Patrick McCollum, a peacemaker and chaplain who is the subject of Gabe Polsky's documentary The Man Who Saves the World, talks with Pinchbeck about a life he describes as ten separate ones. At fifteen he was hit by a drunk driver, pronounced dead for roughly seven and a half minutes, and was among the early cases studied when researchers coined the term near-death experience. He says he encountered God as a woman, which did not match his Methodist upbringing, and that sharing the experience helped seed the goddess and feminist spirituality movement. He later became the first American chaplain serving non-traditional faiths, working with about two thousand inmates across thirty institutions and spending eleven years on death row at San Quentin, where he counseled Charles Manson. The conversation closes on the film's theatrical rollout.
Guest: Patrick McCollum
In brief
- McCollum says he helped unite more than 60 million Indigenous people behind an agreement to protect the Amazon and sacred land worldwide, beginning with ceremonies among the Kogi.
- He was one of the original subjects studied when near-death experiences were first given systematic scientific attention in the 1960s.
- McCollum reports that the deity he encountered appeared as a woman, contradicting his Methodist background, and that recounting this fed into the emergence of goddess and feminist spirituality in the United States.
- He became the first United States chaplain serving all non-traditional religions, eventually training chaplains in forty states.
- McCollum says Charles Manson told him he was Jesus and that the second coming was blocked by his imprisonment.
- The documentary is being released theatrically city by city, with streaming contingent on audience response and screenings scheduled partly through viewer requests.
Full text
I ended up traveling to meet with the Kogi and when I met with the Kogi, I actually restored their spirit and I reunited all their people. All of a sudden, you know, went like a message across the whole Amazon. Hey, this is the real guy. He just did it with the Kogi and now he's coming to us and he's going to unite us all. And they started coming to me and I started traveling to them and doing ceremonies with them. And in the end, I helped unite over 60 million indigenous people who signed on to an agreement to both protect the Amazon and protect all the sacred land on the entire planet.
We are speaking with Patrick Mc Cullum who's the star of a charming new documentary by Gabe Pski called The Man Who Saves the Worlds. Patrick, I feel like you and I met somewhere along the line, maybe at a festival or some kind of a harmony festival, symbiosa, something like that. You look very familiar to me. Yeah. And it feels like that to me, too. So, I recognized you when we were on stage together. So, we probably have somewhere. Yeah. And um but I didn't know anything about you or your history when I watched the film. And uh I mean the film was very good, but even just speaking, you know, on stage with you after because we had a little Q&A with the audience.
I was invited to participate. Yeah. I was like I don't know. I was very touched by you and you seemed like you had a lot of uh wisdom and um you know, just like a beautiful soul, a beautiful character. So, I thought it would be nice to, you know, share with you about what you've been up to and um yeah, maybe you want to just, you know, take a Oh, by the way, I'm going to put this up on You Tube later. If people are encountering this on You Tube, of course, that would be awesome if they would, you know, subscribe, like, and share, do all those things that help us uh to grow this channel.
Uh but at the moment, we're just doing it on Substack. That that's just to plant that in people's minds for later. maybe you could give us just a couple minutes your your your story, your bio, how you ended up having a film made about you and so on. Sure. So, I've had like 10 different lives and uh you know, so I'm a kung fu master. I uh became an international jewelry designer, made stuff for the queen of England, the president of the United States, about 40 movie stars and such in a different life. Uh when I was young, I ran away or didn't run away. I left home for a while and I joined the world's largest carnival and like traveled across the United States and Canada and you know grew up very quickly at like 13 years old.
Um, when I was 15 years old, which is what started all the things the movies about off, uh, I was riding my motorcycle and a woman who was drunk went through a red light and hit me broadside and I was pronounced dead and I was dead for 7 and 1/2 minutes roughly. And I went through a tunnel of light and I saw God and God basically said, "I want you to serve me. If you do, I'll let you go back. This is when I'm 15 years old. This was like a classic near-death experience. Exactly. And I'm one of the Well, well, well, near-death experiences have been going on since, you know, the beginning of time.
They weren't actually, scientifically, and academically uh looked at until in the 1960s. And I was one of the original people who was studied and written about when they came up with the term NDE. Oh, nice. So, I got to participate in that. And then I Go ahead. When you say you saw God, I want to just drill in there for like a second. What does that actually mean? Was there like an old guy with a white beard or So, so no. So, here's the really weird thing. I was a Methodist and God was a woman. Yeah. So, but you saw God as a as a person, as an individual, as an individated.
Yes. Through like a bubble or a portal. And what's really interesting about that is one, it didn't line up with anything about my own, you know, spiritual journey, my religious journey, my upbringing. It it didn't line up at all with any of that. But what did happen out of it is after I had that experience, I began sharing the experience around and it literally led to an entire movement that today has over 2 million people in the United States, you know, who were following various versions of that. And so I'm one of the originating authors for feminist spirituality, goddess spirituality, all that stuff. um really kind of started with me.
