Okay. Hello, everyone. My name is Salman Basit and together with my colleague Philip Estes and some of the colleagues who could not make here, Stefan Berger and Dimitri Ospinorakis, we'll be giving an overview of Docker security. And Docker, as you know, is becoming very popular. Going into Magnum, people are building services around it, and security of Docker is a major concern. Hopefully, with this talk, you'll walk away with an understanding of what Docker security is about and how we can build a cloud service using Docker. All right, so good afternoon. First of all, I think I won't belabor the agenda because obviously we'll walk through it as we go, but we're going to briefly talk about what is Docker, and I hope to approach it from a slightly different angle that will help us kind of walk through the rest of the talk that'll make more sense for looking at threat models, how do you protect against them, how do we configure Docker and related components best to handle the kind of attacks that you might see, and then Salman will wrap it up with kind of some lessons learned that we've had. Before that, definitely we'd like to acknowledge the IBM Container Service Team, who have done a lot of work to run a production deployment in a public cloud. Obviously, we've worked hand-in-hand with the Docker community, with the OpenStack community, with obviously the Linux community. There's a lot of moving parts as we get into this of all these layers of software pieces that are part of having a secure way to run containers, so we will walk through that with you, but first of all, again, I think in most talks on containers at the conference, there's an opening question about who's heard of containers and everyone raises their hand. We all kind of generally understand what they are, but a minor pet peeve of mine is that the same kind of image has been used as long as I've been around Docker, and I guess as far as an introduction, I work in the upstream Docker community on behalf of IBM as a core maintainer in the Docker engine, and so I work closely with Docker Inc through our partnership with them and also with the broader community. But anyway, a lot of folks approach this initial, what is Docker with this image of you remove the hypervisor and we share these layers and there's your binaries and libraries and your app, and things can be smaller, they're not these gigabyte images, and those things are all very true. And definitely some of the space and cost savings in increased performance, definitely all those things are true, but I think a good foundation for what we want to talk about today is to see Docker as its actual isolation components that make up a container, and that's what makes it hard to really describe a container is it's not one unique thing, it's a set of isolation technologies, mostly residing in the Linux kernel, and if you want to know more, I know James Bottomley has a talk later this afternoon that's great on digging deep diving into those components, those isolation technologies that you find not just in Docker but in LXC and other container technologies. So really, you know, a container is composed of a system that can assemble those things in a model where it feels like you're in your own system and so in the Docker world, someone sitting down and typing Docker run Redis or Nginx feels like you're starting in some ways like a VM, you have a root file system and you can install tools in there, but in Docker's case, there's an engine that's actually in that time assembling that root file system, whether it's pulling an image from Docker Hub or from a private registry and assembling the C groups and name spaces and capabilities, et cetera, to create what you think of as a container. Now, we know Docker has grown beyond just that core engine that most people know about in the Docker Hub to include things like compose and swarm and machine and all these other advanced capabilities that are coming around even beyond Docker when we look at Kubernetes and Mesos, but this talk, we're going to focus looking at containers and container security specifically. Obviously, if you run Docker, there are various deployment models you might have, the simplest being I've got a host or a set of hosts that I control all those aspects of it. The code that I run in those containers on those hosts is unknown, maybe it's mine, I'm a single tenant and maybe it runs on bare metal or VM, but anyway, I'm sort of in control of that universe, whereas there's the multi-tenant model where I no longer am in control of all the containers running, there may be multiple tenants, the code running there may be unknown, they may be running on the same machine with virtual networks, maybe the Docker API is exposed to various tenants, and so this model is actually much more like a VM-based multi-tenant cloud, like a public cloud offering, and that's going to be our focus because that's what we're running in the IBM Container Service, that's where we have our experience of these challenges, and obviously the security challenge increases as we move toward this model of a multi-tenant, we don't know and trust all the things that we're running, so Salman is going to take it from there and talk about the threat models. So when you're running a public cloud using Docker containers, there are various types of threats that you have to guard against, and the first one being that if an innocent user is running containers on a machine in your public cloud, can it be attacked by some other malicious users running apps in containers on the same machine as this user? So what are some of the possible attacks? So let's say I'm running a container on a machine in a cloud, so can other containers see which containers I have started or what are the processes running inside this container? Then which files are used? Can other containers see which files are used by my container? I believe they should not be able to do that. A container is typically configured with a network stack, so if I'm using some specific networking IPs, virtual networking, can other containers see that network stack? What is the host name of my container? Can other containers see the host name? Can they set the host name? If my containers are doing IPC, nobody does IPC these days, but if containers were doing IPC, can other containers see IPC stands for inter-process communications? Can other containers see how my containers are communicating with some other containers I'm running on the same host or a crosshose if the IPC is implemented acrosshose? So these are examples of attacks that other containers running on the same machine can attack another container. So raw containers can also attack the physical host on which they are running. And such containers, these can be raw containers, but these can also be misconfigured containers. So what are some of the examples? So with containers is a root running inside a container, also a root user on the host. That's very important to understand because when you create a container unlike virtual machines, there is no separate kernel running. It's essentially a Linux process that's running. And so if a Linux user inside that kernel is root and if that's the same user on the host, there is potential for exploitation over there. Then are the CPU memory and network limits that are configured for this container, are they being obeyed? Is the container going to violate those limits? Can a container gain privileged capabilities? So a container can be configured, a Docker containers can be started with the so-called privileged capabilities by which they have access to the capabilities of a root user on the host. Are other limits obeyed such as the creating a number of child processes or a number of file descriptors? Containers have seen stuff in the wild and it's an issue across many different container platforms such as Cloud Foundry and Docker containers and Alexi's that misconfigured containers or malicious containers can create lots and lots of processes. And finally, can a container mount a denial or service attack on the host or can it try to mount the file systems of other containers? And finally, the third type of threat we want to talk about is the attacks from public internet. So I'm an innocent user. I deployed my container on the public cloud and I hope it to run but it can potentially be attacked from the public internet. And so the examples include scanning of ports, guessing passwords, the containers, doing denial of service. And this threat model is similar to what we have for a VM based cloud. So you're not going to talk about that and we'll focus mostly on the first two threat models, namely protecting containers, namely raw containers attacking other containers and raw containers attacking the host. So isolating from other containers, how can we make sure that we isolate one container from the other? So Docker relies on kernel name spaces for isolating containers from other containers. So with the kernel name spaces for process IDs, for mount, for network, for UTS and for IPC, other containers are unable to see which processes I'm running inside my containers. Other containers are also unable to see which files I'm using. They cannot see the network stack. They cannot see any IPC communication and they are unable to set or get the host name of my container. And another question that gets asked is, okay, so these are nice capabilities, but what about devices? If my host has various devices such as our DMA or others, can containers access them? So the devices have to be explicitly passed into the Docker container using the device option. But all of these things that are described here, they are moot if a user can create privileged containers on the host. And a privileged container is something that has full access to the capabilities of the host, similar to what a root user has. So then that's isolating from the host, isolating from other containers. And then there is this big issue of how do we isolate host from raw containers? And here, as you can see, there are a bunch of capabilities, mostly Linux kernel that are used to isolate raw containers from the host. They mean user namespaces, C groups, Linux capabilities, Linux security modules, SecComp, Docker API, and Docker engine and storage configuration. Now Phyllis is going to talk about user namespaces, which he actually implemented in Docker 1.9. All right. So yeah, as Solomon said, user namespaces are a, I guess I'll say a new feature in Docker. They actually aren't in the Docker main release yet. They're currently in the experimental release. Docker 1.9 is in release candidate form this week. And probably will come out generally next week. But the experimental build in the 1.9 release cycle has user namespace support. And probably, at least for our talk, the key benefit that we'd like to discuss here is that I'm now able to deprivalage this root inside the container from being root outside the container. In this example, if I run a container and I mount a directory that has files owned by the root of my host, now obviously hopefully you wouldn't do that. But we need to show some kind of, some kind of example where you'd have access to do a malicious attack on the host. And in this case, if I had access to a directory in today's model without user namespaces when I Docker run my container, if I have access to a directory, I could actually replace the shell with my own malicious shell where I could copy in a file from my container onto the host. But in this example, basically that's prevented because as you can see over here, if I'm running this container and I look at its PID and I look at the UID of the user running my shell in my container, which is what I've run by running busybox, I can see that that's not actually root. And I think I was going to demonstrate and maybe we'll save it for the end in case we have time, but since we have quite a few things to cover, maybe we'll skip it for now and see if we have time. But the important thing here to take away from user namespaces is that now when I run a container by default, the root, at least the container still has privileges as root, but it's not able to access files or any of the processes as root if it were able to break out of the container. No, you have to start the Docker daemon