed. And I know that that was either Drake telling them to do it or Source telling them to do it, but they were doing it because it was part of my journey to prepare me to go back. Because right after that I was forced to go back. Drake came and put his arm around me and he said, vinny, this next part, it's going to be really hard, but it's going to be worth it. And you know, I think I'm invincible as a kid, but I wanted to cry right there. And he hugged me. And when he hugged me, you know, our two beings came together. And it's so neat because you don't have that flesh vessel there. Your two energetic bodies can come and become one for a second. And when it happens, there's like this pulsar of energy that comes off of just a hug, a simple hug. And I could feel that all the energy that was in me and all the energy that was in him. When we came together as hug, it became 8x, it became 8times power. More powerful than what we could become on our own. It was just so much more powerful. And I felt like that was kind of a send off gift from Drake because in that hug I started to hear in my ear my brother on earth saying a special prayer over my, my comatose body and, and saying, I command you to be whole. I command you to, to come back to your body. Because it was evident it was 3 days 0 brain activity. It was an induced coma in the beginning at least because I wasn't conscious. But they wanted to induce the coma for helping with the swelling. I had swelling on the brain, seizures, all sorts of stuff. So I wasn't coming out of that induced coma mind.

[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

and

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I was off of all sorts of meds and still no sign of coming out of it in my neurology. And they had talked to my brother and my dad and had given them like these little pamphlets on what to do next, what to do when they're not waking up, like where do you go or do you unplug? And he knew what my dad would Decide, just unplug. But he wanted to make sure it was the right thing. And he wanted to make sure, especially for my mom. My mom was our saving grace in our family. And some of my siblings might not agree, but I don't care if they agree or not. She was, and she, she really was this bonding between all of us kids and somewhat of a defensatory wall between dad and us kids. And she was out of town when this was all happening. She was visiting my Uncle Chuck in Texas. And no one had told her because they knew if they told her she'd either get an ulcer or fly out the first flight back. And they wanted to make sure I was going to live or die first before they told her. And they were deciding do we call her, have her fly out and then unplug or do we just unplug?

[Maya Bialik]

So your brother made this prayer sometime in the evening.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

It's about 9:30 at night.

[Maya Bialik]

And a handful of hours later.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah. What happened at 1:11 in the morning? I woke up.

[Maya Bialik]

What did that feel like?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

It felt like hell. It really did. That's the hell I experienced. Even my negative life review wasn't as bad as this. It was really bad. And right at first I didn't remember my experience. I just knew I wanted to go home. I knew I was extremely claustrophobic.

[Maya Bialik]

You said you felt like a whale in a sardine can.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yes. Like our, our energetic bodies are so much bigger than these flesh vessels. That's why we have to come as babies, so we can cry out that, that change. And then once we get through that, we grow into the physical vessel, allowing the energetic body to grow with us. Right. And you know, our energetic body is, is huge. And that's probably why home is such a big place, because we are big. And you know when people say spiritual giants, that's almost all of us. We are.

[Maya Bialik]

So you have this awareness of being in this hospital bed?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yes. I woke up, I tried to go home. I woke up, pulled every tube out of me. I pulled my catheter out, pulled my breathers out, pulled every diode on my head off.

[Maya Bialik]

So you had been dead for three days and you came back fighting like a lion.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And there was only two nurses on the floor and they were, I think they weren't covering too many beds, but they had like, they had like two comas at the time and that was pretty rare. It was a brand new hospital and, and my buddy wasn't one of them. He act, they saved him right away he went, he spent one night in the hospital and went home the next day because they were able to pump his stomach, and he didn't. He didn't ever die. And so, you know, I'm going through this experience of I just want to go home. So I, number one, ripped everything off me and then just stood there naked for a second. And I'm like, I want to go home. I want to go home. And I'm looking around like, oh, I'm naked. And so I went rifling through the cupboards and found these gowns. And I grabbed, like, two of them, just wrapped around my midsection. And then I just started walking. I didn't know how. I would have looked like a crazy homeless man, but I was going to do it. I was like, I'll just walk home. I'm not gonna stay here. And then I heard two screams. And I look back and see the nurses. And I could just feel. I could feel the sorrow, the scaredness, the fear coming off of them. And I knew I didn't want to do that to them.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Had you gotten outside the hospital?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

No, he's in the hallway. I got to the elevator. I got to the elevator and was pushing the button.

[Maya Bialik]

It's a little bit like Frankenstein's monster, Meaning, like, something that has consciousness all of a sudden and has a directive to move but doesn't really know how to do it.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah. So morning. They did a whole battery of tests.

[Maya Bialik]

They got you back in the bed?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

They made me go back in the bed. They put on a real hospital gown. And even though I wouldn't let them tie it in the back, I was like, no. I just didn't like stuff touching me. I didn't even want sheets on my bed. I just didn't want to be touching stuff. I wanted to feel like I could have access to oxygen, even on my skin. And, like, true claustrophobia, the deepest level. And, you know, I met with all the doctors. Everyone was calling me, you're the miracle boy. You're the miracle boy. I'm like, nope, I'm the damned boy. Because this is not miracle. I feel damned. I did. I felt, like, punished at this point. I felt like I must not have been good enough for something. I couldn't remember yet where I'd been. I just wanted to go home again. I'm like, I gotta go home. Kept telling everyone that. And so I fought him and fought him and fought him. And then finally, at about 6am they allowed me to start filling out paperwork. I had to fill it out for over an hour. And at 7:30am, I checked out from that hospital on my own verition. You know, my dad came to get me and Mike took me home. I went running, went jogging.

