An End To Upside Down Thinking With Mark Gober

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot, everybody.

Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell, and I'm really, I'm feeling quite blessed this morning. Woke up, as always, put my feet on the floor and I actually said these words that are imprinted on my chest today. So those of you that are watching this, you can see that my shirt says I love my life. And those of you that are listening, I'm telling you right at the gate that this has been, it's been an interesting morning for me because I went to sleep late last night after being up just thinking about some things. I had just seen a new movie that came out talking about a number of the political divides that are with us in our world today, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Kind of interfered with my normal bedtime ritual. And I woke up feeling a little bit of that same energy, the same sort of disappointment. Disappointment, I guess, in the communication that seems to exist in our world today. And much of that communication, I think, is divisive. And I'm in a place at this moment where I realize that there's more that each of us, I think, can do. But I'm not going to focus on, on anybody in that regard except myself. And so I took it last night before I went to bed and when I woke up this morning as a bit of a personal assignment to just speak into this a bit more, be more clear in my own communication, close any open loops that might exist for me when it comes to where I stand on uncertain issues and all that kind of thing and not be in a place of fear. I suppose that there's backlash, that there is bullying that comes or controversy. That's more than I want to handle based on those things. So I open up the space for our podcast today just to say that I really am going to take my own personal responsibility at a higher level. And I have an incredible guest, somebody that you are all going to enjoy so much today just because of what he has to share, what he's been researching, what he's written about the person that he is in the world at this moment, which I think is a terrific model for many of us in terms of taking more personal responsibility for finding and creating and being solutions to things that are disheartening. So we'll dive into that in just a couple of seconds here. I want to read a little bit about him, share his bio, share a little bit about the work that he's doing, and then bring them on. So the gentleman's name is Mark Gober and he is the author whose worldview has turned upside down. Well, I'll say his own worldview was turned upside down in late 2016 when he learned of the phenomena that threatened the prevailing view in science that consciousness, consciousness, comes from the brain. After researching extensively, he became convinced that a paradigm shift was in order. Biology does not produce consciousness, rather, consciousness produces biology. I want to repeat that biology does not produce consciousness, rather, consciousness produces biology. Implications are immense for science, technology, medicine, and even for everyday issues like happiness, health and relationships. His book, An End to Upside Down Thinking has received endorsements from my friend Jack Canfield, Goldie Hawn, number one best selling author, Eben Alexander, two time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Dr. Irvin Laszlo, Pixar founder, Lauren Carpenter. The list goes on and on. Mark is a senior member of Sherpa Technology Group in Silicon Valley, a firm that advises businesses on mergers and acquisitions and strategy. He previously worked as an investment banking analyst in New York. Mark has been quoted for his opinions on business and technology matters in Bloomberg Businessweek and elsewhere. And he authored internationally, has already authored internationally published business articles. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University where he was also the captain of the tennis team, something I was on the tennis team and high school was not the captain. But we have that in common as well. And mark also represents Dr. Irvin Laszlo's institute of New Paradigm Research as the Director of Corporate Relations. Mark, it's a pleasure to have you on the show today. Welcome.

Thanks so much for having me, Adam.

Yeah, Mark, we're living in interesting times, wouldn't you agree?

We are indeed. I think that's one of the reasons I felt such urgency to write this book, even though, as you mentioned, I only learned of these phenomena in late 2016. And here we are with my book coming out.

Mark, this is an extensive bio. There's a lot going on here. You've had a, you know, very, I would say, kind of a prolific career for somebody who's only in your early 30s. You've done a lot already, done a lot of research, a lot of studying, a Lot of hard work. What is not in this bio that you would love for people to know about you?

Well, you mentioned that my worldview was shifted as a result of the research I did. And I think those words probably don't capture what it's been like to go through that shift in a worldview. And if you want to start here, we can go through what my old worldview was because I think it's one that's very much informed by the current education system. And I realized, wait, something I didn't learn a few things and that changes how I think about my own life. And I think that might be impactful to your listeners.

Yeah, I want to, I want to go there. But first I want to ask you this. You know, you've been able to accomplish a lot of things, and I think that there are people who are striving and spend a lot of time in the mode of striving and achieving. And sometimes that's to prove, you know, prove something. I know for me, part of why I was spent a lot of my early career wanting to prove myself to myself as well as to my family and wanting to really do as well as I could. And that created some level of exhaustion. I got kind of burned out in the first 10, 15 years of my career. So what I would love to have you do is just share a little bit about who you are. Other than the things that are written in that bio. What's something that maybe some people don't know about you or something that really drives you that's not about, let's say, business or success?

Well, I think how I'm going to answer this ties into the content of the book, which is that I have been success oriented my whole life, but even when I was going through these different things at Princeton and investment banking and beyond, I knew that something was missing, that I was striving for things. But even achieving them didn't bring happiness. They didn't bring lasting happiness. So maybe it was a temporary. You know, I'm pumped about something. I win a tennis match or I get a promotion, but then I would quickly return to baseline, which is striving for the next thing. And in my book, I talk about something known as the hedonic treadmill. It's like we're on a treadmill striving for the next thing we're running, but we're not actually getting anywhere. We're staying in place. So I've had a quest for happiness for a long time.

So this is the proverbial rat Race, if you will. It's this idea that we're constantly sort of. I don't say we. And it's not always, but I know I found myself chasing that carrot. And I've met a lot of people along the way also caught up in that idea of, you know, sort of chasing after something, feeling that if I just. If I just can grab that thing, if I get that thing, that carrot, that carrot might be. And I also, from a different university, graduated with high honors and all that. And I thought, geez, if I just graduate with high honors, it's gonna set you. My life's going to be, you know, better, and my life's going to be. I don't want to say perfect, but I'll be happy, just like you said. So I killed myself, or near killed myself to have that happen. And then that happened. But I didn't feel happy, content, fulfilled. And then it was the next thing, I was going to go to law school, okay, So I went to law school, and then it was to pass the bar exam on the first try and, you know, start practicing and open my own firm. And, you know, thing after thing that I convinced myself, if I just have that, then, yes, I'll be happy. Oh, it's the house. Okay, So I grew up in an apartment. We didn't have a house. We'll get a house. Fantastic. Oh, I didn't have a pool. We'll have a pool. We'll have a vacation home. You know, on and on and on and on and on. And in each of those milestones or things that I was seeking that carrot, after going after it, figuring it out, working, doing whatever it took to achieve it, I found that there was this place like you described, where it didn't fulfill, it didn't meet the hype, so to speak. It didn't produce happiness. And I think that's an essential issue in the lives of most people. It doesn't matter what the thing is, whether it's the striving to get a degree or to become a millionaire or to, you know, seek some other other physical things, some other material thing, that we are all sort of caught up in that cycle. And it's almost like Einstein's definition of insanity, right? Because it's. It's the doing of a very similar or operating in a similar pattern and expecting that the result at the end will be different. So instead of it being a million dollars, now it's 10 million. Instead of it being one house, now it's five houses. Or instead of it's you know, 2,000 square feet of living space. It's, you know, 8,000 square feet or whatever the case. I would love it if you would, Mark, tie that in, because I think your book really does, on some level, go at the root. And I know we're going to get into the science of what upside down thinking is, what was the prevailing thinking, what's the conventional scientific thinking, and what does this book do to kind of turn that on its end. But I think there's something that's even more fundamental to the way people live, that everyday people on it, live on in everyday life. That's. That's really being raised by this book, which is really amazing to me. Would you speak into that just a bit?

