WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:25.000 [Music] 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:27.000 Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:29.000 My name is Rick Archer. 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:36.360 Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people, and we've done over 700 of them now. 00:00:36.360 --> 00:00:42.920 And if this is new to you, and you'd like to check out previous ones, go to batgap.com and look under the past interviews menu. 00:00:42.920 --> 00:00:48.280 This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. 00:00:48.280 --> 00:00:53.200 So if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on every page of the site. 00:00:54.680 --> 00:01:01.760 We have a volunteers page which will show you some of the volunteer functions that one can serve if one wishes to contribute in that way. 00:01:01.760 --> 00:01:09.780 My guest today is Dr. Anna Youseim, and I have a bio here that would take me about five minutes to read, 00:01:09.780 --> 00:01:12.860 but we're a little pressed on time today because she's a very busy lady. 00:01:12.860 --> 00:01:18.600 So I'm going to have her give us a synopsis of her qualifications and so on, and 00:01:18.600 --> 00:01:24.100 then we'll flesh those out as we go along during this interview. So welcome Anna, and thanks for doing this. 00:01:24.100 --> 00:01:28.820 Thank you so much, Rick. It is such a pleasure to be here with you today and I would be happy 00:01:28.820 --> 00:01:36.340 to introduce myself and very excited to dig into a lot of different topics with you today. 00:01:36.340 --> 00:01:42.660 So I am a psychiatrist on the clinical faculty at Yale Medical School. I also have a private 00:01:42.660 --> 00:01:46.980 practice in both psychiatry and executive coaching that's based in fourth states, New York, 00:01:46.980 --> 00:01:53.700 Connecticut, Florida, and California. The emphasis of my work is bridging mental health 00:01:53.700 --> 00:01:58.980 and spirituality. In 2017, I wrote the book Fulfill, which I know that you've read, and 00:01:58.980 --> 00:02:04.140 it was really about the science of spirituality, which is a very interesting paradox because 00:02:04.140 --> 00:02:09.660 these two worlds are strange bedfellows. It was trying to reconcile and bring them together. 00:02:09.660 --> 00:02:14.860 And that's been my work in creating at Yale a mental health and spirituality center, which 00:02:14.860 --> 00:02:20.840 we're working to create at present, and in really trying to expand our definition of 00:02:20.840 --> 00:02:27.060 what the optimal and highly competent, most competent mental health care entails. 00:02:27.060 --> 00:02:31.520 And it's really mind, body, spirit medicine, which you and I can get into today. 00:02:31.520 --> 00:02:37.000 I worked in the neurobiology lab of Dr. Robert Sapolsky when I was an undergrad at Stanford. 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:39.080 I then did my medical schooling at Yale. 00:02:39.080 --> 00:02:41.280 I did my residency at NYU. 00:02:41.280 --> 00:02:47.280 I hung up my shingle then and just was a private practice psychiatrist for many years before 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:52.480 writing my book, coming on to the faculty at Yale, and starting to do many other things. 00:02:52.480 --> 00:02:57.200 We're also right now making a film about the intersection of mental health and spirituality, 00:02:57.200 --> 00:03:02.560 and also a docuseries called Breakdown Breakthroughs, and that's a little bit about my world. 00:03:02.560 --> 00:03:03.560 Great. 00:03:03.560 --> 00:03:04.720 You've led an amazing life. 00:03:04.720 --> 00:03:09.840 You've traveled all over the world from India to the Amazon to God knows where, doing all 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:14.440 kinds of things, living in ashrams, studying with all kinds of interesting people, and 00:03:14.440 --> 00:03:18.360 A lot of that is covered in your book, but I just wanted to tell people that you've packed 00:03:18.360 --> 00:03:20.640 about ten lives into one so far, it seems. 00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:23.480 Life is short, you gotta, you know, pack it all in. 00:03:23.480 --> 00:03:24.480 Yeah, really. 00:03:24.480 --> 00:03:26.360 Let's do some definitions. 00:03:26.360 --> 00:03:30.880 So the title of your book is "Fulfillment," and what was the subtitle? 00:03:30.880 --> 00:03:35.120 "Fulfilled, How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful 00:03:35.120 --> 00:03:36.120 Life." 00:03:36.120 --> 00:03:39.360 "How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a..." 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:40.760 Okay, fulfilled. 00:03:40.760 --> 00:03:43.480 So how would you define fulfillment? 00:03:43.480 --> 00:03:44.480 What is it? 00:03:44.480 --> 00:03:49.160 The way that I define fulfillment in my book is a combination of two things. 00:03:49.160 --> 00:03:54.040 It's living in accordance with your soul correction and your soul contribution. 00:03:54.040 --> 00:03:58.040 And so in order to define fulfillment, I needed to define those things. 00:03:58.040 --> 00:04:00.120 I'm going to tell you what those things mean, right? 00:04:00.120 --> 00:04:05.240 So your soul correction is that thing which comes up in your life again and again and 00:04:05.240 --> 00:04:09.960 again, often much to your chagrin and dismay, and despite your best efforts to change it. 00:04:09.960 --> 00:04:12.920 It's what Freud often referred to as the repetition compulsion. 00:04:12.920 --> 00:04:15.200 those difficult things that plague us, 00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:16.480 that can cause us great pain, 00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:19.000 but end up being the greatest lessons in our life. 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:23.160 So part of fulfillment is being able to identify no 00:04:23.160 --> 00:04:26.840 and work towards overcoming your soul correction. 00:04:26.840 --> 00:04:29.440 - So would that be like, let's say a bad habit, 00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:32.920 such as alcohol, or you've been through eight marriages, 00:04:32.920 --> 00:04:35.240 like Mickey Rooney, or something like that, 00:04:35.240 --> 00:04:38.280 you just keep making the same mistake over and over again. 00:04:38.280 --> 00:04:39.320 - Exactly, exactly. 00:04:39.320 --> 00:04:40.920 And there are as many soul corrections 00:04:40.920 --> 00:04:42.000 as there are individuals. 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:45.740 And then there's a few categories, addictions definitely, a really, really big soul correction. 00:04:45.740 --> 00:04:50.540 And this is addictions in all spheres, behavioral addictions, substance and alcohol addictions. 00:04:50.540 --> 00:04:53.000 And then there's psychological addictions, right? 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:59.240 Addictions to money, power, fame, all things which are really good to have, but they become 00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:02.400 an addiction when the more of it you have, the emptier you feel. 00:05:02.400 --> 00:05:04.120 You know, improving relationships. 00:05:04.120 --> 00:05:08.700 For some people, it's about finding a stable partner, finding love, being able to open 00:05:08.700 --> 00:05:09.700 their hearts. 00:05:09.700 --> 00:05:13.700 For others, it's about learning how to be interdependent or even independent. 00:05:13.700 --> 00:05:15.700 For everybody, it's a different soul correction. 00:05:15.700 --> 00:05:18.700 So that's soul correction. So part two. 00:05:18.700 --> 00:05:22.700 Exactly. Part two is living in accordance with your soul contribution. 00:05:22.700 --> 00:05:29.700 So figuring out what your gift to the world is and how you want to essentially give it. 00:05:29.700 --> 00:05:36.700 That which is an encapsulation of your unique talents, abilities, interests, and what only you can give to the world. 00:05:36.700 --> 00:05:42.300 And of course, there's many of us who have very similar soul contributions, but that really 00:05:42.300 --> 00:05:43.800 is what fulfillment is. 00:05:43.800 --> 00:05:49.340 It's living and making a powerful contribution while also knowing the challenge of life and 00:05:49.340 --> 00:05:53.060 that which you have to overcome as part of your soul correction. 00:05:53.060 --> 00:05:54.140 Rick: Okay. 00:05:54.140 --> 00:05:58.380 It sounds an awful lot like the word "dharma" that's used in Buddhism and Hinduism, that 00:05:58.380 --> 00:06:03.280 there's a certain stream, which if you can align yourself with it, a stream for your 00:06:03.280 --> 00:06:09.360 individual life will be most evolutionary for you and most frictionless and you'll get the 00:06:09.360 --> 00:06:14.040 greatest support and success and fulfillment by being so aligned. 00:06:14.040 --> 00:06:20.000 And obviously, there needs to be some corrections sometimes to get in tune with that stream 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:24.160 and there can also be practices such as spirit meditation and so on that can help you get 00:06:24.160 --> 00:06:25.160 in tune with it. 00:06:25.160 --> 00:06:26.160 So, would you agree with all that? 00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:27.160 I love that. 00:06:27.160 --> 00:06:30.080 I think that's such a beautiful way of looking at it and absolutely, we want to be in flow 00:06:30.080 --> 00:06:31.240 with life, right? 00:06:31.240 --> 00:06:32.320 And that means so many things. 00:06:32.320 --> 00:06:34.920 That means accepting life on life's terms. 00:06:34.920 --> 00:06:37.960 And of course, it's not to say that we are always going to want to accept everything. 00:06:37.960 --> 00:06:39.200 We all overcome challenges. 00:06:39.200 --> 00:06:43.280 It's not to say we don't want to fight for things or to overcome things and to make things 00:06:43.280 --> 00:06:44.340 better. 00:06:44.340 --> 00:06:49.100 But to be in flow with life, it's like a Kabbalistic principle of mati velo mati, being in two 00:06:49.100 --> 00:06:54.480 places at once, accepting life as it is, and then always striving to make things better. 00:06:54.480 --> 00:06:55.480 Rick: That's good. 00:06:55.480 --> 00:06:56.480 I like that. 00:06:56.480 --> 00:07:02.280 Okay, now, in the traditions I just mentioned, they would say that even if your life is ideal, 00:07:02.280 --> 00:07:06.960 on a relative level like the Buddha's was, he was a prince, had everything going for him. 00:07:06.960 --> 00:07:10.060 That will not be ultimately fulfilling because it changes. 00:07:10.060 --> 00:07:13.820 The Buddha of course had a wake-up call when he went out and saw sick people and old people 00:07:13.820 --> 00:07:15.560 and dead people and things like that. 00:07:15.560 --> 00:07:17.120 He thought, "Oh, that's going to happen to me. 00:07:17.120 --> 00:07:18.820 There must be something deeper." 00:07:18.820 --> 00:07:23.560 What would you say about the notion that you could even be in a jail cell like Dandi or 00:07:23.560 --> 00:07:26.520 Sri Aurobindo and yet fulfilled? 00:07:26.520 --> 00:07:30.920 You're not doing anything, you can't do anything, but there you are and you're feeling content 00:07:30.920 --> 00:07:31.920 despite your circumstances. 00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:32.920 Absolutely. 00:07:32.920 --> 00:07:36.440 I think that that's true and at the end of the day, that which we have control over is 00:07:36.440 --> 00:07:39.320 really the inner contents of our mind. 00:07:39.320 --> 00:07:44.340 And it's within that space that we can make great, great strides and we can turn a prison 00:07:44.340 --> 00:07:47.020 into heaven or heaven into a prison. 00:07:47.020 --> 00:07:50.620 And this is complicated, right, because as a psychiatrist, the model of the mind is a 00:07:50.620 --> 00:07:53.400 bio-psycho-social-spiritual model. 00:07:53.400 --> 00:07:57.960 So there's factors that impact our mind, our mental health, our brain at the biological 00:07:57.960 --> 00:08:01.720 level, psychological level, social level, spiritual level. 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:06.880 And so, with my clients and patients, I look at all those and see what might be interfering 00:08:06.880 --> 00:08:11.160 to make it hard for you to live the life you want, to be in flow with life, to be able to 00:08:11.160 --> 00:08:17.200 make some of your challenges into things that could be much easier to palate. 