So that was a a offshoot of what happened to me, but also then it put me on a spiritual quest like you know what is this? What does this mean? And so I went on a quest for some time and that led to many of these other lives I was sharing with you. Um, I was actually invited through uh the University of Southern California to speak there to their Ph D students on religion and spirituality. That led to me being invited to be the first chaplain in the United States that served all of the nontraditional religions and faiths. And through that process, I had about 2,000 inmates I was responsible for in 30 different institutions.
And ultimately, I became a chaplain and trainer all across the United States in 40 different states. But the part that people are always interested in is I had a number of the world's most famous criminals who I was like the counselor for Charles Manson, the Menendez brothers, uh, and many others. And I spent about 11 years on death row at San Quinton, uh, you know, with a number of very famous people that were on death row. How was how was how was Manson? Any any tidbits? Well, so you know, the guy was obviously very brilliantly smart. At the same time, there was a part of him that was off in a particular way.
So, he told me, uh, you know, one time I spoke with him and he told me that he was Jesus and that the reason the second coming hadn't taken place is because we locked him up in prison and that until we let him out, it wouldn't happen. And so he was expecting they would let him out and as you know he died in prison but um I just say he was actually far more intelligent than the average person and very much into music. A lot of people don't know, but he was a major musician and connected to the Beach Boys, connected to like the Beatles and other major groups who saw him as a potential person who might join them before he became, you know, the the famous murderer head of a kind of cult thing. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember the whole story, but I think it was over he was hanging out with the Beach Boys before day before they went berserk and killed all those people.
Right. Right. Um, so, um, okay. And then somehow you also befriended Jane Goodall along the way. She makes a really lovely cameo appearance in the documentary. How did that happen? So, Jane and I met at a conference many years ago and it was really an odd thing. I was a speaker at a major um international conference with about 20,000 people and it was a very uh highly secure event because the Daly Lama was speaking and at that time China had announced they publicly that they intended to assassinate him at that event. So there were soldiers all around and we had to have these electronic um badges in order to get into the event.
And as I was entering the event, I saw two women sitting there and they were really upset. And I came up and asked if I could help and they said they weren't allowing them to come into the event. And the one woman said she was a speaker there. And I said, "Well, let me help." And I ended up spending over an hour helping them and eventually got them in the event. And so the two women said, "Look, you know, we really want to get to know you. let us take you to lunch. And I said, actually, I'm now way behind and I don't have time to go to lunch, but I'm glad I could help you.
And I started to walk off. And then I came back and I thought that wasn't really a good way to respond to somebody. I came back, introduced myself, and the one woman held her hand out, said, "Hi, I'm Jane Goodall." I had no idea who she was. So I said, "I have no idea. I didn't know who you were." And she said, "I could tell that. that's why I'd like to have you go to lunch with me. I'd like to be friends. And from that day on, we became friends. We worked on international projects together. We would um write to one another. I I was very close with her.
Like we would zoom and email back and forth together on a regular basis. And in fact, when she passed away just a short time ago, I actually had a date to her with her to have a drink. and you know catch up. And she told me she was very worried it might be our last one and then she passed away the night before we did that. So that was kind of it. But the movie she plays uh she's she's in it numerous different times in the movie and she was a major uh promoter of the movie and she believed it was something that everyone should see.
And so somebody asked in the chat what the documentary is called. It's called The Man Who Saves the World and I believe it's showing this week in a number of theaters. In New York, I think it's showing in Cinema Village until Friday or Saturday. Um, and um, yeah, so it was great to see her in the film and um, it was sort of I I kind of like wanted a little bit um, the film was kind of like very discursive in a way. I was I I sort of, you know, I wanted to fill in some of the gaps, I guess, what we're doing here. Um and um the film kind of focuses on I mean it talks about some other kind of peacemaking work you did in Africa that that yeah I don't know what so I've been a peacemaker for 55 years so the current thing which we'll talk about in a minute which is a big project to save the Amazon is just one of my many peacework uh projects.
So my very first war that I ever helped stop conflict was in the Congo in Africa. And I did a number of different things in Africa. The last one was I was training young uh leaders, political leaders and other kinds of leaders across all of Africa, about a hundred of them, how to promote peace in their continent because Africa has a lot of conflict, a lot of people getting killed, you know, starvation, many things. And I teach people how to reverse that process. I also have long for a long time been an advisor to major leaders of countries, you know, prime ministers, kings, presidents, things like that.
So I I do that still to this day. And um when I was in Africa, I was surprised by a um a leader of a particular tribal region in Africa in Ghana had passed away and his children also had passed away. So I ended up getting chosen to become a king and a chief of a region in Africa. So in Africa, in Ghana, I'm Nanaqabana Oay Darko Yodam, which kind of funny-wise means great king uh born on a Tuesday who puts a chicken on everybody's table. So, and they use names like that there to identify people. And so I have a place in Ghana, but I also have a throne called a stool.