Yeah. I think there is an assumption throughout modern society that we will become happy when we achieve something that's external to us. And you were describing different things. It could be a relationship, it could be more money, it could be the next house. And what we find over and over again is that that doesn't bring lasting happiness or even a sense of peace. We see that it sometimes brings temporary happiness, but it doesn't do it. And for me personally, I achieved a lot of things that I was. That were goals for me, and it wasn't bringing a lasting sense of happiness. I mean, if external things always brought happiness, then every billionaire, every movie star would be ecstatic all the time. And yet we hear of people in the news who are. Who are depressed, who have committed suicide, and some things that don't align with the material success that they have achieved. And this is something I do talk about in the book, which is challenging the idea that anything external is what will bring lasting happiness. What I talk about in the book is that our identity is being the consciousness that we are, rather than something physical and where consciousness is the basis of our reality. If that's true, then anything external is almost an illusion. And that instead of focusing on things outside of ourselves to bring happiness, to shift the attention inward, which is the opposite of what we're taught. And for this is an everyday life issue on a daily basis, we're striving for things, sometimes small, sometimes big, to shift the perception, to say, well, who is the observer? That is, who's having the experience? What am I fundamentally shifting that attention inward, I think is a start to bringing happiness.

Yes, let's dial it back just a little, a little, and perhaps define what materialism is, because what you said earlier, that we're striving looking to get happiness out of some external thing, whether like you say, even a relationship is an external thing. A better body is an external thing. Money, success, fame, celebrity, whatever it is, these are external things. So if that's not the key to lasting, sustainable happiness, if that's not even the key to peace, which is ultimately, I believe, what we're all after anyway, it's all rooted in how we see those things. And that's materialism. But please define it for us.

Sure. So materialism basically says that the universe is made of physical matter, like atoms. So I can touch my table, that's made of matter. The whole universe is made of this physical stuff. And when you break things down to the smallest, smallest level, it's matter that you find. And in this universe that has matter, ultimately a human being and other types of biological organisms evolve that are made of matter, and we develop consciousness. So I have a mind right now. I have an awareness, a sense of identity. And what materialism says is that that sense of identity comes from stuff in my brain, which is made of matter. The materialism says that matter creates consciousness, matter creates my sense of identity. That implies that there is something outside of our identity, that there's a me sitting here that's having this experience, and then there's an external world. In my book where I talk about upside down thinking, an end to upside down thinking, I am asserting that consciousness is the basis of reality. So our identity is actually the centerpiece. So anything that's external is actually just an illusion. It's. It's an experience that the consciousness is having. It's something that we perceive through our vision or our hearing or other senses. But fundamentally, what exists is the awareness that's experiencing those things. So when you shift from saying that there's this physical world and then we emerge within it, just saying that, no, everything is our awareness, and the experiences that we're having are within our awareness. Then to think of something being outside of awareness, outside of our consciousness is not. It's not a real thing. It's an illusion. So then it would make sense to say, well, if I'm striving for something outside of myself, but there's nothing outside of my consciousness in the first place, then of course it won't bring happiness because it's actually just an illusion.

Okay.

Which is a lot.

I've read your book. And so I know. I know where you're going with this. And yet I'm thinking to myself.

We'Ve.

Got to dial it back just a couple of steps. Let's go. Let's go back to the Big Bang. Let's, let's start at the Big Bang, for example, or at least when, when it is that we let. Let's start at the beginning and move forward so that we can understand, everybody can understand what materialism is in that context. Okay, Yep.

So the universe according to materialism started about 13.8 billion years ago with something, some event, it's usually called the Big Bang. And the Big Bang filled the universe with the stuff that we call matter, atoms. And through randomness, you end up with matter that's interacting with itself. So one particle interacts with another particle. We call that chemistry very basic. When you have enough random chemical interactions in this big universe, you're bound to end up with a type of molecule that's self replicating, that's DNA. And as we know, DNA is the basis of our physical biology and leads to the evolution of different beings, like a human. And a human has a brain and the consciousness comes out of the brain.

Exactly. So there's a, there's a human being and that human being thinks. And, and it's that thinking process, that awareness that, that feels like it's, it's coming from the brain or it's what we've been told is that our awareness comes from the brain, that our thinking.

Comes from the brain.

Isn't that what we've all sort of all been taught from the time that we were very young?

I think we're taught it sometimes it's so implicit that we're not actually. People don't even talk about it. It's just, oh, of course I have a mind because of my brain. My mind comes from my brain. That's what the materialist perspective says. Big Bang leads to a human being that has a mind. But it's because of this brain that's the interface.

Right. And what you said earlier about physical matter, we can touch, for example, we can touch our arm. Simple enough. Wherever you are, if you're driving, you're on the treadmill, whatever it is, just touch your arm anywhere and go, yep, that's easy enough to do. You can touch your leg, you can touch some other part of your body, but what's not possible to touch?

Mark, Right? Can I touch my consciousness? Can I touch my mind? Where is it? So this is the big question and the big problem with materialism that I didn't even know was a problem until very recently, which is, how is it that this body that you can touch, you just proved it. If you were able to touch your arm or touch your leg or touch your Head. How does that body that's physical produce something that you can't touch? This is the big open secret. It's called the hard problem of consciousness. Science magazine has said it's the number two question that remains in all of science. We don't know how this happens.

So the real not sort of dilemma, but it is a dilemma because you said it's the hard problem of consciousness. Right. Does the brain produce consciousness or does consciousness produce all else?

Right. And it is a problem in that we all know we have an awareness. It's actually the most provable thing you can think of right now. I'm aware talking to you, Adam. The only thing that I can definitively prove is that I have a consciousness. And that thing that I can prove. We don't know where it comes from according to science. When you think about it, we can send people to the moon. We can do amazing things by genetically modifying plants and different organisms, but we still don't know where our own consciousness comes from. So this is a major issue.

Einstein had an issue with this, didn't he?

He did.