00:08:17.200 --> 00:08:18.200 Yeah. 00:08:18.200 --> 00:08:23.040 And what of the notion that in these ancient traditions, and even in Christianity, Jesus 00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:27.800 said the kingdom of heaven is within you, and Hinduism talks about bliss or ananda being 00:08:27.800 --> 00:08:32.600 your essential nature and if you can be in tune with that then you'll be 00:08:32.600 --> 00:08:37.200 bubbling with bliss under all circumstances. What do you make of that? 00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:40.280 I love that. I think that that's absolutely true. I think bliss is our 00:08:40.280 --> 00:08:44.780 essential nature at the core of our soul and what most people need to do is they 00:08:44.780 --> 00:08:48.160 have to clear out all the impediments to bliss and there's a lot of impediments 00:08:48.160 --> 00:08:53.040 and those impediments come from masks that we wear that keep us from being our 00:08:53.040 --> 00:08:57.000 essential self of knowing who we really are being able to share and communicate 00:08:57.000 --> 00:09:01.160 that in an authentic way. It's also social constructs on the kind of life that we should 00:09:01.160 --> 00:09:05.340 live. Other people telling us who we should be and what we should be doing as opposed 00:09:05.340 --> 00:09:09.880 to that being something that we're really able to tap into or being or really into it 00:09:09.880 --> 00:09:14.640 in a way. None of these things are bad. This is just the society that we live in. Of course, 00:09:14.640 --> 00:09:21.000 it's more just this duality that exists. And so other impediments to bliss are for a lot 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:25.600 of people, you know, the biopsychosocial spiritual model. There are very real biological factors 00:09:25.600 --> 00:09:31.480 and genetic factors that for certain people make them predisposed to having depression, 00:09:31.480 --> 00:09:36.440 having anxiety, having OCD, having psychosis that could really make it hard to have bliss. 00:09:36.440 --> 00:09:40.120 And so it's working through that, getting the right biological balance. 00:09:40.120 --> 00:09:42.080 It's figuring out the social factors. 00:09:42.080 --> 00:09:45.800 You know, we've come through a COVID pandemic, people were deeply depressed and isolated 00:09:45.800 --> 00:09:48.440 and alone and the loneliness epidemic continues. 00:09:48.440 --> 00:09:50.480 So figuring out how to address that. 00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:52.880 People feel spiritually empty at times. 00:09:52.880 --> 00:09:54.360 How do you address that? 00:09:54.360 --> 00:09:58.380 certain psychological predispositions people may have that lead them to have 00:09:58.380 --> 00:10:02.120 certain defenses or certain ways of processing life in the world that keep 00:10:02.120 --> 00:10:05.800 them from this bliss. So I think I completely agree with you. I think our 00:10:05.800 --> 00:10:11.160 core is bliss and our work is to overcome the impediments to it. That's 00:10:11.160 --> 00:10:15.280 good. And the language you're using very much mirrors numerous ancient 00:10:15.280 --> 00:10:19.840 traditions who spoke of impediments, that very word, and who said it's like we do 00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:24.960 have this great reservoir of inner happiness, but it gets all shrouded and covered over 00:10:24.960 --> 00:10:29.700 by various things, and they provided all kinds of techniques and practices and moral codes 00:10:29.700 --> 00:10:33.160 and all kinds of things to help remove those shrouds. 00:10:33.160 --> 00:10:37.760 I used to have a spiritual teacher who liked to say that we should enjoy 200% of life, 00:10:37.760 --> 00:10:42.480 100% inner spiritual and 100% outer material, and that the two were not in conflict with 00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:46.440 one another, as some teachers have suggested. 00:10:46.440 --> 00:10:49.120 You know, you don't have to run off and live in a cave. 00:10:49.120 --> 00:10:50.640 And in fact, they complement each other. 00:10:50.640 --> 00:10:53.400 The inner can enrich the outer and does. 00:10:53.400 --> 00:10:59.640 And yet, I know people who've been meditating 40, 50 years who still have all kinds of problems, 00:10:59.640 --> 00:11:04.480 psychological relationship problems, all kinds of difficulties in their personalities. 00:11:04.480 --> 00:11:09.480 So in my experience from observation, it's not usually sufficient for most people to 00:11:09.480 --> 00:11:14.000 just rely solely on a spiritual practice of some kind. 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:19.800 really often need to supplement it with some kind of therapy or you can tell us 00:11:19.800 --> 00:11:24.600 more of the supplementary procedures but you know you need more in order to 00:11:24.600 --> 00:11:29.480 really work out all the kinks because they can be very tightly knotted and can 00:11:29.480 --> 00:11:35.000 take decades if not lifetimes to untie without some kind of skillful 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:38.880 means. Yeah I completely agree with you Rick I think that that's absolutely true 00:11:38.880 --> 00:11:43.960 and that there are so many ways for us to elevate our consciousness, expand our 00:11:43.960 --> 00:11:48.920 ourselves to work through the kinks as you say and there's many many kinks to be worked 00:11:48.920 --> 00:11:54.680 out and my idea is that as long as we are living there is more work to be done and so 00:11:54.680 --> 00:12:01.160 those kinks can as you say exist on so many different levels including karmic ties, including 00:12:01.160 --> 00:12:06.840 past lifetimes, you know, whatever people's belief is about reincarnation, about how our 00:12:06.840 --> 00:12:12.400 soul is transcendent and we've had possibly many lives and we're trying to slowly cleanse 00:12:12.400 --> 00:12:18.340 our soul of all of the layers and levels of suffering through different experiences in 00:12:18.340 --> 00:12:22.440 a way that we only can here on Earth in Earth School. 00:12:22.440 --> 00:12:25.260 So I think that what you're saying is absolutely right. 00:12:25.260 --> 00:12:29.300 And I think that it's also, as you were saying, there's so many people who are meditating 00:12:29.300 --> 00:12:31.440 and yet they still have common life problems. 00:12:31.440 --> 00:12:34.460 They might be avid meditators, meditating for 50 years. 00:12:34.460 --> 00:12:36.860 And I think meditation is an incredibly powerful tool. 00:12:36.860 --> 00:12:39.280 It's an incredibly powerful spiritual practice. 00:12:39.280 --> 00:12:43.580 But it is one tool and it will take different people to different degrees. 00:12:43.580 --> 00:12:47.040 We live in a world with so many different tools, therapy being the tool, psychedelics being 00:12:47.040 --> 00:12:53.240 the tool, a million and one types of therapies, a million and one types of meditations. 00:12:53.240 --> 00:12:57.280 And so I think it's also you see how something's working for you, you give it six months, you 00:12:57.280 --> 00:13:00.600 really commit, you give it maybe a few years, you really commit. 00:13:00.600 --> 00:13:05.900 And if there are still gaps in your own life experience between who you are and who you 00:13:05.900 --> 00:13:11.300 want to be, then you ask next, "What is my next step?" You either can ask for a 00:13:11.300 --> 00:13:15.380 suggestion from someone you love, from a friend, etc. Or you ask the universe and 00:13:15.380 --> 00:13:18.460 you open yourself up to the answer to come to you through synchronicity or 00:13:18.460 --> 00:13:23.020 through somebody or through something. So there's many different ways to pursue 00:13:23.020 --> 00:13:26.740 these really important psychological and spiritual ascension processes that 00:13:26.740 --> 00:13:31.260 you're talking about. And often for many people, it takes iterations of different 00:13:31.260 --> 00:13:32.260 processes. 00:13:32.260 --> 00:13:38.340 Yeah, and just to emphasize the point, I had three different friends who were deep, dedicated 00:13:38.340 --> 00:13:43.940 meditators for many, many years, done long courses, all kinds of stuff. 00:13:43.940 --> 00:13:48.940 They all committed suicide, two by gun, one by fire, and I know of other such cases. 00:13:48.940 --> 00:13:54.020 So I don't mean to sound morbid or something, but I just want to hammer the point that if 00:13:54.020 --> 00:13:58.540 something is troubling a person, or if you don't even know how troubled you are, but 00:13:58.540 --> 00:14:03.380 have a friend, the spiritual practice can sometimes destabilize a person. Maybe we should talk 00:14:03.380 --> 00:14:08.500 about that. If you see that happening to somebody, you need to intervene and help them in some 00:14:08.500 --> 00:14:12.420 way. Have you seen that? The spiritual practice destabilizing people? 00:14:12.420 --> 00:14:17.940 Absolutely. This could very well happen, and I've seen it in multiple, multiple settings. 00:14:17.940 --> 00:14:22.980 And moreover, as people are undergoing spiritual awakenings or spiritual ascension processes, 00:14:22.980 --> 00:14:29.240 They often, as you say, can have psychiatrically or psychologically very unstable experiences 00:14:29.240 --> 00:14:34.080 that could, for instance, lead them to go to an emergency room, be diagnosed as schizophrenic 00:14:34.080 --> 00:14:36.240 or psychotic and be put on medication. 00:14:36.240 --> 00:14:38.440 I have a close colleague, Dr. Daniel Ingram. 00:14:38.440 --> 00:14:39.840 I've interviewed Daniel, yeah. 00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:40.840 Okay, yeah. 00:14:40.840 --> 00:14:43.840 So Daniel wrote Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. 00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:50.020 He's an avid meditator himself and has himself had such experiences and his goal in life through 00:14:50.020 --> 00:14:54.620 this amazing organization that he's starting, the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium, 00:14:54.620 --> 00:15:02.180 the EPRC, to educate other physicians and practitioners about the fact that in someone's spiritual 00:15:02.180 --> 00:15:07.080 ascension process, they can have these very psychologically untoward events that could 00:15:07.080 --> 00:15:10.460 appear as psychosis, etc. 00:15:10.460 --> 00:15:16.060 And he is teaching people how to work with them without giving people diagnoses or condemning 00:15:16.060 --> 00:15:22.060 him to a lifelong medication ritual, essentially. And so his work is deeply important and very, 00:15:22.060 --> 00:15:25.980 very powerful. And I think that, you know, he is one of the leaders in this field. I've 00:15:25.980 --> 00:15:32.220 had many people come to me either with in meditation practices or after using psychedelics. And 00:15:32.220 --> 00:15:36.580 with psychedelics, there is persistent hallucinations that some people have. These are very, very 00:15:36.580 --> 00:15:44.260 real things. Spiritual awakening is not a little thing. It's a huge thing. It's a really big 00:15:44.260 --> 00:15:49.980 thing that can send your mind, body, and spirit into places that you don't know what to do 00:15:49.980 --> 00:15:54.620 with. And so it's so important to have professionals and to know that there are people like Daniel 00:15:54.620 --> 00:15:57.700 and his organization to help people through precisely that. 00:15:57.700 --> 00:16:03.100 Yeah, you know Dr. Willoughby Britton of Cheetah House in Rhode Island? She's another one. 00:16:03.100 --> 00:16:09.340 She's a professor at Brown and she has this whole organization where people who are having 00:16:09.340 --> 00:16:14.060 unpleasant or negative effects from meditation can get help. But you know, my experience on 00:16:14.060 --> 00:16:19.500 long courses, six months at a time, long meditation all day long, is that your mind-body system 00:16:19.500 --> 00:16:25.420 becomes like unmolded jello, you know, just sort of very fluid, because you're undergoing a complete 00:16:25.420 --> 00:16:30.700 restructuring of the brain, of the mind, of the whole system, and somehow things have to get a 00:16:30.700 --> 00:16:36.300 little loose before they can be restructured like jello. And it's important to come down from such 00:16:36.300 --> 00:16:41.340 an experience slowly and carefully, because if you were to leave a course like that abruptly, 00:16:41.340 --> 00:16:45.100 you could be completely out of sorts for months at a time. I speak from experience. 00:16:45.100 --> 00:16:50.620 So, I don't know why I'm going off on this tangent, but you're a psychiatrist and I just want to dwell with you. 00:16:50.620 --> 00:16:58.620 I'm so glad you are because it's a really important topic and people think meditation, it's always safe, it's always good, and it's always helpful. 00:16:58.620 --> 00:17:03.180 But as you yourself said, you have three friends who are avid meditators and yet all committed suicide. 00:17:03.180 --> 00:17:09.820 Meditation is a wonderful thing and it helps many people, but there's many different types of meditation and it could also be quite destabilizing. 00:17:09.820 --> 00:17:15.700 For instance, someone with post-traumatic stress disorder who's had a severe trauma and suddenly 00:17:15.700 --> 00:17:21.100 they're told to really focus deeply on their inner experience and they do so and it completely 00:17:21.100 --> 00:17:25.760 destabilizes them because already the symptoms of PTSD include hypervigilance when you're 00:17:25.760 --> 00:17:27.500 completely destabilized. 00:17:27.500 --> 00:17:32.380 It includes reliving of certain events over and over and here you're telling someone to 00:17:32.380 --> 00:17:35.920 focus on your inner experience to relive this potentially even more. 00:17:35.920 --> 00:17:41.320 So I think meditation, I'm so glad that there are individuals at Brown and I'm sure in many 00:17:41.320 --> 00:17:46.480 other places that deal with the untoward effects of meditation practices. 00:17:46.480 --> 00:17:50.600 And this is not just meditation, it's actually any spiritual practice where mind, body and 00:17:50.600 --> 00:17:55.440 spirit, it's also with psychedelics, it's with yoga practices, it's in churches where 00:17:55.440 --> 00:17:58.800 there's certain churches, people speak tongues, there's things that happen. 