Kind: captions Language: en [Music] hey fellow G and tears those of us like our spirituality with a Twist as you will have already heard in the introduction we have the distinct pleasure and privilege of having on Dr Neil th the author of notes on complexity and uh thank you so much for coming on uh we're gonna call you Neil we agreed in the pre in the pre we'll drop the formalities but thanks so much for coming on Neil sure thanks for having me yeah so um given we have so much we want to talk about we'll Dive Right In um we like to do this thing which is sort of like a the NPR show This American Life we kind of like to do this American spiritual life so we thought we wouldd go a little bit into sort of your backstory our idea for doing this is always that it's good to learn about the people and see where their ideas come from but also I think it's something kind of inspiring we always think that about hearing how people got to where they are especially people who are maybe a little bit on The Road Less Traveled a little bit thinking about things in new ways and obviously you're certainly doing that your book is such a wonderful example of that so um we're going to do it about we're gonna do it about that to start off with and the first thing that occurred was really um in the book you talk about the impression I got was of you as kind of a very curious kid who was interested in nature in science but then ultimately you become this serious Zen practitioner too and so I we kind of hear about more the science part uh of your early experiences but I was just curious like did you come from a background where there was religious and spiritual things I know you come from a you know Jewish ancestry was there cabalistic things like was was there any precursors for that part oh young yeah yeah um yeah so um I can't I have to reread the book I no longer know what's in it um uh this either made it into the final version or not um I never it was always sort of a balanced thing with me um I I feel like looking back my scientific interests and my spiritual interests sort of derived from the same place which is some sort of innate um sense of intimacy with the world around us and um and it expressed themselves you know it it it it um there wasn't a need when I was really small to like how am I going to approach this um there were lots of options and when I started being able to read and doing school um I discovered the science side of things and so went that way but uh my parents were from Europe my dad was uh um born in Germany which really wasn't good in the 1920s 30s um he escaped his parents sent him to England on something something called the Kinder transport and when he was almost 13 uh five days before Germany invaded Poland he was sent to England and never saw his parents again um wound up in England uh my mother's family came from Poland uh also Jewish um on the eve of World War I my grandparents had a sense that get out of here um and their Journey took them to England and um my mom my grandfather on her side uh became very wealthy it took quite a while to get there but um she was sort of raised as an English princess and my dad was this German orphan um but they uh my dad met her when uh she was 12 and he was 14 and fell in love and um but couldn't speak to her because the orphan doesn't speak to the princess they independently came to the US met Again by chance and and um you know and here I am so I grew up in West Hartford Connecticut where they settled because some of my father's surviving relatives were there um and uh the synagogue I grew up in was primarily German Holocaust Survivors and so there's you know uh maybe we'll get to some of the things that pass for humor in my family it's it's a little strange but um growing up in that community and with my parents the I what I used to say um when people ask you know like are you reform conservative Orthodox well we weren't sort of in any of those American contingents but we were more we were sort of conservative but we were more observant than the average American Jewish Family um and my mom's experence erience of her spiritual life was very rich very deep I eventually came to understand as she entered her later years this is the book I want to write in part that she had a real deep intimate experience of divinity and um that came that was something in her family and it's a long line of rabbis on that side of the family and then I discover later in life all those Scholars who were Rabbi Scholars meaning largely legal Scholars they were all Mystics too so that's sort of know one line of descent but we were the generation of the survivors and so Jewish practice as it was given to us was you know we we weren't tortured or abused or oppressed by our parents with with Jewish practice we were Treasures in this community and so um and I I think not everyone wound up as interested or uh observant as I was and I used to be much more observant on on the Jewish side of things when I was younger um but still it it was it was a very rich way to grow up and so I wasn't afraid of spiritual practice and then um but it sort of came to a head uh in one way when I was um 14 or 15 I think 14 is this story in the book about the beach and the Holocaust I don't think so no I so I don't think so no so um you know if you grow up in a child as a child of a holocaust Survivor you're and and and religious like what the hell do you do with that hello God where were you the Odyssey problem kind of right yeah yeah and so there was this you know uh in Zen terms great doubt this doesn't make sense it just doesn't fit together and uh a friend um a love interest of one of my father's cousins from who was visiting from Canada um she was trying to I think get in good with our family and make a good impression and she saw I was a reader and she gave me a book called um The Source by James mner who people my age everyone you know he was a best-selling author he wrote a dozen bestsellers and they were all like that thick um yeah like 8800 pages and he would pick a location and then write an epic Saga that might go back as far as prehistory and Trace things up to the present day and uh one of those was called the source and it was uh the Middle East and more specifically um an archaeological site uh that he made up but it had elements of reality um in Israel and in chapter something in the middle uh it was the 15 Century um in a town called spat which is where Laur uh Yak Lura who's um one of the most important cabalists in history had his community there and that was my introd introduction to the idea of mystical anything I'd never really in my mom's World there was um there's magical stuff uh another thing in our family the uh Yiddish writer Isaac basheva Singer who's the won the Nobel Prize um his stories are filled with demons and magic and stuff like that and that's also very much my lineage um he was a cousin um but this gave me the idea of oh you can have an experience of being so intimate with the Divine that maybe you get to see things from that perspective and maybe from that perspective I called it the God's eye view um and the beach part I was telling this to a friend of mine when we were walking down the beach when I was 14 I said you know I think if you can uh experience things from the God's eyee view all of this makes sense and so that sort of became the beginning of my wanting to find some sort of mystical practice there wasn't a lot available if you were a you know a middle class gay Jewish who wasn't Orthodox in West Harford Connecticut back in the 1970s now there's plenty we have the internet you know right but you know you can do Zohar online um but back then no and amazing part Neil in the bah here where they make that kind of point it says something like from the point of view of relative beings everything looks the way it is from but from the point of view of like a s everything has always just been a sof all the time right right it's that yeah that IDE right and I remember reading that and just going like right that's you know Nirvana samsara you know not two not one and uh yeah exactly I mean when you get down to the fundamental levels of stuff and that's