And the stool that I have is about 400 years old. It's made of ebony and covered with sterling silver. And I carry it with me where I go. If I sit on that mini throne, I'm uh a chief and king and I can resolve problems in Africa and make decisions about things. But what I'm not sitting on, I'm just Patrick. So I, you know, when there's somebody that has some kind of dispute or something like that, I could step in if I sit down on that throne. Um, how how did you end up? I mean, I don't maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think you went to like you got like a Ph D in diplomacy or anything like that.
Like, you know, was it just sort of happen stance or karma? Like how do you end up in these uh situations? So, um, I always was an activist of sorts. I uh saw Martin Luther King and I got involved in the civil rights movement early on when I was just literally about 12 or 13 and um so I was involved in that. Then I was involved in women's rights issues and things like that and all kinds of those kind of things. But then what ended up happening is I taught myself how to make jewelry. I had moved out into the wilderness kind of like in the hippie days and took my family and literally, you know, hand dug my own well and built my own cabin and all that stuff in the wilderness.
Even made my own gunpowder out of bat manure. And I learned how to do everything. And that turned in somehow that I became a famous jewelry designer. When I say famous, I mean like I was uh commissioned by rulers of countries and movie stars and I did stuff for movie sets and all kinds of things. And one day we received um um the president of the United States contacted me and wanted a belt buckle to represent the United States of America. And apparently since John Adams, every president's had one of these. and it was Ronald Reagan. And so in those days, we didn't have internet and we didn't have cell phones or anything like that.
So he would call from the White House, you know, from the Oval Office, and I would draw something and send it by facts and then he would respond and say, "Oh, you know, could he put some rubies over here or some stones here or whatever it was?" And through the process of that conversations over uh like about six, eight weeks, he says one day, you know, I have a lot of people, everybody in Washington DC, he said, has an agenda and I'd like someone I could just talk to once in a while who doesn't have an agenda and you know, would you be interested in helping some with that? So I said, yes, I would. and then he got Alzheimer's and started not being able to really, you know, do a lot of things. But he um he introduced me to some other political people who needed advice also. And then the combination of that and then I started working in the prison system and advising um I I changed the whole prison system in the United States.
At the time I started, they did not honor diversity and they didn't honor religious diversity. So I took them on all the way to the Ninth Circuit and then on to the Supreme Court of the United States. But we settled out before we got the Supreme Court. So I had started making relationships with highlevel uh people all around the world where I just became an advisor and you know gave good advice. So then they would refer me to other people and uh that's how I ended up doing that. What's what's an example of a you know good piece of advice you gave to Ronald Reagan? Well, he was thinking of invading the Middle East and I shared with him some reasons why that might be something good to do at the time but also where I could see some real problems with it.
Um, my own father had been very involved in the Middle East and was an international person himself. And so I was sharing that I thought it could open up a whole can of worms of a bunch of, you know, interactions and things. And at that time there was a rampco and the United States was getting oil and different things happening. And then ultimately, if you're old enough to remember, we went in a thing where OPEC formed. And then all of a sudden, you know, all the prices of gasoline and oil went up from 29 cents a gallon to like $130 or 40 cents a gallon and now today four or $5 a gallon.
All as a result of decisions that were made at that time. But that would be an example for the president. A better example of how I would advise people is I was uh selected to be or to help uh facilitate peace talks between Israel and Palestine in Aman Jordan um before the current conflicts. And when I was there, I had met the prime minister of Jordan previously and he was very moved by me and things that I helped him with. And so he set up a meeting with him and the king of him and myself and the king of Jordan. And the king of Jordan was considering giving up his throne.
And so, you know, I helped talk through some of that and give advice as to what I thought in regards to that. So I just get stuck in those kind of places earlier on but now I become so well known for it that it's a normal thing for me to have someone reach out and ask my advice around conflicts. Also one other thing relating to that is I partnered with two people and we built the new international peace center at the Alwitz death camp which we named the one humanity center. And then when the Ukraine Russia conflict came up, it has really become mostly a place for refugees. And so we were housing 2,000 Ukrainian children in there who had no parents.
And then recently mercenaries burned it down. And so we're in the process of reconstructing that. So I'll stop there. Uh and what about this? Um so you know the main focus of the film uh was really this project with the indigenous people uh uh in the Amazon and globally. You want to tell us a bit about that and what the genesis of that was? So another thing that had happened in my life, I started traveling to India and I started helping the really poorest people, the untouchables they would call them and things like that. And I got recognized after a number of years as a saint in India.
And so that led to my being um offered an opportunity with three other saints to bless the Ganes River for the largest gathering of humans in human history. It was called the Mahakumba mea. And the belief system that went back thousands of years is that various uh spiritual leaders would bless the river and then people would go in the river and put water on themselves and clean their karma. And this year when we did it, a h 100red million people physically came. I went to I I went I went to a kumba mela years ago. Okay. So 100 million people came. But I had had the honor of blessing the river.