00:17:58.800 --> 00:18:03.040 Like the spiritual world, it's a beautiful world, it's an amazing expansive world and 00:18:03.040 --> 00:18:08.120 And it can also be a world where our spirits and bodies don't quite know what to do with 00:18:08.120 --> 00:18:09.120 it yet. 00:18:09.120 --> 00:18:11.840 And so, crazy things can happen and scary things can happen. 00:18:11.840 --> 00:18:13.680 And this is where we, as psychiatrists, sometimes come in. 00:18:13.680 --> 00:18:14.680 Yeah. 00:18:14.680 --> 00:18:17.160 And you were talking earlier about removing the impediments. 00:18:17.160 --> 00:18:21.920 And I'm sure you have, both in Eastern thinking and Western, there's the understanding that 00:18:21.920 --> 00:18:25.120 we have a lot of stuff bottled up inside. 00:18:25.120 --> 00:18:28.080 In the East, they call it some scars or deep impressions. 00:18:28.080 --> 00:18:32.480 In the West, you'd probably call it the unconscious or, you know, all kinds of buried traumas. 00:18:32.480 --> 00:18:38.280 And these are impediments that have to be removed, but when they are being removed, it can be 00:18:38.280 --> 00:18:44.320 quite unsettling, quite disturbing, quite scary even as stuff comes out. 00:18:44.320 --> 00:18:45.320 Absolutely. 00:18:45.320 --> 00:18:48.120 And people don't always know exactly how to remove things because for so many people, 00:18:48.120 --> 00:18:50.960 they would love to be really efficient and say, "Okay, just tell me what I need to 00:18:50.960 --> 00:18:51.960 remove. 00:18:51.960 --> 00:18:52.960 Tell me how to do it." 00:18:52.960 --> 00:18:53.960 But it's not a linear process like that. 00:18:53.960 --> 00:18:57.880 Oftentimes, you have to be in therapy for years to be able to make the unconscious conscious, 00:18:57.880 --> 00:19:02.080 to really bring it to the surface and therefore give yourself more freedom over decisions in 00:19:02.080 --> 00:19:06.760 your life. So this is a big process, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, this takes 00:19:06.760 --> 00:19:11.240 time. There are really powerful processes now, you know, especially with working 00:19:11.240 --> 00:19:16.060 with trauma, with EMDR, with somatic experiencing, with tapping, with the 00:19:16.060 --> 00:19:19.400 emotional freedom technique, these kinds of things that are able to liberate 00:19:19.400 --> 00:19:22.160 traumas from your body, but they don't work for everyone and they don't work 00:19:22.160 --> 00:19:25.520 all the time. But they're very, very powerful and I think that this is what 00:19:25.520 --> 00:19:31.320 we as society are looking for is essentially ways for people to be able to 00:19:31.320 --> 00:19:36.240 remove impediments more thoroughly and faster and in a way that isn't super 00:19:36.240 --> 00:19:39.240 threatening to people. And there's all kinds of things coming into the pipeline 00:19:39.240 --> 00:19:43.520 including digital therapeutics. Also making this kind of treatment 00:19:43.520 --> 00:19:47.000 accessible to everybody and not just to the people who can afford it, not just to 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:50.600 the people who fit certain demographic criteria, to really increasing access and 00:19:50.600 --> 00:19:55.600 equity especially for the underserved. And that also happens like digital 00:19:55.600 --> 00:20:00.920 therapeutics and the fact that we have telehealth now. COVID really changed the 00:20:00.920 --> 00:20:06.920 that mental health is practiced and so many more people now have access, but obviously 00:20:06.920 --> 00:20:10.880 it's not the same as being in a room with someone, but it also allows people who otherwise 00:20:10.880 --> 00:20:14.120 wouldn't have that access to now be able to do this important work. 00:20:14.120 --> 00:20:18.920 Yeah, and it should be obvious to everybody listening that you and I are both big proponents 00:20:18.920 --> 00:20:23.660 of meditation and spirituality and all this good stuff, but we've been around the block 00:20:23.660 --> 00:20:27.040 and we're just sort of throwing out some cautions as well. 00:20:27.040 --> 00:20:32.080 I just read an article recently about relative newbies going on a course where they're told 00:20:32.080 --> 00:20:33.880 to meditate 10 hours a day. 00:20:33.880 --> 00:20:37.280 And the casualty rate in circumstances like that can be really high. 00:20:37.280 --> 00:20:41.380 So again, I'm kind of obsessing about this right now, but I don't like the hearing of 00:20:41.380 --> 00:20:44.380 people cracking up or committing suicide or whatnot. 00:20:44.380 --> 00:20:48.120 It has to be handled very responsibly and carefully. 00:20:48.120 --> 00:20:49.120 Absolutely. 00:20:49.120 --> 00:20:52.840 And that's why this has to be done in settings where there is a lot of help available. 00:20:52.840 --> 00:20:57.000 okay if you're having people meditate for 10 hours for there to be supervision and 00:20:57.000 --> 00:20:59.920 God forbid if something does happen that there's intervention, intervention in 00:20:59.920 --> 00:21:05.220 real time. Okay so having said all that stuff I also would like to emphasize 00:21:05.220 --> 00:21:09.280 that a spiritual practice can be the greatest blessing of one's life. I mean 00:21:09.280 --> 00:21:14.480 it can enhance life beyond one's conception of what's possible. I think 00:21:14.480 --> 00:21:17.520 that that's absolutely true as well. I mean just thinking from a mental health 00:21:17.520 --> 00:21:21.120 standpoint right I'm working to start with Dr. Christopher Pittinger at Yale a 00:21:21.120 --> 00:21:23.660 a mental health and spirituality center at Yale. 00:21:23.660 --> 00:21:26.120 And that is because there is robust evidence 00:21:26.120 --> 00:21:28.600 showing that spiritual beliefs and practices 00:21:28.600 --> 00:21:30.520 actually improve mental health and wellbeing 00:21:30.520 --> 00:21:32.540 in really, really substantial ways. 00:21:32.540 --> 00:21:35.780 And this includes, to give you some examples, 00:21:35.780 --> 00:21:38.480 if you attend church services, 00:21:38.480 --> 00:21:43.120 that actually improves your quality of life with cancer, 00:21:43.120 --> 00:21:45.880 no matter how severe the cancer diagnosis. 00:21:45.880 --> 00:21:47.280 Also, you know, the Blue Zones, 00:21:47.280 --> 00:21:49.520 the Dan Buechner's work with the centenarians, 00:21:49.520 --> 00:21:50.720 the people who live until 100. 00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:52.380 - Oh, right, I was just reading about that. 00:21:52.380 --> 00:21:53.220 - It's so fascinating, 00:21:53.220 --> 00:21:54.100 I was just reading this the other day, 00:21:54.100 --> 00:21:57.980 and having a spiritual place to go, 00:21:57.980 --> 00:22:00.620 like a faith, a reservoir, like a church, 00:22:00.620 --> 00:22:03.020 to go once a week, it doesn't matter what your denomination, 00:22:03.020 --> 00:22:08.020 but once a week adds four to 14 years to one's life. 00:22:08.020 --> 00:22:11.100 So this is among the people who live to 100. 00:22:11.100 --> 00:22:15.260 And tons of other data for addiction, 00:22:15.260 --> 00:22:19.180 the number one robust predictor of sustained remission 00:22:19.180 --> 00:22:23.660 from alcoholism is actually having had a spiritual awakening. And the two places in medicine 00:22:23.660 --> 00:22:27.660 where a spiritually based model is the medical standard of care is addiction treatment because 00:22:27.660 --> 00:22:33.980 in AA it's a spiritually based model and also in end of life care, which obviously as people 00:22:33.980 --> 00:22:38.260 cross over, they're going to be more spiritual, but in the rest of medicine, that's really 00:22:38.260 --> 00:22:42.940 not the case. So we'd like to bring more of that in. And with suicide, the most interesting 00:22:42.940 --> 00:22:47.980 thing we're talking about suicide. Now this is really important because weekly church attendance 00:22:47.980 --> 00:22:55.500 lower suicide by five times in cohorts of hundreds and thousands of people followed over 20 years. 00:22:55.500 --> 00:23:01.020 And this is a Harvard study that's been done and repeated. And you ask, why is that? Why 00:23:01.020 --> 00:23:04.620 does church attendance reduce suicidality? Is it because they have community, they have 00:23:04.620 --> 00:23:09.100 affiliation, they have positive beliefs about healthy living, they have someone to, if they 00:23:09.100 --> 00:23:13.340 do feel suicidal, to talk to? And it actually turns out it's none of those things. It's 00:23:13.340 --> 00:23:17.580 that going to church actually creates for you a moral prohibition against suicide that makes 00:23:17.580 --> 00:23:22.220 people not commit suicide, which is very interesting. So, at the end of the day, suicide is really 00:23:22.220 --> 00:23:27.180 the failure of my profession. When people commit suicide, our profession has failed. So, whatever 00:23:27.180 --> 00:23:30.300 the mechanism, even if this does create a moral prohibition, we don't want people living 00:23:30.300 --> 00:23:34.080 in fear, but we also don't want people committing suicide. Maybe it's better people live in 00:23:34.080 --> 00:23:37.980 fear than to commit suicide. So, it's a very interesting study. 00:23:37.980 --> 00:23:42.900 Yeah. I think there are probably better motivators than fear for not committing suicide. 00:23:42.900 --> 00:23:43.900 Absolutely. 00:23:43.900 --> 00:23:51.900 Just a real clear sense of what a precious gift this life is and how much progress one can make spiritually in this life by staying in it. 00:23:51.900 --> 00:23:52.900 Being alive. 00:23:52.900 --> 00:23:56.900 Yeah, grab all the gusto you can get. It's a precious opportunity. 00:23:56.900 --> 00:24:07.900 Okay, so what you said about addictions and end-of-life fears reminded me of psychedelics, of course, because, you know, that fellow at Johns Hopkins whose name eludes me at the moment, you would have it on the tip of your tongue. 00:24:07.900 --> 00:24:08.900 Roland Griffith. 00:24:08.900 --> 00:24:14.300 That's it, yes, and who I guess himself either died recently or soon will. 00:24:14.300 --> 00:24:15.300 Already passed away, yeah. 00:24:15.300 --> 00:24:19.240 Yeah, I saw an interview with him when he realized he had terminal cancer and he was about the 00:24:19.240 --> 00:24:21.420 happiest guy you'd ever meet. 00:24:21.420 --> 00:24:24.020 Just totally blissful, not worried at all. 00:24:24.020 --> 00:24:30.060 And that was also the effect on many of his subjects in his studies who for the first time 00:24:30.060 --> 00:24:35.020 in their lives had a profound mystical experience and completely erratic. 00:24:35.020 --> 00:24:37.780 You tell the story, I'm talking too much, you know all this. 00:24:37.780 --> 00:24:40.220 - Yeah, I'm not sure the story that you're gonna tell, 00:24:40.220 --> 00:24:43.540 but a Roland Griffiths work is so incredibly important 00:24:43.540 --> 00:24:46.860 because he also was one of the psychedelics pioneers 00:24:46.860 --> 00:24:48.620 that actually reintroduced psychedelics 00:24:48.620 --> 00:24:51.260 into our academic setting for research purposes. 00:24:51.260 --> 00:24:53.000 Psychedelics were studied, then they weren't, 00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:55.500 and then it's Roland Griffiths work that opened that up. 00:24:55.500 --> 00:24:58.820 And he got the emergency designation 00:24:58.820 --> 00:25:00.900 by virtue of it being this breakthrough drug, 00:25:00.900 --> 00:25:04.100 psilocybin being a breakthrough drug for depression, 00:25:04.100 --> 00:25:05.840 which is an amazing thing. 00:25:05.840 --> 00:25:10.940 And it also, what he showed was he worked with religious leaders and people had fascinating 00:25:10.940 --> 00:25:15.540 experiences that deepened their spiritual practices with these medications. 00:25:15.540 --> 00:25:18.040 And he also worked with people at the end of life. 00:25:18.040 --> 00:25:23.200 And for some of these people, their experience with the psilocybin at the end of life, where 00:25:23.200 --> 00:25:26.840 many people are not like Roland Griffith, but are actually very fearful of death, their 00:25:26.840 --> 00:25:28.520 fear of death went away. 00:25:28.520 --> 00:25:32.320 And they described it as among the most powerful experience of their whole life. 00:25:32.320 --> 00:25:33.320 Some of them did. 00:25:33.320 --> 00:25:35.800 So yeah, Roland Griffith was an amazing pioneer. 00:25:35.800 --> 00:25:37.400 He really put psychedelics on the map, 00:25:37.400 --> 00:25:40.720 and so we're very grateful for his incredible contribution. 00:25:40.720 --> 00:25:43.080 - Yeah, and of course, your death experiences 00:25:43.080 --> 00:25:44.880 eradicate the fear of death too, 00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:47.000 'cause you realize that you don't die. 00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:47.960 - Exactly. 00:25:47.960 --> 00:25:51.600 - I read your book, which you wrote, I think, in 2017. 00:25:51.600 --> 00:25:53.800 At that point, you didn't mention psychedelics at all. 00:25:53.800 --> 00:25:56.600 So is that something that you got into 00:25:56.600 --> 00:26:00.160 either personally and/or professionally since then, 00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:01.520 or had you been sort of doing it 00:26:01.520 --> 00:26:03.520 but didn't want to bring it out in the book. 00:26:03.520 --> 00:26:05.500 - I had been aware of psychedelics 00:26:05.500 --> 00:26:08.300 and I had had many patients who've had those experiences, 00:26:08.300 --> 00:26:11.100 but they hadn't yet come into the forefront in the same way. 00:26:11.100 --> 00:26:12.640 I'll actually tell you an interesting story. 