kind of chapter 12 of the book I can't remember um across many different uh traditions and cultures of metaphysical and mystical practice that's sort of you know the Ral philosophy as some people will call it and you you can go overboard oversimplifying that because there are real differences but at the same time the commonalities are real too um a friend in college because I've been talking about this but not doing anything and a friend in college gave me a book called The Three Pillars of Zen um by roshi Philip kapo which was one of the first Amer written by an American zen teacher trained by Japanese teachers about the basics of Zen practice as well as a whole bunch in the back of the book um people's personal reports of their experiences of Enlightenment experiences Ken show Awakenings um and reading those I was like this reads like the stuff I've read from Jewish Mystics from the 500 years ago but it's people today or relatively um in their own terms so so that's what led me to Zen practice and I had I have a real connection with Tibetan practice which you had mentioned was sort of where my home base now Daniel's yeah yeah um uh there's some weird karmic thing between I like to think between me and his Holiness the Dalai Lama I keep winding up in his presence every few years it's really strange I physically bumped into him once by accident and we both startled yeah um uh how do you do that but that's another story um but like Tibetan practice there were all these images and Tonka paintings and idols and that's not Jewish yeah but Zen sort of I could pretend it was agnostic enough that I could slip myself into zen practice and not feel conflicted right for a while I tried to do some syncretic stuff like on my zen rasu the little black miniature you know robes monk that that Zen people wear I actually put the the Titus from a talist the the Fring from a prayer Jewish prayer Shaw on that um and then my when I wanted to take them off because I realized I didn't need to do this uh my teacher said no a lot of people ask you about it and it's it's a teaching thing for you so no you have to keep them on um and I someone stole that rock so I wasn't going to put cus on so that it's it's my first three decades were sort of that's a su things we did that like a like a certain amount of episodes last year where Carl Young was talked about and he you know when you look at his memories dreams Reflections he talks about feeling this tension in him between maybe like the more sciency part and the more Mystic part he almost says like personality one and personality too and he's really trying to figure that out and he got into medicine I guess as his sort of compromise around that I'll do Psychiatry to blend these two things together but it sounds like for you you didn't really feel as much of that tension in you it seems like it's sort of more naturally Blended or um I'd like to think that but there is this letter in the archives that one of my cousins on the German side um went to Israel married uh a woman from Texas fundamentalist Christian who found herself converting to Judaism and they met and as she went further and further to the right he followed her in um and they came they came back from Israel and um with nine children and wow um and I was the one in the family she was sure she could snag and talk about dodged bullets I within inches I really I I spent lots of time in Crown Heights uh uh at 770 with uh in the room with L baber rebby and she sent me things to read and I remember her sending me this book about the Reby talking about how to you know how you can get science and uh Jewish Concepts to you know share space and it was you know the kind of things like well the Torah says the world is 5,000 plus years old and so how do you explain dinosaurs well you know fossils were hidden to give us you know it's like okay I I just you know I I thought that was [...] at the time but what I wrote to her was I don't have to worry about this stuff because I keep the religion stuff over here in my brain and in a separate compartment I keep the science stuff and I don't really care whether they talk to each other so looking back i' like to think oh I was this well integrated but I recognized in myself that I had actually put walls between them and just I'm a Gemini so I was like we'll do this and then we'll do that and then we'll do this fellow Gemini and I can I can Vibe with that Vibe NE so so you and I were in in Mexico last month um for different reasons and I didn't see you there but maybe next year um but we were leading uh uh a plant medicine retreat at our friends uh Retreat Center Kuman Kaya which is about an hour south of or whatever direction is past Tulum but the the it's a husband and wife team and the husband and we've had them on the podcast before super interesting guy he was a he's from France and he was a monk lived in a monastery for about 20 years and was the Abbott for like 10 years and now he's he said he traded the walls of the monastery for the trees of the Jungle because he you know him and his wife run this place and and just like you he has his religious practice his prayers to God and then he has his work with the medicine and the plants and his teachings and stuff that he shares with the people from his experience but in no way are they conflicting because he's like the some create creation created this and he is working with this and that there is no there's absolutely no tension behind those things and It just fits well for him so I wanted to you know share that with you because I've I've heard this before and it it it seems like those people are not even it's not even well adjusted because there was never never really much tension there to begin with although um and this did not go in the book um but it's in these regards the most important thing is that because of the complexity Theory stuff they cease to be separate things on an experiential level and so I was comfortable never looking for you know there there are people who spend lots of their life looking for some way to integrate young I guess um and the jungians are waking up to my book it's interesting I've been invited to by the yian analysts of Rome in April to go talk to so I have to learn about how Yung relates to what I've written um people think seem to think that there's there's a meeting point there but I've been a Freudian my whole life so I I I I have to go dig up y um but so complexity since we're on it yeah complexity yeah is basically how living things interact with each other to create larger scale structures of living things um it's how you explain how life evolves it's how you explain why life always ends um it's a good way to think about how life arose within the Universe um and that's a a a significant piece of what the book's about this came to me pardon me Jewish nose always runny pardon me good um so these were separate domains for me and by this time I'm very ins sconed uh in my zen practice and my science practice is really hitting uh it's stried with the stem cell research I did uh you know the late 90s early uh ODS and um I had this I was put together with this artist named Jane profit this is in the intro to the book and I'm for an art science collaboration stuff and I was talking to her about how cells in the body move around and interact with each other to lead to Regeneration repair or if it goes a Cancer and she said that the way I was talking about them was very much the way um complexity Theory talks about how ants self organize into colonies or how slime molds can either be single cells or a living being with its own organs and stuff like this and then go back to being cells and so this is how I got introduced to complexity Theory and we continued to collaborate and at some point in the months after we started talking and I was pondering the complexity stuff um I started becoming really aware that when I study stem cells I'm either looking at things I'm doing with animals I did animal research for a little while I don't do it anymore um don't like it um but I was doing it um or because I'm a diagnostic pathologist I have access to human tissues that from biopsies and resection specimen so