So after I did that, four indigenous elders came up and approached me and said they were representing 300 nations in the Amazon and that they had an ancient prophecy. And the prophecy basically said that a guy would come and help unite them all to stand against the destruction of the Amazon when the Amazon started getting destroyed through greed. And then as you know today like a third of the Amazon has been destroyed by oil companies, mining companies, uh timber companies, all kinds of things. And they're also shooting and killing all the indigenous people. So they believed that I was the guy in the prophecy and they wanted me to come and unite them all to save the Amazon.
And I some of those indigenous people were from the Kogi tribe. I thought no that's correct. But they No, they consider themselves Amazon also. So the headwaters of the Amazon come right through their territory. Okay. So um I mean it's more like a big creek there but they consider the self part of it and all the tribes in the lower regions of the Amazon which goes across six countries by the way believe that the Kogi steer the world. So they h hold them in the highest reverence. So um ultimately I ended up traveling to meet with the Kogi. Part of their prophecy said that the guy that would come would restore the spirit of the Kogi people that was stolen 550 years ago by the Conquistadors.
And that the same guy would also reunite the Tyrronus civilization, which was four different tribal groups connected to the Kogi, who were separated by the Conquistadors. And when I met with the Kogi, I actually restored their spirit and I reunited all their people. And so what ended up happening is it all a sudden, you know, went like a message across the whole Amazon. Hey, this is the real guy. He just did it with the Kogi and now he's coming to us and he's going to unite us all. And they started coming to me and I started traveling to them and doing ceremonies with them. And the bottom line is I started off with four elders and in the end I helped unite over 60 million indigenous people who signed on to an agreement to both protect the Amazon and protect all the sacred land on the entire planet.
And I'm currently in the process of still working with all of them and helping to share with them different strategies to protect both indigenous wisdom and also to protect our planet from all the damaging being done. And that is happening in real time right now. Yeah. Um yeah, it was interesting. I mean, um, now that I'm speaking with you one-on-one, uh, I do also understand why Gabe in the film sometimes got a little suspicious or skeptical because it's so many it's so many claims and, um, I mean, it makes me tired just thinking about doing all those things, you know, and I'm I'm 15 years or more younger than you.
Um, yeah, I actually liked what you said in the uh Q&A where you were saying that people feel that old people can't do anything, but actually um, you know, it's actually a great time to do a lot of amazing things. I thought that was a beautiful perspective, right? And here's the thing, I'm 75 years old and all I did was step forward. I mean, you know, I didn't know I could save the Amazon or get all these people to come together. It it did end up happening, but I mean the Amazon is not saved yet. No, I mean with global warming happening, understand this. The prophecy didn't say the Amazon would be saved right up.
It said that they would come and unite all the indigenous people and they would start the process of saving the Amazon and saving the planet. And those two things did happen. They've united now. They are hundreds of thousands of them coming together and standing against the oil companies. And we also convinced the president of both Brazil and Colombia to pass new laws to protect the Amazon. So literally what the prophecy said would happen did happen. It didn't say in the prophecy the whole thing would get saved like in two years or something like that. But it said it would lead to the saving of the Amazon and that the saving of the Amazon would lead to the saving of all the people on the planet.
And now today, thousands of years later, we know that the Amazon provides a lot of our oxygen. And I didn't realize it, but it provides the largest percentage of our actual fresh drinking water. And the reason that is it sucks it out of the river. And there's a very specific process that takes place because of its location by the equator that it turns it into water vapor which rises into the clouds and gets pressed by the jet stream and it rains in California, New York, in the Himalayas in Russia in England and the South Pacific. So all this rain we get, a fair part of it comes from the Amazon and all those processes are starting to break down because of the destruction.
Oh yeah, I know. I know. But so what do you think it was about about you, your character, your personality or your karma that has put you in all these different situations as this kind of like lynchpin figure, this this this crutch crux figure? So first of all, I just think of myself as an ordinary guy. I mean, you know, I what I do do that other people don't is I step forward and I take on huge world problems. I've been doing that for 50 years. So, the idea of stepping in to try to save the Amazon, I kept telling them, I don't know that I'm any guy in a prophecy or anything, but I'm a smart guy and I'm very good at bringing people together, so I'll give it a try.
And so, I did it. I literally went to the Amazon. I had eight full knee replacements during the making of this movie. Eight full knee replacements because I had a MRSA infection which I still have and it can kill me. And so they kept taking my artificial knee out and putting a new one in, take it out, put it in. But even with all of that, I went a wheelchair with a machete to the Amazon and I united tribes. And that's why I like to stand as a symbol that you can be 75 years old, you can be disabled, and you can still change the future of the planet.
Oh, hold on one second. Somebody's ringing my doorbell. Might be my daughter. Um uh and so you struck up some good friendships with some of these indigenous leaders. Who are some of your favorites? Or um uh who have you who you gotten really close to? Well, I mean, there are so many of them. It's almost impossible to name them. The the few that were in the Amazon that I was the closest to which were key figures. So, there's a man named Berito who won the Goldman uh prize for environmental work and like the largest uh single action as a person to protect the environment. And what he did was he was an indigenous person living deep in the jungle in an Amazon in a hut and he took on Chevron and he beat them by himself.