He had an issue because he was a materialist. I mean, I just want to kind of lay out the foundation, which is that there's a divide. And I don't know what the divide is. 50, 50, 70, 30, I don't know. But there's. There's a tremendous amount of science. I mean, that's the one thing that's pretty, I would say, not over overwhelming it. It's just the right amount of whelm. In this book is the science that supports the idea that materialism is not. Is not the law when it comes to consciousness.

Right.

In fact, it's the opposite. And Einstein wrestled with this very. This very idea.

Yes. So Einstein was a materialist and he believed that there was this world outside of consciousness. And what I mean by that is we start with the big bang and there's this universe filled with matter, the human being, and the consciousness associated with it came later. So that means there is a human being and then there's this world outside of it. This is getting back to what we spoke of earlier. Einstein. Here's the problem, and I'm going to say this slowly. We can't prove that anything existed before consciousness. Because in order to prove that this table's here, or for me to prove that I'm looking at you, I have to experience it to actually prove it. Right? Anything. Even if I'm measuring something scientifically, there needs to be an observer, a consciousness that experiences it. If we Say that materialism is right, that there was some big bang and all this stuff, 13.8 billion years worth of things, and then the consciousness came. We can't actually prove it because 13.8 billion years ago, according to materialism, there was no consciousness to actually experience it. So could it have happened? Yes. Can we prove it? No. And so Einstein, he was wrestling with people who were on the other side of materialism. And what he said is that I cannot prove that my conception is right, meaning materialism. But that is my religion. And this is the leap of faith to say, oh, well, I just think there's something outside of my consciousness. But we can never prove it because the minute that we observe it or experience it, it's within our consciousness.

Which is incredible because for science now this is, this leap of faith has nothing to do with religion. It doesn't have to do with anything that would be sort of beyond the realm of what's provable. And yet it serves as the foundation for all science, meaning the first. If you look at science as a series of dominoes, for example, you know, one thing that you know, tips into the next in a sequential order, whatever that might be, if it's a time sequence or some other thing, the first domino in that sequence is undefined. In science, they don't know and cannot prove the first domino in the sequence.

It amazes me every time I think about it still, that it's. It's sort of like, well, I'll take this one leap of faith and then I'll measure everything after that one point. But it's the foundation. It's like the foundation of a building. And that part is very shaky. It's something that's not provable. So if you just look at it from this, it's sort of like a philosophical issue that we're talking about here. The philosophy is shaky. We haven't even talked about the science.

We haven't. And it implies a change to potentially so many views, so many long held opinions, beliefs, the faith that we have in certain things like that if our consciousness exists outside of us. Because in essence that's what you're saying, that consciousness exists outside of our physical bodies, or as I think you use the word non locally. If that's the case, then when our physical bodies pass away, when we transition from this physical life to wherever we are beyond this life, if any place, our consciousness doesn't necessarily die when we do. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, I think that is what's implied by this idea that consciousness is first rather than matter. But then I think there's also science, which we can get into later, suggesting that consciousness is existing when a physical body is not functional anymore. So we start to get into questions of identity. What am I? Am I a body that has a consciousness, and then when the body dies, my consciousness dies? Or am I a consciousness first and foremost, that has different experiences, and one of them right now is through this body? And if that's true, that I'm a consciousness, then we start asking questions about happiness and what's external and things like that.

And when you're speaking about us having a consciousness and identity as consciousness, we're a part of. If consciousness exists before matter and we are an expression of consciousness, then we're all expressions of consciousness. Everything's an expression of consciousness then. And therefore there's some relationship between us, the us, the collective us. Is that also what's implied by this?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that that's what the evidence at least points to in many different ways, where not only are we a consciousness first and foremost, but that the consciousness that's me is the same, that is the consciousness of each of the listeners and the same as the consciousness of anything. But we're sort of having our own localized individual experiences, but still part of the broader consciousness. And there's an analogy I love from Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, which says, imagine that all of reality is like a stream of water, where the water represents consciousness and each of us is like a little whirlpool, meaning we're having our own localized whirlpool experience. That we're not necessarily seeing everything outside of that experience because we're in a whirlpool. But it's all there. The water is still there, and we're still made of water, even though we're a whirlpool. And that also implies that when the whirlpool stops being a whirlpool, the water just flows into the broader stream. It just changes form, which is sort of like. Well, when the physical body dies, the consciousness just transitions into something different.

So we never really go down the drain, do we, Mark?

No, no.

We just return to the stream, is what we're saying.

Right, Exactly. There's no drain in the stream.

There's no drain in the stream.

That's good.

Well, we haven't located one anyway yet. Why don't we get into the science just a little bit? Because I think we set a pretty good foundation for what it is that's being explored. I mean, this is revolutionary. This is Not a small topic. Obviously it doesn't sound like a small topic, but in reality, it changes just about everything, doesn't it?

It does. For me personally, it changed so much. And that's why I felt the need to make the information available to those who are interested in it. And the implications are so big that the way I structured the book was that you have basically 12 and a half chapters or so of science and explaining how this could be true. And then the very end is the implications. Because to start talking about the implications, it's hard to grasp because according to many of the conventional views we've been taught, these things don't make sense. So I structured it with all the science up front. And then when you talk about the implications under that context, okay, maybe it makes sense that maybe there's nothing actually external to me. Even though it does, it feels like there's something external using my eyes. So I want to preface it with that there is a reason for starting with that science.

But you're not saying. You're not saying, Mark, that there isn't matter that exists outside. You're not saying that what we're seeing, like a table or something like that is an illusion, are you?

Well, this is. It gets tricky when you start asking questions of what's matter in the first place. Okay, so my table, it's made of atoms. We can look under a microscope and see atoms. What's an atom made out of? You have protons, neutrons, electrons.

Let me squeeze my sparks, I'll tell you what I'm made of.

Yeah, you can tell me the atom. You know, the atom.

What's the atom made of?

Atoms made of atoms. But when you start looking in, into the microscope, you realize that matter is 99.99999999% empty space, even though it feels solid. And then there's another property of matter, which is that if you observe it, it's there as something physical, but when you're not observing it, it behaves like a wave, meaning it's only in a state of probability. It's maybe here, maybe there. And this is something in quantum physics that I talk about. So when we think about matter, first of all, it's mostly empty. And then it's not even there when we're looking unless we're looking at it. So my point here is that our ordinary perceptions, our ordinary senses, our eyes and our ears, our nose, our mouth, our skin, all of these things that we're perceiving around us give us an appearance of something. But when we break down, well, what is this physical world that we're in? Science doesn't have an answer as to what matter is even made of. So when we say that matter is this thing that we don't even know, what it fully is, is creating consciousness, and consciousness is the only thing we actually know. It's. It's a bit of backwards logic to say that matter, the unknown, creates the consciousness that's known. What I'm arguing, what some others argue is to start with this consciousness and say, well, the table is an experience within my consciousness, so it's very much real, and that I'm experiencing it. What's it made out of? That's where it becomes a big question. Is it just my own consciousness? A way, in a sense. And that's kind of what I'm arguing is that it's a modulation of consciousness. In the. In the experience of my hand touches the table. It feels like a tingling sensation. But. And this is something that everyone can do. You can kind of close your eyes and forget your concept of your hand and the table. What do you experience? It's just a sensation, right? Get rid of the labels of table, hand, room, world, earth. It's just a sensation. And that sensation is located in your consciousness, in your field of consciousness. So one could argue that the experience of touching the table is just a different modulation of consciousness, an experience within consciousness. So it's almost a redefinition of what matter is. And we can do the same thing with. When we hear something, it's a. You. It's an auditory thing. You can close your eyes, you hear something, but that hearing occurs within your own consciousness.