[Maya Bialik]

Stop it right now.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah. And I remember running and feeling this, like, little scab right there and peeling it off. I was like, what's that? Just, like, afflicted. But, you know, I was. I was. I wanted to go back to life. That's what I wanted. And I was a builder at the time, so I. I had a construction site. I'm like, oh, they probably think I'm dead. And so I wanted to go back to that site. But I knew, give myself a day and then I'll go back tomorrow.

[Maya Bialik]

So I give myself a day after being dead for three. You went back to work the next day?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I did, yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I'm not a doctor, but not having brain activity, being in a body bag with almost no pulse in your heart for the length of time, both in the bathroom and then in the body bag in the back of the ambulance, like, TV tells us that there's going to be brain damage. You're going to have much slotrophy. You're not going to be able to function properly. How is it medically possible that you come back with all your faculties? It doesn't make sense.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Every doctor that I've studied it with tells me the same thing. They tell me there's got to be a factor we don't know about. And I had one doctor that said, what was that supplement you were on? I want to do a study on it. So he did a study on it and said, and, you know, I didn't follow up with him on the study, but I did find out what he reported on the study. It was something about that. That supplement kind of worked like a anesthetic or something that would put someone to sleep, but in strong amounts. But there was no heartbeat. They had me hooked up to the vein.

[Maya Bialik]

This was the big sleep.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

There was no heartbeat. And for well over an hour, if not more than an hour.

[Jonathan Cohen]

M. Either from your own medical knowledge or from the Internet.

[Maya Bialik]

Yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

How long after having no heartbeat does there begin to be brain damage? It's like three or four minutes. No.

[Maya Bialik]

No. Yeah.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

It's not like it's very fast.

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah. No, I mean, there's like severe brain damage.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Happens like within 10 minutes.

[Maya Bialik]

I mean, look, the. Look, it's the understatement of the. Of the century, right, to say there's some other factor here, meaning you don't have a lot of choices in how to Explain this, man. There's not a lot of choices.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I had a co worker just a few months later I was working with in Wyoming, and I told him my story and he unbuttoned his shirt and showed me this Frankenstein scar straight down his chest and said, you think that's something? I woke up during my autopsy. Okay.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

What?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And he's not the only one I've read about more since then woke up during their autopsy. What?

[Maya Bialik]

Okay, we need to get his number. No, no. This is a pretty rare thing.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Valerie has some stats here that I think are helpful just to put in context.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Just the enormity of the. Just physical details here.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yes.

[Maya Bialik]

So this is from hypoxia, I think. Yeah. So at three minutes, neurons suffer extensive damage. Lasting brain damage becomes likely. At five minutes, obviously death is imminent. At ten minutes, even if the brain remains alive, meaning has blood and circulation and all those things, a coma and lasting brain damage are inevitable. At 15 minutes, survival is nearly impossible. No, it's not.

[Jonathan Cohen]

That means lack of ability to. To speak, the lack of ability to walk and have motor skills.

[Maya Bialik]

It's not.

[Jonathan Cohen]

No memory.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yes.

[Maya Bialik]

I mean, there's so many parts. And this is why, like, I really. I would like people to read the book because there's so many parts of this that defy logic, they defy reason.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

You know, I, I didn't understand how it was possible until later. I was following some Wayne Dyer stuff and I discovered Anita Moorjani. Her story, we've spoken to her and how she woke up, you know, cured of cancer.

[Maya Bialik]

Correct.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And I feel like that's what that waking up and that's what that water was doing.

[Maya Bialik]

You had a healing.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

The water was not just healing my phys. My energetic body, it was healing what was going to go back into my flesh vessel and that would have to heal my physical body.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So there could have been at that time, before that healing, extreme damage in your physical body?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Oh, I'm sure there was. Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So you couldn't.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

All the instruments said there was zero brain activity. Well, they, they're rating it as like less than 5% activity.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And were you on a. What's the machine that breathes for you?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah, I was on full breathing.

[Maya Bialik]

Intubated?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah, I was intubated. I had catheters in double IVs to each arm.

[Maya Bialik]

They were giving you some sort of solution to kind of keep your electrolyte balance, something, you know, stable.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And then that wake up was like instantaneous. All of a sudden you were back.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I was just back yeah. And maybe that's why the time difference too. My, my brother said that prayer at about 9:30 and I woke up at 1:11. So maybe that's what to me, in my perception, right, I was traveling through space and time. And, you know, time is kind of like this barrel right there or this glass. Right. If you imagine this glass is like a bunch of spiral noodle and you look at that stack of spiral noodle, time is the spiral. And to put me back in my time, they had to find my piece of the noodle to put me into it. But in that process, I could see on this side of the noodle and that side of the noodle, I could see what was in our ancient past and I could see what was coming up in our really distant future. And it was very easy to see. Just looking, you could see it.

[Maya Bialik]

I have an annoying question, and then I have, I think, a less annoying question. I think that some people might, you know, even with loving skepticism, listen to your story and what happened to you and say, well, you had some sort of like, elaborate dream and you think that you were seeing these things, but there's no way that you could. And all we have is like, your account. Is there, you know, is there any way for us to, let's say, corroborate, you know, what was happening, let's say, in the Dairy Queen while you were in the bathroom so that we can say, oh, there is a way that you knew what was going on. Is there any way to kind of reference any of this to try and find connection points?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Well, I, I woke. I woke up from it as a skeptic. I had a neurologist that, that morning before I left, he. He really wanted to keep me another day to observe. He was afraid that it was a hiccup and I was going to go back into coma. He thought, you know, he said that it's common right before someone dies. They'll like, get real high energy and be very, very clean. And it's a death lucidity. Yeah, he thought I was in death lucidity. And I was just going to drop dead any second. And there was a part of me that was like, maybe that's why I should just go running, because maybe if I'm running, that's not going to happen. So that's honestly why I went running as soon as I went home. I think that's probably why I went running. And you know, I was a rugby player, football player, and I, I wanted to go, move, get, get out of this body.