with a remap root turned on. Now, the Docker community hopes that that will become a default once we sort out a lot of issues with volumes and linking and there are other issues that come out of having unique root UIDs. But yes, that's the plan. Okay, so now we have these containers which due to kernel namespaces, they cannot see what I'm running inside my container. With user namespaces, my root inside a container is not a root inside the host. Now let's talk about resource isolation. If I'm running a container, those containers use resources. They use CPU, they use memory, they may use disk, they may use network. And if the appropriate resource limits are not defined, then malicious containers have the potential to cripple the host on which they are running. So in this example, this shows a machine with eight CPUs and there's a container running which has these two CPUs defined, a container is running and the container is started such that only the first two CPUs of the physical machine are allocated to this container with the CPU set command, as you can see. Then at the time of Docker container creation, one can also specify the CPU share a container will get. By default, each process that is started in Linux gets a share of 1024. So one can define these shares relative to that default value. So in other words, if I'm running one container with a default share and another container with a share of 512 and both are trying to consume the same amount of CPU, this container that is started using this command will be only able to use half of the CPU relative to the other container. So that's the CPU isolation. Then there is the memory and the swap. How does Docker make sure that a container is going to obey the memory limits? And first of all, here there is the way memory and swap are configured in a Docker container. So note that the syntax of the command here, that memory is configured as 2G and memory swap is configured as 2G. Swap, the way Docker command is defined, it really configures swap on top of this additional memory. So in this case, it is essentially using zero swap memory because the main memory that is defined for the container is 2G. If the swap was configured as 3 gigabytes, then a gigabyte swap will be configured for the Docker. And one of the problems with the memory isolation is that by default in Linux kernel, the memory and swap accounting is not enabled. So if that's not enabled, containers have the potential to consume more memory. So they can consume more memory and the out-of-memory killer will kick in and kill those containers. But there is the issue of the containers not being the memory limit. Then there is the disk. Containers writing data to disk. If you're running hundreds of containers on the same machine all trying to write data to their file systems, they can also potentially cripple the disk. So it's a good practice to use different disks for containers versus root file systems and moreover define limits on how much data containers can write to the disk. The block IO, which is part of C groups, it can be configured, but there are some challenges and problems in configuring and ensuring that the limits for this IO are appropriately defined. Finally, there is the network piece. With containers, one can use different types of networking using lip containers, using courier. One is using Neutron. For example, the traffic shaping capabilities which define limits on how much a virtual machine or how much traffic can be sent on a port is configured. By default, the network names, the C groups for networks are not defined inside Docker. So if you're going to use default Docker networking, you have to make sure that those limits are appropriately defined. So this slide summarizes what I was mentioning earlier. The key point being that among, besides the CPU, kernel, memory and disk, there's also the issue of processes containers trying to do fork bombs and there are many ways of controlling that and one possible way is through C groups. The C groups for process IDs or PIDs support does not exist in kernel yet, but it's coming soon in kernel 4.3. There are also some challenges in enforcing the data traffic for the block devices and some of these issues are being addressed in C group version V2, which has seen a lot of contributions from the Facebook engineering teams and with the real design interface and a new hierarchical organization, hopefully some of the problems that you've seen with C groups are going to go away and those can then be leveraged directly by the Docker for improved resource isolation. So that's on the resource side. Now let's talk about the capabilities. So again, going back to the story that containers cannot see what's running, they're isolated from the root, their resource is isolated, but they may still have all the capabilities for executing various system calls. Kernels by default share the kernel, sorry, containers by default share the kernel with the host and if they can execute various types of system calls, that can be exploited by a hacker to potentially gain access to the root. So to protect against that, the first line of defense is Linux capabilities and make sure that the containers and what Linux capabilities do is that in the old days, there used to be just two types of users, root and not root, and root will have all the capabilities. But starting I think in Linux kernel 2.2622 or somewhere nearby, the Linux capabilities were defined such that all the privileges of root user were broken down into a smaller set of capabilities. So what are those capabilities? For example, ability to load a kernel module. Can a Docker container load a kernel module? Can it mount file systems? Can it perform network administration operations? So Docker by default, there are about 37 capabilities and Docker drops a majority of them and the numbers are not important here. It depends on how powerful a capability here is. But in this example, so because the Docker drops the mount capability, the figure shows that a Docker container is unable to mount a file system, but it can perform the regular I operations using open and close. So Linux capabilities, so that's great, we can restrict how much capabilities are available to a process, but that's not enough. We would like to be able to use the Linux security modules such as AppArmor or SC Linux to restrict what is available for a Docker, what a Docker container can do. And a popular platform for running Docker containers is Ubuntu and on Ubuntu, AppArmor is the popular choice for a Linux security module. So in a nutshell, what does AppArmor do? So previously, as we saw with the capabilities that we can restrict which system calls or sets of system calls a container can execute. Now with AppArmor, one can define that within that system call such as opening a file, which of those files can actually be opened by a container. So we can say that a container can open in this example as a host, but it is denied access to the dev KMM. And Docker has a default AppArmor profile for containers, and it makes sure that a user that breaks out of a container cannot access the sensitive data on the host such as the files associated with Linux security modules or kernel memory, etc. But one can also choose to define a custom AppArmor profile for different types of containers that runs on the host. Okay, so isolated containers, limited capabilities, C groups for resource isolation, restrictions using AppArmor. One thing I did not mention when I spoke about capabilities is that sometimes capabilities are implemented using a series of system calls. In this case, there's an example here. The set UID capability has four system calls that can be used by a container. So there's a technology called SecComp that can be used to limit which system calls can are invoked by a Docker container. So we can restrict and isolate containers in that way. And lastly, I should mention that all of this work that we have done so far in securing our host, protecting our host from raw containers, that is all useless if a user can create privileged containers. Docker, the current Docker API allows a user to create privileged containers. And there is work in progress in the Docker community to create appropriate authentication and authorization for that. But until then, if you want to build a multi-tenant container cloud, you have to make sure that a user does not have the ability to create privileged containers or add capabilities or changing the Linux security module profiles associated with the container. So we'll talk about that. Sure. So just a step back for one second to SecComp. So everything we talked about in that section exists in Docker today. SecComp has been put into RunC. I don't know how many this week have heard about the OpenContainer initiative. LibContainer is sort of the underlying library that does a lot of the low-level work to start a Docker container. SecComp support has been added there, but it's not in Docker yet. So I think Docker 1.10 will probably have the SecComp capabilities. So we've talked about all those limitations we can place. Now we're going to shift gears a little bit and talk about the Docker engine itself and ways to isolate and configure it properly. So obviously using TLS for communication with the Docker engine, if you're opening up the API over a TCP socket, there is documentation on how to set up TLS certificates. There are various modes of whether you're validating with that or actually doing client authorization with that. And that's sort of not full-featured yet, but as Solomon said, there's actually two proposals right now to add a full authorization and authentication to the Docker daemon and client. But you can check out the current TLS support in the documentation. Obviously you want to set appropriate limits. Some of the things we've talked about, limiting opening huge amounts of file resources, a number of processes. And there's a good tool that the Docker community and Docker Inc. security team have been working on. The CIS benchmark, we have the link here and the Docker bench tool, which was announced at DockerCon this summer. And there's a lot of links in our slides and obviously some of you have been taking pictures, but we'll also post these on SlideShare so you can easily get to a lot of these resources later. But anyway, the Docker bench tool is very useful for running through a set of recommended security checks on your configuration. And then as many of you know, the Docker storage setup is configurable. There are many backend storage drivers available. A couple of our experiences consider using DeviceMapper, which is block versus file oriented. If it's possible in your environment, setting the default file system of containers to read only, which of course you can use volumes for data. If you need write access to areas, you can use volumes for that. And then something Solomon has worked on upstream. Bind mounted files in Docker have no quota. So again, that's another loophole for a malicious container to try and basically DOS your host. If you can make those read only, that limits that capability. And then also in that ecosystem we showed at the beginning, the Docker registry is a key component. Whether you're running a private registry, obviously Docker Hub is running the V2 implementation.  