Again, well, it's a sense, right? We. We have. We have five senses, right? This is. This is our. The way that we perceive what exists in our awareness, whatever that might be, by sound, by sight, by taste or smell, or any of those things.

Right? But they are all occurring within your own field of experience. So again, this is taking this idea of an independent world, and then we emerge in it to saying that there's a we are it, and everything's happening within us.

So is that a subjective. Now I'm hitting you with one here. Is it a subjective experience or is it objective?

I would argue that it's. It's subjective. And some people ask, well, if it's subjective, then why is it that you and I appear to experience the same world around us? Well, if there's one consciousness where we're all connected in the stream, then we're sort of lenses looking at it from different angles, but it's the same thing that we're experiencing. So that would also explain it to say that there's a singular consciousness and therefore we experience the same reality. Which I'm not saying that's an illusion because we're all very much having experiences and having highs and lows. And I touch the table, that feels like something. I don't want to diminish that. But the question of is that table an independent thing outside of my consciousness that's kind of the upside down thinking.

Or outside of the collective consciousness? Because if you and I were in the same room, right. We're, you know, we're both sitting at a table, we'd both be able to say, yeah, that's a table. That's what it feels like to me.

Exactly.

Yeah. Interesting. So let's dive into the science a bit and then I've got a couple of other questions that I think will kind of help help define a few, few of these things and may just lead to more questions, which is fun too.

So yeah. So now that we've primed everyone with all the mind blowing ideas, we'll get to how I got to even be curious about these things and think that they might in fact be real. So I have two different categories of phenomena that I discuss in the book broadly. One is psychic phenomena. So things like telepathy, which is mind to mind communication, precognition, which is knowing the future before it happens, psychokinesis, which is the ability for the mind to actually affect physical matter with no physical contact. And something called remote viewing, which is the ability to see something without your eyes being involved. So seeing something that's very far away. I have a chapter on each of these phenomena in the book and show the evidence for all of them. What they all suggest is that like you said, consciousness isn't localized to us. So remote viewing is something far away that I'm able, excuse me, to see with my, with my mind. The US government and we getting to the evidence for these things that sound totally crazy is the US government ran a 25 year program on remote viewing using psychic spies. Jimmy Carter confirmed that this was used to find a downed Russian bomber in an African jungle that they couldn't find. The remote viewers went into a trance and were able to see it with their mind and locate where this bomber was. And there are many other examples of this. What's really interesting is that the CIA recently released documents which talk about what happened during this program and show these documents in end to upside down thinking they say very explicitly, remote viewing is a real phenomenon. That's direct quote from a CIA document.

So that alone declassified CIA documents saying that remote viewing is a real thing.

They're saying it's real. Classic. Yeah, yeah. It couldn't have been more explicit for me as I'm looking for evidence to show people. And they show a science panel that looked at it and there was a scientist from Caltech and some very prominent people. And their science panel's finding is that the implications are revolutionary. Again, another direct quote. But if we think about the stream analogy, again, where I'm like a whirlpool, a localized whirlpool in this big stream, and it's like the remote viewers are somehow able to access another part of the stream that normally is shielded out because they're in this circular thing. But it's like they open their whirlpool a little bit and are able to access something else.

Yeah, you know, I think there's something that a lot of people have heard of or maybe even experience because sort of near death experiences are more common than people would realize, than I realized. And the experiences of people who've, who've come to close to death or been technically declared dead even for some period of time and then come back to life relay very similar information. Isn't that correct?

That's right. So whereas the psychic phenomena are more about how our consciousness is interacting locally to us or somewhere outside of us, whether it's someone else's mind or finding a plane in the African jungle. There's another category that suggests that consciousness is existing when the physical body is not even functional. So it's not only non local, but it's, it's not dependent on the body. And the near death experience is one of the most, I think, important phenomena out there that should be talked about much more than it is where people are having a conscious experience when they're clinically dead. And in some cases they just have a highly impaired brain, but in other cases their brain is off and that shouldn't happen. According to this conventional view of the brain, the materialist perspective, which is that chemical and electric electrical activity in my brain, somehow that's causing my experience and my memories. What's happening is there's no brain and yet there's somehow a verified memory.

So switch, the switch is turned off. They, they say technically this person is there, there's no brain function, and yet.

And yet they have an experience. And what is that experience? And this is where we start to get into questions about, okay, what is existence? And what can we learn something about the broader reality from these experiences? What people describe, and this has been described since the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Plato. People have been talking about these things for a very long time. The reason it's become more commonplace now to talk about it is that resuscitation technology has improved. So now we're bringing people back in larger numbers. And even if it's just a percentage of those people that report this experience that I'll describe, we're having more, we have more case studies to be able to say, okay, something's up, what happens is. And not everyone experiences each element, but a person typically describes hovering over their body, seeing what's happening in the room. And in many cases, what they describe is accurate, which is the doctors go crazy for this. I mean, they see the person was dead, they were operating on them, and then the person describes things that were accurate during that time. The person.

This goes well above just. Well, not just. It goes beyond the life review. You know, the idea that at death or near death, we've got this sort of a cascading film of our life leading, you know, up from birth, up to, up to that moment. That's something that's very common as well. But this is, this is not that.

It's part of it. So the sequence that's described in the cases that have the most elements is the first hovering over the body. Then there's typically a feeling of relief and unconditional love. People just feel this incredible, incredibly positive feeling. In most cases, there's a minority that are fearful or fear inducing. There's discussion of beings being seen or experienced, sometimes family members, sometimes mystical creatures. And then there's a feeling of being comforted by these creatures. And then having this life review that you described where the person watches his or her own life in a flash and judges him or herself for how he or she acted. To me, and I think about this every day, is that in some of these cases, the person experiences the life review from the perspective from the eyes of those he or she affected. So Bob inflicts harm on Jane. Bob in the life review sometimes will feel Jane's pain as if he were Jane. And he comes back after the life review and comes back into the body, which is typically what's described after the near death experience. Totally with new priorities in life of I don't care about these material things. I care about how I'm treating people. And many people often get divorced after a near death experience. They change their jobs because their priorities shift 180 degrees. And this starts to get to happiness where what people care more about is the treatment of others. And if we're all connected, then that actually makes sense because treating another well is treating yourself well. And this is what people come back talking about after they've had a near death experience. And sometimes they were completely materialistic beforehand.