And so he became a champion among many other indigenous elders. And what happens is there are hundreds and hundreds of different small tribes, nations and pblo. Some of them have as few as like you know 50 people in them and some of them have 40 or 50,000 people in them and I've now united with most of them. And then we crossed over and I created a partnership with a guy named Chief Phil Lane in North America and a chief named Chief Arville Looking Horse and another chief named Chief Dominic Ranken in very well known here. Yeah. And so I partnered with them and then we started uniting all the people in North America and also the rest of the world.
So now I with those two partners or those three partners have brought together and created actual documents with indigenous elders representing you know millions and millions and millions of people in the South Pacific and Siberia and you know Australia and New Zealand and and pretty much across the entire planet now in Africa. Um, so we have elders all over the entire world and I'm right at the dead center of all of them. How do people find out? I know I know you are looking for contributions uh for this work. Uh, how do people get involved and learn more about it and all that good stuff? So, you can go to patrickm.
org patrickm. org and that is a foundation. and I have a foundation and you can read all about the Amazon project and if you want to donate there you can just donate right there or if you if you don't want to donate to the Amazon you want to donate to the international peace center at Awitz or you want to donate for women's rights you have an ability to write down what you want to have supported and I work on almost every kind of um issue that there is on the planet so you things relating to marine wildlife and saving the ocean, all kinds of things. But you can just go to that. And something that's really important for people to know, you know, you can send $2.
You don't have to send hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars or something like that. Literally, a couple of bucks will pay for an indigenous person in the Amazon to travel 500 miles to meet with me and the other elders and unite their tribe. Um, oh, I had a question. Hold on a second. Where did it go? Um, well, it'll come back in a second. Oh, before All right. Well, as I as I fumble around for the question that I just lost, I also very much liked when we were on the panel that you were talking about how when you meet people, um, you really try to see the the sacredness within them.
And um that felt to me like I mean in a you know it's it's in a way it's a very natural idea but we're in a time where you know people are so out outraged at each other and you know like the right wing hates the left wing and people on the left wing hate the right wing. So tell me a little bit about this um this perspective that you've developed or this this way of of handling people. When I went through this tunnel of light, I returned with a different view on the world and all of creation. And by that, I don't just mean our planet. I mean everything.
But if you just focused on our planet itself, I came to a recognition that the planet and everyone on it is sacred. Because if there's God and God created it all, whatever you think God is, and I and I don't pinpoint that. I mean, that could just be two atoms crashing together. I don't care what you think it is. The the fact that we're all here and everything is here is a very sacred, deeply sacred thing. And that means that each and every one of us is carry a piece of that sacredness within us because we're all a piece of that creation. And so I began to view each person I would meet before I even speak to them.
when I look at them, I look them in the eyes and I just say to myself, you whoever I'm talking to are sacred and then I begin my conversation from there. And I've actually found that I have met with people who are the worst of the worst. You know, when I was in the Middle East, I met with the number two person of al-Qaeda, and that's when they were going strong at the time and just had beheaded some journalists. And like I met with that guy and he said, "Aren't you afraid?" And I said, "Why should you I be afraid?" I said, "For me, you're sacred and you're my brother." And he actually got tears in his eyes. And he said, "No one's ever spoken to me like that." And I established a relationship and got that guy to back off killing people.
You know, so my experience has been that has happened everywhere. And what I like to tell people is that this when people see the movie and they see what I managed to accomplish, they walk away feeling really inspired and they go, "What can we do?" And I tell people, you don't have to be Superman or Wonder Woman. You don't have to save the Amazon or the planet. You can simply teach your children better values, or you can be a better person in the world. But the one thing you can do above all other things is just view each person that you come in contact with as being sacred.
And if you start there and treat them that way in your interaction, things will go well. You can have a person on the right that hates you cuz you're on the left, but if you're thinking to yourself when you're talking to them, you're sacred. You talk to them in a different way. You handle them in a different way and they pick it up and you establish a relationship and now you can talk. I like it. Yeah, that's a very that's good medicine, I think, for everybody right now. Yeah. Yeah. Um Oh, wait. I I had the question again and then I lost it. Let me come back to it for a second.
Well, tell me a little bit how how did you end up making the film with Gabe? Uh he's quite a character. he approached you and um um one of my favorite moments in the film was right at the end where you guys realized that you were like you know the archetypes of Don Kyote and Sancho Panza and actually I think that's something that should have been like a motif throughout the film. It made everything make sense in a way. It should have but the thing is you have to understand that neither Gabe nor I knew we were going to make a film when we started. Yeah.
