Science & Spirituality Talks with Todd LePine, MD
In this hour‑long interview, Deanna Minich, PhD, converses with Dr. Todd LePine, MD, a functional‑medicine physician and longtime student of the intersection between science and spirituality. The dialogue begins with LePine’s childhood experiences of looking through a microscope and a telescope, which sparked a lifelong sense of wonder and a “spiritual awakening” about his place in the universe. He frames science and spirit as two complementary languages that both seek to describe the mystery of reality. LePine explains his view of cellular biochemistry as an energetic, liquid‑crystal membrane that functions like a brain, linking energy, DNA expression, and consciousness. He shares vivid personal synchronicities – the “Holographic Universe” book appearing just after meeting its author, and a precognitive déjà‑vu bike ride on Block Island – to illustrate how altered states of perception can collapse time. The conversation moves into consciousness beyond the brain, citing near‑death experiences, quantum perspectives, and the idea that consciousness is a universal field rather than a brain by‑product. LePine discusses plant consciousness, DMT, ayahuasca, and the universal “elf” entities reported in psychedelic experiences, arguing that plant medicines act as a bridge to dimensions normally hidden from our five senses. He tackles moral duality, suggesting empathy as the operational definition of “good” and noting that religions are story‑telling attempts to make sense of the inexplicable. Healing practices are explored: forest bathing, time in nature, laughter, community, and a “work‑hard‑play‑hard” ethos. He outlines emerging therapeutic tools – psilocybin, ketamine‑assisted psychotherapy, breathwork, and functional‑medicine protocols – and emphasizes the importance of stepping out of the default‑mode network. The role of visionary art (Alex Grey, COSM) is presented as a visual language for the interconnectedness of consciousness. LePine speculates on AI, quantum computing, and the possibility of machine consciousness, while affirming that the mystery of consciousness remains unresolved. The interview closes with LePine’s personal “three‑pillars” for spiritual health: regular immersion in nature, authentic relationships, and living without ego, plus a reminder to stay present, grateful, and compassionate.
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Hello, welcome to another episode of Science and Spirituality Talks. Today I'm joined by Dr. Todd Lappin, a board-certified internist, functional medicine physician, educator, and leading voice in the fields of optimal aging, detoxification, the microbiome, and brain health, and so much more actually. Dr. Lappin has worked alongside Dr. Mark Hyman at the UltraWellness Center. He spent decades helping patients and practitioners understand the deeper roots of health and disease. And I'm so excited for this long-awaited conversation to have with him about the intersections of science, healing, and human potential. Welcome, Todd.
Thank you, Deanna. I really am excited about today. I've been very much looking forward to this. I feel privileged and honored, and I'm super excited. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I think it should be for most people. And I've got a lot to talk about, you know, personally and things that I've read, things I've experienced. In fact, I'll mention an experience that I had this past weekend, which will be very interesting as in the conversation. So I'm really looking forward to it.
Well, I want to tap into that, what you just said about how this, this is a topic that's very near and dear to your heart. How did that come to be? You know, why, why is it, you know, you kind of have this— I don't think many people know this about you, you know, that you do have, you have a voracious intellect and also this, this curiosity about science and spirituality. But how did that even happen?
Uh, very, very good question. I'm like, I sort of equate myself to be like Curious George, the little monkey who's always sort of exploring things. And, and I'll tell you, I've always been interested in science, even as a kid. Um, you know, the two things that really opened up my, my eyes and my vision to the, the world is my father had a microscope and my father had a telescope. And it was really interesting because I would study things from the microscopic level. I would look at things under the microscope, leaves and ants and rocks and crystals and all kinds of things. And I saw that there was this world way, way, way down that we couldn't see with our own eyes. And then I also, uh, would— my father would very generously let me use his telescope. And then I started realizing, okay, there's another world out there. It's like— and then you realize, okay, there's the star, the stars, you know, our sun is, you know, uh, uh, 8 minutes away, 93 million miles. And then there's universes hundreds of, you know, millions of light years away. And then I, I remember distinctly having a, call it a spiritual experience or a spiritual awakening. I was probably about 12 years old and I was sitting out on the grass, a summer night, and I was by myself and I was just looking up at the sky. And then I realized, you know, my place in the sky, in the universe. It was like this, like, you know, this perspective. Have you ever seen the movie The Powers of 10? Do you ever see that? It's a, it's a—
no, but I know what you're getting, the micro and macro.