that's mostly what I do research-wise I'm looking at human tissues and that's where my stem cell work started I was looking in human tissues and it suddenly occurred to me that I think about those cells as out there in the mouse or on the slide that I'm looking at under the microscope but this is me that I'm studying I have these cells in me and once I started to think about that I had to start thinking about you know a colony of ants looks like a thing from a distance but if you go up closer you see that it's not a thing it's just a phenomenon arising from ANS interacting and now talking to Jane I'm realizing that a body looks like a thing of this level of scale we have three things talking to each other and that seem separate and bounded by our skin but when you go in close enough which I do every day because I'm looking at microscope slides of humans um the thingness of the body disappears and it's just a phenomenon arising from cells interacting with each other so am I a body or am my cells Neil were you already doing your Zen at that point were you a Zen student okay so that's has a very Buddhist vibe to it it's yeah it's a kind of a [...] it's a kind of a shun thing right it has that to it and no it it it very specifically does now I wasn't thinking in those terms yet but I was kind of aware that the I could not stop thinking about it it became this um uh really kind of obsessive thing like a Coan does yeah um I don't think I was yet doing coong practice I'm not sure uh yes I was I've been doing King practice for about five years just intellectual curiosity that NE are you more so or renai or I'm or yeah sort of sort of a mix I'm in the myi uh lineage from UCLA Zen Center so okay and he got uh uh Dharma transmission through both and so some of us do shikantaza some of us do uh Coons many of us flip back and forth um yeah SOI my zen teacher said it was always the [...] that was most personal you know we could give you a [...] but the one that shows up more naturally for you that's the one that's really going to mean something to you right from your own yeah right and it often comes to you and bit so I wasn't looking for this and um I was walking down the street I live in New York City um and I came to a corner on Park Avenue and there was a stop sign um so I was standing at the corner and is my body a body or is it cells is it a body or is it cells and I was just deep in this and then the light changed and people next to me stepped off the curb and I couldn't move because my leg leg had become a flock of cells and then the moment passed and it reassembled into a leg and I could keep walking so I had that experience and I'm not sure how long after I think it was just a few weeks I was at the Zen Center uh Village zendo in New York and um I was this Thursday morning opener and anyone came by and back in those days no one came by on Thursday mornings for the most part so I was sitting there by myself in the Zeno and I had lit the incense on the Altar and I was sitting at the other end uh doing zazen and not I was at that point I was following my breath and um but I was not doing that I just could not let go of cells or body cells or th cells or th and at some point during that my eyes lifted up and I saw uh the incense on the altar turning into smoke and there was a moment of incense smoke body cells that's emptiness that's emptiness of inherent existence and I felt it um me and the incense sort of like boundaries disappeared and there was a moment um at least I got a moment um and uh was saying like would you count he was saying like that word a Satori or a Keno and it was like that's that moment right yeah you get that yeah and I I I just don't like putting labels on that because people like oh got a you know whatever Fair um I I prefer Awakening to Enlightenment that that's also not you know these terms are so loaded and people think and people make the mistake particularly you know even people within the practice oh once you get that everything changes everything's fixed well no we're still us um back to Nirvana back to samsara um but I had that moment and in that moment suddenly the science practice and the spiritual practice were not separate in any way um and I was not looking for that I was not hoping for it it was no ambition I ever had and yet in that moment suddenly they were just the same thing and that's been with me since and the book is really an expression of that moment and and unpacking what that means in every way I could I could explore it I took that insight into my zen teacher in in doosan in one-on-one interview as we do in Zen practice and I said I think this is what emptiness is and she said uhhuh and I said I thought it was way more complicated than that she said no it's pretty simple it's just not easy and uh but everything then I mean it was very quick I could use that complexity analysis um cells and body that could lead to interdependence and impermanence and karmic law and then I started seeing how it it lined up with all sorts of aspects of Jewish mystical practice and insights and you know that's that's what I've been doing since yeah down the we're talking a little bit about the character for were you know Chinese medical people and it shows the rice and the pot and then the steam coming up so when I was listening to your story I was like yeah that has that feeling to it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that feeling yeah yeah and if you if you are really resting in the moment where's the separation yeah but how do you really rest in that moment that's the question yeah my mom did that that's partly why I want to write her story um in her later years she lost her short-term memory her long-term memory was totally intact but she couldn't remember five minutes ago I always wondered what it would be like if I had been able to get her stoned and um and now I discovered what what were we talking about is there any food in the house um but she was a pretty anxious woman when I was growing up there was a lot on her plate and she had grown up in World War II etc etc she was married to a holocaust Survivor um and uh but in these years she that was gone and I said to her once you know you're even smiling when you're sleeping now how do you stay so happy and she said well I don't really worry about the future anymore and I can't remember the past so all I have is the now and when you live in the now you're happy now I sit on a cushion or tell myself I'm not sitting on a cushion enough how much of time and here she just you know she arrived there um yes so almost like we were talking about her because you do talk about her in one of the lectures we listen to you know it's not as much in the book doesn't seem to me it looks like maybe I heard no it's not it's that's another book that's the other next that's the next that's the book you wanted to write and now you're getting to it yeah gladly thankfully enough little obstacles in the way yeah yeah yeah it almost seems like in we're going to get to this at some point because it's Consciousness is such an important subject in the book right you're really exploring that that's kind of like section three of the thing very strong and it almost seems like for your mom maybe um certain parts of memory were lost certain parts of cognition we're lost but it almost seems like part of her Consciousness kind of expanded oh oh absolutely describe her having these kind of like metaphysical kind of insights intuitive like the way you talk about go go almost right that seem to match things in physics like she seemed to like her Consciousness kind of expanded yeah that's why I I I I it's hard to avoid the language when you're talking about someone who's older who has cognitive changes and we want to say Well they're demented was she is that the word we use for who she became um she died in a bliss bubble um and uh you know she was uh just this nuclear reactor of mother love that was very uncomplicated that eventually I mean this is a whole other story and I don't know if I'm going to put it into her book but um I also had a parallel to all of this stuff is um do you know who mother merera is are you familiar with her yeah