And currently the V1 registry is deprecated and will probably in a couple of Docker releases go out of actually the Docker engine will disallow access to V1 registry, mainly because of its original weaknesses. There are many blog posts on these topics. You can find yourself. I think we're running a little short on time, so I won't delve into what you can read here. But the V2 API and the implementation in Go were worked on earlier this year in the community. Docker 1.6 was the first engine release which officially supported the V2 API. The most important piece being that now all content is addressable with a strong cryptographic hash rather than the random layer IDs in V1. So now you can have safe distribution and signing and verification is now available. I don't know how many people have heard of Notary. Docker Content Trust is kind of the branding Docker as put around that, but the Notary tool now allows for full signing and verification through that and there's some great demos if you look back at the DockerCon July content on what that can prevent as far as malicious attacks on your registry data. And again there are also performance improvements because now these digest and the manifest that describe them allow for an easier path to pulling all the content for an image. So that's a quick overview of the engine configuration and registry. Then Solomon's going to go on to potential attacks. Right, so when you're running containers, as I mentioned, one common problem seen across different types of containers is fork palm. Containers, misconfigured or malicious can just try to create a lot of processes. So there has to be appropriate protection against that. And as I mentioned that with Linux kernel 4.3, limiting the number of processes that can be created using C groups, that support will be coming there. But until then, you have to use your own custom solution to protect against that. There are resource exhaustion attacks. So there are three types of files that are so-called bind mounted inside a container. So there are no resource file. There are no quotas defined on these files. And again, there are multiple solutions. One can make the whole file system read-only or have some watchdog demons to protect against that. And lastly, and this is perhaps very important that all of the good things we have done cannot protect a container from a user misconfiguration. So for example, if a user deploys a package Nginx or MySQL exposed on the internet, does not use strong passwords or does not follow the appropriate guidelines for configuring and deploying the application securely. Those applications running inside containers can get hacked over the internet. This is similar to what can also happen for applications deployed inside virtual machines. So to put it all together, starting from the top, it's important to restrict the Docker API calls that are out there and differentiate between certain operations that can be used to create privileged containers versus non-privileged containers. It's best as Philip was describing to use the Docker version 2 registry as it has support for a cryptographic hash of image layers. Docker uses kernel namespaces for isolating containers from other containers. You have to make sure that all containers actually do end up using kernel namespaces and cannot arbitrarily drop the use of this. C-groups are used for resource isolation and they will be improved with the changes in Linux kernel as well as in the new version of C-groups. There's already a limited set of capabilities that Docker uses and one can further restrict the capabilities available to Docker containers depending on the deployment model for a container offering. So one aspect about containers is that containers do share the kernel with the host. Unlike applications running inside VMs which have their own kernel and then they run on the host which has its own kernel, containers share the kernel with the host. But the important thing to keep in mind here is that because of the restrictions, because we limit the capabilities available to containers, because we can define Linux security module profiles for restricting file or capabilities access and because we can further restrict what can be used, which system calls can be invoked, one can greatly reduce the attack surface for containers. And obviously with username spaces with containers running as non-root on the host, that provides additional protection. So I mentioned about username spaces. One has to make sure that the Docker engine is appropriately configured. Some things we talked about earlier that appropriate Linux security modules are defined that one follows the host best practices for securing the host. And one can also consider using hardware-assisted verification and isolation and there has been some great work happening in the community on using TPM for verifying the host, verifying the images on the host, verifying the containers and there are several talks from our colleagues in Intel about that. But the important point is that whatever you do, make sure that you define appropriate security tests and you run them within your cloud environment before putting stuff into production so that all those limits and all those configurations we defined are indeed being followed. So here we have put together a series of links on these topics. Hopefully you find the talk useful and I guess at this point we will open up to questions. Yeah, I think we have two minutes. I guess the block, there is the block IO limits and then how the block IO limits are currently configured in the C groups for Docker. First of all, only the limits for direct IO are enforced. The buffered IO limits are not enforced. And for direct IO, some of the options that are available don't quite work well and they depend on the Linux kernel version. So there are some issues there. Yeah, that's why there's some C group improvement that's still coming that will hopefully improve some of those weaknesses that we mentioned. Yes. There are a lot of open stack questions. Some can be managed by Kubernetes management solutions. Some security can be contributed to Keystone or anything. Is there any integration work or even a tool that can do that? Yeah, I assume some of that will have to come through like Magnum, for example, where there's some integration about how a pod is deployed and what's going to configure those settings. I think we have folks involved. I'm not directly involved in Magnum, but we have some from our broader IBM team where some of the lessons we're learning hopefully get implemented there as well and that information is shared. That's not a perfect answer, but yes. I think there has to be that sharing of how do we configure these so that everyone's not doing things a different way and missing some key issues that may leak through if someone doesn't understand the best practice. I think we're over-limit. I've got this headset on that makes me feel like I should sell something, but this is free. If you do want a postcard, this is not related to security or Docker, but open source and open governance has been kind of a Keystone of IBM's involvement in OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, Docker. So this is a book that myself and a colleague wrote. It's an e-book form. If you want to download link, I've got postcards. If you don't, that's fine too. Yeah, two for one for the next five minutes. I will tweet the SlideShare link of the talk at estesp is my Twitter handle, and I'll throw in some hashtags to make it findable maybe. Thank you.


The DuPont Company, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents Dane Clark on the Cavalcade of America. Lifeline, a story of adventure on the bottom of the ocean. And here is Dane Clark as Bob Forrest. I mustered out of the Coast Guard in late 45. And like lots of others, the change over to civilian life wasn't easy. I was restless. I picked up some deep-sea diving experience in the Coast Guard, so I signed with a salvage crew that was working in the Philippines, China, and places west. I guess I spent a year or more walking halfway around the world, underwater. I came home to see my wife and baby in 46, October 46, and Lula had a little speech all prepared. You've got to make up your mind, Bob. It's got to be one way or the other. Oh, wait a minute, honey. Please, let me finish. I've spent the last eight months rehearsing this speech, and I want to finish it. All right, all right. Lula, how do you think it is with you going for months on end? China, the Philippines, Alaska, Timbuktu. Or when someone asks the baby where his daddy is, he says in the mailbox. Okay, Lula. Okay. Suppose I give it up. Suppose I settle down nice and fast here in Port Angeles. Well, what do I do? What kind of a job do I get? You'll find a job? Where and doing what? You'll find a job. You're too good a man not to find a job and a good one. Not deep-sea diving either. Now, wait a minute, Lupin. Bob, how do you think I see her? Knowing that every day, any day may be the end. Underwater with all the things that can happen to you. And when I read somewhere that some divers had an accident, I... I cave in inside. Honey, the way you say that someone listening might get the idea that you're in love with me is something. I am in love with you, Bob, and you know it. Completely and for always. But so far, the only one who's gotten anything out of our marriage is the kid next door who collects stamps. It's a smart thing not to argue with a woman, especially when she's right. But agreeing with Lula still solved practically nothing because our town, Port Angeles, Washington, is up there in the hip pocket of the country on the shore of Puget Sound. It's timber country mostly with big paper mills that work over the hemlocks hauled from miles around. But I was a diver, not a lumberjack. So getting something for myself was going to be a question. Next day, I wandered down to the docks. It was a wet, sloppy day with the wind blowing in from the sound. The first thing I see is a cloud around a barge tied to the pier. How long has it been in there? It looked like something was happening, so I ran out and asked what was up. A fellow let me know quick enough. There's a fellow down there under the water, 40 or 50 feet down. A diver. Something wrong? Yeah, plenty. They can't haul him up. The line seems to be snagged or something. Want to get by with you? Okay. Hello? Hello on the barge, who's down there? Guy Kiddler. Is he getting there? Yeah, but we can't get him up, or the phone is out. Oh, wait a minute, will you? I'm coming aboard. Got a suit? Yeah, there's a spare in the cabin. Well, give someone else a pump. Come on, help me get into it. You a diver? Yeah, I'm a diver. Then come on. Johnny, keep the pup going. And stop yanking on that line. He'll only follow up words. This way. Come on, let's go. I was in that diving suit within three minutes and over the side in four. I went below down maybe 20, 30 feet. And then what I saw was enough to make any diver's hair turn platinum. It was weird. Like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was a jungle.  Not just a few, but thousands. Some flat, some upended, some swaying in the current. You see him? Yeah. Give me some slack. Is he OK? I don't know yet. Give me a chance. I saw Si before he spotted me. He was jammed up against a hemlock that must have measured four feet across the rump. His airline was snagged, caught fast. Si was an old hand. He knew what I had to do and he was ready. I put the blade of a saw right across his airline, then waited as Si slipped the lead weights off his shoes and from around his belt. He waved his hand. I cut the airline. He flexed his knees and shot upward. He was free. OK. He's up. We got a line out to him. Well, get me up, will you? There's plenty of trees down here, but it ain't no picnic park. Come on, haul away. They're in the cabin of the barge, Si said to me. Thanks, Bob. I'll do the same for you sometime. Oh, not familiar. Won't you never catch me going down that lopset trap? Say, Si, where could the devil has all that timber come from? They floated down from the lumber camps in great big rafts. Some of the stuff, the hemlocks especially, are heavier than water, so they sink. But there must be hundreds of thousands of feet of timber down there. There must be. Been dropping down there for many years. Well, come on. We going somewhere? Home, my place. Yeah, but I've got a date. Bet your life you have with me and the wife. Lula's going to find out that I've been diving again, and if something tells me, I'd better bring along my alibi. I couldn't get those underwater logs out of my mind. All that timber just lying there, doing nothing, waiting. Then the idea came to me. Not sudden, but over a day or two of thinking. I walked into the office of Don Frodel of the Crown Zellaback Lumber Company, operators of the biggest paper mill in Port Angeles. He asked me to sit down. He offered me a cigarette. Well, what can I do for you, Mr. Forrest? How many feet of logs do your raft booms drop to the bottom of the sound every month, Mr. Frodel? Thousands of feet. It's a chronic problem. Why? And for every log you lose, you've got to cut another tree, don't you? Yeah. Well, turning that around now, for every sunken log that could be saved, that would save a tree. That's right. And your company likes to save trees. Naturally. We're always interested in conservation. Good. Good. I'm in the conservation business. Or I will be if I can sell you this idea. You see, I want to haul the logs out of the sound. You interested? Interested. Well, how far will that interest go financially? We'll pay you 60% of the original value of the logs. You'll give me a contract saying that? I'll give you a contract saying that. And agreeing to take all you hand over to us. With one proviso. Yes. The logs must be sound. Well, naturally, that's exactly where I'm going to get it, in the sound. On the basis of my contract with Crown Zellaback and maybe even a little bit on my own gall, the banks gave me the financing I needed. I was in business. I latched onto some top diving gear from the War Assets Administration. I picked up a diesel-powered crane barge and three sea mules. Then with an old pal of mine, Dewey Landrieu, his topside man, I went into business as an underwater lumberjack. Hey, I'm Mr. Frodle. First load now scheduled. Got over 100 logs. Should be come to 3,000 at least, huh? Oh, fine. Splendid. Let's have a look, huh? Okay, okay. I picked out the biggest I could find. Grandpas, all of them. Look at them, will you? Mm-hmm. Nice, huh? Hmm. Uh, something wrong? Pterados. Come again? Pterados. I'm just looking at these logs for Pterados. Underwater wood borers. Now, this one is chewed hollow. No good? I'm afraid not. Not for pulp. I couldn't use it. Well, what about this one? Same thing.  