[Maya Bialik]

So Is there any way that we can have little bits of connection points or is it. Or do we simply rely on your report? You know what I mean? Like, I want, I want to know the witness statements and I want them to say that you heard the thing. Like, I want to know.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I tried to get all of that at the time. I was 25 when I tried, so I didn't try that hard.

[Maya Bialik]

Right.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I tried with like a few phone calls, a few letters.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's complicated.

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, it's very complicated.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Number one, the, the medic, transportation, they wouldn't give me anything. They wouldn't even give me the medic's name.

[Jonathan Cohen]

No. They have huge liability for leaving you in the bag.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I knew he was gonna get fired.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

Did he get fired?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

He almost did. He ended up becoming a fireman. And, and, but if he had stayed on, he was going to be released. He was going to be terminated. Yeah, yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You don't like to save people.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

That's not part of the job. I did collect, you know, my very expensive block and a half ride on a, on an ambulance. I had a bill that at the time was like 40 something thousand. Again in 2003, that was a lot for three days. Nowadays you could burn that in a day. Here you go to lunch at a Hospital for 30 grand now. So, you know, back then you stay a week for maybe ten grand if you're lucid and not under a lot of assistance. So yeah, I had that. I think it was like 38, 40,000 for that bill. All of that's record. My time of death recorded is record. But because I resuscitated, they didn't turn that in as finished paperwork.

[Maya Bialik]

So in theory, you know, we, we do, we get to rely on your accounting. When did the rest of the story get filled in for you?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

So for me, you know, I met, I was extremely depressed after this. I went to the most trusted search engine at the time called Ask Jeeves. And I was before Google.

[Maya Bialik]

What do you do when you die and come back?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

No, I asked, what's the most? And it's funny the way I thought of it. I knew this life insurance guy, he kind of bugged me. He's very annoying. And I asked him, I go, you know, what kind of jobs can you not sell life insurance to? And he's like, I don't know. It's a good question. So I went to Ask Jeeves and I found there a couple of articles saying, you know, if you're such and such life insurance company, you can't sell Policies to underwater welders because they have a very high mortality rate. It's like 60 something percent. Crab fishermen, it's in the 50s. At the time, back in the early 2000s, like 50%. Some military duties, it was in the high 30s, especially if it was their. An active theater of war. And so I looked into all of them, signed in, signed up for military. I signed up.

[Maya Bialik]

What were you looking for?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I wanted to die. I want to go back. I didn't want to be here. This was hell. Being here after there, that's hell. That's why we can't remember it. If we could remember, we wouldn't stay here. We would just release ourselves. I wanted to go back so bad, but I knew that if I just went and drove off a cliff, which I had. There was this one cliff. I drove to the top and just stared at it like I could do it. I could do it, Drake. I could do it right now.

[Maya Bialik]

Were you still in contact with and

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I thought I was crazy.

[Maya Bialik]

You thought you were going next?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I thought I was schizophrenic. I thought I needed to be on multiple prescriptions for this. I did not believe in any of that stuff. I didn't. I believed in spiritual people, in intuition. I didn't believe in psychics back then. I didn't believe in. In people being able to speak to the dead.

[Maya Bialik]

So you and Drake are still in conversation?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Complete. And not only that, I'm seeing dead people everywhere. Okay. And I'm seeing them as if they're alive. Seeing him walk around, sitting around, talking to each other, even to this point where I felt like I almost needed to stop driving for a while because I would swerve for someone who's not there. And there was a big part of my brain that I'm. I'm having a hard time accepting. And I keep hearing that sentence from the neurologist. Don't believe what your brain is filling in the gaps with, because that's what.

[Maya Bialik]

That's what you were told.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

That's what I was told. He says your brain's going to make up a story. It's going to be colorful, it's going to be elaborate, but don't believe it. It's just your brain using Crayola crayons to fill in the blocks. And so I went, continued on my journey. I met my wife. I met. Met my. My Andrea, my angel. And she's someone who, you know, the world doesn't get her because she has a special gift with kids, especially special kids. And she could Work with them, help them to do things that they've never done in their life. And she almost has like an ESP with autistic or special needs children. And here I was and I just saw her as this porthole to heaven. I really did. And I met her through one of my friends, through her best friend. And before we even went on a single date, we knew we were going to get married. We went on our first date after we had already both decided we were going to get married. And we even had our first kiss before we went on our first date. And we were just hanging out as friends. But she was the first person I shared my story with. And I did it to try to like scoot her off because I felt it was crazy. So if she did too, I'd be like, well, dodge that bullet. And so I told her the whole thing. It took like a week, by the way. I went into every detail, every element. She asked questions, I told everything that I could remember. And we get done to this period and we decide, yeah, we're going to get married.

[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Vincent Todd Tolman]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Vincent Todd Tolman]

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[Maya Bialik]

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[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And I. I find a new hope in my life. And with her, she helped me reprioritize my life.