I've heard the mate I've never I've never heard the audience might not have either so yeah so she's a woman um who was born in India um she's my age or a bit younger so I'm 64 or so but um she was found as a young person and thought to be uh a human Incarnation or Avatar of the Divine mother and um eventually for various reasons she wound up in Germany and people started visiting her and I wrote I read books about her uh in the early 90s and I thought uh and I read books about ramach Krishna uh uh founder of uh uh Vidant in that in that lineage in the mid 19 century and how because he was an avatar um he could touch people and they would become enlightened and I thought if I ever hear of an avatar I'm gonna go the Shak depart re right uh it didn't work that way but um but I went to visit her and um after a friend of mine had died this was the AIDS era and um there was a lot of death that's another book the one after and um I had some very intense experiences um no flashing you know I'm I don't get the flashy stuff you said plant medicine I tried iasa once everyone in the room was in a bliss state or you know in a Hell realm um I drank what everyone else had I got a little bit extra because not much was happening and finally around 3 in the morning I thought mother a is in the room okay and her message for me was this is not your path I was like really really um so uh I I'm sort of condemned to doing a lot of hard work um okay but she um at one point so this was her thing was all about connection with the Divine mother um and I it was 99 um so a little a little before my mom started to enter her Decline and I was doing the California AIDS bicycle ride to raise money for AIDS services from San Francisco to LA and on day four I was lying on the side of the road in the Hard Scrabble and I was in this pocket where there were no bicyclists behind me and no none ahead of me and I was desperately thirsty I'd run out of water and the sun's beating down on me and I'm thinking what the [...] was I thinking um and then I thought there's the sun beating down on me and mother miror is all about bringing the light down I thought okay let's let's try and turn this into that and the sun in my imagination became her f and the sunlight coming down became that light and I started to relax and chill out and as I was getting ready to pick myself up and get back on the bicycle feeling revived and I recognize all of this might have just been my psychological thing in the moment there's nothing necessarily magical here but um I promised that I hadn't been to visit her in Germany in a number of years and I said I'll come to visit within the next year I made that sort of vow yeah and I kind of heard you don't need to come visit me just go visit your mother in Forest Hills she's an expression of the Divine mother as much as I am and from that moment that's how I sort of started interacting with my mom I didn't tell her this but taking care of her became in part that devotional practice and in her later years when I say she became a nuclear reactor of Mother Love what it really was an experience of and continues to be after she's gone is oh this is what the Divine mother brings to things this is what a relationship with the Divine mother is about I think you have your ying connection right there yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um but you know so that comes out from Left Field um and postco that's become a very rich part of my prce too um so I'm you know all these balls are up in the air most people don't let me talk about this stuff or don't ask so thank you very much we prefer it be interested okay I wasn't sure how we were gonna talk about this but I was reading your book there's and just it's in the we're ripping so okay sure so you know in Chinese medicine they talk about kind of like in a Tibetan book of the BAU and things you know uh the body joins with Spirit or Shen or Soul or what consciousness whatever word you like right you know uh D culture Chinese meican culture they tend to use this word Shen and then you know when the Shen in the body separate they call it yinyang separating right and uh there is this notion that there can be these kinds of clarity of Consciousness things that appear that in a certain sense the body is you know your connection to this place you know this Mortal coil but as you separate away more subtle aspects of experience maybe become possible or even blisses and joys I remember talking with a friend of mine Russian Jewish scientist uh uh uh biologist you know very he came up with like uh the pumps for multi-drug resistance that was his big thing you yeah and um but really great guy and uh we were talking he was like a chronic smoker and eventually he did get lung cancer and we had a party for him to say goodbye you know and he was out on the porch of course grabbing the smoke and uh I went out to talk talk with him and he said I can't explain it to you but this is the most Blissful I've ever been in my life and I I love everyone I feel at peace with everyone you know I wish I could share it with you in this direct way I don't know how else to say it yeah but there's a Clarity with this and I was you know I didn't say it to him you know I was already a Chinese medical person but I was thinking yeah that's that moment you know when this separates and in some ways even the Consciousness clarifies so when you were talking about your mom having insights into the plon length and you know the the universe not being smooth but having little I was like you know like dicing carrots she said yeah yeah yeah um and so is time and her respon and and she experienced it as incredibly beautiful um and said exactly I wish I could that you know you and Mark and and the kids my my her grandchildren my brother's kids could experience it the the way I do it's just so beautiful f um that was the thing about my mom is that she she was you know sort of declining went into became acutely sick went into Hospice Care stopped walking talking and eating for seven months and uh we had her in home hospice care and I was there every single day because this is probably going to be her last oh no not yet um and then after seven months uh I got a call from her home attendant Mr Neil come quick your mother's in the kitchen asking for a cup of tea wow and she lived for another six years wow oh my God okay and uh we um a friend of mine came up with a good title for the book that so far is still the working title Sarah in the in between because she was partly in this world and partly in Yiddish the yelt the other world and she she just hovered there you meet people who as they're dying may have some hours some days maybe even a few weeks it went on for years wow um and uh but one of the interesting things about this you know I she really was in a bliss State um and you think well you know uh a taste of Nirvana but she needed 24-hour Home Care you can't live in a bliss State like that because you won't be able to feed yourself because you're not in this world in that way and so you know what and and I think this is you know the trick of of of so many of our spiritual practices if you're looking for a depth of experience it's not getting to a destination um it's finding how do you balance those and how flexibly do you shift between those I am this body I am these cells I am these molecules and there's no I am the quantum foam I am the underlying fundamental awareness that emanates everything um all of those things are equally true yeah if the moment we select one and say oh this was my destination you've missed it which is such a Zen thing right it's such a Buddhist thing oh you missed it why because you chose okay yeah yeah remember hosak roshi saying something like you have to like there's a part of you that's connected to this body too and if you didn't have that part you just walk off the roof by accident or walk a truck both of those things are kind of always in play right yeah yeah now I don't I I I don't know how Consciousness you know what is the ele element that separates theoretically there is no such thing as separation um in the model of understanding existence that I explore in the book well