Yeah, I really recommend you can go on YouTube and it's just called The Powers of 10, and it basically takes you sort of like the microscopic to far, far away. And it's— it really just shows you how small and minuscule we are in the entire universe. And it becomes a humbling experience when you sort of realize that, uh, and especially, I didn't realize that at an early age. So that was sort of how I got into the spiritual aspects of, you know, it's, you know, spirituality. You know, we define spirit— spirit is Latin for breath, and spirit is really an invisible energy or invisible force that is out there. So that we can feel the wind, but we can't see the wind. And you can measure the wind, just like, you know, there's radio waves out there, there's, you know, cell phone signals and, you know, internet signals and all this kind of stuff. And, and, you know, spirit is not religious, and I really want to make the big distinction there. And I think people can have spiritual experiences within the domains of religion, but I'm not going to be talking anything about religion. It's really about the energy of the universe, and the invisible energy of the universe is really what what we're talking about. And I'm very much interested in both the science and also, you know, the spirituality, which is how much of the universe is unseen. Like I said, a microscope and a telescope allow you to see things that you normally can't see with your own, uh, your own, uh, senses. And I think science and spirit, uh, are basically two different languages that are still— they're both looking to understand the mystery of the universe. And the one thing that I, you know, I've been practicing medicine for a long time and I know a lot in medicine. And the one thing that I know is that the more that I know, the more that I know that I don't know. And I think, you know, ultimately a lot of spirituality is trying to reconcile, you know, who are we, where do we come from, why are we here and where we're going. And I think that a lot of religions try to build a story around that.. And a lot of religions are sort of ancient ways of trying to explain the mystery of the universe, because the universe is a mystery. And anybody who thinks they fully understand it, they don't understand it. That's really my sort of take on it.
Wow. Yeah, you said a lot there. And I really love how you're toggling back and forth between micro, macro, you know, and as a child really being sandwiched between those two domains. And then that becomes your framework going forward. So let's go back to when you were a kid, when you were 12, when you were looking through the microscope and having these experiences. Tell us just a little bit about you as a child and when you first thought, hey, I could be a medical doctor, or, you know, was that something that was instilled quite young, or was it something that kind of came to be?
It happened very naturally and organically because I was, I was always experimenting on things. Like my mother, I was the last of 6 kids, so I was like let loose. I mean, my mother would let me do anything. I was literally riding my bicycle to the local library to, you know, get a book and learn how to make my own gunpowder. And I was, you know, nowadays I would probably be classified as a terrorist. And I was, you know, I bought my chemistry set and I was just exploring the world. And I would just realize how, you know, fascinating the world is and how much there is to it., and there's always different layers of, of the science that you can, that you can see in the world. Like, you know, and I was actually a chemistry major, and then chemistry then led me into biochemistry, which is the chemistry of life. And that's really what I do as, you know, a, as a functional medicine physician. I'm a, you know, I, I'm a working with biochemistry. I mean, you're, you're, you're a PhD in biochemistry, so it's the chemistry of life and, and chemistry and, and what we're made up is really, you know, we have this, We're all taught in the Newtonian framework of, you know, sticks and stones and things as solid and such. But we really realize is that the universe is really