[Maya Bialik]

Because you kind of had a bad boy image also.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I. Not just image. I was a bad boy. Like any girl that like bad boys. Those my, all my girlfriends and ex girlfriends, that was just me. I had this scar above my head from a headbutt that was so bad that it dropped my whole skin head down and it gave me a second eyebrow. And like a lot of girls love that. They're like this bad boy fighter guy.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And good thing you didn't meet her back then.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Oh, I watched Blossom.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Hold on, hold on. I'm. I still want to go back to the time period where you've come back. You feel like it's oppressive. You're living in hell. You've been in this place where you're so expanded, you're now back in the physical form and your mind, as you said, is like filling in the gaps. How are these images coming back to you? Like, how do you begin to recount and become aware of all that time that you just.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

All the experience, it came in one flash.

[Jonathan Cohen]

No.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah, one flash. The entire thing dumped into me.

[Jonathan Cohen]

How long after? Like, when was that moment?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

So, you know, I got out of the hospital at 7:30 in the morning, did my, you know, running around doing busy stuff that day like you do

[Jonathan Cohen]

after just running some errands after I stopped being dead.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Dead man errands. Then I, then the very next day, went to work, worked a full day after work. My sister called and said, hey, I'm in town. She lives further up north. She's like, I'm in town. I want to take you to dinner. Our sister's here too.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So glad you're not dead.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

So two of my sisters and I, we, we went and had dinner. And this one sister, she was just enthralled with nd ease and she knew something happened, you know, she'd been really following this story and I think she had called the hospital a couple of times and she was calling my brother and calling my dad. No one would tell her enough information.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So she had the term ND already. She probably didn't have it.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

She called it. Did you? That's what she asked. Wow. She goes, you were dead. Everyone says you were dead. They say you're a miracle. Like, did you see anything? Did you experience anything? And in my mind, my, my human formed the words, no, leave me alone. But what came out of my mouth while I. I started crying like a newborn child. I said, yes, I have a guide. His name's Drake. And I started describing him and I started crying really hard and heavy and I was like, I couldn't catch my breath. And I'd say, and I went on a journey. I just started crying and I just, I couldn't control it. I went into the bathroom, got myself together even before my food came. And that was not me either. Like I would eat all my food. I was a bodybuilder. And no, before even my food came, I went and got myself together in the bathroom and just went home. I didn't go finish dinner with him.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So in that moment when she asked and you started speaking, it just, it just came to you?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

It all came to me in a single single dump.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And you knew it all, all of it.

[Maya Bialik]

But what he said was that human meat suit. Vinny said, no, nothing happened.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

And energetic Vinnie said, do you think

[Jonathan Cohen]

it was protecting you? Like there's a version of our awareness,

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

similar mask, I think it was. They had to put a mask over it because if I'd remembered it right away, it was, you know, my hospital room was on the third story, second or third story. I probably would have just like headbutted myself through the window just so I could go back. Honestly, that's probably, that's. Unfortunately I was one of those crazy guys at parties. That was me. And what's with the head butting, baby? Well, you learn it in rugby, right? And then you learn it in mma and it becomes like your go to and it keeps you from scarring up those knuckles.

[Jonathan Cohen]

But it's like when we're children and we embody as babies, we have to forget about the transition so that we can. It feels similar that you came back, but you needed protection in order to.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I did need that protection.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Take yourself into that transition of getting over the, the, the coming back.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And I noticed that there was a lot of spirits. What I would call angels hanging out with Drake around me when I first came back for that first day.

[Jonathan Cohen]

They have to watch over you, make

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

sure that there's, like, the transition hundreds.

[Maya Bialik]

What is the. What does that look like?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Oh, they're so amazing. They're so beautiful.

[Maya Bialik]

Is there a visual?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yes. Yes.

[Maya Bialik]

What is it?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

It's. If you imagine, you know, being in. In that place of heaven, I saw that when you're there, there's no outside light. Everything is source light. So you're source light. The grass is source light, the flowers are source light, and angels are source light. So they could be in a dark room, and they just. They're brighter than the day sun. If you can tune your consciousness into perceiving it, you can see even tones of color that the angels are. And by the tone of color, you know who they are. And it's like Lorna Byrne. Yes. And the unemployed angels, they. They're all hanging out, out here waiting to be called in, either by prayers or by inquest, by. By asking anyone who wants to get help from heaven, you ask, there's spirits that show up, there's angels that show up for it. And I know, you know, my mom had heard what had happened. She wasn't rushing back. She. She had heard I was okay. And I know for a fact she was praying off her tail to pray that I was going to be okay.

[Maya Bialik]

You saw, when you were with Drake, you had an experience of seeing groups of beings praying for someone.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yes. And watching those prayers fuel actual legions of beings to go help. Like, enlist and go help. Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

There's. There's one story that I wonder if you can give us as an example of the kind of help that you sought, because there was one doctor in particular that you went to, and a woman presented herself.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

She did. So I was still in the period of I'm a crazy guy. Andrea is the only one who believes me. I don't think even. I didn't even think my sisters believed me yet, because I still couldn't tell them the whole thing. Andrea was the only one I could tell her for more than 30 minutes without, like, deep breathing, weeping, you know, And I just felt a comfort level with her. So I was in that period. And I still am so skeptical. I've been so skeptical. Abused kids are skeptical. They don't trust anything. You trust what your gut tells you. You don't trust what you see. And so I wasn't trusting what I saw with my vision or whatever. And so I did say, you know what? Screw this. I Told Drake, I'm like, I'm going to go see a doctor. So I went to one doctor and he was like, I'm the wrong doctor for this. You need somebody who can prescribe you stuff. So I was like, okay. So he referred me to another doctor. That second doctor, I went to go see him. From the second I walked in the room, I sensed this presence of an older female. I knew she was in there. I couldn't see who she was or how she was connected until he started to fill out my prescriptions. And then she said to Drake and to me, don't you dare take those prescriptions until you tell him. Two sentences. The two sentences essentially alluded to, don't forget what I did. I protected you, and that's why you do what you do.