material reality doesn't in fact exist so the body itself is not a material thing that has to separate from a spiritual thing it's all just pure awareness so they're not different things they may be different um processes Within the substance Spinosa is one substance um within nonu fundamental awareness as my collaborator uh Minas and I uh talk about it in our academic papers it's giving rise to material existence it's giving rise to our minds it's the same stuff it's only this human existence that teaches us to think that those are separate things but they're just complimentary the yin they their different views is it that um you know is it if you're calling it yin yang Yin never exists without Yang Yang never exists without Yin that's why a yinyang symbol not only do they meet perfectly and intertwin but they also have little dots of the other within them so there is no separating but there's this sort of shimmying where you become aware of the different aspects perhaps maybe maybe I don't know I'm talking out of my ass right no no we we Eric and I were talking about this earlier um because I had some some dreams that I was talking with him about and and we were kind of making a um I don't know a similar point but kind of a [...] that we him Eric and I both share independently but how does Consciousness or the Shen link with the the DNA or the body or this this thing and like how it is that you know like it's something I mean I've always been interested in Eric said you know because Eric's known me I've known Eric for uh over 10 years at this point 12 years something like this and he's like you've been interested in that since I first met you you know because it it is it is such a big question and but then you know when you think about it to your point it's like well I'm not sure that they're two separate components well they're not they're not you know I mean I I have the courage of my convictions that I write about in the book The Universe does not make our minds does not make Consciousness our brains do not make Minds it doesn't they don't make Consciousness the material aspects of the universe arise from nondu mind Consciousness awareness English we have don't have good words for this correct um and the emanation of all this stuff gives us the illusion that we have to keep saying this and that this or that but there is no difference between the material substance of your DNA and or and the non-material substance of your mind because even material and non-material that's duality in the realm of the nonuel these distinctions are utterly without meaning and even the moment you get into let's be some you know be hardcore um complexity scientists here the moment you say DNA you have in your picture probably I would guess not just a double helix lines with lines between them but you probably have an awareness that these are atoms creating these structures you've seen models of atoms that are make up the molecule of DNA well those atoms are just protons neutrons and electrons which are quantum phenomena which are made of leptons and quarks and muons and Now where's your thingness down there you're talking about activated wave states of the entire universe at the quantum level because non-locality and entanglement to Einstein's great Chagrin are real that's why they won a Nobel Prize final yeah not that a Nobel Prize guarantees it's real but um so and you're not so then you're down at the quantum foam and you're still not even in my frame of reference and in the stuff I cover in the book of different cultures you're still not at the fundamental level the fundamental below that you're still talking distinctions you're still talking wave versus particle you're still talking momentum versus energy you still got Heisenberg's uncertainty principle where you have two things once you get below that there's no distinctions the bigger question to me is and this was a puzzle duh um well so first off how does nondu mind give rise to Duality and uh Minas is a Kashmir shist and that tradition sort of supplied um this piece of the puzzle um in their contemplative practices they really try and you know every contemplative practice has questions it's asking and what they find in their contemplation depends on the question asked so in Buddhism what's the end of suffering um in Judaism it's how does uh in cabala much of it is how does the universe uh come into being every moment Bari in the beginning bad translation but how does creation continually renew itself that's the question karism how does the nonuel give rise to the D and what they talk about are these uh 20 tatvas or stages where you have nonu reality within which the urge to know itself arises whatever that means because it can't really mean anything at that stage and then sort of there's a recognition that it contains within itself an i and a that and then so there's a little shimmying there and then they're sort of like well is that I or is I that and there's a little movement there um and then finally there's I am that that am I and then there's a separation to arrive at the at Duality there has to be separation how do you have separation well there has to be dimension ality within which you can have separation in non-d dual awareness there's no such thing in space and time there's no such thing as past and future or here and there it's just because it's beyond description but the moment there's a recognition of self and other within itself then there has to be dimensionality and that's where space comes into existence and time comes into existence and perhaps other dimensions string the like um and the moment that happens you have SpaceTime and that's an energy-rich field we know from quantum mechanics and suddenly you have subatomic particles and atoms and molecules and all this material stuff because nonu awareness had an urge to perceive itself and all of it but but they're all the same there's no at their root we're just right there I go on a toot you s get to the to the riddle of that thing then and you know you're using different metaphors to describe that in the last section of the book because then they get to this point of like well how does this nonu I guess like ontological ground of being thing right that still is everything my finger my hat you know this thing over here it's still that right yeah yeah but then you also get to the and this is the this is the [...] Maybe how does that also get to be individual experiencing individual agents or something and right you do address that in kind of interesting ways at the end of the that deep part at the end where you're exploring these different systems of thought kajar shiism and the cabala and the Zen and the bant you have that section at the end you know which is you know very unique part to have such a sciency book and then the flip of the switch and here we are um so I I can't remember TI how you talk about all that but you do say well these are still sort of the riddles so how are you thinking about those things now I'm trying to remember how you framed it because I was Ling to it kind of last night um and you were kind of talking okay here's are still the things that are still sort of the questions we have to have individual Consciousness within this whole thing and then how's that connect what's the brain actually doing relative this all those kinds of questions kind of pop up again well so the conventional truth as opposed to the ultimate truth if you want to be a little budhy about it yeah um you know the first thing what's the brain doing in all this because we I can't dismiss the brain as having import yeah I remember yeah but but so uh we have all these great correlations between ways of looking at the brain like fmri and EEG and contents of awareness you know someone sees something in their mind or actually and their visual cortex lights up so you know hardcore materialists which comprise most of of our culture say well the visual cortex is producing the sensation no there's not there's a correlation there but there's no place in the brain that you can point to that says this is the source of the experience of awareness this is the the so-called hard problem of Consciousness that