Six days before September 11th, 2001, Grammy-winning jazz pianist John Novello picked up the phone and called a woman he had only recently reconnected with after 36 years apart. He told her to cancel her flight from Dulles to Los Angeles. He didn't know why exactly. He just knew something was wrong.
She thought he had cold feet. Her mother thought he was trouble. She almost didn't listen.
The flight was American Airlines 77. It struck the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. on September 11, 2001. There were no survivors.
When we sat down with John on The Skeptic Metaphysicians, we thought we were getting a fascinating story about intuition. What we actually got was a complete dismantling of everything we thought we understood about how inner guidance works, and a practical framework for accessing it ourselves that neither of us saw coming.
We Were Approaching Manifestation Completely Backwards
Let's be honest. When John started talking about manifestation, both of us mentally braced for the usual material. Affirmations. Visualization boards. The Law of Attraction. We'd heard it. We'd tried versions of it. We'd watched it not work in ways that were quietly demoralizing.
What John said instead stopped us cold.
"The Law of Attraction is a narcissistic version of this," he told us. "I, I, I. When in fact, the architect is the power. You're not. But what do we do with the power of electricity? We distribute it."
That one reframe changed the entire conversation.
Most manifestation teaching puts you at the center of the equation. You are the generator. You create your reality through thought alone. The problem, as anyone who has tried it sincerely will tell you, is that the mind pushes back constantly. You say "I am wealthy" and your bank account laughs at you. You say "I am healthy" and your symptoms remind you otherwise. The gap between the affirmation and the reality becomes its own source of anxiety.
John's framework, which he calls the Be-Do-Have Manifestation Formula, flips the relationship entirely. You are not the source. You are the conduit. The Invisible Architect, his term for the quantum intelligent energy underlying all of existence, is already generating the power. Your job is to align with it, invite it, and get out of the way.
"God's sitting there going, 'All he has to do is have faith in me, and I'll do it. But since I gave him free will, I can't bypass him,'" John said. We both laughed. And then we both got a little quiet.
What 70 Years of Listening Actually Looks Like
John first heard the voice at age three, sitting on the floor of his living room watching his parents' favorite show. An accordion player came on screen, and something in his mind said, clearly and completely, point to that keyboard. He pointed. His Italian Catholic parents enrolled him in accordion lessons. The rest became a six-decade career that includes a Grammy, a Billboard number one hit, nine albums with fusion trio Niacin alongside bassist Billy Sheehan and drummer Dennis Chambers, and a keyboard education series with a foreword by jazz legend Chick Corea.
What struck us wasn't the career. It was how he described the communication itself.
"It's not sequential like you and I are talking," he explained. "I get full comprehension immediately. It's a knowing that arrives all at once."
This description aligns closely with what researchers in the field of intuitive cognition call "non-analytical knowing," a form of rapid, holistic information processing that bypasses the brain's sequential verbal systems. Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, whose work at the Max Planck Institute has studied gut instinct for decades, has documented how expert intuition in high-stakes situations frequently outperforms deliberate analysis. John would likely say the architect is doing the heavy lifting. The science would say the same thing in different language.
The Night He Left His Body, and His Dog Saw Him Do It
One of the most extraordinary moments in our conversation had nothing to do with 9/11.
After his first wife Gloria died of breast cancer in 2000, John threw himself into researching after-death communication. He hired five separate mediums, all of whom independently confirmed contact with Gloria. Then he read the out-of-body research of William Buhlman, whose books Adventures Beyond the Body and Soul Journeys document techniques for conscious out-of-body travel and remain some of the most widely read resources in the field.
After three months of nightly attempts, John gave up on a particular evening and simply rolled out of bed to use the bathroom. He landed on the floor and noticed it felt spongy. He turned around and saw himself lying under the covers. His German Shepherd, asleep on the other side of the door, looked up, saw something, and bolted down the hallway with his tail between his legs.
"I knew he saw me," John told us. "And I was out."
He went on to visit what he describes as a vast castle, floated through its doors, climbed a spiral staircase, and found Gloria at the top. She looked thirty years younger. She told him it wasn't his time and sent him back.
We're not in the business of telling you what to believe. What we will tell you is that the detail of the dog is the kind of thing you don't make up. And that John told that story with the calm specificity of a man reporting something that happened, not performing something dramatic.
The Part Nobody Tells You About Twin Flames
Here's what we didn't know going in. Barbara, the woman John saved from Flight 77, the woman he eventually married and spent twenty years with, also passed away. Four years ago, after they moved to Nashville together. After a year there, he told us quietly, "her race was done."
"I visited her too," he said. "And she did the same thing."
Sent him back. Told him to go live.
John believes Barbara was his twin flame, a concept in spiritual traditions describing two souls created from a single energetic source, as distinct from a soulmate. The loss of a twin flame, he said, carries a different weight. And yet even from that, he has found direction.
"The fact that I'm doing this and it's a passion of mine to help hook people up to the architect," he told us, "is amazing. It's just amazing."
We believed him. Completely.
How to Start Listening: Three Tools From John's Framework
Talking to John made us realize that most of us aren't failing to manifest because we lack faith. We're failing because we haven't learned the difference between our inner narrator and the signal beneath it. Here's where he suggests starting.
1. Learn to distinguish the voice from the noise. Your inner narrator is sequential. It speaks in sentences. It loops. The Invisible Architect, or whatever you choose to call your deeper guidance, arrives as a complete knowing all at once. Practice noticing the difference. When something arrives fully formed, without the usual internal debate, pay attention.
2. Apply the Law of Thought Substitution. John draws this directly from physics: no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time, and no two thoughts can be fully active simultaneously. When a negative or doubtful thought arises, don't fight it. Replace it immediately with the ideal thought. Not suppression. Substitution. Do it the moment the pushback appears, not after you've given it ten minutes to grow.
3. Stop being the power. Become the distributor. The practical shift here is significant. Instead of "I am creating this," try "I am aligning with the intelligence that is already creating this." Invite rather than demand. Have faith rather than force. This is the core of the Be-Do-Have model: Be the version of yourself who already has what you're seeking, Do the actions that version of you would take, and then Have, expressed as advanced gratitude in advance of the physical result.
The Bigger Picture
What stayed with us long after the conversation ended was something John said almost in passing. He told us that the architect gave us free will deliberately, because a life that simply hands you everything teaches you nothing. The friction isn't a mistake. It's the curriculum.
We came into this interview expecting a good story about a near-miss on September 11th. We left it with a completely different relationship to the word guidance. Not as something that happens to lucky people. As something available to all of us, all the time, waiting for an invitation.
If you've had a feeling you couldn't explain and talked yourself out of it, this episode is the one you've been waiting for.
Listen to the full conversation with John Novello on The Skeptic Metaphysicians wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the full episode at newrealitytv.com.
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The Skeptic Metaphysicians is hosted by Will Rodriguez and Karen Endsley. New episodes every week at skepticmetaphysician.com.
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