energy, and matter and energy are the same. And Einstein sort of showed that with, you know, E mc². And understanding the role of energy, I think, is a really important thing. And that's another thing that I really rely on is feeling energy. And you know that when you're with someone and you have a good resonance with someone. You know, the HeartMath talks about that, the connection between your heart and another person's heart and the connection between your brain. And we're basically bioelectric animals. I mean, you know, we have a heartbeat, we create an electrical signal, that signal resonates, it goes out. We have thoughts, those thoughts actually interact with other people that we're around. I think when you remember what you and I were doing, a roundtable discussion, I was talking about, you know, Bruce Lipton's The Biology of Belief and how our thoughts and our beliefs and our perceptions have a way of influencing our structure and expression of our DNA. And that's— it's a fascinating, you know, thing. And, uh, uh, you know, I've read a lot of different books that have really opened my eyes. And Bruce Lipton's, uh, talk was— I remember I went to the Science and Consciousness Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, years ago. And Bruce Lipton had just come out with his book on, uh, The Biology of Belief. And I— he blew me away. I just— I was totally blown away by what he had to say. I'll never forget it. And at the end of the talk, there's probably maybe 300 people there, and everybody's lining up and to talk with them. And I think I was last in line. And I just— I introduced myself. I said, you know, I'm a practicing physician. And I said, you know, your talk was just absolutely breathtaking and that really opened my eyes to a whole new way of seeing things. Because, you know, in, in school we're all taught to see things a certain way, and this is a new way of seeing things. And it, it's sort of like you almost have to unlearn what you learned in school to get to the next level. And, and he was talking about how the, the membrane of the cell is actually a brain and it receives energy from the environment. And then, you know, that sort of led me into understanding that our cellular membranes are basically polyphasic liquid crystals, which act as semiconductors for energy. And our cells respond to energy. That energy goes down into the DNA and expresses the DNA in a good way or a bad way. And how that, you know, resonates with— resonated really with me because it made a lot of sense. And, you know, I always, always say that we're cosmic stardust and we're basically, you know, polyphasic liquid crystals. We're like mood rings and we respond to the energy of the environment around us, whether it's people or trees or plants or the sky or whatever. And that understanding really opened up my eyes to another dimension to the world, just like a microscope will open up your eyes to seeing things differently. So, that was a big— I'm a voracious reader. I love to read. I love to learn. And I think that one of my favorite sayings is that a mind is like a parachute. It only works when it's open. And I go, yeah, it really, it's very, very true. It really is. And I think that all of us can get stuck in a certain way of thinking. And I always like to have conversations with people who think differently than I do, who believe things differently than I do. They see things differently than I do. Because I always want to say, well, what's it like from your perspective? Because, you know, Deanna's perspective on the world is different than my perspective, which is different than, you know, my friend or family members or whatever. And it just gives you a whole different, you know, angle of looking at it. And so that's sort of, you know, how I envision the world. And another book, and I got to tell this story, this is a fantastic— there's actually two sides to this is There's a really good book. I highly recommend this. I'm setting people books to read. I'm giving them some homework. There's a wonderful book called "The Holographic Universe," and I don't know if you've ever read it, Deanna.
Yes, I have that in my library.
Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm going to briefly tell the story with this because I think it's really telling. So, I was at a friend's house, and this was probably about 20, 25 years ago. And it was a Saturday afternoon. My friend, he and I were just relatively new friends, and we were watching golf on television. We're having a beer. He gets up to go to the bathroom, and I always like to look at people's libraries and see, well, what do you read, and, you know, see what they're interested in, maybe open up a conversation to see what, uh, what, uh, what they like. And he had The Holographic Universe, uh, in his, um, library. And I said, oh, that's really cool. When I was a kid, I, you know, played with the holographic pictures where you can see 3 dimensions, and even though it's on a 2-dimensional, uh, uh, piece of plastic. And, uh, I said, hey, hey, Chuck, did you ever, uh, read this book? How'd you like it? He goes, well, a friend of mine gave it to me, and And I read it and I read it for a while and I really couldn't get into it. It was a little hard to understand, so I never really completed it. I go, "Well, you mind if I borrow the book?" He goes, "No, no, go ahead and borrow the book." So, I borrow the book. And about a week later, I'm in the local wine and cheese shop looking for a bottle of wine and I run into this guy and he strikes up a conversation with me. And he said, "Have you ever had the wines from New Zealand?" I go, "No." And I said— he goes, "Well, I'm from New Zealand and we have fantastic wine out there." So it turns out he was a visiting psychiatrist at the Riggs Institute, which is the local outpatient psychiatric facility in Stockbridge, where I live. And Eric Erickson used to be one of the people there. He's since passed away. And he was a visiting professor from New Zealand, and he was there for about a month. And I was the local town doctor, country doctor at the time. And I said, well, I want to make him feel comfortable. I said, so let's, let's get together, we'll have, we'll have lunch. So about a week later or so, we get together and we have lunch. And all the while I'm reading The Holographic Universe, which my friend gave me. And every time I go to bed, I'll read the— I like to read before I go to bed. So we had lunch together and he talked about a practice that he would do. It's just a really, you know, just a casual conversation that we had. And He was talking about this, this practice he would do. He would get into a meditative state for 45 minutes to an hour, and he would come out of it, and then he would do sort of an abstract Zen drawing. There's a Japanese practice that people do to get into a different level of consciousness, if you will. So we finished lunch, and I went back. I think I went, you know, did my rest of my practice that afternoon, and then I went to bed that evening, and I opened up The Holographic Universe. And The Holographic Universe talks about how do we explain from a scientific basis how is the universe put together. And it's by Michael Talbot, and he talks about the universe being a hologram, which is that all the information is contained in every part of it. So it's like a fractal, if you will. So I'm reading the book that evening And, uh, the book talks about, you know, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, clairvoyance, mental telepathy, remote viewing, uh, etc., etc. Just all different kinds of things. So I opened it up, up the book that evening to out-of-body and near-death experiences. Guess who's in the book that I'm reading that evening? The guy that I had lunch with, Stuart Twemlow. I'll never forget, I'll never forget this. It was literally the hair on the back of my head stood up. And I said to myself, what are the chances of me meeting this guy, having lunch with him, and then reading the book of all books in the world and opening up to the chapter that he's in? And I said, the universe is talking to me. I better stop and I better listen.
Amazing.
It was an amazing— it was really an amazing— now, you call that synchronicity. You can put different words on it, different phrases, but It was a really interesting experience. And then, and I'll tell you another interesting story, and this sort of applies to the same thing. And this past weekend I was down at Block Island. I go down there 2 or 3 times the summer, and I go down there for just a getaway weekend by myself. I'll go camping, then I'll take my bike over to Block Island. And I was there in Block Island this past weekend, and I'm riding my bicycle And it's a beautiful summer day, not too hot, nice sun is out. And I take my bike after I have a cup of coffee and I just ride my bike out to the end. And it's probably