00:26:12.640 --> 00:26:15.740 So I wrote my book in 2017 and it was at that time, 00:26:15.740 --> 00:26:17.600 I wasn't on faculty at Yale at the time, 00:26:17.600 --> 00:26:20.820 I actually very deliberately chose not to be on faculty 00:26:20.820 --> 00:26:23.100 in order to be able to do my own thing, 00:26:23.100 --> 00:26:26.740 to think for myself, to just not feel in any way encumbered, 00:26:26.740 --> 00:26:28.260 to be able to put forth ideas 00:26:28.260 --> 00:26:30.460 that could be considered a little woo-woo, et cetera. 00:26:30.460 --> 00:26:32.400 So I wrote my book and there was a fear in me 00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:34.020 by virtue of having really written a book 00:26:34.020 --> 00:26:36.120 that was authentic and true to me. 00:26:36.120 --> 00:26:37.460 What if I do get discredited? 00:26:37.460 --> 00:26:38.700 What if this is too woo-woo 00:26:38.700 --> 00:26:41.580 and suddenly my license and my profession goes? 00:26:41.580 --> 00:26:43.420 And thank goodness that actually wasn't the case. 00:26:43.420 --> 00:26:45.580 And as I was presenting the book at Yale, 00:26:45.580 --> 00:26:48.180 Bob Rohrbach, who was associate chair at the time, 00:26:48.180 --> 00:26:50.100 invited me, he was a professor who, 00:26:50.100 --> 00:26:52.740 when I was a medical student at Yale, I was very close to, 00:26:52.740 --> 00:26:55.540 invited me to come back on Yale as clinical faculty. 00:26:55.540 --> 00:26:58.920 And that's when we started to talk about this center, 00:26:58.920 --> 00:27:00.800 the Yale Mental Health and Spirituality Center. 00:27:00.800 --> 00:27:02.840 That was in 2017. 00:27:02.840 --> 00:27:04.440 And I knocked on a few doors, 00:27:04.440 --> 00:27:06.960 and it was so clear that it was not the time for the center. 00:27:06.960 --> 00:27:09.000 The department was not ready, just wasn't the time. 00:27:09.000 --> 00:27:11.540 So then I continued with my life, 00:27:11.540 --> 00:27:13.120 and like about two years ago, 00:27:13.120 --> 00:27:15.820 was sitting in a Joe Dispenza meditation, 00:27:15.820 --> 00:27:17.080 and I hear this voice. 00:27:17.080 --> 00:27:18.760 And the voice says, "The time for your center is now. 00:27:18.760 --> 00:27:20.100 "Go knock on the doors again." 00:27:20.100 --> 00:27:22.200 And I said, "Okay, well, that's interesting." 00:27:22.200 --> 00:27:23.840 So I went to knock on the doors again, 00:27:23.840 --> 00:27:25.780 and this time the doors swung wide open. 00:27:25.780 --> 00:27:27.240 John Crystal, the head of psychiatry, 00:27:27.240 --> 00:27:28.760 said this is a very important idea. 00:27:28.760 --> 00:27:30.920 I call the meeting with some of the other psychiatrists 00:27:30.920 --> 00:27:32.440 and Dr. Christopher Pittenger, 00:27:32.440 --> 00:27:33.940 who's an associate chair of psychiatrists, 00:27:33.940 --> 00:27:36.320 comes on to co-found the center with me. 00:27:36.320 --> 00:27:38.880 And he's been this amazing source of support 00:27:38.880 --> 00:27:42.480 and also is himself a deeply spiritual person. 00:27:42.480 --> 00:27:46.080 But what happened in between 2017 and 2022, right? 00:27:46.080 --> 00:27:47.980 What happened in those five years 00:27:47.980 --> 00:27:50.080 that it wasn't the time for the center and suddenly it was? 00:27:50.080 --> 00:27:51.960 And this is a mental health and spirituality center. 00:27:51.960 --> 00:27:53.840 I think what happened was psychedelics. 00:27:53.840 --> 00:27:55.400 Psychedelics came on the picture. 00:27:55.400 --> 00:27:57.600 Psychedelics started to penetrate our culture 00:27:57.600 --> 00:28:01.440 our society and our mental health world in a way they never had before. 00:28:01.440 --> 00:28:06.520 And psychedelics, as I see it, don't just offer a novel biological mechanism to treat some 00:28:06.520 --> 00:28:09.440 of the most treatment-resistant psychiatric conditions. 00:28:09.440 --> 00:28:12.800 What they also offer for many is a connection to spirit. 00:28:12.800 --> 00:28:17.120 And suddenly we have a modality of treatment that is very biologically based but also has 00:28:17.120 --> 00:28:18.600 a spiritual component. 00:28:18.600 --> 00:28:22.880 And that's why I think Yale was open to starting this Mental Health and Spirituality Center 00:28:22.880 --> 00:28:26.680 in 2022 and that it wasn't the time five years prior. 00:28:26.680 --> 00:28:33.760 Do you see psychedelics as something that one could potentially do a somewhat regular basis, 00:28:33.760 --> 00:28:38.240 I don't know what the frequency would be, as an ongoing spiritual practice or do you 00:28:38.240 --> 00:28:43.920 think it's more of a kickstart thing where you get a deep glimpse that the world is much 00:28:43.920 --> 00:28:49.880 more than meets the eye and then you get into something more natural and non-chemical as 00:28:49.880 --> 00:28:51.160 a long-term strategy? 00:28:51.160 --> 00:28:56.160 You know, I think both are wonderful options and it really depends on the person. 00:28:56.160 --> 00:29:00.760 And I know lots of people follow who have had either psychedelics jumpstart their experience 00:29:00.760 --> 00:29:05.320 or for whom psychedelics are a really vital important part of their spiritual and psychological 00:29:05.320 --> 00:29:06.320 path. 00:29:06.320 --> 00:29:09.160 And so I'll tell you a little bit about both. 00:29:09.160 --> 00:29:13.080 Psychedelics they're wonderful tools but they are a biological substrate and they can be 00:29:13.080 --> 00:29:16.640 taxing on the body and you can have withdrawal, you can have side effects, etc. 00:29:16.640 --> 00:29:21.800 So yes, if you can do this naturally through meditation, through other sorts of practices, 00:29:21.800 --> 00:29:23.320 through breath work, etc. 00:29:23.320 --> 00:29:26.000 What a beautiful thing that you don't have to tax your body in that way. 00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:30.840 And yet, not all of us can reach those same heights or have those same experiences through 00:29:30.840 --> 00:29:32.840 meditation and breathwork for whatever reason. 00:29:32.840 --> 00:29:36.680 It's just the way that we're wired constitutionally, psychologically, spiritually, etc. 00:29:36.680 --> 00:29:38.240 Some people can and others can't. 00:29:38.240 --> 00:29:41.880 Now with psychedelics, can everybody use psychedelics? 00:29:41.880 --> 00:29:44.200 Unfortunately, they're not safe for everybody. 00:29:44.200 --> 00:29:47.200 And there are certain people for whom they're unfortunately not safe. 00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:50.640 And I've certainly had people who have used psychedelics and then become psychotic and 00:29:50.640 --> 00:29:55.180 for whom that was like the opening to a diagnosis of schizophrenia that did become lifelong. 00:29:55.180 --> 00:29:57.020 So those are very, very real things. 00:29:57.020 --> 00:30:00.700 So unfortunately, psychedelics are not an option for everybody. 00:30:00.700 --> 00:30:03.300 And also, let's be clear, there's many different psychedelics. 00:30:03.300 --> 00:30:05.180 One might not be an option, another might be. 00:30:05.180 --> 00:30:10.260 And so you have to also evaluate on a case-by-case basis with the person at hand what is right, 00:30:10.260 --> 00:30:11.260 what isn't. 00:30:11.260 --> 00:30:14.780 And you know, I've had people come to me with a lot of risk factors and say, "You know what? 00:30:14.780 --> 00:30:15.900 I have a lot of risk factors. 00:30:15.900 --> 00:30:19.820 This could be really bad, but I also don't have any other tools and I've tried meditating 00:30:19.820 --> 00:30:20.820 my whole life. 00:30:20.820 --> 00:30:21.980 I really need that jumpstart. 00:30:21.980 --> 00:30:26.940 Can we think together how I could safely have a psychedelic experience in order to see if 00:30:26.940 --> 00:30:29.000 I could move the needle in my spiritual path? 00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:30.740 So I work with people in those ways too. 00:30:30.740 --> 00:30:32.100 And that's an important question. 00:30:32.100 --> 00:30:35.700 It's a very, I think, fair and honest question. 00:30:35.700 --> 00:30:41.100 There's these very powerful spiritual tools and I haven't been able to reach what I really 00:30:41.100 --> 00:30:42.900 want to reach in other ways. 00:30:42.900 --> 00:30:45.340 Can I try that and how can I do so safely? 00:30:45.340 --> 00:30:49.620 So I think it really depends on the case and I think both of the things that you mentioned, 00:30:49.620 --> 00:30:55.520 either a sustained path for the right person or a one-time jumpstart followed by a more 00:30:55.520 --> 00:30:57.540 natural process are both wonderful things. 00:30:57.540 --> 00:31:02.780 Have you noticed or observed that those who do psychedelics regularly, like every weekend 00:31:02.780 --> 00:31:08.140 or something for a period of time, have you noticed any deleterious influence on their 00:31:08.140 --> 00:31:14.380 personality? Does it make them kind of more unstable, more obsessive, more ungrounded, 00:31:14.380 --> 00:31:15.460 anything like that? 00:31:15.460 --> 00:31:19.460 I don't think that there's that many people in my sphere who've had those experiences. 00:31:19.460 --> 00:31:25.940 I do have people who will do ketamine with a provider on a relatively regular basis for 00:31:25.940 --> 00:31:30.300 treatment-resistant depression or other related conditions, and ketamine is a psychedelic-like 00:31:30.300 --> 00:31:31.300 substance, certainly. 00:31:31.300 --> 00:31:37.020 And no, on the contrary, for the people for whom it works, it helps them a lot and actually 00:31:37.020 --> 00:31:40.620 helps their mood, helps their stability, helps their energy. 00:31:40.620 --> 00:31:44.740 And I've had certain patients who've already been doing it in this way for years. 00:31:44.740 --> 00:31:48.940 And when I say for years, maybe once every two weeks, once a month as they need it as 00:31:48.940 --> 00:31:50.020 maintenance. 00:31:50.020 --> 00:31:51.460 So that's one. 00:31:51.460 --> 00:31:57.060 Then there are a lot of people that I know that have occasional psychedelic journeys, 00:31:57.060 --> 00:32:02.180 whether it be with psilocybin, whether it be with ayahuasca, and they have it at times 00:32:02.180 --> 00:32:04.980 of breakthrough when they need answers to important life questions. 00:32:04.980 --> 00:32:08.740 This could be once a year, once every three months, whatever people need. 00:32:08.740 --> 00:32:13.420 And sometimes it's more closely condensed when they feel as though they really, really 00:32:13.420 --> 00:32:18.620 need this breakthrough and there also are people who want to become ayahuasca coronaderas, 00:32:18.620 --> 00:32:23.420 they want to serve ayahuasca and that's a very, depending on who you train with, you 00:32:23.420 --> 00:32:28.700 sometimes have to go and drink ayahuasca every day for X amount of time, for a month or every 00:32:28.700 --> 00:32:30.460 few days for a few months. 00:32:30.460 --> 00:32:35.460 So there are these training rituals and I know people who have undergone that path very successfully 00:32:35.460 --> 00:32:39.060 and it's changed their life and they've actually become people who now serve ayahuasca. 00:32:39.060 --> 00:32:41.540 So it really depends. 00:32:41.540 --> 00:32:44.980 I don't have any horror stories of it in my practice and from who I know. 00:32:44.980 --> 00:32:45.980 Okay, that's good. 00:32:45.980 --> 00:32:52.900 Do you think that it would be good if these psychedelics, psilocybin, ayahuasca, etc. were 00:32:52.900 --> 00:32:53.900 legalized nationwide? 00:32:53.900 --> 00:32:59.700 Or do you think that would be too unregulated and potentially dangerous? 00:32:59.700 --> 00:33:03.260 The whole idea of the legalization is that in many ways it would be more regulated. 00:33:03.260 --> 00:33:07.220 We'd be able to have it more regulated and it really depends on the nature of the legalization. 00:33:07.220 --> 00:33:11.400 So what we're having with the MDMA is going to be a federal legalization process. 00:33:11.400 --> 00:33:16.060 And the way that, you know, this is Rick Doblin's work, being able to have this very, very potent, 00:33:16.060 --> 00:33:20.880 powerful heart opener MDMA to be used as a trauma treatment. 00:33:20.880 --> 00:33:23.620 But it's not something that you're going to be able to do at your own home. 00:33:23.620 --> 00:33:27.560 It's something that you could do in an office with two trained practitioners specifically 00:33:27.560 --> 00:33:29.220 to work on your trauma. 00:33:29.220 --> 00:33:30.700 And this has been Rick Doblin's life work. 00:33:30.700 --> 00:33:36.340 So it's hopeful that by the end of this year, early next year, there will be that FDA approval, 00:33:36.340 --> 00:33:40.940 willing. And now with psilocybin, it's more at the state level and there are states where 00:33:40.940 --> 00:33:45.180 it's decriminalized and where people are able to do that and there's many states where it's 00:33:45.180 --> 00:33:51.340 not. And cannabis is another example. The legality of cannabis changes over time. And 00:33:51.340 --> 00:33:55.500 since cannabis has become more legal, has cannabis abuse and addiction gone up? I don't 00:33:55.500 --> 00:33:59.420 believe that that's the case. I actually believe once things become legalized, you have more 00:33:59.420 --> 00:34:02.660 controls in place because you're able to do things at the level of control and there isn't 00:34:02.660 --> 00:34:04.420 so much of an underground market. 