[Maya Bialik]

How did he react?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

He. He had some closeted trauma that he had zero memory of, that he had no memory. No one in his world had memory of this except for his mother.

[Maya Bialik]

That's who you were seeing?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

That's who I was seeing. Either mother or grandmother.

[Maya Bialik]

What did he do?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Just saying those sentences. It's like she gave him the memories. And when this happened to him, really good. Like, Christian guy, pictures of Jesus on his wall in his office even. And he took those prescriptions, just like, ripped them to shreds and said, get the F out of my office. And I. I knew this guy from his reputation. That was probably the first time he had said that word in his life. Wow. And because he had such a good, clean, like, reputation. So that freaked me out. I was like, good job, Drake. Thanks for letting me piss this guy off. Maybe I'm going to have a white van meet me at my house, and I'm going to go live in a new house. I really thought that. I was driving away and then a few, you know, about a mile or so down the road, my phone rang and he. It was him. He called me and he said, vinny, you know, I don't have any answers for you. My version of medicine doesn't have answers for you. He's like, I don't want you to seek your answers from us. My official opinion is you need a preacher and not a doctor.

[Maya Bialik]

Wow, that's a spiritual solution.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah. So I did. I went to try to find more spiritual solutions and found some rabbit holes, found some dead ends. And others I found is very helpful too.

[Maya Bialik]

I mean, also, you had a completely different perception now of what religion even is.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Right?

[Maya Bialik]

That's a human construct.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Relig regather. That's what religion Is it's to re. Separate regather. And you know, for me it was really important for me to try that doctor's visit though I wanted my ego to know I did what you wanted me to do. Now back off. Let me play with this a little and see if it is real. And I would. I would play with it a little and I would talk to guides, I talk to angels. I would go help people. Like I would. I would hear two miles up on your right, there's going to be a woman sitting down on the road.

[Maya Bialik]

No.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

She needs a. She needs a ride three blocks down.

[Maya Bialik]

No.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And. And if you don't get her there soon, her daughter's going to fall and hurt herself. So I like rushed around. I'm like, I'm here to pick you up. And she's like, okay. She just jumps in the car.

[Maya Bialik]

You're like freaking Superman.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Like, okay. And at first I was. At first I had to turn it down. It was making me crazy. And I ran her to her house and I knew, okay. And I was like, drake, did we make it in time? And he's like, great job, Vinny, Great job. You know, and it was like to me, on earth, when there's angels, that's what it is. It's like real angels working through us. That's what angels are. That's what earth angels are. Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

What brings the tears for you?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

It's just that love. There's nothing like it there. There just isn't. I have two amazing kids, a beautiful family. There's just nothing. Nothing like that.

[Maya Bialik]

Do the angels go away? When you're intimate with your wife?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

You don't think about that.

[Maya Bialik]

You gotta draw the curtain.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

It's like there's, you know, your human, your. Your flesh vessel might think about that. But interesting. There's no one interested in that.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You're getting these messages.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You're helping people.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah. You're having here and there. Not a ton, but here and there.

[Jonathan Cohen]

But you're being guided. You're actively being guided.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

When they told me to do it, I would do it.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And you're in relation with Drake that seemingly on. On a very consistent basis.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

He's worse than a shadow at that point. I couldn't lose him for anything.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So you're now not dead. You got Drake. You're running around like Batman and Robin sometimes.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

But what else is. Like, what are you experiencing? Like, what is your day to day?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I still think I'm crazy. Yeah. I really do. All of a sudden I had this new Gift that if someone was coming to speak to me, I knew it, like, two hours before they'd come.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So you're having minor premonition.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I did. I had minor premonition. I had a complete gift of perception. Like, I could tell so easily when people would lie to me or try to mask what the truth was.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You could tell when something was beneath the surface.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I would speak to their spirit guides and say, how do I get them to tell me the truth? And they tell me what to say, I'd tell it to them, and then they would, like, unravel the truth in front of me. And they would be like, how did you do that? I'm like, I don't know.

[Maya Bialik]

I don't know.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And are you having mediumship experience or just conversation?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Not yet.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Not yet.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah. I didn't know. You know, again, back 2003, this is before a lot of the medium shows and all that. I didn't know what a medium was. I knew what a psychic was. And I thought they were evil. I thought they were like, charlatans and snake oil, bad people. That was just my judgment, my prejudice. And, you know, through all this, there was this pulse of light around me called Andrea, and she kept, like, aligning me. I would go into these tangents of, like, I just want to be back there. And then she'd say, let's get together. And all of a sudden I'd be, like, happy again. And I'd stop thinking about those things. So we started spending every day together and got to a point where she said, hey, next weekend, we're going to your family reunion. And I'm like, no, we're not. We're going to go watch a game. We're going to go do this. Go on a date. She's like, no, sir. We are driving five hours up to the little town in Wyoming where this is going on. We're going to go to your family reunion. I was like, okay, so we go to this little reunion. It's the end of the day. They're doing a little presentation at the high school on the history of this little town in Wyoming called Star Valley or Afton.

[Maya Bialik]

How long has it been since you woke up?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Seven months.