Right. So the idea that we began our conversation with that, the chasing after something external, chasing after something material to bring, create a feeling, whether that feeling is to love yourself or to be peaceful or to be, quote, happy, whatever happiness is that, that's sort of a. I don't, I don't know how else to say it. To me it feels like it's a fool's errand because we're chasing after something that does not necessarily exist. It's like sort of the dog chasing its tail or that old expression about, you know, putting the, the cart before the horses.

Totally, totally. And I personally experienced that, like I said, of achieving things and then not getting that lasting happiness that I thought I would get from it. So it's the shift inwards of okay, I'm this consciousness. We're all connected as consciousness. I don't think it says that we should not care about anything external to us. I think we should still live our lives. But the dependence to say that it's a requirement for me to get X relationship x job X in order for me to be happy, that's a dangerous situation to be in because it's saying, number one, if I don't get X then I'm going to be unhappy. And then as we've talked about, once we achieve X, it's not always what we think it's going to be. So it's a real shift in how we think about our own priorities. I mean, this is such a major shift in today's day and age because we're not taught to think this way.

No, we're not. What was the catalyst, the trigger point, if there was one for you, Mark? Because I know for me I was a little bit older than you when I had that sort of moment of. It wasn't even a moment, it was sort of day after day just looking in the mirror and thinking, is this the person I'm going to be for the rest of my life? And not being satisfied to look in the mirror and think this is what I'm going to be doing and this is how I'm going to be feeling. And so that that caused, it was a catalytic moment. Where I just said, you know, something has to change. Something has to change. And, you know, you ask that question or you pose that. That problem enough, I think, for me anyway, was only natural to find, to create some solution around it. So what was it that. That said, you know, here you are a guy that, you know, had worked you, you know, very hard through school, done well, gotten a job. I think you were an investment banker in Manhattan right around the time of the financial crisis in 2008. That wasn't an easy time at all to be around. But at some point after that, you started to have these conversations.

Yeah, well, I think I've had questions around the same thing that you described. Is this exactly what I want to be doing? Am I happy with everything that I'm doing? What is happiness? I've been asking those questions for a very long time, and I didn't have good answers. My answer was, well, this materialist perspective that I'm taught is that when my body dies, my consciousness dies. So that does. That means that no matter what happens during my life, it's wiped out once I'm out. Once I'm dead, the computer's turned off. There's nothing functioning anymore. So the very strict interpretation of materialism is that there's no meaning in life. It's unavoidable. It's an unavoidable logical consequence of materialism. Consciousness comes from my brain. Once my brain is off, there's no consciousness, there's no memory. So anything that happened in my life, I'm not going to remember it. So meaning in life is a rationalization. And I don't think that's even a controversial statement. I think that's just literally implied by materialism if we take out any biases. So I struggled with that of, well, okay, something great happened even at a young age. This would be before college. Why does it matter? Okay, something bad happened. Does it really matter? I'm just rationalizing that it's good or bad. So I struggled with these questions, and I didn't have an answer.

Will it matter after I'm dead?

Hmm, I don't think so. I don't think it will. So almost, who cares? But I still went through the motions because I'm in this world, and I felt kind of an obligation to go through the motions. So I had this deep issue of understanding what. What was implied by my worldview. And it was not a very happy one. It was a pretty bleak one. I wasn't looking for a different answer because as far as I knew, that was the science and to look for anything else was just rationalizing the bleakness of this materialist perspective. But it was about two years ago, it was starting in the late summer of 2016, when I came across some of these ideas that talked about consciousness not being dependent on the brain, talked about people being able to have communications with a consciousness that is no longer living. Talking to a dead person. I mean, these were totally crazy things.

Mediums.

Mediums, exactly. And I had. I mean, I guess I had heard of mediums, but I hadn't heard people who claimed they were mediums talk about it like it was a normal thing. And I hadn't heard of studies on these things. So it wasn't like overnight my life changed. It was. I became exposed to these things, kind of brushed it off, started looking into it a bit more, would forget about it. And then I became totally obsessed with learning about it. Because if it meant a worldview shift, then I had to re. Understand, recontextualize. Who and what am I? What matters? If something actually does matter, if my consciousness persists, then that's at least more meaning than I was giving to life before. At the very least it's more. I don't know what. So I had to investigate it because it was. It rocked me completely of, oh my goodness, I can't believe my whole life I thought the world was one way and that I was certain thing and I didn't know all these other things.

It gives us a greater responsibility as well, doesn't it, Mark? I mean we. That's sort of. Again, the first domino in the sequence of this conversation was me saying, you know, I saw this movie last night, kind of really disturbed me. It was Michael Moore's movie, Fahrenheit 11 9. And I started to think about things like Flint, Michigan and where we are politically and how it is that we treat each other. And the fact of the matter is I've had my head. I'm just going to say this out loud because it's true. I've had my head a bit buried in the sand. I've created a wonderful life. I get to work with a lot of people, get to do things I want to do. I feel fulfilled. I don't focus on things that have no ability to affect or haven't some positive impact on. And yet there's a lot of things that are going on that need addressing. And it's not even enough, in my view, to vote. Although if you haven't voted, I'm just going to say this out loud. If you Know somebody that does not vote in major elections. I mean, this is a huge issue in our world that half the eligible population of the United States, for example, do not vote in major elections. It's absolutely shocking, but it's. It goes beyond that. And what I think is really implied, or at least one of the serious implications about what your book represents and what you're talking about is that we have a. We have a greater responsibility than the one that many of us are owning at the moment. Is that fair?

It's totally fair. And it's been a big worldview shift for me. I think the materialist perspective, whether people realize that it's so embedded in our culture or not, it implies, well, my life is finite. You've got one life to live. I'm separate from you. So the goal is to collect as much material stuff as you can to make yourself as happy as possible. Maybe you give to charity, maybe there are things you do. But at the fundamental level, materialism teaches that we're separate. So why should I care if something's happening far away from me? What's suggested by the science, in my opinion, is that we're all connected, so we should care a lot about things that are happening that seem far away from us because they are a version of us, another part of the stream that we are a part of. So there's no avoiding it. And that's probably one of the reasons I felt so compelled to actually write about these things, even though they're not conventional by the science in 2018, I think at some point soon they will be, but that's a. That's a big risk on the surface. However, I think about things very differently now where there's an obligation of, well, I have this knowledge that I spent all this time researching things, and I think I can put it together in a way that will open things up for those who are interested. So this is my way of contributing to this area. There are many areas that need contributions all over the world.