Well, that's the sure sign. Skeletons of the Pterado slugs. This one is bad. Well, what about this one here? Let's see. Well, that one may be all right. But the one under it is bad. That one? That one? Most of them, huh? Looks that way. But unload them all from the scow. I'll have one of my inspectors go over the lot. And when we have it, we'll send you the report. I found out something else then. To get a business started, you need more than the idea. Even more than the push to see it through. You need that little thing called know-how. And that's what I was learning. The hard way. What I learned, I got so that I could spot a Pterado at 20 feet and 15 fathoms of water. In the meantime, my wife Lula, who was also my financial secretary, kept tabs on our earnings. The second month, her report was pretty good. All bills of the Port Angeles Marine Ways and Supplies Company paid. Profit, $501.73. A dollar and 73 cents is your bonus, honey.  Come on, live a little. Gee, thanks. Oh, I'll get it. Hello? Yes, Dewey. He's here. Hold on. It's Dewey. He sounds worked up. Oh, Dewey? No, I haven't had the radio on. When did it come in? Sure, sure thing. I'll be right down. Bye. Trouble, Bob? Storm coming up fast. The barge is anchored in open water. It's got to be moved. Broadside, don't try it, Bob. You can't get aboard that barge. Not the way it's working in this way. Come on, get me closer, will you? Closer. I'll get aboard next time. It dips this way. But he's the launch. Closer, will you? Closer. Now. Are you okay? Okay. Can you get the line? Yeah. Here it comes. Yeah. I got it. We'll make it fast, the hurry. Get off that barge now.  All right, here it comes. And hitch it on the stern. Okay. It's fast. Now get going. If we can just get it around the plow. Bob. Where's the plow? It's peeling over. It's going over. I got it with it. The axe, give me that axe, will you? It's under your seat. All right, got it. I got it. Cut the line, Bob. Cut the line. Right here. Everything we had. The whole work's sunk with it. Our business is back where it started. On the bottom of the sound. There's an equipment sunk below the water. There's a Puget sound. Bob Forrest planned to salvage sunken logs. It stopped in its tracks.  Day after day, I'd go out and watch them work. One day, Si Kindler came aboard. He lit his pipe, squatted down next to me on a coil of cable, and he said, I'm pushing out next week, Bob. Where to? Madagascar. What's doing there? British transport sunk there during the war. Carried the payroll for the whole expeditionary force. Nice job. Good figure? Uh-huh. $35 a day. Plus keep. Plus a buck extra for every foot down below 16. Sounds good. Yeah, sweet. Wish you luck. Thanks. They need another diver. Had it been to Madagascar? No. Not a bad port. Sorry, Si. I'm not interested. I just thought I'd tell you. Okay, you told me. That doesn't figure Bob. You're too good a diver to be wasting your time. I'm not wasting my time. $35 a day. No maybes, no worries. And no future. Nothing you can sink your fist into and hold onto. Oh, look, Si, it's not the money. It's being on my own. My own boss taking my risks, taking my profits. And your loss? Yeah, that's right. And my loss. That's part of the deal. But it's worth a gamble. When you got a business, your own business, you can grow. You're not stuck on the water. You can get up. You can get up on dry land. I'm sticking with this, Si. I'm sticking as long as I'm able to. I'm seeing it through. Two months after the hurricane, my loan was due, and I... I was at rock bottom. I went to the bank. The bank had listened to my troubles, scratched his nose a bit, and said, How much of an extension will you need, Mr. Forrest? One month. I'll be time enough to get you rolling again? I want a month. If I'm not rolling by then, I'll be ready to call it quits. One month? Let me see. That'll be until April 30th. That's right. Okay. The bank will go along with you. And good luck. I went up to see Mr. Frodel at Crown Zellaback. He had some bad news for me. Something I hadn't figured out, and he told it to me straight. There's another outfit moving in, Bob. They've approached us for a contract. I guess I can't stop that. I had no pattern on the idea. It's a good idea, and it stands to reason that someone else will take a crack at it. Did they get the contract? I haven't got it yet. Why not? Well, I'm kind of rooting for your side. I appreciate that, Mr. Frodel. But just remember, I'm not the man who makes all the decisions around here. I can hold out, but not indefinitely. How long more? Maybe a month. Until April 30th. Just about that long, but no longer. April 30th. April 30th. We'll make our first delivery on it before that date, or... Or what? Or expect to get a postcard for me from Madagascar. Tuesday, the 18th was the day set by the salvage company for raising of the barge. Lula came along with me, and Dewey was there, too. And the three of us stood along in the railing of the salvage tug, looking down at the water. Waiting. Stop them bubbles! The tanks are servicing. Get back from the rail, Lula. Back! Back! There she comes! Yeah, it's up. But look, what a mess. Bob, Bob, it's all right, isn't it? It doesn't matter about the mud. The barge is all right. I don't know, honey. We'll have to go aboard and find out. But it looks like it'll take a month just to scrape the scum off our deck. And all we've got is 12 days, it's like I said. I just don't know. The next day we went aboard, all of us. We stood knee deep in the muck and tried to tell ourselves that it wasn't so bad. The equipment seemed okay, at least as much as we could see of it, on the three inches of slime. But we went to work, all of us. Lula along with a rest, elbow deep in mud and winning. We started the stern, we worked forward, first with shovels and power hoses and rags, brooms, scrapers. We didn't work any special hours, we worked them all night and day. The 30th was a Friday. Thursday night we swapped down the deck. And about one in the morning I called a halt. We had coffee and then Lula and I sat down on the bulkhead up for it. And she said, Tired? Ah, little, what about you? Fresh as an eight-year-old kid with freckles. Oh, honey, tomorrow's a day. You're sure the equipment is okay, Bob? Don't take any chances. Oh, it's okay. Do we give it a final check? Bob? Hmm? Are there any mermaids down there? If there were, do you think I'd tell my wife? Why not? Do you think I'd be jealous of an old mermaid? Wouldn't you? Uh-huh. I would. Ah, honey, as soon as we get set again, we're going to take off on a vacation with little Steve. Your Seminy, maybe. We'll take the coast route down, see the big trees. Frisco, too. Maybe we'll even be able to catch the big rodeo at Salinas. Wouldn't that be something, Lula? Lula? Sweet dreams, baby. Sleep tight. All right, Dewey, this'll tell the story. Clamp on the head. Let's get going. Let me do a test on your phone. One, two, three, four, five, six. I wish you'd get real original. Read me a poem or something. Bring up the big ones, Bob. The jumbos. That's for me, honey. Okay, Dewey. Right. There we are. Good luck, Bob. Good luck. The last thing I saw of Lula was she was standing at the rail and there was a mist in her eyes. Or maybe tears. Then I was below in my private little jungle below Puget Sound. Dewey and I had figured out that about 28 logs would make up our load. That meant 14 cables to attach, two logs to align. I passed up the first few. Two were rotten with tornadoes. Three more were puny, not my style. Then I hit a batch of beauties, all of them over three foot across and solid as a rock. This was my meat. How are you doing, Papi? Great. Well, how's Lula? She's got one finger bitten down to the palm. She's halfway through the next. I'll tell her I'm okay. I'm starting the last cable. We'll get going then. Time's a-wasting. In a little less than two hours, I had 13 cables attached. One more to go. And all the time I was whistling to myself, feeling that at last I was over the hump. Once when a five foot sand shark swam up to give me the one so I slapped him on the tail and told him to go find another playmate. I was busy. I headed for the last log. A whopper that must have measured close to four feet across. Then I saw it. It swam out out of a heap of logs that must have been its nest. It's eight arms playing away at the current. It's dagger like beak, white and ugly. Octopus! But I wanted that last log. An octopus or no octopus, that was for me. One eye on the devil fish, I stomped slowly to the log, bent down to twist the cable around its beam, and then it was on me. Octopus, come on up. No, not yet. One more log. I'm just hitching it on.  No, wait. Wait. Okay. Okay, lines attached. Now hold me up and get set on deck. I'm bringing company. Look, it's back. I'm bringing them both in. It's choking him. Hey, act. Give me the ax, Lula. I got it. Get away. Sure, honey, sure, I'm fine. Oh, you swing a mean action, lady. I still don't feel so well. I shouldn't wonder. It was so ugly. Uh, forget it, honey. Forget it. It's all over with now. Do we get those logs, the boy? We just got time to meet our deadline. You're better. You okay now, honey? Sure, I'm okay. We're in business again. Uh-huh. The business is beginning to look swell. Dane working. Here's your timber. Right on time. You can say that again. Right smack on the nose. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Dane Clark. You've just heard me in the role of Bob Forrest. Now, how would you like to hear the real Bob Forrest? All right, let's go to our cavalcade microphone in Hollywood where Bob Forrest is waiting for a cue. Come in, Bob Forrest in Hollywood. Hello, Dane. You did a swell job. I got quite a bang on listening to my story. I just don't know why the cavalcade people decided to pick my story when there must be thousands they could have chosen. I will say this, though. What happened in my case, my being able to build up a pretty fair business from nothing but an idea, shows that the little guy still has a chance in this country. And another thing is this. I couldn't have done it without the help of the bigger concerns that were in there pulling for me all the time. Crown Zellerback, for instance, the bank, they went out of their way to give me every break. Big business, helping little business, that's the way it was. One thing else. In the past couple of years, my outfit has been able to salvage upwards of 2 million feet of timber. That means that maybe a square mile of trees is still standing in the forest. And that's the best part of my story. If I'm proud of anything, that's it. Thanks again, cavalcade. It was a great show. Thank you, Bob Forrest. We understand that you've just opened a boat repair yard, too. Well, good luck to you, Bob, in your new venture. Next Tuesday, cavalcade will present Strike of Blow for Liberty, an exciting drama of revolutionary days, and starring in his very first radio appearance after his return from Europe, Tyrone Power. Tonight's cavalcade play was written by Margaret Lleworth and Irv Tunic, and was suggested by an American magazine article on interesting people, and based on the true life story of Robert Forrest. The program was directed by John Zoller. The music was composed by Arden Cornwell and conducted by Donald Voorhees. Be sure to listen next week when cavalcade will present Tyrone Power. In the weeks following, Kerry Grant, Ray Malan, and other great stars in stories of America and its people. This is Ted Pearson speaking. Cavalcade of America comes to you from the stage of the Balasco Theater in New York and is presented by the DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware. Makers of better things for better living through chemistry. To me and Jenny, following immediately on NBC.