00:34:04.420 --> 00:34:09.620 Okay, good. I sometimes think that we actually need widespread use of psychedelics, even though 00:34:09.620 --> 00:34:15.540 I haven't used them since the 60s, just because society needs a good swift kick in the pants. I 00:34:15.540 --> 00:34:20.900 mean, meditation is too subtle for most people, or too slow, or something. They need to have an 00:34:20.900 --> 00:34:26.100 eye-opener, and then maybe collectively even we'll settle into something more natural after 00:34:26.100 --> 00:34:28.020 we've seen a vision of possibilities. 00:34:28.660 --> 00:34:33.380 Personally, I agree with you and I think that it would be a beautiful thing for more people 00:34:33.380 --> 00:34:37.980 to have those experiences that show them what is possible in life, those awakening experiences, 00:34:37.980 --> 00:34:42.980 whether through psychedelics or through meditation, breath work, etc. 00:34:42.980 --> 00:34:47.500 So many practices, like if this was something that was a natural part of our culture, that 00:34:47.500 --> 00:34:51.100 we offered people those experiences and that was part of mental health care. 00:34:51.100 --> 00:34:56.740 This is part of what I'm doing is our model currently of psychiatry is a very mind and 00:34:56.740 --> 00:35:02.420 brain-focused model with two primary modalities, psychotherapy and psychopharmacology, right? 00:35:02.420 --> 00:35:04.980 Psychopharmacology treats the brain, psychotherapy treats the mind. 00:35:04.980 --> 00:35:08.460 There's many psychotherapies, some of them treat the body as well, somatic therapies. 00:35:08.460 --> 00:35:13.700 What often is missed is the body and the spirit in the mind-body-spirit model of a whole person 00:35:13.700 --> 00:35:19.260 and this is what my work is, is to bring the body and the spirit back into psychiatry and 00:35:19.260 --> 00:35:24.060 so to help people have these spiritual awakenings and connect with the spiritual part of themselves 00:35:24.060 --> 00:35:28.740 And then with the body, it means many different things, including the food is medicine movement, 00:35:28.740 --> 00:35:32.940 nutritional psychiatry, healthy sexuality and pleasure, longevity and fertility, exercise 00:35:32.940 --> 00:35:36.940 psychology, connecting to nature, all of those things that are so vital to mental health 00:35:36.940 --> 00:35:39.940 but often overlooked in traditional psychiatry. 00:35:39.940 --> 00:35:43.180 It's a good sign that you're talking about this stuff and doing this stuff because you 00:35:43.180 --> 00:35:46.900 hear stories about how doctors go through medical school and psychiatrists go through 00:35:46.900 --> 00:35:51.500 their training and they never hear about these things and maybe they get a, doctors get a 00:35:51.500 --> 00:35:57.100 half-hour lecture on nutrition or something. I remember lecturing on meditation to a group of 00:35:57.100 --> 00:36:02.940 doctors in Orange County, New York, I think it was back in about 1973. And I was showing some 00:36:02.940 --> 00:36:07.180 scientific charts about reduced metabolic rate and lower blood pressure and this and that. 00:36:07.180 --> 00:36:11.340 And pretty much everybody in the room started screaming at me because they thought it was just 00:36:11.340 --> 00:36:16.940 this bogus, hocus-pocus nonsense. They had a huge slab of meat on the table that they were eating 00:36:16.940 --> 00:36:20.300 and they're drinking and this and that. Finally, like at the end of the whole thing, I was a little 00:36:20.300 --> 00:36:24.740 shell-shocked and a very sweet Indian doctor came up to me and said, "I'm so sorry about 00:36:24.740 --> 00:36:28.020 my colleagues, you know, they just don't understand this stuff and, you know, what you're doing 00:36:28.020 --> 00:36:33.100 is..." but it seems like it's become a long way since then. It's getting much more mainstream. 00:36:33.100 --> 00:36:37.860 Absolutely, absolutely. Completely agree. Yes, and thank goodness for that. 00:36:37.860 --> 00:36:40.540 So tell us more about what you're doing up at Yale. 00:36:40.540 --> 00:36:44.700 We are creating a mental health and spirituality center. It's not a center yet. It'll be a center 00:36:44.700 --> 00:36:49.580 when we have the $25 million charitable contribution. We need to create a center, but we're certainly 00:36:49.580 --> 00:36:54.220 creating the infrastructure for the center now. And what it's going to be is research, 00:36:54.220 --> 00:36:59.140 clinical work, and education around this area of mental health and spirituality. Our top 00:36:59.140 --> 00:37:02.660 three research projects that we have are going to be, I mean, we're going to have many research 00:37:02.660 --> 00:37:06.580 projects. There's so many subjects at that interface, but the top three, the first three 00:37:06.580 --> 00:37:13.020 that we have are with Dr. Al Powers. He's actually a schizophrenia researcher and he studies voice 00:37:13.020 --> 00:37:18.180 hearers. He studies what? Voice hearers, individuals who hear voices, but there's another group 00:37:18.180 --> 00:37:23.580 of people who hear voices who are not plagued with schizophrenia and actually are individuals 00:37:23.580 --> 00:37:27.500 who have much more control over these voices and can use them in the service of humanity. 00:37:27.500 --> 00:37:29.700 So this is your psychics and intuitives. 00:37:29.700 --> 00:37:31.940 People like Edgar Cayce or whoever. 00:37:31.940 --> 00:37:32.940 Exactly. 00:37:32.940 --> 00:37:37.140 And so Al's work thus far has been using the psychics and schizophrenics as the control 00:37:37.140 --> 00:37:42.220 group but what we're going to do with Al is be able to use them actually as the experimental 00:37:42.220 --> 00:37:44.940 group and learn more about the processes of voice hearing. 00:37:44.940 --> 00:37:50.580 clairaudience, clairsentience, clairvoyance, claircognizance, all the different ways of receiving 00:37:50.580 --> 00:37:54.700 intuitive information. So that's going to be one of the first projects. Then we're going 00:37:54.700 --> 00:37:59.780 to be studying the spiritual side of psychedelic use because Yale is a very neurobiological 00:37:59.780 --> 00:38:06.140 institution. Neuroscience is at a premium there and everybody's studying what the biology 00:38:06.140 --> 00:38:10.220 and neurobiology is, but nobody there is studying at present the spiritual side. So we're going 00:38:10.220 --> 00:38:14.340 to be able to bring that in with Dr. Pittengerm. And then the third project is with Dr. Mark 00:38:14.340 --> 00:38:21.700 Potenza and Lisa Miller at Columbia. She runs the Columbia Spirituality Mind Brain Institute. 00:38:21.700 --> 00:38:26.140 This is going to be looking at the neural correlates of spiritual experiences. So where exactly 00:38:26.140 --> 00:38:29.540 in the brain does spirituality reside? And there's going to be so much more work. We 00:38:29.540 --> 00:38:34.100 want to also do work with energy healing for cancer. There's a ton of other projects, but 00:38:34.100 --> 00:38:38.160 these will be the first. And eventually all of this work will lead to improvements in 00:38:38.160 --> 00:38:42.680 clinical care, educational opportunities, getting an endowed chair, like really creating 00:38:42.680 --> 00:38:45.960 and making this a key part of the fabric at Yale. 00:38:45.960 --> 00:38:50.080 Do you think spirituality resides somewhere specifically in the brain? 00:38:50.080 --> 00:38:54.480 You referenced Jill Bolte-Taylor in your book and I've interviewed her and she has this 00:38:54.480 --> 00:39:00.760 whole brain living book and she talks about a fully developed personality as being a flourishing 00:39:00.760 --> 00:39:03.960 of four major areas of the brain. 00:39:03.960 --> 00:39:07.720 So do you think it's a whole brain development as opposed to like some little part of the 00:39:07.720 --> 00:39:09.040 brain waking up? 00:39:09.040 --> 00:39:10.040 Absolutely. 00:39:10.040 --> 00:39:11.640 I mean this is mind versus brain, right? 00:39:11.640 --> 00:39:15.140 And like, what really is spirituality and how do you define spirituality and where does 00:39:15.140 --> 00:39:16.140 it reside? 00:39:16.140 --> 00:39:17.140 These are beautiful questions. 00:39:17.140 --> 00:39:18.140 Yeah, how do you define it? 00:39:18.140 --> 00:39:19.140 So there's many different definitions. 00:39:19.140 --> 00:39:24.140 I often define it as a connection to something greater than oneself, which could be for some 00:39:24.140 --> 00:39:28.820 people to God or a collective consciousness or even a set of transcendent values like 00:39:28.820 --> 00:39:30.980 hope, love, trust, and perseverance. 00:39:30.980 --> 00:39:34.620 Or it could be a connection to Mother Nature, whatever is greater than oneself. 00:39:34.620 --> 00:39:39.220 And oftentimes, that greater than oneself is indeed transcendent and beyond the self, 00:39:39.220 --> 00:39:45.940 but it can also be intimately inner and deeply personal and subjective as well. But whatever 00:39:45.940 --> 00:39:51.140 that beyond the self is, it's often concerned with questions of purpose, meaning, and values. 00:39:51.140 --> 00:39:56.260 So this is a combination of my own definition, also the definition of British professor of 00:39:56.260 --> 00:40:00.740 theology Christopher Cook. So I combine those, my favorite definition of spirituality. 00:40:00.740 --> 00:40:08.260 So spirituality and mental health. I think of someone like the great spiritual giants of history, 00:40:08.260 --> 00:40:14.700 Buddha or Jesus or people like that as being the fully mentally healthy people and the rest of us are like 00:40:14.700 --> 00:40:17.900 unhealthy to varying degrees by comparison if 00:40:17.900 --> 00:40:23.940 The goal of human life is to grow to higher and higher levels of spiritual development 00:40:23.940 --> 00:40:30.840 Then we're all sort of subnormal or abnormal or something until we have reached that full spiritual development 00:40:30.840 --> 00:40:35.920 Which is not to say we should just put life on hold until we reach it because living life is part of reaching it 00:40:35.920 --> 00:40:39.360 I love that perspective. I would personally agree with that perspective. I think it's 00:40:39.360 --> 00:40:42.600 a beautiful perspective that we can all strive to be like the Buddha. We can all strive for 00:40:42.600 --> 00:40:46.640 enlightenment. We can all strive to remove our samskaras, to work through our impediments, 00:40:46.640 --> 00:40:50.840 to be the best version of ourself. And how many people actually do that, right? If that's 00:40:50.840 --> 00:40:55.760 normal, you know, probably normal is much more who we are and it's a state of relative 00:40:55.760 --> 00:41:02.040 suffering punctuated by pleasure and punctuated by goodness and hopefully as many positive 00:41:02.040 --> 00:41:07.000 experiences to counterbalance some of the suffering and the challenges that we face. 00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:11.160 And you know, it's kind of the question of what is the purpose of life and why are we 00:41:11.160 --> 00:41:12.560 actually here? 00:41:12.560 --> 00:41:17.440 And they ask that question oftentimes and you know, the Plato and Aristotle, one answer 00:41:17.440 --> 00:41:22.160 was to live a very purposeful existence and the other answer is to be happy. 00:41:22.160 --> 00:41:23.760 And so what does it mean to be happy? 00:41:23.760 --> 00:41:27.840 Does that mean to maximize pleasure and minimize pain? 00:41:27.840 --> 00:41:32.920 Sure, we'd all love to do that if we can, but there's another definition of happiness and 00:41:32.920 --> 00:41:37.200 that is working through and committing to the best possible life that you can even with 00:41:37.200 --> 00:41:42.080 the challenges, even with the pain, because there's something very meaningful and purposeful 00:41:42.080 --> 00:41:47.040 in overcoming and really aligning with your best self, really aligning with the best life, 00:41:47.040 --> 00:41:49.080 a combination of both purpose and happiness. 00:41:49.080 --> 00:41:52.320 Yeah, I just picked up on the phrase, "How many people really do that?" 00:41:52.320 --> 00:41:58.240 I think that perhaps in our society today it's a tiny fraction, but I could envision a society 00:41:58.240 --> 00:42:03.920 in which a fairly significant percentage of people had done that, and imagine the transformation 00:42:03.920 --> 00:42:07.560 that would bring about in terms of the world at large. 00:42:07.560 --> 00:42:13.160 Our technologies, our environment, our social systems, our economies, all those things, 00:42:13.160 --> 00:42:17.720 which are I think always a reflection of the mentality of all the people who make up the 00:42:17.720 --> 00:42:22.720 the world, but imagine if that mentality were highly enlightened for the most part, what 00:42:22.720 --> 00:42:23.720 kind of world we might have. 00:42:23.720 --> 00:42:24.720 Absolutely. 00:42:24.720 --> 00:42:28.280 I think that would be the most beautiful thing and there are many individuals who, like David 00:42:28.280 --> 00:42:32.280 Hawkins, you know, he wrote Power Versus Force and they have books about the avatars of our 00:42:32.280 --> 00:42:36.960 world and that actually, we don't need everybody to be at that level, we just need a few people 00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:40.560 to be at that level and carry the rest of us because when people are very high consciousness, 00:42:40.560 --> 00:42:42.040 it permeates the rest of the world. 