So what actually happened was I decided to step in and travel to South America and start the journey by meeting with the Kogi. And I had no idea what would happen. I never met the Kogi before. So you know I I didn't know what would happen when I went there. And Gabe heard about it through another director who had met me and come to some spiritual things I was teaching. And that director said, "You ought to check this guy out." When Gabe found out I was going to meet with the Kogi, who were one of the most remote peoples on the entire planet, he was much more interested in filming them, not me.
And he went along. But then I did this thing that restored their spirit and reunited their people, which is what the prophecy said would happen. And what what was that saying that you did? Well, so what I did to start with is the Kogi had been asking to get their gold back. The concquisadors took all their gold and everybody because of the world we live in think the gold is about wealth and money. But the Kogi never used it for any kind of exchange. They never used it for money. They never used it for power. They never used it for anything. Their creation story said that there was the mother of all things who created the universe.
And when she did, the first thing she created was the spirit of gold. It was like a mist. And she shone the light of the sun which she created through that mist. And that gave each and every one of us and everything on the planet a spirit or a soul. So our souls or spirits as we talk about it in modern religious terms from their perspective came through the spirit of gold. So when the conquist that's that's why it's more valuable than bitcoin. Exactly. So for them, it was the most sacred thing. And they'd been asking for 550 years for someone to bring back gold. And nobody ever did ever.
And I had a pendant that I made for my father about 45 years ago. And my mother and fire father's house caught on fire and they died in the fire and burned to death. And when I went to see my father's body, the mortician says to me, "Your father had a pendant around his neck, but it got so hot that it melted through his skin and is rested up against his heart. Do you want me to cut it out?" And I said, "Yes, it I lost everything. My parents, I lost their house. All of our family heirlooms, pictures, everything I had from a kid was entirely just ashes.
That pendant was the only thing left. So, I asked for it back and I began to wear it. But I when I went to see the Kogi, I was inspired to give my most precious thing, that gold pendant, to them because they were asking for that. And when I gave it to them, it literally restored their spirit. And that's how that happened. And then they turned around and gave it back to me. And they said, "We didn't need the gold to keep. We just needed someone in 550 years to make a sacrifice and give us some gold." And you did it. Now our spirit is restored, and we don't need the physical gold.
and they gave it back to me and told me to put it around my neck and that for now on for the rest of my life they would focus their prayers on the pendant I wear I've got it on right now. Uh I don't know if you can see it here. You lift it up a little bit. Oh yeah. Here. Okay. That they focus their rituals and ceremonies every single day on this pendant to send good into the world. and I walk around the world and I'm literally a walking temple for them now. So that is how that happened through my sacrifice. And if you watch the movie, you see I mean I'm like crying because I'm giving up the only thing I have connected to my father who was my I the closest person in my life.
But I was willing to make that sacrifice if it would help them. Nice. Yeah. I did two retreats with the Kogi years ago through a Colombian shaman and I I I loved them so much. It was also people from the we had elders from the Arowak uh community. Yes. Uh who were extraordinary. They were some of it was really like it was like really like being around um the dowist maestros like the the top level you know the people like people are at the center of the world who just uh radiate this kind of um power in a way. They really do. There is something about them that goes way beyond anything we can understand.
Yeah. The other thing about the Kogi in particular, all of the other indigenous peoples in the world were colonized or destroyed and such like 550 years ago. The Kogi weren't. They beat the Spanish, went up to the highest mountains like 14,000 ft up and they caved in the trails and the Spanish couldn't come after them. And for 550 years, no one knew they existed. They only came out recently to the world. And the only reason they came out is they call us, you and I, what they call the people of the concrete. They call us the younger brothers. And they think of us as children who've lost our way because from their perspective, we're destroying the world we live in.
And they have a message for us of how we can turn that around. And so they decided to come down to humanity and interact with people, try to share their message. And I'll just tell you, you know, like when I went there and met with them like the first times and stuff like that, it was like meeting it was like meeting somebody from another world. Definitely. Definitely. Um yeah, it's such a beautiful culture with the um uh there was that that beautiful couple movies made about them. Uh Aluna, Aluna, yes, was the best one probably. And now they're in the movie about my work. You know, they play a prominent role in there.
And just so you know, they made me their representative to the entire world. And so I actually connect people from around the world with them. And I currently am bringing them down for the the the most elders that never have ever left in 500 and something years. They're going to come down the mountain and I am going to showcase their voice to over two billion people in the spring at what's called the state of the world forum and they've agreed to come down and we're interacting right now. I spoke to them yesterday connection with them. Oh, that's awesome. What is the state of the world forum?
I don't know what that is. Okay. The state of the world forum was started about I think about 30 something years ago by Mikuel Gorbachoff when he won the Nobel Prize. Um Ticknot Han, Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall, the Dollaly Llama, and a man named Jim Garrison. And they wanted to create a like a public thing on television in those days where people that were major speakers from around the world shared the state of the world currently like what wars going on what's happening in this country what's happening in that country with the focus being what can we all do to turn around the bad things that are happening in the world.