[Maya Bialik]

Seven months?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

Okay.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah. So six, actually. Six months there. Seven months when I got married. Okay, so just short of seven months. Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

Family reunion.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Go ahead of family reunion. I'm sitting down. I'm bored. I'm like, let's just go back to the hotel and watch TV or do something. I was still very much my 25 year old human. And Andrea's like, no, this is really cool stuff. Let's learn about your heritage. This is your heritage, not mine. Let's learn about it. And so we were sitting there and I was trying to play along, trying to play nice, and all of a sudden Andrea says to me, that's your guide. And I'm looking down, I'm like looking at this cooler that we have some drinks in, and I'm like, that's not my. And then I stopped. I was frozen because I turned and looked and there was Drake, like larger than life. They had this huge movie screen in the, in the middle of this football field. And they filled the whole screen with his face. And I just again, just started weeping. I couldn't speak. I was, I was almost like paralyzed. And Andrea, just being the diligent little soul, she like grabs our stuff, kind of lifts me up. And she's so small compared to me. She's like a third the size of me. And she's like kind of helping me up and she's like guiding me back to the car. She knows it's time to leave right then. And between the, the tears that just snot bubbles, like running out of my face, she heard me say, let's go to grandma's house. Because I saw the last name of Drake was Kazair, and that's my grandmother's maiden.

[Maya Bialik]

Okay, so hold on one second. You're watching this documentary movie. Yeah, right. It's a documentary that's put on about the history.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

It's like a play. Yeah, right.

[Maya Bialik]

But it's a, a film strip.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

A film.

[Maya Bialik]

Right. So the. There, you're watching this and it's part of just the whole thing, like the history of this area and the history of this region. And a face comes up.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And Andrea saw it first.

[Maya Bialik]

And Andrea, Andrea saw it. She felt something about this. And when, when you saw it, you said, that is the image, the person that's been with me, my guide. But it didn't say that his name was Drake.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

No, it said Charles.

[Maya Bialik]

It said Charles. And then the last name was Kazaire. Right. So it said Charles. And that's not Drake. But you had this feeling that you should go ask your grandmother.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yes.

[Maya Bialik]

Who has that last name. So this was one of her. We don't know.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah, don't know. Don't even know if they're related.

[Maya Bialik]

Correct.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

But same little town with like less than maybe a thousand or two thousand people in it. Yeah. There's got to be a relationship.

[Maya Bialik]

So you go to Your grandmother go

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

straight to Grandma's house. And I think I need to ask about this Charles Kazair. And so I went and said, grandma, Grandma, Grandma, do you know who Charles Kazar? Can you tell me anything about Charles Kazar? And her response was, oh, you mean Great Grandpa Drake?

[Maya Bialik]

That's it.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

He's really famous in our family, Drake. And he, and she brought it up. She brought up the name Drake. That was the very next time I had ever heard that name before him telling it to me.

[Maya Bialik]

Who was he?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And come to find out, he was one of the first settlers in, you know, early settlers in Afton, Wyoming. He was like a land surveyor. He was a, a city member. He was a county government member, a state government member. He was also a clergy leader. So he was like a high leader within the clergy.

[Maya Bialik]

And who was he in your family?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And he was my great, great, great grandfather on my grandmother's side. Yeah. So is my grandmother's great great grandfather. Yeah. And the stories were so prevalently being shared with each other with her as a girl that she felt like she knew him. And she even said, I, I. They say I wasn't alive when he was, but I, I swear I remember meeting him. And I'm like, yeah, you did, Grandma. It was right before you got in that little baby body of yours. And it was just so neat. And as you know, Kismet would set it up for us. It was only three months later we were living with my grandmother, taking care of her at the end of her life, and. And that was it. I, I learned so much about Drake. I learned that he was blessed with a special prayer that said the important duties he would play in this life. And then on the backside of that prayer was an entire page of all the duties he would have in the afterlife. And that one of his primary duties would be to welcome those who are loved by God, by source and family or not, and guide them to where they want to go. It said that in his, in his 1800s prayer, which to me, that was someone channeling, that was summoning source through them and bringing it into this prayer for this man. And now I had a whole nother relationship with him. I very much had a love hate relationship up until that point. And now I was like, fanboying all over my great, great great grandpa. And I was like, why didn't you tell me? He was like, you weren't ready yet. You weren't ready yet. And he kept telling me, I promised you it was gonna get better. And ever since then, anything bad that happens to me. He's always right there, Vinnie. It's going to be hard, but it's going to get better. It's going to be worth it. And he was just saying that to me six weeks ago. I mean, he's a daily part of my existence. He comes forward now when I call him forward. He used to be forward, interacting with me all the time, everywhere I went. I've now kind of like, put him on the shelf with many guides, and I utilize them according to what my spiritual team helps me organize in the work that I do with helping others, you know, change their lives and step out of their. Their old paradigms and step out of their. Their trauma cages. Unlock those cages and grow and heal and. And live beyond our old story and learn how to live in a new story. And that's what I do. And. And I use all of my gu.

[Maya Bialik]

How do you get in touch with them? Is it a place you go inside? Is it words? Is it thoughts?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

So it's the you inversed. It's the universe.

[Maya Bialik]

Oh,

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

it's the you inside out. So, you know, what we perceive as the universe is just us inside out as above, so below. And so I tap. I tap in, but that ends up tapping me through and out to them. Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

This is not what you thought your life was going to be like.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

No, I thought I was going to be working in film. I mean, I worked on this little movie called Pool Hall Junkies, and I got to meet, like, Christopher Walken and. And Chaz Palmitari and. And I got to meet, like, Ricky Schroeder, which is from your. Your early days. Right. And it was so cool. They were. They were, like, friendly with me, most of them. One of them wasn't, but it was a really neat experience. And I thought for sure this was going to be my gig. I was going to make movies. I worked for Touch by an angel for two years, and I've now done it.

[Maya Bialik]

I mean, the irony there is not lost on any of this.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I know. But you know what's funny is one of my guides is Delarice. Yeah, that gets me every time. Wow.