about 5 miles, maybe took about an hour or thereabouts. And I'm just having a great day riding my bicycle. And as I'm riding my bicycle, and I've done this route before, so I know the route, you know, not, I don't have it memorized, but I know the route because it's just basically one road that leads out to the end jetty. And as I'm riding, I'm saying, you know, I, I've, I've done this before. It was like— and if you have your experience, déjà vu. Yeah, yeah. So most of the time when you have déjà vu, it's sort of like a fleeting, like, oh, I've done this before, I've seen this before, I've, you know, I've been here before. That is a— it's sort of a short-lived kind of a thing. I literally had a déjà vu movie for an hour. And as I'm riding my bicycle I'm predicting what's going to be around the corner. Not so much like, you know, things that are fixed, you know, a house and a— you know, there's certain things are just landmarks, they don't change. But I specifically was like, I saw, um, a— I said, oh, there's going to be around the corner, there's going to be a pink moped. And there was a pink moped. And then there was another, uh, moped. And I said, oh, there's going to be, uh, a couple, a Black couple, man in the front, a woman in the back. So I was literally, you know, predicting what I was going to be seeing. And then I said to myself, you know what, this is a dream that I had about a week or two before. It was wild. I've never had anything like that happen to me before. I was, you know, I wasn't on anything. I was completely sane. I wasn't like tripping or anything. I was like, wow. So it was, it was like an experience of, you know, clairvoyance, or, uh, you know, uh, maybe my dream became reality. And, you know, I, you know what happens when we dream? We go into a different state of consciousness. Consciousness? I don't know. I was— all I can say is I experienced it, and it was very real. And I don't have the, you know, scientific explanation for why it happened, but I do know that it happened to me, and it was very real. And, and it was, it was like time was sort of— I saw the time before, ahead, ahead of time in a dream. And, you know, and I think, you know, also in, in, in physics now that, you know, time is really an illusion, and it's all now. You know, we have this, this, this, uh time is, you know, we experience time as we live, but there is no really no such thing as time. It's all now. And, and, and it's, it's hard for us to sort of wrap our heads around that, but it was an experience of that. So it was really, it was really quite an amazing experience I had just this past weekend. And I said, well, this will prepare, prepare me for the, for the podcast. I mean, it's crazy.
That's incredible. So do you think time just collapsed in that moment of like your dream to that present moment of being on the bike, being there before. It's like déjà vu meets a, like a dream, like a precognitive dream. It's kind of an interesting mix.
Yes, yes, exactly. Right. And like I said, it wasn't like a déjà vu moment. It was a déjà vu movie for like an hour. And literally it was, I had already dreamt the reality that I was experiencing as I was riding a bicycle. So that was, it was just, it was really interesting. It was very, very interesting.
Well, let's put our MD, put your MD brain on and how would a neuroscientist or a neurologist try to explain that? What, you know, cause I've heard neurologists talk about near-death experiences, right? Like, oh, well that's just the brain firing in a certain direction and there's really nothing to that. You know, I can just explain it in terms of function, neurons,, you know, some kind of oxidative bursts. So do you think that, like, because, you know, with you being on the medical side of things, do you ever find that you're trying to explain things in terms of biochemistry, or do you just punt right over to the physics and say, no, this is beyond biochemistry, we can't explain it in that way?
Absolutely. And that's sort of where I think you have to unlearn, you have to have the ability to unlearn what you've learned. And another way of looking at that is that, you know, as the medical profession basically looks at the brain as the brain is how we get consciousness. If you don't have a brain, you're not conscious. Well, that's not true. According to the latest things, that consciousness exists outside of the brain. And they've actually had, you know, people who have had near-death experiences that have sort of proven that your consciousness can happen even when you have a flatline EEG. And there's a wonderful book by Frederico Fagan. Have you—
Yeah. Yeah. You shared with me that podcast, which was, wow, really mind-blowing for sure.