Well, then 911 happened and when that happened, it stopped the state of the world for him. It went on for six years and was broadcast all across the entire planet. And now everyone has passed away except Jim Garrison. and Jim Garrison. And this is where things get really weird. Someone that's very close to him, a woman named Lynn Twist, who I also know went the who does the Hatchamama headers, the Hatchima Alliance. She went to the Amazon, took Iawasa, the Iawaska spirit told her to call Jim Garrison and say he needs to restart the state of the world forum. No. And so Jim called me and said, "Gorbachoff's gone.
Could you take his place? You're one of the highest peacemakers in the world." And just to give you a little uh thing where I am. So Jane Goodall was my partner. Now that she's passed away, I'm the number two peacemaker on the planet. So I've been gradually moving up, you know, through the and that's what my colleagues make. It's not like you get to be that, you know, it's just something that naturally happens as other leaders pass away. Um, but so I took Gorbachoff's place, Jim Garrison's still there. There's another man named Tom Eddington and the three of us began putting the forum together. We reached out to the Rockefeller Foundation and also the Buckminister Fuller Institute.
they supported it and then we created a uh advisory council of about 14 major world figures and then we were going to launch the state of the world forum in December live in Washington DC and unfortunately the president of the United States put a target on it and they said they'd be arresting the people that we would be bringing from the other countries the indigenous people the prime prime minister of Canada, the president of Mexico wouldn't come because of the tariffs. The prime minister of India was going to come, won't come because of the tariffs and the issues. And so we've now had to move the the state of the world forum online still in late December and then we're going to do the physical event in the spring in another country, which is a sad thing. I'm an American and we can't hold a conference talking about the state of the world here now. We have to go to another country.
One thing I wanted now I remember what I was curious to ask you about before. One thing that um I think is confusing as somebody trying to understand who you are is like normally people like you, you know, have like sort of like a foundation of like a think tank or institution or like you like in the film there's a section where you're talking about going down to the Amazon. and you're like, "Look, I'm just putting my $1,400 a month social security check into doing this. That's all I got." And it didn't feel like you were living very high on the hog. It felt like everything was kind of like just barely financially kind of like holding together.
So, so how are you in that situation or or or what what what what's the story there? Let me tell you about that and why that is. I have had so many opportunities to be really famous and make a bunch of money. when I was doing my jewelry designing, I was doing for the president of the United States, the Queen of England, uh, you know, for the TV show Dallas that was on for many, many super wealthy people. And when I went into fashion, I actually was in a thing where I was uh, beating um, you know, like Versace and the most major fashion designers in the world.
my stuff was ahead of theirs. And so, um, you know, I was at the Plaza Hotel, had ice sculptures, you know, with champagne coming out of them. I had a Rolls-Royce and a driver and all that stuff. But what I realized is that the nonprofits and the people who try to change the world get caught up in this situation. The situation is you need money to go do the thing. So, you ask people to donate. And at first it's people giving you 10 bucks or something at a time. But then as you get really good at it, bigger donors come and go, "Hey, I'm going to give you $100,000." But then that person starts telling you how they want you to do what you're doing.
And eventually you end up your whole process even though you're a good person trying to do good is to try to keep the money flowing and at the same time make sure you're doing what all these different people that are giving you big money want done. And I decided I don't want to be that guy. I will stay an ordinary person. I'll use absolute minimums. I'll sleep on people's floors. I'll fly economy. I'll drive across the United States in my car, what whatever it takes so I don't get trapped in that. And I have managed to do that for almost 50 years and not do some big thing.
But I make bigger things happen than most of the bigname people, you know, and they all know that. So I'm partners and friends with all of them. But what's happened for me now is, you know, I went from doing big projects to now 60 million people. I have to try to figure out how to get them to do things and stuff that that requires me having some backup people to just deal with the correspondences and the email things and I got to have now, you know, professional zoom to talk to them and I got to have a bunch of stuff. So now I am asking people to give me donations but I don't want to get into that big time place.
I want to stay I pay for everything with my social security. So I have as you said was very modest with my social security. It was a very modest check. You said like Exactly. And so I I don't want it to get some big giant thing, but I obviously need some help now because I my social security isn't enough to travel to all these places now. Yeah. It's almost been an hour, so we're going to wind down in a in a minute or two. But I I have a question for you because this has been like I mean personally lately with what's happening with like the rise of fascism in the US and these you know faceless masked men attacking people and destroying freedom of speech and the constitution.
I feel very demoralized and then like the genocide in Gaza and um um you know the ecological catastrophe that's happening. Um yeah. So, I'm kind of curious like um don't you ever just feel like you want to give up? Like um h how do you how do you keep up the uh the oomph, the enthusiasm? I I I I used to have I tried to build a whole Save the World media network and community group network and then that got destroyed partially because of my fault, partially because of other people's faults. And ever since then, I felt like um almost like I don't really know what to do.