What we're doing there's a right to sack Joan you hear me Gordo mm-hmm There's bubble verse I think about some times Many times It goes then I heard the voice of the Lord Saying who shall I send and who will go for us? and I Said Here am I Send me That's Shia LaBeouf from the movie fury Talking about the mixed feelings that come with being chosen I thought it was a good fit for my interview with David Ditchfield who had a rather remarkable near-death experience I pushed David pretty hard on his Christian interpretation of the experience, but I think we settled on some But I think we settled on some interesting deeper truths about being chosen Interviewed people David who've had multiple near-death experiences and they've said that they've gone deeper and subsequent ones and the reality that they were at gave way to a deeper reality and Then a deeper reality beyond that and they even speculate that there's almost no end to how deep or how high Because it's all moving towards the light moving towards God moving towards love How does that strike you? Yes? I do because as I said to you I felt like I was being prepared for something to go on to another stage and I've realized now since my NDE that a lot of My teachings are still coming through now. It's almost like they sent me back and it's kind of okay So I'm back here now, but I didn't suddenly feel like oh man. I don't want to be back here. You know I straight away. I was thinking right. I want what's my purpose why they sent me back Stay with us for skeptico Welcome to skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers thinkers and their critics I'm your host Alex Icarus and Today we welcome David Ditchfield to skeptico. He's here to talk about a new book of his called shine on an Amazing remarkable near-death experience story that changed David's life in well a number of ways that we're gonna talk about You know, we don't usually do stories on near-death experience accounts But David has a lot more to talk about in terms of the near-death experience in general and also I think there's some interesting kind of subtle cultural differences between the UK and the US and how we all think about near-death experience So David, I think we'll have a good discussion. Thanks for joining me today No, thanks for having me along good to meet you Alice So I can jump right into it the excellent trailer that you guys did for the book. So So this is it David, you know had a near-death experience and that was just very gripping. I remember listening to that I couldn't turn it off at all. I was really drawn into his experience and you could hear it in his voice Okay, so for folks who saw that I think it's gonna be super compelling For folks who are listening, which is the largest part of our It probably didn't have as much except There are these amazing Images that you do in your painting that we're gonna talk more about and then also that music That all comes about as a result of this remarkable experience So in words then tell people and what they're hearing in Introduction Okay. Yeah, well what I wanted to condense actually into that trailer there was you know the book itself Which is a journey which starts off it starts with a point in my life where I was down Basically on my luck. I was I'd hit hard times and I Then we take you from that point to the train accident that I had that should have taken my life But didn't and then the near-death experience and then coming out of that coming through the other side of all that and Suddenly being compelled to to want to paint Huge canvases like I'd never done before in my life and then going from that to want to write classical music which had also never done and all these things came about because I felt this Strong urge to really want to be able to tell everyone what I'd seen and what I've been through You know, I just felt and still feel this. It's very important message to get across So yeah, that's that's in a nutshell the kind of it's a journey if you like so it's taking you from that journey of Darkness at the beginning has to be said because that's where I was at and coming out the other side and coming into like this You know a beautiful more colorful and three-dimensional way of living, you know So there's kind of a lot to that, you know, as I kind of alluded to on this show We've kind of explored a lot of different of the aspects of near-death experience kind of more from a scientific standpoint and that's not to Lessened the significance of anyone's story but more as a way to kind of Lead us into someone's story because your account is is remarkable because You're just kind of a guy there who's in London who's a very expensive place to live and you're having trouble Making it doing labor stuff and building tree houses and doing that stuff And you go say goodbye to your girlfriend on the train and you go to step back from the train Your coat is caught in the in the train, which is quite Unbelievable to think how that could happen, but it does and you should die I mean from what happens you're dragged down the tracks you're thrown under the train You should die by all accounts instead you what happens is what we hear so often in the near-death experience You throw on outside of your body have this amazing experience and then as you say You have a transformation afterwards that changes your life in some Significant ways, so it is a remarkable story in all those respects You know one of the things that you deal with in your book I guess is kind of this interplay between Two different groups I thought this was an interesting interplay these two different groups that are kind of advising you in one Are these folks from the spiritualist church? Which are guiding you in this kind of profound way and the other is this very Materialistic kind of psychological you're going to see a therapist and she's coming at it from a very grounded kind of I don't really know if I believe this, but I'll just go off Well, what did you see is that in your personal life? What do you what did how did you experience that tension between the kind of spiritualist church perspective and the? psychiatrist perspective well both absolutely relevant to me at the time and as much as obviously I'd had to deal with Quite in a horrific accident you know going under a train and facing life Sorry death in the eyes is very traumatic, so I had to deal with all that That's why I had those sessions, but at the same time I was being helped by the spiritualist church I was going to spiritual healing and I found that to be really quite remarkable It was helping me to heal both physically and mentally and and I know that that was challenging to people in a medical profession I The therapist because I knew that she was kind of like it was kind of the gears were grinding a bit for her because I kept Talking about my spiritual aspect and I could I felt that she was trying to close me down on that So yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I knew that she was in that she was she couldn't deny what I was talking about It was actually something quite strong and powerful and so in terms of science you talking about you know I've been in Conversations with scientists well via interviews like this and and I found it to be really okay You know because I mean for me we need science I wouldn't still be here now Without the scientists like I either doctors and the consultants that saved me and put me back together You know so we need the balance of two in our lives So that's how I see it with those two aspects that I found that I was benefiting from both and I never found that there was a Personally for me that there was a kind of a jarring so of the gears as I put it. So yeah, both were really relevant Yeah, I just think there's there's a lot of different ways to take that one of the things I felt again and again in the book is kind of this cultural difference that I don't know if a lot of people pick up on but You're probably in a good position to talk to it because as part of the book shine on You've now done a number of interviews with people in the US as well as in the UK And there seems to be we seem to have a kind of a different take on it people in the US seem to Be much more open to the spiritual light and love stuff and in the UK. It seems like we're still having to Kind of tell the story. This is real. Please believe me You know and did an interview with the woman from the Guardian and she's like wow I probably don't really believe you and I'm really afraid of death So tell tell me the story from that standpoint and I just wonder if you see those How you see those differences in our two cultures? Yeah, there's a massive change most certainly you're talking to US people. It's I don't know what it is.  Let's um There's many a times that I'd speak to people here. I mean for example when I was in hospital I remember I wanted to speak to Like the like the priest that was in the hospital itself I was dying to speak to him because I thought he's got to get this story straight away He was a lovely guy But I felt that he was like kind of closing me down as if to say okay, David That's enough. Let's say a prayer for you But I thought and that was so very British whereas yes when I had to speak to people in the US so a lot more wanting to sort of Listen and absorb more of it and they're not too quick to sort of judge on it but again going back to what I was just talking about earlier, it's it's good to have both elements because In saying that I've spoken to I've done interviews here I remember doing an interview on a like a drive-time show here and this guy came on and He got me on the show and I could hear him talking just before the commercial break. I thought this is all wrong It's not gonna work. It was one of the very first interviews that I did. I thought he's just not gonna get this and So, yeah, he kind of went come on then, you know, tell us the story So I started telling it and by the time I'd finished it he was going look I've got to stop you because we're going to the news break, but this is great I want to come back to this and It was like it made me realize that people can deny it as much as they like but at the end of the day It's it's that thing that I realized that none of us actually think about death at all It's a strange thing that none of us do none of us want to go there But it's not like I think we should be talking about it every day over our breakfast cereal. It's just that We should actually talk about it more because it's inevitable It's all gonna happen to us at one point, you know, we may as well talk about it and think about it and and the fear element will go away and So so maybe in the US a lot more people are going to be a lot more open to that point and When that happens when that point of death comes up, they'll be less scared less fearful Maybe although, you know, there's a couple other ways to pull apart those cultural differences like one of the things I see is it seems to me that people in the UK have kind of bought into the atheistic kind of scientism stuff that Some folks in the US have kind of gotten to the other side of and said hey, that's probably not the whole story We are not just Biological robots in the meaningless universe. There's