Mind-blowing. Yeah. Yeah. And Anne Shippy, you know Anne, she's the one I was— In fact, it was funny because as I was driving back from Block Island, I think 2 years ago, she texted me and said, "Todd, you got to listen to this podcast." So, I had like 2, 3 hours in the car. And I said, "Okay, I'll listen to the podcast." Like, I'm listening, I'm like, "Oh my God, the podcast was amazing." It was, I'm trying to remember the, because he's done a bunch of different podcasts. It's from the podcast called Know Thyself. And if you just Google Frederico Fragan consciousness, Apple Podcast, Know Thyself, you can listen to it for the people that are listening here. Frederico Feynman, I don't know if you know the story of him, but if you have a computer and you have the touchpad on it, he's the guy who invented the touchpad. This guy is— he was very much into computers, and he was actually trying to work on creating a computer that was conscious. He would really want— and what he ultimately realized is that you can't— computers can't create consciousness because consciousness requires things more than just numbers and computations. And an example of that is, you've probably used AI, right? AI, okay. When you talk to AI, AI has the appearance of being conscious. Like you can have a conversation with AI and it appears conscious, but it's not conscious in the way that we are. Now maybe if we get quantum computers and, 'cause our brains are literally operating on quantum mechanics, maybe with quantum computers, computers could become conscious. I don't know. I don't rule that out. But, you know, consciousness exists outside of the brain. And that's where, you know, mainstream medicine, they're just not going to even think about that because everybody's brainwashed to think, okay, you've got a brain, this is how the brain works. That's why you're— it's an epiphenomenon of the brain electrical activity. And that's why you're conscious. And uh-uh, nope, nope, that's not really how it works. Now, we don't necessarily have all of the physics to explain that. But I would venture to say that that is the leading way in which we understand, you know, consciousness. It does not require— and then the other aspect of that is that, you know, we have this idea that we're separate from the universe. Like, we're, you know, we're in ourself, we're looking out at the universe. There's the landscape, there's the tree, there's the grass, there's the clouds, and we're just separate from it.. And that's a, uh, a delusion. We actually are the universe looking at itself. And that's the real big thing that, that, that once you realize that, it's like an epiphany that like, oh yeah, I am the universe exploring itself. And we all have a different perspective on it and we all have different eyes, uh, about that. I'm gonna later on I'll talk about Alex Grey, who's a visionary artist, um, and a lot of his images have eyes. And that was one of the things I actually, as a, when I was studying for medicine, I actually really wanted to be an ophthalmologist because I found eyes absolutely fascinating. I still, I mean, I still, you know, the eye is really an outcropping to the brain and how our brain through the eye, you know, filters the world and brings the world into us. So this is this whole experience that we have. So it's really, it's a fascinating way in which that our bodies are conscious. And, you know, maybe when we dream, we go into a different state, different state of dimension or being or consciousness, different level of consciousness. Maybe that's what happened to me when I was dreaming. And, you know, it just— time didn't really— doesn't really matter. I just— time just sort of disappeared. And, okay, that's— I've already— it's already been there. It's, you know, it's already experienced it. So it's really quite wild.
Wow, you are getting my neurons going. I have a bunch of questions for you. One of the questions— some of them are kind of narrow and some of them are wider. So I I love what you're saying. You're a very expansive thinker. And just like you started us with the parachute analogy of like, you know, you need to, the brain, the mind is only as good as you open it, right? So where do you draw the line? How far is too far for you? You know, I know that you're into, you know, today, June 12th is Disclosure Day comes out at the theaters, Steven Spielberg's new film. I don't know if you're planning to see it. You know, we talk about, there's a lot happening in the UAP world and just people learning much more about non-terrestrial life, alternate life. You know, how far is too far for you? Is there anything where you say like, okay, now we've just gone too expansive and I got to bring it back? Is there anything you can think of where you wouldn't entertain a conversation or at least be somewhat piqued in curiosity?
No, no, I, I, I think that, you know, I go into everything with a Zen mind. I, I have no preconceived notions. I just, you know, would experience it as, as is and then study it. And, um, another, another, um, way of looking at that is that, you know, we can get into different states of consciousness. You know, you can meditate, you can do breathwork. Uh, Stanislav Grof, who, uh, had an LSD experience He developed holotropic breathwork, which is basically getting your brain into a different state of consciousness. So there are different ways in which we can do that. You know, plant medicine— Michael Pollan's book How to Change Your Mind, you know, is a fascinating book. And for those who have read Michael Pollan, you know, he's written The Omnivore's Dilemma and a whole bunch of, of books, you know, and he's a very erudite you know, learned, uh, very intellectual, I call it, you know, a Jewish guy. And he went into this book— I'm not sure why he ended up doing this book, but it's a very— it's a big thick book, and it's a— it— you got to really spend some time reading it. But he went into writing this book as a— as an atheist Jew, and he experienced a bunch of plant— different plant medicines, including peyote cactus, psilocybin mushroom, ayahuasca, cannabis, uh, even I think he did some DMT, which is, you know, called the spirit molecule. Our body makes the DMT, dimethyltryptamine, and that's actually the active ingredient in ayahuasca. And my, my take on it is that the plant world— and I think plants are conscious, I mean, do you agree with me?