[Maya Bialik]

You say that you thought back to the darkness in your childhood, and there was a lot of it. Fear, pain. I grew up creating an alternate universe in my mind where I was safe. This is something that we have heard from pretty much every individual who has had an NDE that there was a set of skills acquired.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

They just show up.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, the notion being that there are challenges that allow you to practice.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yes.

[Maya Bialik]

Not only Leaving your body but surviving.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Surviving, yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

The things that force you out of your body. Talk a little bit about the trauma you experienced, the dissociation you were able to achieve, and how you think that might relate to your nde.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

So I'll, I'll express one really precious traumatic event for me. I. I got my brand new eight dollar boots dirty. And that I was not allowed to do. I was seven, six or seven years old. And so that meant it was going to be two to three hours of beatings. And it also meant that I was going to lose chunks of my hair, possibly going to have one of my ears torn. And I knew I was going to be beat. I just didn't know with what it could have been a stick could have been the belt buckle of the belt or just the belt, or. I loved Mr. Spoon because he'd make a loud smack, but he didn't hurt. And that was more my mom's instrument than my dad's. But I knew that here I was from the second I got in the car and my dad saw I had mud on my boots, that that was it. And I had this weird sense that death was around me. What I didn't know is one week later, that friend that I had been playing with that day died in a camping accident. And I feel like there was a part of my dad's psychic nature that was picking up on that and channeling his anger for me not to follow the rules. And so he. Dad just started unleashing on me. He unleashed on me in the van while he's driving, full fists to the face, to the chest, anywhere he could reach. And if you lunged or flinched, he'd hit you again. So you had to hold still for your punches. And by the time I got home, I knew that, that I had just had the appetizer and that this was going to be the meal. And so my dad brought me in. I won't go into all the details. Fast forward 20 minutes later, I'm now in the backyard. Chunks of my scalp are torn. I have hair missing out of my head. I've got lashes all over my back. I'm not wearing pants, I'm wearing my whitey tighties. And I was tasked with going out back and getting wood out of the wood pile, which we had this big coal bin that was bigger than almost an adult. And then I needed to climb up into that thing, get some wood out and refill our wood burning fireplaces, which we had two of them in our house. And that was my duty to, to Bring justice to getting muddy boots. And while I was out there, I was climbing. I could not. I was so exhausted from all the beating so far, I couldn't climb into this coal bin. So I started stacking pieces of coal that had fallen and I was like teetering on them, trying to lift up this really heavy wood lid. It looks kind of like a lean to garbage can. I was like lifting in this heavy wood lid while I was trying to reach in and get some wood out. And I remember getting like one piece and it was barely starting to come out. And right as that happened, I feel this smack right across my back of my head. And I went rolling onto the concrete. And my dad said, not fast enough, are you? And he reached into that same coal bin and pulled out a two by four. And he goes, you know the position. And any abused kid knows the position. I went into my position. That means you put your hands on something and you brace because the blows are coming. But I knew that 2x4 was bigger than my, my elbow, it was bigger than my knee. I was a little, little child at the time and I knew this was probably going to be it. So I went to my space. I did. And in that space you have friends. You don't know that they're angels at the time, but I called my friends, I called my friends over and they all came. They're surrounding me. And it's weird because when you go into that space, you're now not in your body. You're watching your body like remotely. And you're surrounded by all these beings that are full of light. And you're like watching the abuse happen to the body, but you're like, oh good. Like it's like you're not feeling that pain, the 2x4 as it comes swinging down full speed. I watch this white arm clothed in this like kind of different looking print. This white arm reaches out and puts itself right in front of this two by four. And that two by four exploded into hundreds of pieces. And it sounded so loud. It sounded like a bomb, like a little stick of Dynamite or an M80 or something. It was so loud, neighbors on both sides, two houses down went in their backyard to see what that was. And one neighbor, she witnessed this because she was out on her patio, she heard that crack, looked outside and saw this shattered 2x4 sees me laying, you know, in the position and like bleeding and just in my, in my turmoil. And I'm watching it from outside me and I'm like, that was a real superhero. And to me I thought that was Archangel Michael. I always thought that was Archangel Michael. And, you know, years later in my healing journey in me trying to help heal people, I've had to heal me. And that's the hardest client I have is me. Way hard client. I want to fire me all the time. And trying to heal me. I. I ended up going back and working on this moment. And I brought in Michael because he was the guy who saved me. So I'm like, okay, kay, you're my dude. You know him and Drake and Yeshua and quite a few others, they all hang out with me when I do this work. And I'm like, let's go. Let's go to the space. Let's do the work. Let's do the heavy lifting. Let's clean this up and let's move on. It's time to release this and let it go. And I was watching the whole scene play forward. I see my little soul come out. I see all the little lights that come around it, and I see him all watching, like, giddy. And I'm like, okay, Michael, this is it. I'm like, grabbing his arm, like, put your arm out there. Do it. And he, like, looks to me, puts his hand on my chest. He goes, it's not my arm, Vinny, it's yours. And so I did it. And when I came out of that meditation, I had, like, serious bruises on that, on my elbow right there. And so it was like a reminder that this is not just something energetic. This is physical. It is. There's a commingling, there's a quantum weaving between all of this, what we can perceive and what we experience and what we think are all reality.

[Maya Bialik]

It's so powerful. And when I think about then the NDE and what your soul experienced, even before you had an awareness of Drake, Right. You were being summoned to this place that so many nd ears describe.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

Of. I already know the skill to pull back and not be in that physical space of pain, because I can remove myself and be above it, as it were.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

And, you know, as an adult, I'm like, oh, I was meditating. It was trauma induced meditation, but it was still meditation.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, it's a dissociative. It's a dissociative sense skill. Right.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

It is y. It's a coping mechanism.