something more to this story Versus I still when I talk to people in the UK they they're unapologetic about well, of course I'm of course I'm atheist of course science explains everything and you're like Oh, you haven't maybe kept up on the research there and the same thing like when I heard your therapist say, okay You know I David to be honest with you I first investigated your NDE and I know about I think she even said MDMA receptors in the brain and all this stuff which is like outdated out Completely dismissed science as it comes to near-death experience. So I wonder if That just hasn't penetrated to a certain extent, but then you also on the flip side of that So you guys are atheistic in kind of a mind-numbing way and then of course in the US They're Christian in a mind-numbing kind of way where it's hey, it has to be this one Way and that's the only way we could ever understand it. That has its that has its limitations, too There's a lot of people who aren't actually atheists who are you know, but it's mainly sort of Christian and Church of England as we call it all Catholic and I think it's a whole mess there that we could get into, you know Exactly because it's a faith that hasn't changed over over decades or centuries Yes, I mean it's remained the same and there's no budging. So there's no sort of like leeway You know as I talked about the priests in the hospital though It's almost like it was like a robot who's at the steams about to start coming out his ears I can't I can't comprehend this. This is wrong, you know think in turn we can't understand it in terms of He can't process it and then I think at this other level that we're not even aware of We can't process why he can't process it if you know what I mean Like I get the sense that you weren't a super religious guy beforehand But you had a sense that if you went to a priest He would have some answer and then when he doesn't that kind of throws you for a loop like But aren't you supposed to be interested in this? What is really maybe exactly that's exactly how I felt You know, it wasn't like I was going there for sort of Confirmation of what happened. It was like I just thought wow you you you guys will want to hear this because it's part of your I'm sure it's part of your faith But then I realized afterwards that it's not that in fact that the afterlife is not really discussed that much in Most of the British faiths it's apart from Jesus and Christ and you know, and you know the Resurrection, but they nobody really talks about what happens to us our souls when we when we go, you know, it's all so Yes, that's a very different sort of Lockdown sort of faith in if you're like yeah, but hey, how I mean that a lot I don't like to knock people who do have a faith because most of them are really lovely people You know, I mean there's been times I've gone into churches since you know, and I've seen well They're really good, you know, they're really good kind-hearted souls and giving but if only they would just you know If only I could just walk in and just do one talk to them all and in the congregation And just chat not to try and convert them or anything like that because that's definitely not not what I'm about You know, I don't want to convert anybody. You know, I just I just want to talk about what I saw and what I Experienced because it's such a beautiful thing that awaits us all you know that I feel and can only help us overcome this stigma of the idea of death You know one of the cool things that I think the Brits do have is this the spiritualist church tradition and we have it here in the US, but it's like way Very very small and not talked about much and you stumble into a spiritualist church Early on before the end of E right, don't you go there for that's right? Yeah Yeah, I was because I was traveling up to see my sister She'd invited me up for for the weekend and I was on the train and I bumped into an elderly couple So opposite me and we got chatting They would want it to know where the next station was and things and then this lady turned around to me And said look, we're going to see a medium and I went oh, okay, and I just didn't want to get involved in the conversation I was kind of like was in my own at that point I just wanted to like just be myself, but she kept coming back and chatting to me and She said she handed me a flyer like a small poster. She got off the train with the details for this thing on So I thought okay so I just put it in my pocket and forgot all about it and I remember getting to my sisters and The family were all doing their own thing and my sister was cooking and stuff So I thought do you know what? I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go to this thing and see what it's about So I went and it was packed.  He's got a watch here Is that right and people it was amazing. They were like bang on, you know And I've got no reason to go at all. I wasn't looking for a message, but she turned around this medium He's very animated. She just stopped and she went man in the blue jumper. I've got a message for you And I went okay, and she said your life is about to change.  I thinking wow, you know Is this there's the money gonna start coming in there? You know is it all these different things? She said they're not telling me But you'll be protected and that was it and so I went off thinking that you know at that point I was Looking for a relationship to start with somebody and it never never came into the talk nothing None of those things happened, but then I realized that after my NDE that's what it was about That's what that message was before so I was keen to try and find that church again Because I thought those people will probably want to hear about it You know and they did as soon as I walked in there and found it. They just wanted to Hear that, you know, they took it straight on. It's like they knew about it again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah near death experience. Yeah, we've heard of those They had heard about yours David because it was all over the news there, right? Um, everyone rides the train everyone that's their worst fear I know I couldn't believe it. You know, I was lying in hospital, you know And my my surgeon was coming in each day and he was going You're in the guardians today. You're in, you know, you're in the times and I was going what?  It was really enjoyable that I was in this hospital room, you know Unable to move but I think and this is brilliant, you know so yeah The spiritualist church thing I mean like that's the stuff I'm so interested in and and you are too and you go back to them and you have some amazing healing Experiences and I'm going to show people one of the quotes I had from the book and I'm going to put it up on the screen If anyone's watching they can see this amazing artwork that you've done And again, keep in mind when people go and look at this. This is something you never had any inclination For no experience no training in and you come out and you start doing these large pieces that just One in a million Could could kind of produce this stuff. But here's the quote. I thought this was amazing from You can tell me who it's from but it was a woman who did a healing session for you at the spiritualist church It's essential to understand that spirit doesn't show up here except through us Ultimately it must come through us to manifest in the world. That's why it's so easy for us to create Hell in this life Terrible things are happening right now everywhere around us. But hell exists here on earth Only because people are still working out the hell within themselves Talk for a minute about this healing session and if you want to about that quote Yeah, well joy is the healer and she's amazing because A lot of the stuff that she told me like for example that she would also tell me afterwards that that came through by spirit Because I would be in the healing session.  They're sort of like Sorry, they're not guides They draw into their guides and their guides send through the healing energy through their hands and through In her meditative form as well So she was picking up an awful lot of stuff and it's like it's almost like Transmissions from the other side all these messages. So it's like really profound and which is really incredible because When I speak to her say just before it says and she didn't come across as like a Very profound person So you could tell that a lot of it was definitely coming from somewhere else And so I learned an awful lot from her because I learned an awful lot about And it all tied in with my near-death experience as well because I what I'd learned From the experience all made sense. So it's kind of like there was almost like these kind of like moments of affirmation but also Making me go. Oh, yeah, that's what happened there. That's why that happened. So You know, I mean, I maybe I should talk you through the near-death experience itself and chat about what happened there It might help to explain a bit more. Sure. Please do David. Where do you think? Yeah, well I mean, basically what what happened to me was I was it was at the points I'd where the paramedics had rushed me into hospital from Picking me up off the rail track and and we had arrived in the hospital I remember seeing like there was a whole team of you know surgeons and doctors and nurses all waiting for me Looked like this big semi-circle and in I went And they were rushing around I was losing copious amounts of blood at that point and they were running around just trying to save me And I remember my family had come in as well.  So it was a very stressful scenario And then I suddenly went from that place to a really beautiful sort of Like I thought it was a darkened room at first.  It was like a medieval altar or something, you know And but it felt very comfortable to be laid on this here in your nde But what was your vantage point? How are you looking at it? Yeah, yeah, I was in my body because that was one of the first things that I did was I realized where I was I suddenly looked at my body to see how it was looking And all the wounds healed. I could just see I was just covering in like a blue cloth So there's no clothing on me. There's just like this blue beautiful sort of satin sort of sheet that was like really cool, but comforting And I looked down and and my everything all the cuts and bruises and rips and everything It healed, you know, my left arm had been severed in in the accidents and that was that was still back in place So I definitely felt like like I was in my body And so it was like me in in another in this Dimension which I believed was actually that I died. I thought this is it I passed on this is That's over here. I am in the next phase, but I I had no sense to fear or anguish about it I actually felt so comfortable there that I I accepted it readily But it was at that point that I felt there was a presence with me, you know And you know, you sense someone's just behind you or have you think you look, you know But this wasn't behind me It was it was like an androgynous being a beautiful being this was stood at my right feet and just staring at me And the odd thing is this being I call it like a being of light because it was like had this beautiful blonde white hair But the skin was like sort of like glowing and the expression on on The being's face was like Like it's beautiful. It was like on like a knowing smile Like like I've known this person throughout my whole life or in fact beyond that, you know It was like a soulmate, I guess and I felt that I was being cared for and protected And I thought well, this is really quite amazing. So I just kind of laid my head back And then I looked up and I saw like three grids of pure white light above me And and I remember lying there looking into that light and I just couldn't take my gaze away Normally it'd be the kind of bright white light that you wouldn't be able to look into like an erected fluorescent strip or the sunlight even, you know But I kept looking at this and it just felt like it was healing me and I felt all this energy coming from that light And I just thought this is really beautiful and then I suddenly then was aware of two other beings Either side of me and two female form one of them was white cohesion I guess and the other one was