no matter how much they want to say otherwise cognitive neuroscientists are still suck stuck with that's why every paper they publish talks about anything they find is a uh uh is a neural correlate of Consciousness they're never allowed to say it's Consciousness because all they got is correlations in which case what's the brain doing uh the easy answer is it's like a radio that's taking in radio waves and turning it into an experience right um it's a transducer of Consciousness you don't expect to open a radio and they're The Beatles playing inside um you know that there's an infinite set of radio waves extending in all directions that include the Beetles and if you tune in at the right frequency you can hear the beetles but we also know because our computers this was a big thing probably when you were eight um you could you could play music on your computer but you could get a light show too um and so you could turn radio waves which we think of well that's sound isn't it no it's just radio waves you can transduce it into light you can transduce it into vibrations that a deaf person can experience as music all sorts of things so the brain of a bee um samples fundamental non-u reality of awareness and mind and has be experience and we have human experiences there is no world out there that's independent of us and this is what drove Einstein Matt um and it's what led to his to some extent his his bad science that didn't allow him to accomplish what he wanted but at the same time his critiques of this in quantum physics are what led to things like non non locality and entanglement he was saying no these are impossibilities so if your ideas lead to these your ideas are wrong turns out no that's where they go and he was smart enough to see it but he couldn't accept it had a a delightful afternoon experience because I was teaching my little class on physics for Chinese medical students and I got to talk about the brain as a transducer because I was doing Maxwell's equations and you know all the waves going everywhere and I was saying well these waves are why you have all this telecommunications and you know the radio is there you know and it's picking up the waves that are there anyways right you know those waves are there regardless of whether or not the radio is there the radio just latches onto it right and that seems to be like kind of how you're talking about that no that's exactly that's exactly it and I think it's a very nice elegant solution and in these terms the hard problem ceases to exist it just dissolves the problems the problems we were talking about well you know is it the body is it the mind of stuff all of these cease to be problems they dissolve as questions because everything is just awareness everything is only experience there is nothing to make it experience because experience is all there is um but we're not brought up to think that way and other cultures this is easy because you know some indigenous cultures um some religious communities these are simple um you know but in our contemporary post Newtonian you know and and Newton himself no one you know you know he wrote thousands upon thousands of pages about alchemy I have to say I'm proud in my little class because I teach that to students every semester now like he's a Mystic that's the reason he likes this gravity where everything's pulling on everything everything everywhere all at once right so why didn't you write my book and saved me the trouble well and then wouldn't get a chance to read your delightful book from my side all right all right all right you can write a followup enjoyment so Neil Eric and I were having this so I have I have two questions for you but we'll start with this one because it seems to be related to what we're talking about and and you have to remember the other one because the way I answer you may never get back to it so well I know I will you've actually I've had I had like four questions I wanted to ask but you've already gone through and answered them already so okay so only two are remaining and one comes from Eric and I's conversation earlier today but we were talking about spiritual practice meditative practice and development or uh Rory hiltbrand who was one of the other presenters at that conference that you gave a presentation to had a really beautiful uh saying and that instead of calling it like development or the path of Enlightenment he called it an act of a continual Act of devotion which I quite like that so we so talking about practitioners who are Enlightenment seeking or meditative seeking or you know giving continuous acts of devotion however you want to talk about it in this country in particular or in the west we can say which is a lot of people and I'm sure there's a lot of practitioners it's not exactly pop culture but there are plenty of people all over this country and probably in Europe who give themselves to more or less to the process of Awakening we'll we'll see it or we'll say it but Eric and I I was kind of talking with Eric before about difficulties in practice and marrying things together like you talk about body versus cells which which was you know your kind of [...] for quite some time inadvertently or advertently who knows where Karma comes into all of this do you have a feeling from your travels your discussions your 34 35 years of Zen practice something like this Neil yeah 37 37 it's a long time yeah so do you feel you could ask why I haven't gotten Dharma transmission yet slow maybe you have it just just hasn't come out yet you know um do you feel that there is that it is more difficult or that there are obstacles that are more present now than times past do you not feel that way or do you think that we are more capable therefore we can deal with these obstacles as they are coming about or are you know we're this is the this is the School of Hard Knocks and this is what we need to go through like where do you fall on on on this because I know I have I've been blessed by having some really great people and teachers like Eric in my life who have brought this to my attention and I have some other vadana teachers and some yoga teachers who also talk about this as an impediment to practice actually being around I don't know electromagnetic fields as as Eric and I kind of talked about earlier is it a a collective Consciousness that might be a sort of haze over our ability to connect if you will so I just wanted to kind of give you this as the premise and hear what you thought about it because Eric and I talked about it earlier and I was like let's ask Neil tonight um I don't know okay um however I do have things to say not fair um I don't think we have anything to say about how easy or hard it was in other Generations um for one uh I think about my father's parents who were teenagers in Germany when World War I started my grand grandfather was in the trenches his brother was there for the Christmas Truce if you know what that is in World War I um and then survived came back home uh the great inflation and then the Great Depression and then there were Nazis and then they're dead and so nowhere in there did they have any opportunity for a quiet undistracted spiritual practice but people I've spoken to who were alive and knew them uh talked about how joyful their household was my father's household that he grew up in um how warm it was and I had a strong sense of how um deep their devotional practice was in Jewish forms so so that's one thing number two is I'm not I can see where you might say contemplative practice is sort of a form of devotional practice is MHM um I think it's uh I don't know VC vidanta Hindu generally I'm not sure where it where it's deriving from but there's this notion of there are categories of practice there's scholarship there's devotion there's the path of service the path of contemplation there's a fifth one I think I'm not thinking of this one's kind of kind of philosophical or something right yeah something scriptural scholarship versus Phil philosophy yeah for years I tried to get my mother to meditate and she was just not having and um and eventually this is before um her Advanced years I was watching her light chabas candles on