[Maya Bialik]

Correct. But when people talk about. When people like Suzanne Giesman talk about it. Right. You're dropping into this space. That's the space where you're receptive to this other wavelength. Right?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah, it's.

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, I I don't even know what to say.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's. It's an unbelievable and powerful story. I mean, for people who are only listening. You may have heard Archie chime in, howling, and pets are so aware of the emotional state. Like, he came over to be. Got up off the bed in the back and came over. Like, he could feel the intensity.

[Maya Bialik]

You may also need to pee, but I don't know, probably, you know, as we kind of round out our time with you, what is your life like? What's your life like? Energetically? It's like, what's your purpose? You know?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Now it's like heaven, hell, paradise, and school. It is each day a little different. And I don't get squeamish to which day I'm in. I just am coming out of a real weird phase with my body that, you know, it's weird. Some of the damage that I should have received with that blow randomly. Five weeks ago, I got a fever really bad. And all of a sudden I was almost paralyzed. And I'm just coming out of that now. Been walking for four days now.

[Maya Bialik]

Wow.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

But putting it to spirit medicine wasn't able to help me. We tried every test. They thought I had spinal meningitis at first. They tested everything, couldn't find anything wrong. And from pressure in the right area, where spirits would tell me to put pressure on my body, I got my body to start functioning again. And I just keep wherever they say, hey, put pressure right there. I'll do it right away. I've been doing that now for five weeks, and. And I'm getting better. Like, way better now. And the fact that I walked up here is actually one of my miracles. I count today because yesterday I couldn't do that incline, honestly.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Yeah. We're on a big hill.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah, it's.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's not an easy walk to get up there.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

Such is life.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

But it wasn't hard. It felt like I almost had my assistance. Truly, I'm sure I did. I wasn't looking for it, but I'm sure I did. Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

If people are listening and they haven't died, do you have advice on how they can connect with their guides?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Yes. Number one. Anyone who's listening to this and you're triggered, move on. I don't share my experience to try to convince anyone of anything. What I do is I share my experience. Like a PR campaign for heaven and for who we really are. I want to awaken as many of us as possible to know that there's no legion except for the. The Legion of Souls. And that's the true re legion, is the legion of all souls. And that our source is our re Legion. And that, that we don't need separations from each other. I share my experience so that we can reconnect, draw together, find solutions and stop focusing so much on the problems. Because being an anti problem in this universe, it invites more problem. We have to be pro source. We have to be pro solution to bring more solutions. And we have to bring love everywhere we go. As we do it. And as we do, we can knock that laundry list of problems this earth has until there's none left. And that will be heaven on earth. And that's coming.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What do you think about Earth right now and what it's going through? Like what cycle are we in?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

She's in a shedding phase. So she's in a phase where she has this higher place she's going to go. She also wants to shed those who are not ready to go with her. And so she will shed them in two ways. Shed them through death, or she'll shed them by offloading a piece of a shell of herself. Like a skin of herself, an energetic skin that's very low vibrational. So that can be the safety net to capture those who aren't ready to graduate with her. But she's getting ready for graduation. Is it going to happen tomorrow? No. We've got quite a few years before graduation. But it is a time that we all who are alive right now waited to come here now so we could witness. And some of us are some of the last volunteers to come for this transition.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Do you feel like as it transitions, people are going to have an easier time connecting with spirit?

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

That it's way more. They'll want to connect to spirit more than their technology. And in fact, they'll put technology down. And I saw in our, our distant future that where technology exists, it exists only in community spaces. It does not exist in your own home spaces anymore. And so that when you use it, you go to community space.

[Maya Bialik]

That's what it used to be like in the 90s.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Right. The library for the computer. Right.

[Maya Bialik]

Or we would go at ucla there was like a you'd stand in line computer lab. Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So that it's not infiltrating every part of our existence. Like we go back to some semblance of human interaction. And then when I have to work, you have to work.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

But in that, that future timeline, we get to a point where we don't need to use words to communicate again. We had that a long Time ago, we lost it. We also bring back one of the last 12 tribes who had the power of levitation or levitation. So that comes back to us. And that's just one little nugget in the bucket of gold that comes in this transition phase. But it comes with us earning it, though. So we have to prove that we don't have to choose to let our governments be source. We don't. We don't have to engage in what they want. We don't. We can choose to not look, not be distracted, and choose to put our energy in positive places. And that moves more positive energy into your world, into your realm.

[Maya Bialik]

This is such a powerful conversation. We're so grateful that you shared so intimately.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

I'm so grateful to be here.

[Maya Bialik]

The book is the Light After Death. My Journey to Heaven and Back. Thank you so much. And I wanted to end with a quote that I thought of. That's from the Talmud. We've talked about it before. Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers, grow, grow. And I thought of that when you talked about the grass and just your entire journey and this notion that. Yeah, that everything matters. Everything has its own angel, even a blade of grass.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

If you think of the atom, the first creation, the Adam. And think of it that all of us carry so many atoms, that we are all the atom. And that every atom has an angel. Every atomic level of us has an angel.

[Maya Bialik]

It's beautiful. Vincent. Todd Tolman. Thank you so, so much.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

Thank you for having me. I mean, it's been my pleasure.

[Maya Bialik]

I got nothing else to say. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's Maya Bialik's breakdown.

[Vincent Todd Tolman]

She's gonna break it down for you.

[Jonathan Cohen]

She's got a neuroscience PhD or two now. She's gonna break down, so. Break down. She's gonna break it down.