00:42:42.040 --> 00:42:44.280 The same, unfortunately, when people are very low consciousness. 00:42:44.280 --> 00:42:47.000 So that's, you know, one part of it. 00:42:47.000 --> 00:42:49.960 And then, you know, there's the Maharishi effect when there are a number of people meditating 00:42:49.960 --> 00:42:53.760 together that also reduces crime in a city, elevates consciousness. 00:42:53.760 --> 00:42:56.740 So there's beautiful things that we can collectively do. 00:42:56.740 --> 00:42:58.600 And of course, each of us has our own purpose. 00:42:58.600 --> 00:43:02.760 And also each of us has our own sort of destiny and what is possible for us. 00:43:02.760 --> 00:43:06.720 You know, not everyone could be the Buddha, even if they did everything within their power 00:43:06.720 --> 00:43:07.720 to be it. 00:43:07.720 --> 00:43:11.800 Even if they meditated all the time, did all the practices that the Buddha did, use psychedelics 00:43:11.800 --> 00:43:13.560 when they needed to, had the best therapist. 00:43:13.560 --> 00:43:19.120 I feel like our life course and our destiny is on some level, you know, like we can affect 00:43:19.120 --> 00:43:22.400 it, there's free will for sure, but not everyone can be the Buddha. 00:43:22.400 --> 00:43:28.080 No, nor would we have a normal world if everyone were because he was a specialist in what he 00:43:28.080 --> 00:43:29.080 did. 00:43:29.080 --> 00:43:34.720 But, you know, we also need enlightened doctors and garbage truck drivers and whatever else 00:43:34.720 --> 00:43:38.320 people need to do in the world to make it run. 00:43:38.320 --> 00:43:39.320 Exactly. 00:43:39.320 --> 00:43:43.920 One thing that concerns me is, you know, you can reflect on societies like, you know, Nazi 00:43:43.920 --> 00:43:49.360 Germany or China under Chairman Mao or various other societies like that where it seems like 00:43:49.360 --> 00:43:55.060 a large percentage of the population has just gone mad and horrible things happen. 00:43:55.060 --> 00:43:59.600 And I'm somewhat concerned about something similar to that happening in the US. 00:43:59.600 --> 00:44:06.600 Do you ever think of that in terms of the mass psychology of nations and how spirituality 00:44:06.600 --> 00:44:10.920 could somewhat ameliorate that trend. 00:44:10.920 --> 00:44:14.720 Unfortunately right now we have a time in our society with the greatest polarization 00:44:14.720 --> 00:44:15.920 we've ever had. 00:44:15.920 --> 00:44:19.280 People don't know who to trust, we don't know what is true, what's not true, there's 00:44:19.280 --> 00:44:21.880 so much fake news, there's so much misinformation. 00:44:21.880 --> 00:44:27.720 There are two opposing sides with intelligent people on both sides with completely different 00:44:27.720 --> 00:44:29.600 essentially facets of reality. 00:44:29.600 --> 00:44:31.600 You wouldn't think that we were living in the same world. 00:44:31.600 --> 00:44:35.400 They're looking at completely different data to understand what's happening, to understand 00:44:35.400 --> 00:44:38.940 the COVID vaccine, is it helping us or is it actually hurting us or is it a combination 00:44:38.940 --> 00:44:43.120 of both? And it's a very, very concerning, difficult place that I don't think our nation 00:44:43.120 --> 00:44:48.440 has ever been before. And this is in a way, when you don't know who to trust, when you 00:44:48.440 --> 00:44:53.760 don't know what's true, how do you make your decisions? And is going crazy just a part of 00:44:53.760 --> 00:44:58.120 that? Are we all going a little bit collectively crazy? And how do we get out of this? How do 00:44:58.120 --> 00:45:04.200 we recognize what is true? How do we go back to starting to be able to trust authority or 00:45:04.200 --> 00:45:09.160 to at least have our own authority to know what the facts are. I think what you're talking 00:45:09.160 --> 00:45:15.920 about with people going collectively crazy, I think that fascism and dictatorial regimes, 00:45:15.920 --> 00:45:21.960 when control is at a premium and you really have so much fear of uprising and that your 00:45:21.960 --> 00:45:28.160 only way of controlling your people is not at all democratic, but fascist and dictatorial. 00:45:28.160 --> 00:45:31.760 Yeah, people are going to go crazy because no one wants to give up their freedom. And 00:45:31.760 --> 00:45:37.140 We've seen examples of what happens in communist countries or in dictatorial regimes, and it's 00:45:37.140 --> 00:45:38.140 not good. 00:45:38.140 --> 00:45:42.000 So we're doing our best to give people a voice and for people to sustain their freedoms. 00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:43.320 That was very well put. 00:45:43.320 --> 00:45:46.200 You were born in Russia, weren't you? 00:45:46.200 --> 00:45:50.100 But like these things you just mentioned, like COVID vaccines, for instance, is it really 00:45:50.100 --> 00:45:55.340 a matter of opinion or is there actual data that gives us a pretty clear understanding 00:45:55.340 --> 00:45:56.340 of their efficacy? 00:45:56.340 --> 00:45:58.940 Yeah, there is definitely data. 00:45:58.940 --> 00:46:04.180 And then there's also both sides and both sides saying that, "Here's the data and here's the 00:46:04.180 --> 00:46:05.180 data. 00:46:05.180 --> 00:46:08.700 The data is super, super helpful for COVID and here's actually the data of all the people 00:46:08.700 --> 00:46:10.620 that have been hurt by the vaccine. 00:46:10.620 --> 00:46:12.340 And this data is often suppressed by this side." 00:46:12.340 --> 00:46:17.340 And you're exactly right, there's data, but I don't feel that we are necessarily being 00:46:17.340 --> 00:46:23.780 shown the whole picture and that there's a lot of professionals who are very well trained, 00:46:23.780 --> 00:46:29.380 highly accomplished in their field who are saying certain things that the government may 00:46:29.380 --> 00:46:34.080 not want to hear and so unfortunately aren't being fully acknowledged. And I think people's 00:46:34.080 --> 00:46:38.500 freedom of speech has oftentimes been limited in situations like this. 00:46:38.500 --> 00:46:44.860 Rick: What I would love to see is for there to be TV shows with panel discussions in which 00:46:44.860 --> 00:46:51.140 opposing sides discuss these things very respectfully with Robert's rules of order or whatever without 00:46:51.140 --> 00:46:55.860 shouting at each other and were allowed more than like two minute soundbites and that they 00:46:55.860 --> 00:47:00.980 could just really argue their positions. This used to be done in ancient India with philosophical 00:47:00.980 --> 00:47:05.860 debates. You know, someone like Shankara would debate with his philosophical opponents and 00:47:05.860 --> 00:47:09.820 the big crowd would turn out and it would be like an event for the people. But we need 00:47:09.820 --> 00:47:14.420 that in the public stage these days because there's so much polarization and siloing, 00:47:14.420 --> 00:47:18.540 as you said, and people only hear what they want to hear and so we become more and more 00:47:18.540 --> 00:47:19.540 divided. 00:47:19.540 --> 00:47:21.620 Absolutely, and I think that that's exactly what happens. 00:47:21.620 --> 00:47:26.280 The polarization and siloing creates essentially echo chambers because what we're being shown 00:47:26.280 --> 00:47:30.440 by the internet and what comes up in all of our searches is things that essentially mimic 00:47:30.440 --> 00:47:33.340 back to us other ideas like us and other people like us. 00:47:33.340 --> 00:47:37.300 And so we become increasingly more and more siloed, polarized, etc. 00:47:37.300 --> 00:47:39.200 And we're not often exposed to these other views. 00:47:39.200 --> 00:47:40.980 And we see the other views as threatening. 00:47:40.980 --> 00:47:41.980 And I completely agree. 00:47:41.980 --> 00:47:46.660 So an open dialogue with this kind of mentality would be so beautiful. 00:47:46.660 --> 00:47:51.740 And it almost seems like there's such an ideological divide now in our country that to have something 00:47:51.740 --> 00:47:55.100 like that is challenging and ruffles a lot of feathers. 00:47:55.100 --> 00:47:57.380 And I hope that one day that won't be the case. 00:47:57.380 --> 00:47:58.380 Yeah. 00:47:58.380 --> 00:48:00.180 And I hope that you don't consider this irrelevant. 00:48:00.180 --> 00:48:04.500 I'm bringing it up because I'm thinking about collective mental health and you're a mental 00:48:04.500 --> 00:48:05.980 health professional. 00:48:05.980 --> 00:48:09.180 And I think that collective mental health is a big deal these days. 00:48:09.180 --> 00:48:10.180 Yes. 00:48:10.180 --> 00:48:12.220 Oh, I think this is hugely important, Rick. 00:48:12.220 --> 00:48:15.780 You know this idea of the one-on-one therapy sessions that we have in our country. 00:48:15.780 --> 00:48:19.060 What a luxury and what a beautiful thing that we have that and can afford that. 00:48:19.060 --> 00:48:24.500 In the majority of the world, people can't afford or have access to a therapist or a 00:48:24.500 --> 00:48:26.100 psychiatrist or a provider one-on-one. 00:48:26.100 --> 00:48:31.260 The level of care that's needed for people overcoming trauma, for instance, after the 00:48:31.260 --> 00:48:36.360 Rwanda genocide, there was no possibility that there was going to be one-on-one care. 00:48:36.360 --> 00:48:40.380 And this is also with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion. 00:48:40.380 --> 00:48:44.220 One-on-one care is often reserved for people who can afford one-on-one care, who have insurance, 00:48:44.220 --> 00:48:48.100 who can pay out of pocket, who are in areas where they have ample transportation and where 00:48:48.100 --> 00:48:52.460 there's a lot of psychiatrists, therapists, etc. to be able to have that. 00:48:52.460 --> 00:48:56.340 There's plenty of people in rural regions or don't have those resources or who don't have 00:48:56.340 --> 00:49:00.500 insurance or who would feel too ashamed or stigmatized or wouldn't even know the first 00:49:00.500 --> 00:49:05.140 place to go to find a therapist or psychiatrist who don't have access to one-on-one care, 00:49:05.140 --> 00:49:07.700 much less access to any care whatsoever. 00:49:07.700 --> 00:49:09.640 And so two things about that. 00:49:09.640 --> 00:49:15.040 one is the collective healing like you mentioned to be able to heal through groups and through 00:49:15.040 --> 00:49:20.120 our societies. So at Yale, there's many initiatives for instance with churches and they have the 00:49:20.120 --> 00:49:24.880 black church there and oftentimes in disadvantaged areas with mental health issues, the first 00:49:24.880 --> 00:49:30.520 place that you're going to go to if you have that area, if you have that issue, it's not 00:49:30.520 --> 00:49:34.320 to a psychiatrist because you probably don't even know how to do that. It would be to your 00:49:34.320 --> 00:49:39.960 church and the churches then intercede and intervene and churches are a place for amazing 00:49:39.960 --> 00:49:45.160 collective healing. That's number one. The other thing is for indigenous cultures, right? 00:49:45.160 --> 00:49:50.080 And ayahuasca ceremonies, et cetera. The majority of work with plant medicine isn't one-on-one 00:49:50.080 --> 00:49:54.680 also in our country it is because that's what Western medicine is. But in these other communities, 00:49:54.680 --> 00:50:00.360 ayahuasca, et cetera, often and peyote and a lot of very healing medicinal plants, this 00:50:00.360 --> 00:50:05.360 is collective healing done in groups and we're essentially taking these very powerful rituals 00:50:05.360 --> 00:50:12.240 and catering them to our mental health and our just medical system, but we often remove 00:50:12.240 --> 00:50:16.800 the collective power of healing. So I think what is happening more and more in our country 00:50:16.800 --> 00:50:21.800 is that we're looking to the collective to heal us and there's an amazing psychiatrist 00:50:21.800 --> 00:50:27.080 at Yale, AZ Alsop, who's actually starting a collective healing center that's going to 00:50:27.080 --> 00:50:30.600 a joint collaboration between Yale and also Howard University. 00:50:30.600 --> 00:50:36.960 And I'm being approached by a number of people wanting to do ketamine in group settings, wanting 00:50:36.960 --> 00:50:41.080 to have for people to be, you know, ketamine is a legal medication used for certain indications, 00:50:41.080 --> 00:50:45.700 but people want this to be done in a group setting because the power of collective healing. 00:50:45.700 --> 00:50:50.200 And there's a beautiful documentary that was recently made by psychiatrist Geeta Vaid together 00:50:50.200 --> 00:50:56.560 with trauma therapist Basil van der Kolk that was ketamine done in group sessions together 00:50:56.560 --> 00:51:02.840 with psychodrama, people being able to work through drama and theater, the dramatic reenactments, 00:51:02.840 --> 00:51:04.000 some of their traumas. 00:51:04.000 --> 00:51:07.080 So I think that, and I'm so happy you brought this up, it's not at all irrelevant. 00:51:07.080 --> 00:51:11.240 I think it's hugely important and really potent and powerful, and I hope that we have more 00:51:11.240 --> 00:51:12.240 of it. 00:51:12.240 --> 00:51:16.000 I'll say one other thing about collective healing. 00:51:16.000 --> 00:51:22.120 There are certain types of trauma that we have that only collective healing can heal. 00:51:22.120 --> 00:51:28.280 Jack Saul, he is one of the founders of the Trauma Survivors Program in New York City at 00:51:28.280 --> 00:51:29.280 Columbia. 