Friday night the the Sabbath the candles that marked the sabbath coming in and I just thought that that's it right there she's got this devotional practice that is every bit as rich and deep and intimate as my contemplative practice aspires to be but her path is devotion um and my husband he's very supportive of all this stuff that I do but if you try and talk religion when we first met he's not Jewish and I was more observant then um but he's the food guy and we met and it was our first week and it was Friday night and I said I'd like to do a Friday night dinner the Sabbath thing and with the candles and the wine and the whole ritual um and I thought well I should translate the the stuff for him from the Hebrew so he knows what he was like oh no don't ruin it right now it's theater don't turn I don't want to hear about he's just completely uninterested and it took me again a long time to realize you want to know what his practice is it's service and you watch him prepare him meal and that's his practice that's how he becomes intimate with the world and the people around him so I I I I hesitate to want to Mush these things together because I think uh people are different and you know in Buddhist terms we talk about skillful means you gota in in Jewish lore um there were 600,000 Jews um at Mount Si when the Torah was given and so there're in fact 600,000 different versions of the Torah one for each of [Music] them so I'm not you know I I think the bigger question these are interesting questions that you're asking but the I guess as I've gotten older I sort of I don't have time I'm very aware that my time is you know I had two strokes this year a shoulder replacement now I'm getting a hip uh a shoulder repair now I'm getting a hip replacement it's been a hard year and I published a book um it's been quite a roller coaster um I those questions don't help me know what I should do and they don't help me guide other people into what they might do they're interesting things to talk about but I think my instinct now is to but what's the thing and and uh I'll leave the the the interesting questions like that for people who are younger maybe of a Zen pragmatism in that too I'm I'm here now I have to start here I can't start maybe it would better if I would started someplace else maybe it wouldn't better I have to start here maybe that's that kind of thing too yeah and I I don't I'm I'm not being dismissive no of what you're saying I understand where the urge comes from this is I mean gwing on those kinds of questions are part of how I got to where I am yeah um so it's all process and this this sort of leads me then into the the next my other question because of course I'm not going to forget um you know in the book and and just now you talked about how these spiritual Traditions are probably viewing the same phenomenon or similar Phenomenon with different lenses but what was what struck me as even more interesting than than that because I have this view also was that your uh idea of pointing out the questions that they're asking and this informing how it is that they are pursuing the answers and then thereby giving rise to practices and so on and so forth ways of being ways of living given all of this given your experience after writing this book you know as it's these kind of conversations hopefully opened up for you and I've listened to one of the talks that you gave at a library in in Connecticut and you said that you've had some sometimes you have really great questions from people that make you think oh yeah yeah people who ask me questions I haven't thought to think about oh this is the fun part yeah so and you know I'm not putting on your spot you could certainly Kick the Can down the road but like you mentioned in Buddhism that they were wondering you know how do we end suffering you know and in in Judaism how is it that we know the creation or what what what is creation creating or something like this have you thought about qu you know and these are just two questions of two very large spiritual Traditions have you thought about questions you know we talked earlier about Coons have you thought about a a question or questions for yourself moving forward as everybody's asking you questions have you thought about questions you know that would give rise to something for yourself you know either moving forward or you know as as you kind of organize what it is that you do I know you mentioned just now you're kind of a pragmatic person but you have a gnawing mind I'm sure you know and and still lots of curiosity and have M great desires for self-expression and I would imagine that many of those come from from query from self-inquiry and from things still yet not done chattering you know in your mind and so I just wanted to ask you like what kind of questions like this are are lingering for yourself because I've you know wanted to know yeah how do I finally figure out to how to get out of my way um you know the one way of summing up everything in the book is you know in Zen terms what's dogen talking about zazen itself is the thing there's no um there's nothing to be gained um when I'm sitting here as this body I am very truly completely nothing but awareness turning into the appearance of this body sitting here with this personality that thinks of itself as real and every single godamn moment that I'm sitting there pondering that I'm separate from the experience of the fact that that is it um so so you know with The Strokes it was I I there were no lesion Associated I had two little strokes up here there were no lesion Associated uh deficits but um what became very clear days after and it's still lingering and it's problematic for me at work is I can no longer multitask um I can't do two things at once um I turn into a little anxious Chihuahua backed into a corner and if you come near me I'm going to snap uh I just there's a little moment of panic and my first response was I've got too many things to do um how can I not even do two things at one time and then I thought Big Shot you've been as end student for how long trying to learn how to do one thing at a time you haven't learned how to do that really well and the universe has come along and handed you this gift or hit you with a baseball bat I can only do one thing at a time MH so so that's a big piece of where I am now can I you know I haven't been given an option this is what I have to do um there's that the other thing though as I say that is I also have fallen into this shamanic thing which is part of my mother's story um there are I have experienced non-material Realms and they are populated by non-material conscious living beings um they can influence us I can influ we can influence them that's kind of what shamanic practice is in in my mind and I'm met a shaman and so we're doing that now these days too how do you explain that how do you put that into the context of my complexity theory model of the universe where's that are those Realms of pure mind um and I have a scientific theory about what this all is and I debating whether to put that in my mother's book because I think there is a way to to solidly do that which it's up to you whether I just hand it to you right now or leave it for later so you know Eric has been highly influenced by Zen and and Tibetan Buddhism I've been highly influenced by Tibetan Buddhism and Shamanism you know and we've had my teacher on Mary K Ryan who is you know a great influence on me but then obviously I'm going I'm leading Retreats I'm teaching classes on on this very topic and Zen and and Tibetan Buddhism is is based on shamanic practice I mean yeah yeah yeah it's r with non-material beings appearing out of the blue yeah and then but then in the Practical the Practical kind of aspect because I'm a Capricorn so we're going to have some practicality I know you two Geminis in the building but we need someone with all of our feet on the ground all all four Hooves or or sideways on a mountain you that's right so we're horny exing um but it it is on how it's a lived practice so it is visionary and it is influential but it's influential on reality right it doesn't only exist in like just this place where when you