Indeed, when I describe your book to friends and colleagues of mine, I say, what's interesting to me is that there's all this, because it's very much a book that distills down a lot of the science and makes it accessible, readable, understandable. And what's shocking is that with the mountain of science and evidence and studies and every. Everything you could. You could really put together to prove something. You know, I was a lawyer for 18 years, so I'm very much, you know, think in logical terms of how, you know, how the Premises lead to the conclusion, what's the proof of stuff? There's. There's actual science that suggests that materialism is not the correct way to look at things. And there's a lot of opposition to that science, this opposition to what is otherwise irrefutable evidence. Why is that, Mark? And what do you, what do you, what do you think is the, you know, what's, Is there something you can. That you think drives that sort of continued denial of the evidence? And also, what do you think is going to happen when this book is published? Because it's coming out pretty soon and it's going to hopefully have a large impact. I know it's going to have a large impact.

Well, you reminded me of one of the endorsers who wrote a quote about my book, and he called the book an expose. It's a science book, but it really does expose some of these issues that you're talking about where we're seeing resistance to ideas that challenge the prevailing wisdom, because that prevailing wisdom of materialism is, for some reason, scientific fact. It's not even something you can argue with. And it's so entrenched. Why is it entrenched? I think there are a number of reasons we can speculate. And I have a great quote from Dr. Ed Kelly at the University of Virginia, who is aligned with the. The topics I'm talking about. He was kind enough to endorse my book, but he says in one of his books, he says, we predict with certainty that in the future sociologists will look back at this period and try to understand how it took so long for people to realize and accept the science. It's an unbelievable phenomenon sociologically. Why do people resist something new? Well, if you think about those who are in academia and have fancy PhDs and are really smart people, and I'm not saying these people are not smart. They would have to admit that they were wrong about their overarching worldview. I think there's a potential ego issue of having to admit that one is wrong. That can be hard to do when you've spent a whole career on something. So that's, I think, challenging. I think another challenge is something that I personally experienced, which is I was willing to admit I was wrong because I knew, for example, that 96% of the universe is unknown dark matter and dark energy. So even before I was a materialist, but I knew there were things I didn't know, so I was open to shifts. Where was I going with this? It's a hard shift to make, even if you're open to it, to rethink about the world in a new way. I mean, it's taken me. It's been about two years and I'm still adjusting to it. And this is, for me, I've been totally entrenched in it, spending so much time on it. It's really hard to shift how you think about things, even if you're open to it.

It's sort of the sunk cost fallacy, right?

Yeah. Of like, I spent all this time with something else and I've got to kind of give that up and think in a new way. But it's a. You have to rethink everything about your own life. Of, okay, well, in this new reality, how do I think about that?

If I'm connected to every everything or to all other consciousness, what does that mean for how I live my life?

Everything.

If my consciousness doesn't expire when my body, you know, is no longer, what does that mean for how I live my life? And what are the implications for after I've lived? In fact, is there scientific evidence for past lives? Is that also implied by this?

I do have a chapter on that topic, which, if you think about it from this perspective of a whirlpool, the notion of a past life is like water that was in one whirlpool. It stopped being a whirlpool. It dissolved into the broader stream, it dissipated, and then it became a new whirlpool. That's like this idea. There's evidence again from the University of Virginia, the Division of Perceptual Studies. This is at the med school. These are hardcore scientists looking at this, of children, usually between the ages of 2 and 5, who start speaking of a life that's not theirs. And it's very difficult to explain some of the detail that they're able to provide. And these are 50 years worth of studies at UVA, over 2,500 cases. In some cases, the researchers are able to find a person that matches the description of the child gives in those cases, the most compelling ones, the children and even the families would have had no way of knowing about this individual person. Like someone who died in a plane crash in the war. That's an example that I talk about very specific details. Sometimes the children have preferences that you can't explain. Like they're craving tobacco or alcohol or think about clothing. That's not something that's in their. In their everyday living with their parents. To me, the most compelling cases are ones where the children actually have physical deformities or they have Birthmarks that match how they described dying in the previous life. So these are very chilling pictures to look at from the University of Virginia professor's books on this topic. But sometimes you see a birthmark where there's an entry and an exit wound of where a bullet went in and out of their body, and the birthmarks tie to that. In one case that I show in the book, a little girl has what look like constriction rings on her leg. So it's like her leg looks like it's being tied ropes. In fact, the past life that she is describing was of a person who was tortured and had ropes tied around his leg. And she has a leg that is shaped in that exact manner. And there was a person found who was. Who died in that way. So this is all pointing to the idea that the consciousness of our own body isn't limited necessarily. That's what's implied by this, to this singular life.

Now, AI, artificial intelligence, is definitely a topic that's on a lot of people's minds. And there's. There are implications in regard to that as well.

Yes. So, Adam, you're. More generally, you're hitting on a really important point, which is that every topic in society, we have to rethink in this new context. So AI is one. There's an assumption, I think, that's not even. It's not talked about often, that AI will get to the point where it develops feelings, it develops its own consciousness, and it has emotions, it has greed, it has pride. The show Westworld is a good example of that. The machine.

Yes.

It's a scary thing where they start taking over. They get to a point of sophistication where, oh, wait, I remember things. Oh, wait, I have my own desires, and they become human. Like, so that the implication is that we can create a machine that develops its own consciousness. Is that true?

Well, under a materialist view, it would be true. Right.

Yeah.

If we can replicate physical thing and. Right. Can produce a consciousness, then. And you can replicate the brain, then you should be able to replicate that as well.

Right, Exactly. So that's what materialism would say, is that all we have to do is understand the sophistication in the brain, replicate it, and we're done.

Yep.

But even so, Frederico Fagin, who is one of the founders of the microprocessor. So this is someone who's pretty credible in the area of AI he comes to the same conclusion I do and is now writing about this, which is that, no, we're not going to be able to create a machine that has consciousness because consciousness isn't coming from something physical in the first place. Now, that's not to say that AI isn't dangerous, because we can program a machine to do something that's not good for people. We can program it to shoot at a person. But still, in that case, it is a computationally intensive machine that doesn't have feelings.

Right? It's not autonomous, fully autonomous, not autonomous.

It's not, it's not doing things that its master isn't telling it to do or hasn't been programmed to do. We can program a machine to do terrible things, and we have to be careful as programmers what we do. But can we make a machine that's conscious on its own? I would argue we can't create consciousness because it's not coming from matter in the first place. So I think this idea has to be, has to come into the debate about AI. I think we hear from Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking and others who are terrified of AI. I think embedded in that thinking is this idea that AI can become conscious.