Asian American Indian And and they were they they had their hands kind of like hovering very slowly over my body And I felt this sensation that they were healing me. It was almost like a form of uh, Reiki or spiritual healing in fact, which I've never had obviously until that point, you know and But the energy that was coming from all three of these beings was just like pure love. It was just like this energy of I don't like a compressed love of all the different types of love You experience in your life, whether it's from through your lover or your mother your father or even your pet cat like you've got And it's all those types of love all condensed and that it was just amazing and like It it was like a form of love that was just like I could feel it running through me through my whole throughout my whole being and it was I felt at that point that I was being prepared almost for something. I thought Some what are they doing? What's going on here? And I felt like I must be Getting ready to go on to the next stage of something, you know, and and then I am Suddenly thought about my family because as I said earlier, I knew that they were all frantically sort of looking over me in the hospital In the in the emergency department. So I thought I wonder how they're doing And so I kind of figured I if I looked over the edge of this kind of like huge rocks that I would see them But I didn't see them But what I did see was this most amazing sight It was like a it was like a huge waterfall of stars that was curving ran in a huge curve And all these stars were just like cascading down and they were just sparkling into this beautiful sort of like Sort of this, you know, like this and I looked down and it seemed to they seem to be disappearing into other galaxies and other Dimensions and it was just so spectacular and then there were beautiful colors As I looked down further and and it's quite interesting because some of the I've been Hubble have been putting up all these photographs quite recently New parts of the universe they've never seen before and it's amazing because That it's almost like what it's what I saw In my NDE, which is amazing because I also started painting what I saw in my NDE and I've had I had friends phoning me up Two of them this week said have you seen the new Hubble things? It's your paintings on again. I know It's incredible So anyhow, sorry, I digress there But I just had to put that in because it was just Again a moment of affirmation But there's so many there's so many jumping off points there that It's tough because and that's where I guess the I don't want to use the term science and kind of take people in the wrong direction But to try and organize what you're saying.   Yeah, and you're protected. What is what is your understanding at this point? And you talk about this in the book, but let's talk about it here What's your understanding of Fate of our life being predetermined Free will all those things are there there's somewhat Irreconcilable even within your story, but how are you understanding some of those things now? Well, since all this has happened my take on it is is that we have it's like our Lives are predestined probably before we're actually born into this world And the way I see it's almost like it's like a highway And that's that's our that's our map our roadmap, you know And we're all tempted to take routes off that highway that we think that's going to be the road That's going to lead us to freedom and happiness and you know all all the riches we want But we go down those roads and then they are not the ones for us And I took too many of those roads. I think on my journey and My take on it is is I feel that I'd hit such a low point in my life You know, it was like the dark night of the soul if you like that I've gone in so deep That the only way I was going to come out of this was for something very dramatic to happen Like that train accident and that everything was predestined to lead me towards that point Hold on though David because don't you see I mean there's kind of an implicit contradiction what you just said Number one, we need to understand what those deep dark things are I don't know you must know some really horrible things because it doesn't sound like it from all accounts other than Playing in a punk rock band, which I don't even know if there's anything wrong with that But I don't know maybe you do have some really maybe you're doing satanic stuff in the basement or something I don't know No, no, why is there the need for redemption if you're on your path? Why does the path need to change? Why does the healing need to take place? Why are they doing anything? That would be the question right like if it all is just an experience. Why do anything? Why does the native american Asian Person have to get together and do some heavy-duty reiki on you to put you back. Why why why? Because because I was destroying myself. I wasn't I wasn't doing any dark sort of stuff. It was just The darkness was just um my depression. I was drinking too much I was drinking heavily and that was just taking me right down and you know I was beating myself up big time and so it was just What i'm trying to say is is that that they felt right. Okay He's not a bad guy. This guy needs to be pulled out of this Mess that he's got himself into and it was just pulling me out of that and and bringing me back onto the track that I That was meant for me Which I feel now i'm back on that on that highway and I follow it now You know, I'm I'm not really tempted by too many of those Those roads are saying hey come and take this road, you know, so that's what I'm trying to say So it's it's it's you know the phrase Dark night of the soul. Have you not heard that phrase? It's all there. Absolutely and I love the way you put it Let me let me read another quote from the book that gets to this And to remember that we live in a universe that offers redemption Perhaps that was the purpose of the message I think that's what you're talking about. You're talking about a redemption story But the art piece that goes with this is a very jesus looking figure With almost a ufo looking kind of thing Over his head. So talk about redemption because that's what we're talking about basically As he rightly pointed out. I wasn't really I didn't follow any Faith or Christianity or anything like that. It wasn't it wasn't at all in my life but What happened next in my NDE was when I turned over after looking at that waterfall of stars I suddenly felt there was an even more powerful energy that was that was around me And and that's when I looked and saw this huge ton of white lights coming towards me And it was just slowly coming in and this ton of white light was just like surrounded by all these kind of like Slowly circulating flames of yellows and reds and and and what have you earned? and The energy had come enough that it was like it just turned a dial at big time I could feel it like pulsating through every molecule in my body And I just straight away Thought that is that is god. That's the energy of all creation That's where it's all coming from from this tunnel of white light with all the flames It's not the the Michelangelo sort of Vatican ceiling image of god with the beard putting his hand there That is it. So for me it's I now have that I that's my faith But it's it's and that jesus Coming into the fold there that happened because when I started going for the spiritual healing sessions One of the sessions I had I was lying there and I had for no reason at all I had this image of christ The there looking at me while I was being healed and I thought nothing of it and then right at the end Joy the healer turned man and said, you know, you had christ stuck next to you there I was going what though, you know, so I thought this is just too much So I've got to paint that so that's what I painted I painted him And that's him sort of floating above the river which is near where I live And and I wanted to paint christ not in the usual form that we'd be seeing which is hanging off a cross Which is the worst part of his life. I thought let's paint him, you know, looking healthy and happy, which is how I saw him And I also wanted to give him I looked at all Halos and all all the different sort of renaissance paintings that christ is given and they're just like this little fine white circle I thought no, I want to give him this like credible halo because you know, it's a it's a powerful image And it's I incorporated some of the images that I was getting through from those healing sessions into the halo And yes, there's been quite a lot of ufo interpretations put in there But you know what it's it's okay because I want that painting to sort of Make people stop and I don't want it just to be an image of christ and oh, there's christ I want people to think about it and chat about it One of the things I think is really interesting about that and we've had this ongoing discussion about it like The christ consciousness thing to me is an undeniable part of the near-death experience in that it comes through Again and again if you go to the researchers they go hey, this is undeniable Christ seems to be coming through when we look at jesus historically. He slips through our fingers There's a good chance that he doesn't exist certainly in the form that he's portrayed In the bible and in these other things. He doesn't exist now I personally, david don't have a problem with that I am open to the idea that we do and can manifest everything but other people have a very literal historical interpretation of that I wonder if you've given that any thought and what do you think if if someone was able to Kind of lay out a bunch of biblical historical Archaeological kind of stuff and say wow, you know that jesus figure doesn't doesn't really add up What does that mean? Does that mean anything to you? Well the way I I take on it is this and that is that he was around obviously at the time of the romans and We never question for one minute that if we have a history lesson on seizo or Pontius pilot that all those guys existed and we think yeah, they existed and we see paintings of them and it's like, yeah They existed in history. We don't question it. Whereas with jesus is this kind of thing? Well, maybe he didn't exist, you know, but you know, but we do question it See, I mean if you really look into it like when you said the the history stuff Like I'll just give you a small example Like most of the history that christians go to to say that Jesus is historical Is they go to geosephus? Because geosephus was a roman historian But there's no record if jesus in there the one record we have is fake and then Josephus's writings wind up in the gospel in a very pro roman kind of Reverse engineered way. I i'm just saying historically. No, there's jesus doesn't doesn't hold up It's just like satan satan completely slips through your fingers when you go back and look at You know the very early Judaic texts of Yahweh the thunder god, there's no satan in there and then the same stories are repeated afterwards Well, maybe i'm the satan Satan has introduced well, you can't you can't take one or the other if we take your near-death experience Literally as that you were in this dimension and these things really happened Yeah, well, then we have a conflict with thousands of other near-death experiences that Look completely different I interviewed a guy dr. Gregory shushan who's done this cross-cultural analysis of near-death experiences for me and i'm a spiritual believer I look at the similarities But if you step back you can also look at the differences and say well Well, no one's right the people who just see who see jesus and believe it's jesus of this cross thing Well, they can't possibly be right because this isn't possibly right they there is conflict conflicts But if jesus didn't actually exist, let's face it christianity would have died out and faded years ago But it didn't it just stayed around and it just grew and it's just it's just you know I'm not trying to sort of like say hey, you know christianity. I'm not trying to defend christianity But i'm just trying to say that i can't imagine that it would still be around now if this guy was just a myth But david it's the opposite of that if we understand christianity the way we