close they are not separate right but how do you know I have what seems to be a complete model of existence that contains everything where's the room for that or do I have to invoke some weird Magic um and I don't think you have to um we have something called dark matter that everybody's in agreement we have dark matter the way scientists for the most part talk about dark matter is that it's this brute kind of dumb substance that the only thing it can interact with other things through is gravity um so that's how we can detect it's there it helps shape galaxies but we can't see it it's not dark because it's evil it's dark because we can't see it hear it touch it there's no other there's no communication via electromagnetism the weak Force vi strong force only through gravitation um but what make us what makes us think that it doesn't have ways of interacting with itself there's nothing that says that in fact isn't that kind of crazy don't you think Dark Matter should be able to perceive itself and inter interact with itself and if it is arising from SpaceTime let's not even go to fundamental awareness yet let's say it's arising from SpaceTime because it is in SpaceTime then it's got to be arising in some sort of Dark Matter quantum foam too it may not be strings or particles we have no idea what they might be but if they do and they can interact with each other then according to the rules of complexity Theory and Chaos Theory they're going to interact with each other to lead to larger scale structures that then behave like things which interact with each other and suddenly you have non-material living conscious beings arising in the universe that have no meeting point with us except where we meet is in fundamental awareness so the way we can access them is through Consciousness one of my teachers I I this was kind of a turning point for me he said to them to us their world is dream like and really hard to to grasp and perceive with any sort of solidity to them our world is the dream because where we both come from is just pure awareness and so I don't think these things are separate uh I'm call you Dr th right now because that very deep idea and deserves the the hfic title I thought about it that way that's very creative application of that idea I think so the whole Dark Matter thing who's to say that doesn't have all kind of complexity and you know teaming within it why would it not right yeah yeah yeah the dark energy Dark Matter thing that's creative thank you yeah that's great yeah that's that's that's good man that's a creative twist I hadn't thought of it that way uhuh because you yeah the the I should put that in the next book I definitely I think that I think that rocks I think that rocks yeah for sure rocks I mean I don't know I don't know if we're your Target demographic but you know we both give you uh you know you both gave us like one of those moments of like oh that's good yeah that's creative well you guys are part of my Target demographic right there are people out there if you read my Goodreads reviews you know I'm still above 4.0 um but there are 20% of the people just hate me um and are so dismissive it's interesting though where they where they usually tear me apart is you don't understand quantum physics well you know I've got some high power Quantum physicists like the founders who are on my side as well as some contemporary ones no one ever tries to tear me apart on the goodle stuff because they don't get it um and interestingly no one has yet said oh that transducer idea for the brain makes no sense and some of these are like neuroscientists who who you know excoriate the book because but you know brain makes mind what are you talking about so I find it interesting that the there's if I'm not pushing someone's buttons I haven't written the book I'm supposed to write H yeah I was just gonna say if no one's hating I don't know that you're doing it right right right right and uh you know someone asked me the other day aren't you worried about your um your reputation and I'm like my reputation that pays my bills is being a liver pathologist and I'm really good at being a liver pathologist and they don't care when I give them a diagnosis on a patient's biopsy what crazy religious ideas I have or philosophy or you know that I do iasa on the weekends or whatever as long as I'm not doing it while I'm looking at the biopsy right so so I'm lucky that uh I have a career that keeps me safe academically who's going to touch me um yeah you know I have a you have a good you have a good research resume too I mean you not like you haven't made your research right contributions you certainly have well listen uh Neil and Eric we Neil you asked us to be gotta go a little bit about time yeah yeah yeah and it's it's uh you gota work early in the morning and get back to that 30 minutes before your bedtime and we want to give you your uh downtime but um thank you so much for coming on tonight I mean this was really great you know I really appreciate you coming on Eric and I were talking earlier and it's just a wonderful th this Venture this particular Venture is such a wonderful opportunity to meet people who we never would have met before you know if I was taking that lecture with you um last in December and I would said oh he's really cool I'd like to meet him I'm not gonna message you hey Neil let's talk on the phone for a while why Daniel people do people do do they oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah hey I'm gonna be in New York you want to hang out oh really this year it's been yeah this year it's been real easy uh I had a couple of Strokes I'm recovering from shoulder surgery oh I've got a hip problem so um but ultimately yeah I I I barely have time for friends and family that you know but but this kind of stuff is also nourishing for me you know meeting other people who are engaged take my work seriously yeah have their own experiences they're bringing uh to it um I'll tell you I had a really hard day this hip thing is sort of making me a little insane um and today I was not so strong in the face of it um and now I feel really good so thank you for the good medicine well you're you're welcome thank you thank you for your work for your insights it's it's definitely been a great ride listening to your book listening to your lectures and then having you here today it's like uh it feels like we've we've come full circle and and it feels like I have an ally in uh in in one uh Mr Neil so thank you thank you so much for for making the time sure and thank you so much for being like you're sharing so much yeah ask you this question it's like oh this is coming from the heart so thank you so much for that and of your B yeah your image of your mom riding the can lighting the candles and the Shea Divine mother appearing and you know yeah when you were giving your talk at that at that seminar I was like oh yeah this is we're we're in the same we're in the same tree you know whatever whatever tree that is yeah um yeah yeah well that's a nice thing to find people growing up it was kind kind of like who am I and where am I going to fit in here and it turns out oh I'm me there's lots of places to fit in that's right that's right maybe there's more of us out there right look people responding to your book there people know these things yeah yeah all right my brother we'll let we'll let you run but um thank you so much for coming on uh if anybody has questions or you know comments or whatever for for Neil please email us at Jin and Tantra gmail.com Neil at the beginning of this episode I'm going to give all your bios and all that other stuff so people can get a hold of you and uh bu Neil's book we will will have the link to it in the description of the podcast both on YouTube and on the audio version so wherever you're getting it from like comment subscribe do all the things that uh help the show grow so we can continue to have great conversations with people who are doing the real work uh in life and that uh influence our our minds and our hearts and hope they do the same for everybody who's tuning in today so for Eric Daniel this is Neil we catch you guys in the next one [Music] peace