100%.
Exactly right. The plants talk to us. And, and, uh, and, and actually, what I— interestingly, when I was at the Science and Consciousness conference with, uh, where I met, uh, Bruce Lipton. And actually, after I met him, you know, I told him, I said, I said, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch in life, but I'm going to give you a free lunch if you have lunch with me. And he did.
I ended up having lunch with you. Yes, that's great.
And, and, and, um, the— one of the other speakers there was, uh, Cleve Baxter, uh, who, uh, Cleve Baxter, uh, did some work on The Secret Life of Plants. Oh yeah, and he was, he was basically, uh, I remember the story is really fascinating, which is that he, he was, uh, working with polygraphs and they had like a bunch of time to kill. So he basically attached the polygraph to some plants and then he saw that the plants were registering, and then he would like cut the plant and the plant would register. And then he had a plant that was connected to the polygraph and then he cut another plant across the room that wasn't connected to that polygraph. And when he cut the other plant, the plant that was connected to the polygraph actually responded because the plant was injured. So what he was coming up to is that the plants are conscious at some level. You want to call it whatever, that they have some awareness, some, some, uh, you know, energetic awareness, energetic connectivity, um, and which is really fascinating. Um, so, you know, my mind is completely open in terms of not having any bias about, you know, how things are, because we don't really understand, you know, how things are. Uh, it's, it's just, it is a mystery. Uh, it's, uh, and, and I think that, you know, I— there's— when you look at the universe and how big the universe is, without question there's other life forms out there. Some of these life forms may be energetic life forms, they may be interdimensional. Um, we just don't know. Um, it could be, you know, uh, you know, alien, um, uh, you know, we call aliens or, you know, Martians, or whatever you want to call it. Um, I definitely think that, that, you know, there, there's other dimensions to the reality. Just like with a microscope, you can see bacteria and viruses that you can't see with your own eyes. So I think that when you get into different states of consciousness, it allows you, just like a microscope or telescope, to see things that you can't see as a human. We only have 5 senses, and, you know, our visual spectrum— and if you look at the electromagnetic spectrum, the visual, you know, electromagnetic spectrum that we see is just like this, but there's all of this stuff. And, you know, we're tuned into, you know, 90.3 on the radio dial, but there's all this other spectrum out there. And our brain is really a filter to reality. It doesn't generate consciousness, it filters reality. And a fascinating thing, which I found this absolutely fascinating when I was doing some reading, is when you take a functional MRI of an infant who's pre-verbal and you look at the functional MRI of their brain and you compare it to someone who's taking LSD, they're pretty much almost identical. All right, now this is, this is really interesting. So what does that mean? I would venture to say that when we're born, we're tripping. Literally, when we're born, we're tripping. Now, do you remember— I mean, do you remember when you were pre-verbal, like 1 year old, 6 months, you know, 1 day old? No, we don't really remember that. But guess what? It's actually in us. And, and Stanislav Grof, I remember when he gave his talk at the Science and Consciousness Conference, he basically said that he traveled through time and he went through his birth and he just, he went out in outer space and he just, he was literally you know, the whole time thing was just all one, and he was just traveling through time, uh, if you will. Uh, he would, uh, just traveling over landscape, and, and this, this dissolution of, of time, uh, you know, can happen. And, and, uh, I think, you know, LSD, which is synthetic, it's not naturally found, but it's actually— I think it's derived from, uh, ergot, um, changes the— you know, I call it like you're tuning into a different dial. And what I think the psychedelic experience, which is the, you know, this visual and auditory sensation, that's sort of real, that's reality. There's all these energies and our brain has to filter it to try to make it so that we can survive and we can hunt and reproduce and eat and everything else. But our consciousness is way bigger than what we have on the filter that we have, which we call quote reality. So that's sort of how I sort of see it.