00:51:29.280 --> 00:51:35.040 He's done a lot of work, especially with a certain kind of trauma, which is, it's like 00:51:35.040 --> 00:51:41.280 a moral trauma, having carried out unspeakable acts often, not through your own volition, 00:51:41.280 --> 00:51:43.840 but because you were, for instance, in war and had to kill women and children, or had 00:51:43.840 --> 00:51:49.720 to kill, and then you come back and you're carrying the moral decrepitude of these actions 00:51:49.720 --> 00:51:51.840 and you don't know what to do with them. 00:51:51.840 --> 00:51:58.040 And the healing for that, which Jack Saul has found, is actually the other people who did 00:51:58.040 --> 00:52:02.280 not go to war being able to come into community with the people who did. 00:52:02.280 --> 00:52:05.960 And the people who went to war and are carrying this, share it with the people who didn't 00:52:05.960 --> 00:52:07.020 go to war. 00:52:07.020 --> 00:52:10.960 And the people who didn't go to war are able to take some of the burden off of those people 00:52:10.960 --> 00:52:12.640 in this collective healing space. 00:52:12.640 --> 00:52:14.800 And there's something really powerful about that. 00:52:14.800 --> 00:52:17.880 This is another place of trauma collective healing specifically. 00:52:17.880 --> 00:52:18.880 That's beautiful. 00:52:18.880 --> 00:52:19.880 It's very interesting. 00:52:19.880 --> 00:52:20.880 I hadn't heard of that. 00:52:20.880 --> 00:52:27.440 even if there were unlimited funds, there wouldn't be enough people like you to provide one-on-one 00:52:27.440 --> 00:52:28.840 therapy to everybody. 00:52:28.840 --> 00:52:30.720 So there have to be these collective things. 00:52:30.720 --> 00:52:32.160 Absolutely, absolutely. 00:52:32.160 --> 00:52:36.280 I really feel like that's where healing is going and there's something so powerful about 00:52:36.280 --> 00:52:39.000 especially we also have a loneliness epidemic, right? 00:52:39.000 --> 00:52:41.680 So people, it's wonderful to be able to heal alone. 00:52:41.680 --> 00:52:46.400 It's luxury to be able to have one-on-one therapy and healing, but it also is something 00:52:46.400 --> 00:52:52.160 really beautiful to be able to heal collectively together and to have our own loneliness ameliorated 00:52:52.160 --> 00:52:53.400 in the process of healing. 00:52:53.400 --> 00:53:00.400 Yeah. It would also be nice if there were some way of introducing spirituality into the 00:53:00.400 --> 00:53:04.840 schools. It's a touchy issue because of the church and state stipulation and everything. 00:53:04.840 --> 00:53:09.720 There's a lady named Kavalee Morgan whom I've interviewed who has introduced very beautiful 00:53:09.720 --> 00:53:14.960 mindfulness programs out in Oregon or Washington, one of those states. She has a documentary 00:53:14.960 --> 00:53:20.360 about it and all these kids who had been cutting themselves or going through all kinds of really 00:53:20.360 --> 00:53:24.160 serious issues are just flourishing as a result of that program. 00:53:24.160 --> 00:53:28.880 So obviously, that's the time to catch it when kids are young and enable them to develop 00:53:28.880 --> 00:53:31.400 spiritually as they develop in every other way. 00:53:31.400 --> 00:53:32.400 Exactly. 00:53:32.400 --> 00:53:35.880 I couldn't agree more and indeed there are more and more programs. 00:53:35.880 --> 00:53:40.520 So at Yale, they have a Center for Emotional Intelligence that was created by Mark Brackett 00:53:40.520 --> 00:53:46.920 together with the current president of Yale. And it has a rollout program called RULER, 00:53:46.920 --> 00:53:51.940 which essentially teaches children about meditation and emotional intelligence. And this is something 00:53:51.940 --> 00:53:56.060 that's rolled out now across many schools and programs across the United States. And 00:53:56.060 --> 00:54:00.760 also now it's going to be rolled out in Britain, and I think many other countries. So there 00:54:00.760 --> 00:54:05.820 are interventions at play. And I think people are recognizing that the data and the science 00:54:05.820 --> 00:54:10.860 really supports that this helps on so many levels. This is not just go teach people 00:54:10.860 --> 00:54:15.460 meditation to be spiritual, this has real data for the children's emotional 00:54:15.460 --> 00:54:19.340 regulation for their capacity to achieve in school, getting along with their peers, 00:54:19.340 --> 00:54:23.780 all of those things for even how they are at home afterwards. Yeah I heard 00:54:23.780 --> 00:54:27.900 somebody on Bill Maher's show a couple weeks ago talk about how the epidemic in 00:54:27.900 --> 00:54:32.420 depression and suicide among teens coincided precisely with the 00:54:32.420 --> 00:54:35.820 introduction of the smartphone. And this is what Vivek Murthy, you know the 00:54:35.820 --> 00:54:40.100 Surgeon General, says basically that social media is a huge huge contributor 00:54:40.100 --> 00:54:44.460 to the suicide epidemic, to the mental health crisis, and that they're now 00:54:44.460 --> 00:54:47.980 trying to limit as much as possible students access to smartphones in 00:54:47.980 --> 00:54:50.860 schools and things like that and really encouraging parents to get smartphones 00:54:50.860 --> 00:54:54.940 at later ages. But that's a very real effect. I think it was before we started 00:54:54.940 --> 00:54:57.740 the recording actually, we were talking about Greece because you got stuck in a 00:54:57.740 --> 00:55:01.280 traffic jam because of the Greek parade and you mentioned the Oracle at Delphi 00:55:01.280 --> 00:55:04.820 who said "know thyself." There's something about the smartphone, which is this 00:55:04.820 --> 00:55:10.560 hypnotic device that absorbs you into what other people think, as opposed to 00:55:10.560 --> 00:55:15.260 turning within and knowing oneself. Absolutely, absolutely. Right? On one hand 00:55:15.260 --> 00:55:18.800 the smartphone is everything all in one and you can be so incredibly productive 00:55:18.800 --> 00:55:22.760 and be so, in certain ways, connected and yet at the same time, just like you said, 00:55:22.760 --> 00:55:25.560 so disconnected. Disconnected from yourself, disconnected from others, 00:55:25.560 --> 00:55:30.040 because you can essentially be on your phone. And there very much is the phone 00:55:30.040 --> 00:55:35.480 addiction or the addiction to your smartphone because there's very strong dopamine hit of 00:55:35.480 --> 00:55:39.560 every time that you get your, you know, you check your text message or send a text or get 00:55:39.560 --> 00:55:42.040 an email and it's constant. 00:55:42.040 --> 00:55:43.040 It's constant. 00:55:43.040 --> 00:55:47.520 So I think for people to have limits around that, for some people it works great to have 00:55:47.520 --> 00:55:52.080 access more often than not and for other people to be able to really limit that and create 00:55:52.080 --> 00:55:55.480 the right boundaries to be able to really connect with your family, with your friends, 00:55:55.480 --> 00:55:57.240 with yourself as you say. 00:55:57.240 --> 00:56:01.400 actually a quote from Einstein in this but I can't quote it, that the technological 00:56:01.400 --> 00:56:07.440 development of the world is out of pace by far with the personal or subjective 00:56:07.440 --> 00:56:10.640 or human development and that the human development has to catch up or else 00:56:10.640 --> 00:56:15.320 we're in serious trouble and as it is we've already created atomic bombs and 00:56:15.320 --> 00:56:18.640 destroyed the environment and all kinds of other things and now we have, we're 00:56:18.640 --> 00:56:21.920 talking about cell phones, that's a big one, now we have AI that's just going 00:56:21.920 --> 00:56:27.800 like wildfire. So what do you think about the exponential pace of technological 00:56:27.800 --> 00:56:33.280 development and what you would like to see or that we need to see to 00:56:33.280 --> 00:56:38.160 counterbalance that in terms of human development? I feel like Moore's Law, the 00:56:38.160 --> 00:56:42.800 amount of information we're able to store in a microchip has exponentially 00:56:42.800 --> 00:56:45.880 increased and therefore our technological capacities have increased 00:56:45.880 --> 00:56:48.880 and you're exactly right that we don't have a commensurate Moore's Law of 00:56:48.880 --> 00:56:52.600 of consciousness, a commensurate exponential increase in consciousness. 00:56:52.600 --> 00:56:55.320 We're certainly trying and we're certainly trying to use the technology to elevate our 00:56:55.320 --> 00:57:00.400 consciousness both biological technology like psychedelics and biotechnology, meditation 00:57:00.400 --> 00:57:03.800 apps, etc. and just giving people tools and resources. 00:57:03.800 --> 00:57:06.400 You want to expand your consciousness, here's what you can do. 00:57:06.400 --> 00:57:11.120 But human consciousness, it's not just science plug and play. 00:57:11.120 --> 00:57:17.720 There's many, many more complicated steps as to how to really grow as human beings. 00:57:17.720 --> 00:57:23.600 And I completely agree that we need something if the technological pace continues, which 00:57:23.600 --> 00:57:25.400 it most likely will. 00:57:25.400 --> 00:57:30.320 And this is where people, you know, are like, well, what do you do with where AI is going 00:57:30.320 --> 00:57:32.360 and what are the proper safeguards? 00:57:32.360 --> 00:57:37.500 And like, how do we use our consciousness and how do we actually enable people to grow 00:57:37.500 --> 00:57:42.840 in the way that they need to grow and to expand in the way that they need to expand so that 00:57:42.840 --> 00:57:47.860 the technological progress that's happening is something that only will help humanity 00:57:47.860 --> 00:57:53.000 as opposed to toppling humanity or leading to the destruction of humanity, God forbid. 00:57:53.000 --> 00:57:56.280 Do you and your colleagues at Yale and elsewhere ponder these questions? 00:57:56.280 --> 00:57:59.880 Yes, I have many colleagues with whom I ponder these questions. 00:57:59.880 --> 00:58:06.660 I spoke at a UN summit on AI and mental health along with a number of other people including 00:58:06.660 --> 00:58:14.340 a chaplain from Scotland and some just really beautiful souls. So we've been thinking about 00:58:14.340 --> 00:58:18.020 that and I have, you know, Singularity University in context there with whom we've been thinking 00:58:18.020 --> 00:58:23.940 about that. There's a lot of people, contacts of mine, in actually the AI hedge fund world that are 00:58:23.940 --> 00:58:28.260 thinking about that, that are thinking about these very big questions and creating the right 00:58:28.260 --> 00:58:33.940 safeguards and investing in the right technology that's going to enable us to flourish as a society 00:58:33.940 --> 00:58:38.340 and civilization. So I'm thinking about that in many different spheres with many different people. 00:58:38.340 --> 00:58:46.260 I have a feeling that, you know, there is a kind of an upwelling of collective consciousness and 00:58:46.260 --> 00:58:52.020 of awakening around the world that is not as obvious as these technological and external 00:58:52.020 --> 00:58:56.580 things and certainly not as obvious as the wars that you see on the news every night, 00:58:56.580 --> 00:59:03.460 but that nature is responding. There's some kind of saving grace going on that might just save the 00:59:03.460 --> 00:59:05.020 of the day and the neck of time. 00:59:05.020 --> 00:59:07.580 - Yeah, that's been the case constantly, right? 00:59:07.580 --> 00:59:09.020 We are still here. 00:59:09.020 --> 00:59:11.540 And with all the prophecies, the mind prophecies, 00:59:11.540 --> 00:59:14.380 the this, the world's coming to an end, COVID, 00:59:14.380 --> 00:59:16.520 we're still here and we're still kicking 00:59:16.520 --> 00:59:19.140 and we're trying to make the world the best place 00:59:19.140 --> 00:59:21.460 that it can possibly be and mitigate the problems 00:59:21.460 --> 00:59:24.660 and increase human thriving and flourishing. 00:59:24.660 --> 00:59:29.180 Is there a collective consciousness that is helping 00:59:29.180 --> 00:59:30.900 and guiding us along the way? 00:59:30.900 --> 00:59:33.340 God willing, I very much hope that's the case. 00:59:33.340 --> 00:59:37.980 And I think the collective consciousness is a product of all of us making good choices 00:59:37.980 --> 00:59:42.820 or those of us who are making good choices bonding together to be able to move the course 00:59:42.820 --> 00:59:44.300 of our world forward. 00:59:44.300 --> 00:59:49.440 Most of those ancient prophecies say it is going to get rough, but there will be a renaissance 00:59:49.440 --> 00:59:52.300 or a collective awakening on the other side of that roughness. 00:59:52.300 --> 00:59:53.300 Exactly. 00:59:53.300 --> 00:59:54.380 It's like we don't have a choice, right? 00:59:54.380 --> 00:59:58.940 If you hit rock bottom, you hit your dark night of the soul as individuals and as a collective. 00:59:58.940 --> 01:00:02.840 The only choice we have is to awaken or to die, right? 01:00:02.840 --> 01:00:07.240 If we want to be, we need to get to the other side and we need to see the world anew and 01:00:07.240 --> 01:00:13.240 expand ourselves and let the old parts of us be taken and the new parts of us to thrive. 