That's of great value in a way. But I so I so so I'm I feel a lot of admiration that you that you stayed on this uh this path. Um cuz yeah in a way sometimes I feel like at this point just hiding out in a you know in the mountains of Bolivia or something and giving up. So Jane Goodall was my closest friend and partner in all this kind of work. And the thing that was the best between she and I is we could talk personally on Zoom about things that we can't publicly say, right? And we both would go, you know, wow, I just feel like I want to quit.
I mean, you know, it's so discouraging. It's so difficult and this and that. And we could support each other through that. I mean, we get depressed, we get down, we feel like it's worthless, we feel all those kind of things. But here's what I know. I received multiple um international peace awards. So I received Mahatma Gandhi award for example and Gandhi was somebody I really looked at well he was a guy walking around like with a towel around him and bare feet but even to this day the whole idea of you know nonviolent kind of protests and things can change the future still are around. And so here's what I have to say to all of that.
You know, if we don't step forward, if we don't keep the belief that we can do something, we're just going to go down. And there's no light at the end of that tunnel. When I see the fascism rising, I see what's happening in this country. It's tearing down everything I've worked for 50 years to put together. And so, it's very discouraging. But, you know what? I'm a tough guy to take out. Like I said, you know, I'm in a wheelchair with a machete in the Amazon and I'm going to take on what's happening in this country and I'm going to turn it around. And I am only one person and maybe I won't do that, but I'm sure as heck going to give it my best shot.
And I think we all need to stay in that mindset because if we do, we will turn it around. If we don't, if we just give into it, we will end up in like other places I've traveled in the world where, you know, you can't even, you couldn't have this conversation in many places in the world. And if we did, they'd put you in some prison off in, you know, an icy place and probably poison me. So, right now, we still have something and we need to preserve it. And I want to be a champion for that. And I appreciate this talk with you because whether you feel discouraged or not, right now having this conversation, you are a champion for it.
You're still fighting, right? No, I I really appreciate it. It was wonderful to meet you on that uh event and I'm I'm happy the movie's out in the world. I'm glad to know more about you and um have this connection. May maybe we'll find some way to uh work together uh on one of these projects. Uh, anybody who is on the chat want to ask a quick question before we fold up uh for today, but we can always do this again, Patrick, now that you've mastered the uh the substack. It's a very f wonderful tool to, you know, reach an audience instantly. We've had like 125 people uh coming through and I'll put it up in my newsletter so it'll go out to more and uh yeah, I think people will really appreciate it.
So, I thank you very much for the time too. One thing I do want to say and then if somebody has a question, you know, we can answer it is that this movie is premiering all across the United States. So, for example, I'm leaving from here and I'm going to Minnesota, then I'm going to Wisconsin, then I'm going to Chicago, then I'm going to San Francisco, then I'm going to South Carolina. And it just doesn't end. And every premiere is nearly sold out. And you know, people respond hugely. So no matter where you are in the US, if you go online and just look up the manh who saves the world.
com, you can find the Showtimes and you know you can go and see it. So yeah, it is playing in New York Village. Yeah, we had a question or two. Well, somebody asked, "How can we see this movie?" I think we just covered that. Somebody asked, "Who was your father?" U my father's name was Jim Mc Collum and he both my grandfather and my father did a lot of good things in the world. So I couldn't even tell you all about my father but my father was named Mr. American Navy during World War II for the whole world. And my father was was a person who didn't finish college but had a dream.
He wanted to deal with space and he ended up being at the top of the Apollo program and he was like me. He started and worked his way up and after the space industry ended he started doing projects going all over the world helping to resolve conflicts and creating relationships between our country the United States and me many other countries in the world. Oh, so we have some questions about Thank you, Patrick. But when can we watch the film in the UK and when can we watch it in Europe? Is there a streaming element or how is that being handled? There's no streaming yet because the way this whole system works and I'm not a movie person so I'm just learning about this.
It first shows in theaters all over then Netflix and those guys they're looking at it you know and if they like it and the audience responds well then they'll pick it up and it'll be streamed all over. As far as the UK we've gotten a lot of requests for the UK. We've got a lot of requests um for the Netherlands, Asia, Japan, uh Australia, and so we will be going all those places, but it's going to be down the line. First, we're going to hit all over the United States, and then we'll start spreading to other places. There might be a thing where people can request um if they write on the website to Gabe um maybe they can do a special screening.
Sometimes that's useful to get the word out in other countries and stuff. So, I want to tell you that that is true. If you go to the website, the manhavestheorld. com, at the very bottom, there's a request form and half the places we're going are from a person who sent in a request. Yeah. So, you know, wherever you are, if we get enough requests in the UK, I mean, it's no harder for me to fly it to the UK than it is to fly to New York from San Francisco, you know. So, uh, we're willing to go everywhere and show it everywhere. We just need to know that there's enough people there and a theater that we can show it in.
All right, cool. Patrick, listen. I think that's an hour. I think we're good for today. Uh, hopefully more to come and I really appreciate you making this time for me and thank you for the uh, inspiration. I mean that in a very heartfelt way. So, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity and everyone have a lovely day and let's let peace prevail.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.