did like at the beginning of the show If we understand it as a social engineering mind control project, which it is I mean the catholic church look at it now. I mean, it's completely discredited in most people's minds It is not an institution that's It was the church for the longest time, right? If you go back to the beginning it was always about Controlling the people if you look at constant teen when he first establishes a church in 412 He brings in the feudal system and it turns everyone into slaves. You can no longer own property It's a control mechanism in the same way that it's being used today And then you know people who are more spiritually minded say well, don't worry about that You know look for this or look for that. Well, you can but you also have to consider the other aspects of it I mean, I don't know Well, that was of course. Yeah You have to consider the other aspects of it I mean, I mean that was one of the things I was very keen to do when I first started writing the book I spoke to my co-writer and and she's She was able to she said look, why don't you contact the hospital and find out, you know All the medications we were on at the time and how that may have affected you Whether it would be in a mind-bending drug and all those different things So we went through all that and we discovered that because she's got she's Basically she was lecturing in nursing. So she knew what she was talking about. She knew her staff. She was qualified And so we she said yeah, I've been through everything and yes, there were Drugs that you were given that that could have been hallucinated, but they were given afterwards, you know, not before you had your NDE And the other thing is as well just going back to to what you're talking about And that is that there's been studies in people who have NDE's and the difference being is you know, there's a lot of them Intense real consistency to their near-death experiences, you know, like mine stayed with me And it's as clear to me now as it was then because it was real. It wasn't like a dream.  It's like, hang on a sec. I thought you said the guy with blue hair walked in And now you're saying it's you know pink and stuff, you know, it's it's a very different thing So and I don't think that most people who have had NDE's would be bothered to sort of just be talking about it like I am now as much because It's also a thing that for me as I said earlier I don't particularly want to sort of be trying to convert people saying listen to me. This is, you know, and it's it's It's more, you know, this is what happened. This is what I saw and and it's it's This we we can't assume just because we were scientists and we've got brilliant minds And we have a lot of us have that that's it. We've nailed it. We know the answers because amp equals You know x or whatever. I mean, I'm totally with you. But but here's the rub I have with that You can't do what you said do the scientism thing which I'm rail against every week But you can't also say my experience trumps everyone else's experience You can't say because I had this experience and it's so important to me I hold that dearly and that can be the only truth and in that sense That's the advantage of looking at near-death experiences across the board Like I told you there's nothing kind of more offensive to me than fundamentalist Christians who co-opt the near-death experience for their religion and want to shut everyone else out and say All the genuine near-death experiences have Jesus and have all the rest of this And if you didn't have those then your experience is somehow lesser or some To me, I I don't know how you get there So what i'm interested in doing is climbing on top of those experiences letting loose of them a little bit and seeing that Okay, you had a realer than real experience that I accept from my research Is closer to the ultimate reality than this bullshit we're talking about here But I would suggest to you that it's possible that that that experience is still an abstraction of a more Ultimate reality, you know and that in that realm you're still that's the only way I can explain it that you're still interpreting and You know creating a reality in that extended reality Do you think that has any possibility being true or do you think where you were is the ultimate reality? Yeah, it was the ultimate reality. I know that to be the case. There's nothing else. There's nothing else beyond that It's I've never I've never questioned that it where I was wasn't Was you know some kind of dream or state it was it was real But the other thing you say I think as well is is that we can do all the science in the world we can but there's you know We don't understand the soul. We don't understand You know, those scientists can turn man and actually come up with an equation as to Why we feel love, you know and what brings two souls together to collide and fall in love, you know And it's it's the same thing. I mean the soul is such a powerful thing and my take on it now is is that That Death is not the end that the soul lives on. Yes. Yes, the actual body that we're walking around in that that decays and that dies off But our souls live on and where they go to i'm not sure But I just know that that the soul lives on and that's exactly where The state that I was I feel lucky enough to have been into to have A look into that and say right.  I'm aware of that because Since my near-death experience it was one of the first things I wanted to do was to like so look around You know, I went straight on to the internet as soon as I could to find that when I got home to say right Let's have a look into this One of the best ones I saw actually was from it was a young child I think she must have been about five years old and she'd had a near-death experience and she painted it and it was unbelievable because it was It was just like a matchstick sort of version of my painting that you put a barrier There was like a her lying on the square. Well lying on the square table actually But she got three different individual people with our hands out with like these stick hands going over her body Then it's square, which is like a blue square over her body, which is the clearly the blue cloth And then it looked like what was like an ice cream cone sort of like flying through the sky towards her and I thought wow And that stayed really because that blew me away because I just thought there you go It's like that she she went and her her soul Passed over onto the side, but she she came back, you know, so it's I've interviewed people David who've had multiple near-death Experiences and they've said that they've gone deeper and subsequent ones and that they're the reality that they were at Gave way to a deeper reality And then a deeper reality beyond that and they even speculate that there's almost no end to how deep Or how high because it's all moving towards the light Moving towards guide moving towards love How does that strike you? Yes, I do because as I said to you I felt like I was being prepared for something to go on to another stage And which I didn't do but I've realized now since my end either a lot of My teachings are still coming through now. It's almost like they sent me back and it's kind of okay So I'm back here now, but I didn't suddenly feel like oh man. I don't want to be back here You know I straight away. I was thinking right I want what's my purpose why they sent me back and I'm still sort of searching for those answers and so I feel like I'm still getting teachings Thankfully through through the likes of joy and through the healing but not only that I've also learned to channel with my guides to communicate with them and they've helped me do those paintings They've helped me have the confidence to actually say I'm going to write a piece of music for an orchestra And and not only that that very first piece of music that I wrote and was performed by an orchestra Sold out the concert sold out two weeks in advance Which was for the orchestra itself were unheard of they were really couldn't believe it And I mean in all fairness. It was the media build up, you know, it was good You know the local bbc tv guys came down and stuff But but I felt again that I was being held. I felt like these guides from the other side I still felt like I was attacked like it like there was a cord that was still Pulling me back up there, you know, and they were helping me and they helped all that come together and for it to be A really wonderful event and a pat out audience, you know, the atmosphere was just so beautiful in there that line. It was just like Yeah, you know, I just feel like they're there with me and they're still That I was sent back here to continue with the work here But I also get it that other people because obviously I've read about other people's nds that they do go to different dimensions And they they get all sorts of Teachings, you know, they're educated further through those The deeper sort of dimensions that they go into. So yeah, I believe that that that is it We don't you know, I we don't just hit the stage where I'm at. I went to and that's it The you know, it'll be different dimensions That's awesome, David And I think that is consistent with your story and with your life and you mentioned that pretty early on I mean, I think one of the ways that we can judge The veracity of these stories is by looking at the people And your life is a testament to your story and what you've learned not so much like a Preachy thing because you're not a preachy guy. It's more a testament to Real spiritual transformation. So this book of yours shine on it's gotten some great press You've got a great publisher who's really behind it. How's that all going for you? And where do you go after this? Are you going to write another book or I guess you're open to being led Wherever you'd be wherever you're led, huh? You've just said that. Yeah, exactly It's uh at the moment it is being led a bit like that concert I feel like they're there with me the energies really helping me and lifting me along and you know, we're getting Getting into talks to people, you know like yourself, which is great And it's like it's getting me out there and it's getting the message more global now I'm just sitting down doing these interviews And um and the energy of the book feels great in terms of you know being helped with this promotion, which is fantastic And I I'm not really thinking beyond This stage at the moment, you know, the book's coming out in june So I'm just kind of all just putting all my energies towards getting that and hoping that I can Get it to you know to stay afloat and then go out to see Happily and then I can think about what comes next, but as you said, yeah, I'll be guided You know, I know I'm actually writing a new piece of music at the moment So that's been going on for a while Which is called I wasn't expecting this and so that's coming together really nicely So I know that that will probably be the next stage because I want to keep the the music and the artwork coming.  It's it's it's a pretty high order Industry, so that's It's been awesome getting to know you and thanks for joining me. Good. Best of luck with all this work Thank you so much. It's been great chatting with you. Alex. It's really great questions Thanks again to David Ditchfield for joining me today on skeptico I have a level three kind of question to tee up for you Is there something beyond the Christian near-death experience and if there is something beyond it Then can it really be called a Christian near-death experience? I think you understand what I'm getting at especially if you listen to a lot of these shows I've kind of found it on this topic a lot, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about it Drop me a note or come over and join others on the skeptical forum. Tell me what you think I'm delighted to see that a few of you are doing that I wish even more of you would but if you for some reason you don't or you can't Know that you're still part of this conversation Just by listening to it and giving us the opportunity connect in this magic way that is podcasting So thanks for listening. I have some I just think the really good show is coming up I hope you'll stick with me for all of that until next time. Take care and bye for now