Mark, we've got a couple of minutes left. I'd love to know how this has really impacted your life because you're still, you've. We didn't track your history very much other than what I said about you having worked in New York and then you moved and ended up taking on a role in the investment banking on the West Coast. So you're, you're still in the business space, you still do a lot of business consulting, and yet you've had this. I don't, I don't use that word, epiphany very often, but there was, there was something that changed for you, like you said two years ago, and you've written a book about it, and now you're speaking widely and representing, you know, a number of organizations in this area. And I'm sure you can't, you can't create more hours in the day more than I can. So you're, you're just, you've got that much more of an active calendar and schedule. I'd love to know, other than the fact that you're probably working double time these days because this is such a passion of yours. How else has your life changed as a result of what you've learned.

In so many ways? Well, I think the Life review that we talked about where people, if we think about what's the meaning of existence, and that's how I've always thought about things, why is it that I do anything that I do anything. Where does it come from? Where does that desire come from? Am I a biological machine? Well, if I were just a machine, then I would do everything that my biology wants. I would see the chocolate cake over there and I would eat it every time. But I'm not that because I don't eat it. So something is going on. I have some element of control. And if I have control, what is it that I want to do? The Life review gives us a hint as to what at least part of the meaning is of our existence, which seems to be. It's about how we treat one another and that's what matters. After this physical body is going away. That's what scientific studies on near death experiences are suggesting. So if that is true, we take it literally and following the logic, and you're a lawyer, Adam, following the logic, then the desire to help people, which I think is something I've always had, is something that's actually very intrinsic to my identity as consciousness. So it's something I'm fostering much more of. How. How can I be of service to people in whatever ways that I am an expression of consciousness. So for me right now, I guess that's writing a book and having discussions about this topic. I don't know where that will lead to in the future, but there's much more of a focus on helping other people. And another area for me is making sure that I'm following my own passions. Because if again, if I'm a consciousness first and foremost, if I'm not a body first and foremost, then where are my desires coming from? Where is my urge to study these topics coming from? Is that coming from something more intrinsic to myself? These are big questions. But what I'm saying is that following my passions and paying more attention to what I'm passionate about is much more top of mind. And I think this gets to questions of happiness as we started the conversation with and for your listeners. So I think all of us, we're looking for what's happiness.

And.

There are probably things that if we look inside of ourselves and see what we're really passionate about and follow those things naturally, we might have a better chance of achieving lasting happiness.

Yes. You know, it's really interesting because the brain limits us in many ways. And I don't mean just by intellect or IQ or something like that, but the brain as part of its functionality, the way that it's constructed and wired, limits our consciousness on some level. You address that as well in the book, that we're not always thinking about These bigger things, or let's say can wrap our brain around, as the phrase goes, some of these kinds of these concepts that would otherwise lead us to obviously more and more questions, but also would help us to see the connection points between ourselves, everything in the world around us, including obviously all of our brothers and sisters. I think this is really important, Mark, because the way that I've been addressing this topic and how I've seen a lot of other people over years address this topic is through spirituality or sometimes through religion, but through belief in oneness or the interconnectedness of all beings and things like that, or with reference to words like God, universe or spirit. And I think another one of the implications of seeing this differently, of expanding our awareness, I can't say expanding our consciousness because if I buy into this book, I can't expand my consciousness. This whole idea of even raising my consciousness is kind of silly because there's a consciousness exists this large stream. I'm a whirlpool in that stream. And I'm just becoming more aware of what is. And back to that earlier statement that our brain has a way of being is wired to actually give us only a limited view of the stream. Is that. Am I on? Is that right or not?

You're onto it. So I view the brain. And this is a question that your listeners might have had as we were talking about this connection of brain and consciousness. Don't we know that the brain is related to consciousness? Yes. What I'm arguing is that the brain isn't the producer, but it's a limiter. It's like a filtering mechanism or like an antenna. So that's a way to think about it. For those who are have been confused about that topic. It was, that was a big revelation for me. But if we think about the brain is limiting us only allowing us to see a portion of the stream, what is the potential function of that? Why might that be the case? And this is getting to the point where we have to make inferences. But what we see from near death experiences and from people that are able to channel different types of consciousnesses that are not local to them, messages come about that relate to the idea of learning that we are here to have experiences. And if I didn't have a limited consciousness right now, limited experience of consciousness, then I wouldn't be able to learn the things that the body of Mark is learning. So it's an enabler in some sense, Adam, where it allows us to have a very specific experience that enables targeted learning experiences where the life of Mark, through this brain is going to have certain experiences that someone else isn't going to have. So this is getting to the point of extrapolating a little bit that if we think about our existence as learning, then it makes a bit more sense.

And if we think about the fundamental purpose of our existence, I mean, from a, from a biological standpoint, we're here to live long enough to perpetuate the species. I mean, the main function of, on that level, from a biological level, is that we continue the species. Right. We live long enough, we survive long enough to be able to see that the species continues. Isn't that true?

Absolutely.

So, I mean, to limit our consciousness helps us to focus on some of those basic human. I don't even know what the right word is, but just to continue to exist as, as a, as human beings, as a species of human beings.

Yeah, totally. So in my book, we become extinct, right? Right. If we had the exposure to the actual reality, would we function the way we do to be able to reproduce? Probably not. And Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist, has looked at this topic from an evolutionary perspective, and he's run simulations on machines that see reality as it is versus machines that see a skewed picture like we do through our brains. Those who see reality as it is don't survive as well. So from an evolutionary perspective, it benefits us to see a limited picture of reality. Which again argues, should we use our perceptions to tell us about the broader reality? No, they tell us a very good thing about enough. They give us an opportunity to survive and survive in this world, but it doesn't give us an accurate picture of what we're actually in.

Very interesting. Yeah, I love the analogy of the antenna. I mean, the whirlpool I get. And that, that makes sense to me as well. Just think the antenna, maybe it's because of just growing up and spending a lot of time driving in the car. My parents would always take us on these trips and things, and we, we would drive from sort of place to place, state to state, and the stations would always change. I remember that, you know, we dial, dial in to get, get a good clear signal, and then 30, 40 miles later, you have to change the station again. So if you think of it as an antenna in, in our particular place, we can pick up whatever frequencies and, and information based on, on that reach. But there's a broader. There's more information that's out there. There are more stations available, more music, more sports, more business, whatever it is, but we're not picking up those signals. Necessarily, that's right.

And there's some people that are very talented at this and they describe what you just talked about. To them it's like tuning into a different station and they're picking up different information that way. We're just not fostering it because it's not conventionally accepted. I love the antenna analogy because it's one that's easy to relate to the. It's not fully precise because it presumes that there's a separation still of there's something outside and then there's a me. So the filter or the whirlpool keeps the oneness of it. But the antenna I think is probably the one that really got me initially because it's so relatable of a television set has an antenna. So when you're watching a show, it's because the TV is receiving a signal from outside the TV set. So I break the antenna and all of a sudden my TV screen scratchy. I know that the signal came from outside the TV set. It's not produced by the television itself. And this is the brain consciousness analogy that the brain is picking something up that's not localized. So to me that was like a world changing revelation. To think about the brain as like this TV antenna where someone has brain damage and yeah, they get a scratchy screen, they get losing their memory or something. But it's not because of their brain. Their brain is just the TV set that's processing a signal that's not from the brain.