01:00:13.240 --> 01:00:18.160 Yeah, and I bet you one thing you do as a therapist is you give people hope. 01:00:18.160 --> 01:00:22.080 You know, you give them the hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that 01:00:22.080 --> 01:00:25.480 they can get through this and that things can get a whole lot better and that this won't 01:00:25.480 --> 01:00:28.320 last forever, this rough thing they're going through. 01:00:28.320 --> 01:00:31.480 And we can extend this to the collective as well as the individual. 01:00:31.480 --> 01:00:35.400 Absolutely, absolutely. I feel like you're exactly right. This is what I do for so many 01:00:35.400 --> 01:00:39.080 people is to give them hope, especially in the darkest of times. And the reason I can 01:00:39.080 --> 01:00:43.080 give them hope is because I've seen in all of those cases, whether you're suicidal or 01:00:43.080 --> 01:00:47.320 in a deep depression or were just diagnosed with cancer or undergoing a divorce, those 01:00:47.320 --> 01:00:52.240 things are bad and horrible and painful. It's all true. And people get through it and they 01:00:52.240 --> 01:00:56.440 get to the other side and they kick their cancer and they get to the other side of depression 01:00:56.440 --> 01:01:00.680 and they treat their depression and they're no longer suicidal. And one day it's the last 01:01:00.680 --> 01:01:06.080 time they ever feel suicidal. And so this is a reality that I have taken so many people 01:01:06.080 --> 01:01:11.120 through. So I have very real experience personally, but also we know that there are things that 01:01:11.120 --> 01:01:15.840 work for depression, for anxiety, for all of these conditions. And there's also ways 01:01:15.840 --> 01:01:22.200 there is, you know, the Institute of Noetic Sciences has a database of essentially all 01:01:22.200 --> 01:01:27.480 incurable diseases. And there's a beautiful book called Spontaneous Remission, which was 01:01:27.480 --> 01:01:32.040 actually written about people with spontaneous remissions from cancers. I was actually just 01:01:32.040 --> 01:01:35.960 giving a talk about this the other day. And so I'm going to tell you, there's plenty of 01:01:35.960 --> 01:01:41.200 people who have had spontaneous remissions, even from cancers that were considered incurable. 01:01:41.200 --> 01:01:46.920 And there were nine factors that were found to be the factors that ultimately led to these 01:01:46.920 --> 01:01:49.520 spontaneous remissions. And I'll tell you what those are. It's so funny. I had it in 01:01:49.520 --> 01:01:52.800 my pocket because I was just giving a talk about it the other day. And that included a 01:01:52.800 --> 01:01:57.440 a radical diet change, taking control of your health, following your intuition, herbs and 01:01:57.440 --> 01:02:01.880 supplements, increasing positive emotions in your life, embracing social support, deepening 01:02:01.880 --> 01:02:06.440 your spiritual connection, releasing suppressed emotions, and having a strong reason to live. 01:02:06.440 --> 01:02:11.840 So those nine factors in this beautiful book, Spontaneous Remissions, were the factors that 01:02:11.840 --> 01:02:16.320 were ultimately responsible for, or the difference between the people who did have spontaneous 01:02:16.320 --> 01:02:17.320 remissions and didn't. 01:02:17.320 --> 01:02:20.480 There's no guarantees, of course, in life, but these are the things that you can do to 01:02:20.480 --> 01:02:24.740 really increase the likelihood of that. Yeah, and you spoke about getting to the 01:02:24.740 --> 01:02:29.120 other side of cancer, but even if you get to the other side literally because 01:02:29.120 --> 01:02:33.320 you don't beat the cancer and you die, that's not such a bad thing. I mean, if 01:02:33.320 --> 01:02:36.980 you listen to all the near-death experience people who, once they have one 01:02:36.980 --> 01:02:41.080 of those experiences, they totally lose fear of death or kind of looking forward 01:02:41.080 --> 01:02:46.280 to it in a way without trying to hasten it. Exactly, exactly, right? You can 01:02:46.280 --> 01:02:52.680 completely have like death anxiety is one of the four key existential issues of life. 01:02:52.680 --> 01:02:56.060 There's four main ones and death anxiety is at the top of the list. 01:02:56.060 --> 01:03:01.020 If people get a hold on their death anxiety, the nature of life changes completely. 01:03:01.020 --> 01:03:04.880 My favorite author on the subject of death anxiety is actually Dr. Irvin Yalow. 01:03:04.880 --> 01:03:09.440 He's a brilliant existential psychiatrist and he writes a lot about death anxiety. 01:03:09.440 --> 01:03:14.320 And one of the things he writes is the people that least fear death are those that have the 01:03:14.320 --> 01:03:18.600 least unlived life within them. It's people who live life fully are the ones that don't 01:03:18.600 --> 01:03:23.440 fear death. If you don't, you're always wondering, are you missing something, are you regretting, 01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:27.600 are you... those are the people who fear death much more. So one of the antidotes to death 01:03:27.600 --> 01:03:29.200 anxiety is living your life fully. 01:03:29.200 --> 01:03:34.240 Nice. Well, we have about five minutes left and we could probably go on for five hours, 01:03:34.240 --> 01:03:35.240 but... 01:03:35.240 --> 01:03:36.760 We could, I know, Rick. And next time we will. 01:03:36.760 --> 01:03:41.560 Love a marathon. Are there any key points that you want to make sure to mention that 01:03:41.560 --> 01:03:43.600 we haven't had a chance to touch upon? 01:03:43.600 --> 01:03:46.400 I think you've asked me such beautiful questions and I love what we've shared. 01:03:46.400 --> 01:03:50.600 I'm happy to share anything more, but I feel like you've done just a beautiful job. 01:03:50.600 --> 01:03:52.840 Okay, how can people connect with you? 01:03:52.840 --> 01:03:57.200 You have a website, you have an Instagram and things like that, a YouTube channel, so 01:03:57.200 --> 01:04:02.040 I'll put links to all those things on your Batgap page, as well as your book, and so 01:04:02.040 --> 01:04:04.360 far your Miracles book hasn't published yet. 01:04:04.360 --> 01:04:05.360 Exactly. 01:04:05.360 --> 01:04:10.440 My first book was Fulfilled, on the science of spirituality, and that came out in 2017. 01:04:10.440 --> 01:04:14.040 My book that I'm working on right now is on the science of miracles, with the miracle 01:04:14.040 --> 01:04:17.440 being defined as something highly beneficial yet statistically improbable. 01:04:17.440 --> 01:04:22.280 And the question of the book is, what can you do to increase the likelihood and prevalence 01:04:22.280 --> 01:04:24.320 of miracles in your life? 01:04:24.320 --> 01:04:27.040 And so, it's going to be a scientific exploration of that. 01:04:27.040 --> 01:04:28.360 Talk about that for five minutes. 01:04:28.360 --> 01:04:31.280 So how do you define a miracle, Rick? 01:04:31.280 --> 01:04:33.080 What is a miracle to you? 01:04:33.080 --> 01:04:39.200 To me, even the big ones like Jesus walking on water or whatever, I would say are not violations 01:04:39.200 --> 01:04:40.200 of laws of nature. 01:04:40.200 --> 01:04:45.420 just utilizations of laws of nature that are not commonly understood. So, you know, a jumbo 01:04:45.420 --> 01:04:50.960 jet would appear to be a miracle to somebody in the 19th century who couldn't imagine such 01:04:50.960 --> 01:04:55.240 a thing, but the jumbo jet works by virtue of laws of nature that we understand very 01:04:55.240 --> 01:05:04.440 well now. So I think that ultimately, people at their core are one with, or are, a reservoir 01:05:04.440 --> 01:05:12.520 of tremendous potentiality and intelligence, and that if one could reside there consciously, 01:05:12.520 --> 01:05:17.860 then one could potentially have mastery over laws of nature that people ordinarily don't. 01:05:17.860 --> 01:05:22.120 And that could result in their ability to do the kinds of things that we've heard about 01:05:22.120 --> 01:05:24.160 throughout history as miraculous events. 01:05:24.160 --> 01:05:29.760 >> I love that. I think about things precisely in this way as well, that the potential for 01:05:29.760 --> 01:05:34.320 miracles actually is within each of us, and it's about us mastering ourselves and essentially 01:05:34.320 --> 01:05:39.040 coming into resonance with the laws of the universe that obviously are there because 01:05:39.040 --> 01:05:41.480 you wouldn't have miracles if they weren't. 01:05:41.480 --> 01:05:45.080 They're just not normal and they're outside of, you know, the standard deviation. 01:05:45.080 --> 01:05:48.560 There are a few standard deviations beyond, but somebody's doing it and so how do you 01:05:48.560 --> 01:05:49.560 do it? 01:05:49.560 --> 01:05:53.280 And this is actually why it ties so beautifully into the book on spontaneous remissions called 01:05:53.280 --> 01:05:54.840 Radical Remission. 01:05:54.840 --> 01:05:57.760 And it was these like, what exactly do you do? 01:05:57.760 --> 01:06:00.160 What do you do to get a spontaneous remission from cancer? 01:06:00.160 --> 01:06:03.800 There's no guarantees, but here's nine things you can do because the people who did have 01:06:03.800 --> 01:06:08.000 spontaneous remissions, the majority of them had these nine things. And the things are 01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:12.520 very human things. Radically changing your diet, increasing positive emotions, things 01:06:12.520 --> 01:06:15.000 like that, things that are accessible to all of us. 01:06:15.000 --> 01:06:20.520 Yeah. And there's things like people about to get into a serious car crash and all of 01:06:20.520 --> 01:06:25.020 a sudden they find themselves on the other side of the thing that was about to hit them. 01:06:25.020 --> 01:06:29.760 Something like that. There are these really far out things that you hear about. And what 01:06:29.760 --> 01:06:33.200 is that Shakespeare line, "There's more to heaven and earth than you have dreamed of 01:06:33.200 --> 01:06:36.000 in your philosophy, Horatio," or something like that. 01:06:36.000 --> 01:06:37.000 Yeah. 01:06:37.000 --> 01:06:38.000 Absolutely, right. 01:06:38.000 --> 01:06:40.280 There's so much more to the world, and I think that that's it. 01:06:40.280 --> 01:06:44.400 Ultimately, like coming into Residence of Miracles is really living the mystery and 01:06:44.400 --> 01:06:48.880 recognizing how much we don't know and being open to learning it and wanting to learn it, 01:06:48.880 --> 01:06:52.440 having that deep desire, asking for that from the universe, from whatever your universe 01:06:52.440 --> 01:06:56.840 is, whether it's your God, your divine self, whatever that is, having that deep desire 01:06:56.840 --> 01:06:59.600 for that, and then being open to how that comes in. 01:06:59.600 --> 01:07:02.920 So I think that that all is a part of this process. 01:07:02.920 --> 01:07:03.760 - Cool. 01:07:03.760 --> 01:07:04.760 Well, I hope that's a popular book. 01:07:04.760 --> 01:07:05.840 I think it's a, 01:07:05.840 --> 01:07:07.680 I don't know of any other books 01:07:07.680 --> 01:07:09.360 that have been written on that topic. 01:07:09.360 --> 01:07:11.180 Of course, we've all heard of "Miracles," 01:07:11.180 --> 01:07:12.480 but I don't know if there's any book 01:07:12.480 --> 01:07:14.440 which is specifically focused on it 01:07:14.440 --> 01:07:15.960 with a scientific angle. 01:07:15.960 --> 01:07:17.200 So it should be interesting. 01:07:17.200 --> 01:07:19.080 When do you think you'll get it published? 01:07:19.080 --> 01:07:20.400 - I think within about another year. 01:07:20.400 --> 01:07:22.280 I'm gonna write it for about another year. 01:07:22.280 --> 01:07:23.720 - Okay, great. 01:07:23.720 --> 01:07:25.400 All right, so I'll let you go. 01:07:25.400 --> 01:07:26.540 You're a very busy lady. 01:07:26.540 --> 01:07:27.380 I think you said about, 01:07:27.380 --> 01:07:29.240 you had about 15 meetings today already. 01:07:29.240 --> 01:07:36.740 It was a crazy day, but it was so wonderful. This was such a treat, Rick. It was such a pleasure to do this with you, and I look forward to next time. 01:07:36.740 --> 01:07:40.240 Yeah, we'll be in touch. There's a number of things we will follow up on. 01:07:40.240 --> 01:07:41.740 Beautiful. I love that. 01:07:41.740 --> 01:07:44.240 Okay, thanks to those who've been listening or watching. 01:07:44.240 --> 01:07:53.740 I think my next interview is with a guy who lives in Tahiti, who is not a spiritual teacher, hasn't written a book, doesn't even have a website, but he had some kind of profound spiritual awakening. 01:07:53.740 --> 01:07:59.660 I love those stories, you know, because it shows that such things can happen to anybody. 01:07:59.660 --> 01:08:03.700 You don't have to be anybody famous or remarkable or anything like that. 01:08:03.700 --> 01:08:08.340 That was one of the founding motivations for starting this show, to empower people with 01:08:08.340 --> 01:08:10.820 the knowledge that they too can have this. 01:08:10.820 --> 01:08:11.820 I love that. 01:08:11.820 --> 01:08:12.820 I love that that's your next interview. 01:08:12.820 --> 01:08:14.100 I can't wait to hear that interview. 01:08:14.100 --> 01:08:15.100 Good. 01:08:15.100 --> 01:08:16.100 All right. 01:08:16.100 --> 01:08:17.100 Thank you, Anna. 01:08:17.100 --> 01:08:18.100 And thanks to those who've been listening or watching. 01:08:18.100 --> 01:08:19.100 We'll see you for the next one. 01:08:19.100 --> 01:08:20.100 Thank you, Rick. 01:08:20.100 --> 01:08:21.100 Bye-bye. 01:08:21.100 --> 01:08:21.100 Bye-bye. 01:08:21.100 --> 01:08:24.460 [MUSIC PLAYING] 01:08:24.460 --> 01:08:44.820 Thank you.