Yes, well, we're going to end it there. But I'll say this. What you said earlier about how the brain has sort of a regulator, a limiter. It relates to the. There are people that have had brain damage or in other words, or in other ways are not sort of functioning within some normal parameters that have extraordinary gifts, access to information and are able to do things that are savant. Like those, those are related as well. Right. Because the way that brain is, is constituted. They're getting access to things that they wouldn't otherwise if their brain was working within what we would call some, you know, normal functionality.

Right, right. I mean, under the materialist perspective, in order to have a heightened or enriched consciousness, you need more activity. Typically that's what's implied, more brain activity, more conscious experience. But we get examples like savants who have severely damaged brains and yet they have or impaired brains. They have abilities that are incredible. We see this in near death experiences. The person has no brain functioning at all or some brain functioning, but that's very minimal. And they have an enriched experience. A person on psychedelics. There have been emerging studies where people have these enriched trips where it feels like a hyperreal thing and they have reduced brain functioning. These all go to the idea that when you actually limit the brain in certain ways, you have access to the broader reality that we're typically filtering out.

Amazing. So, Mark, with everything that's going on in your world right now, how is it that you. That you maintain your own harmony? What are. What are some of the rituals, or at least one ritual that you do to maintain har. Your own personal harmony?

I think there are things that I do throughout the day that are very subtle, which is remembering the reality that I'm in. I'm still hardwired based on my own. My old way of thinking. And also, I think our biology trains us to bias things based on what we can see and hear and everything, our senses. The reminder of, wait, am I a body that has a consciousness, or am I something deeper? Just even thinking about that for a second pulls me back from whatever might be stressing me out. So it's an easy exercise to say, right now I'm aware I'm having this experience. It's like this subjective thing. Is that my identity? And it's almost like a meditative practice, being aware of being aware. So that's something that I do throughout the day. And the more I do it, I think, the more even keel I am. And then there are other practices, different meditative practices and breathing practices. I have a Beamer mat. We've talked about that. Which is. I don't fully understand how it works, but I know it's done miracles for certain people. And what I like about it is that it forces me to sit down on the mat for eight minutes in the morning, eight minutes at night. And there are electrical pulses that go through it that apparently help with blood flow. So that might be an added benefit. But I mention it because it gives me that eight minutes in the morning, eight minutes at night to put my phone away and to try to just be.

Quieting the mind. I'm not a great meditator myself, and part of my own ritual is to. To sit and to sit in stillness, mostly. And in that stillness doesn't mean that my brain isn't actively sending me information. And so I'm not sure if there's any difference, at least from my perspective, between sitting in stillness and being quiet, even, and meditation. They're probably very, very much related things. But the. The idea that we could have a spiritual experience of living without it being, quote, spiritual is intriguing to me as part of this because I think in our world, sometimes when we refer to things in that way as spiritual or we use words like God or universe or what have you or faith or belief, there's a segment of folks that are ready to believe and want to believe, and there's a segment of our world that that's just not where they're at or for other reasons, potentially they're even averse to that. I think what's really incredible about the work in this book, and I'm highly recommending it to everybody that's listening to our show and really recommend that you also share this with other people and into Upside Down Thinking, which if you're seeing this now on YouTube, you can see a galley of the book. This is a sort of a pre. A pre publication release. And the book is officially out 10-9-9th. Beautiful. So that's the official on sale date. And obviously there'll be people who are listening to this and watching this even after that date because that's the way podcasts work, of course, an end to upside down thinking. And we didn't read the subtitle, but I think this is really key, dispelling the myth that the brain produces consciousness and the implications for everyday life. It's been a real blessing to cover today with you, Mark, just some of those myriad of implications. And it really does. I think it has sparked something in me. And everybody that I've heard you speak to has sort of had a. It's been like lighting a fire that there's. There's so much more for us to understand about the nature of our own existence. And that doesn't have to rely on religion or spirituality. And I'm not opposed to religion or spirituality. And as I said, I've been calling it spirituality for a long time. And. And what it feels like to me is that this is really more the. This is the rule of existence. This is the law of existence versus something that you have to explain through faith or belief. Does that make sense?

Totally. And what you described is what I'm hoping for with the book, that it sparks something in certain people who are open to it in the same way that it sparked things for me, completely changed my life, completely changed my worldview. And I wanted to make that accessible to people in the most condensed, accessible fashion possible. So I'm hoping that it has that effect on those who are interested.

Yeah. Way cool, brother. Thank you for writing the book. It's been a blast to have you on the show folks, I want to also remind you if you've loved this episode, and I hope you have that you'll refer to other people if you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, go ahead and do that and we'd love the reviews. So on itunes please leave a review or you can go to AdamMarkel.com podcast and leave a comment. We'll reply to it there. Of course, our Facebook group has been growing tons and tons of people like hearted, like minded folks interested in these kind of topics. And you can get to that Facebook group by going to pivotfb.com or simply go to startmypivot community on Facebook as well. This has been a joy for me, a pleasure. I loved every second. And I am reminded as we're gonna bring this podcast to a close, that it's so important that we, each of us become more awake. I think it's we started with at least my own ruminations on personal responsibility and I think it's a great place to end as well, that we have a fundamental responsibility to awaken, whatever that means for each of us individually in our lives. And so we all got to wake up today, at least on the physical level, we were able to wake up and that was not guaranteed. So my, my appreciation in this moment is that we all get to wake up again tomorrow. And in that moment, when we are waking up, when we're taking that first conscious breath, and I'm going to use that word specifically, but when we're aware of the fact that we are awake physically and breathing, we can also be aware of the fact that there will be people in that moment taking their last breath. There will be babies being born taking their first breath. There's something that is special about that moment, something that deserves or can be the source of gratitude. So tomorrow when you get to wake up, when I get to wake up and we are aware of that fact, we can be grateful. We can be in a state of appreciation. And if you feel like it, and it is the kind of thing that might even be something you would like to sort of test out for yourself, it has been my ritual for just about 10 years now in that moment of waking to say these words out loud. I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. I welcome you to try those words on for yourself and see if it changes how you feel as well. An end to upside down thinking is available. You can go to Amazon to get it or you can go to markgober.com there'll be full show notes with information about the book, about Mark, and about some of the other things that Mark is up to in the world. So ciao for now, everybody. We'll see you soon. Mark, again, thanks so much for being on the show.

Thanks so much Adam. Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, strategies and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love. Join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com.