You know, it makes me think I was just watching a video. It was a reel on social media of a baby that was seated looking into a room and the baby was laughing, giggling like the baby was seeing something there. And the mother is right behind the baby like, what are you laughing at? What? You know, she was trying. And you see that, that sometimes animals, whether cats, dogs, they're looking around, they're looking at specific places within a room, but we don't see anything. So based on what you're saying, It's kind of like our mind might be filtering, like we've shut off certain things.
Exactly. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. And it's almost to the thing where you get sort of adapted and it's just sort of like you don't notice, you stop noticing things. And I think that, you know, that's one of the things that if you're around young kids, the one thing that they do is they see the world as it is. There's no, you know, like if you have an infant and they look at this, they don't have a word for that. We put words onto everything. They just experience it. And again, in the pre-verbal state, there's— they're just, you know, they're soaking in all this energy, you know, the temperature, the wind, the visions, the sounds, and everything like that. And then their brain has to make sense of what all that is. And I think that's— I think you're bringing up a good point. And it's also interesting that, you know, when you have younger kids, oftentimes they will be— they will have more spiritual experiences. Like my middle son Lincoln, when he was younger, he said, I saw an angel. He saw an angel, you know. Okay, so what is that? It's an interdimensional existence or a creature or whatever you want to call it. And it was— the other thing that's also an interesting thing is, and I go back to the whole thing about words, because we use words to talk to one another, so we have a sort of consensus reality. When you dream, Deanna, do you ever talk in a dream?
Might be more telepathic.
Yes, exactly.
I mean, I think that there's some exchange where, you know, there's—
yeah, I never really thought about it like that, but yeah, I just, just start, start remembering it because it is telepathic. That's exactly what it is. And it is. And so we basically, when we go into a dream, we're experiencing things in a nonverbal way. Because you don't, you know, you don't need words to communicate. You can communicate telepathically, you can communicate through body language, you can communicate all different other ways. So, so there's— and again, it's an energy, it's an energy exchange, you know. And, you know, what is, what is sound? Like, if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?
No.
What do you say? Unless you have an eardrum to hear it. But the energy of the tree falling is there. And it's all about— it's all a matter of how your brain transduces that signal, and then you interpret that signal as, okay, that's a tree falling, or that's, you know, Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, or whatever, whatever it is. Um, so that's, that's— it's a really, uh, fascinating thing. And, and then the, the other thing, which is another thing that— and this is, this is something which, uh, you know, I, I was trying to sort of understand some of the psychedelic experiences when people, you know, have a psilocybin magic mushroom trip or LSD trip is they experience what's called synesthesia. Now, for those who don't know about synesthesia, synesthesia is when your senses become mixed. And there are some people that actually have it naturally, but it happens also when you are under the influence of a psychedelic, uh, like, um, LSD or psilocybin. And that's when you can taste color and see sound. So what you're doing is the energy is coming in, and all of our senses are really ways of doing, uh, signal transduction. So when we, when we see photons come into our eyes, hits the retina, the lights up the, the back of the retina, the electrical signals are there, and then those electrical signals travel through the, the, uh, the optic nerves, go through the optic chiasm, go back to the, the back of the brain, and then we create an image of, of what's out there, like it's on the screen of our brain. And that energy can actually, uh, that of the photons can actually be heard. I mean, that's, that's wild. And, and that can happen naturally for some people, um, and then it can also happen under the, the influence. So our brains are, are receiving energy, and then we're sort of making sense of the energy. And I think that to some degree, you know, as we get older and evolve and we do a lot of pruning, that we filter those energies that are coming in and we create what's called reality. But the reality is way bigger than the little, you know, the radio station that we're tuned into.
It's kind of interesting because I think towards the end of life, some people start to become more expansive. Like they kind of let go of that tight reality. And for various reasons, whether that's a biochemical, physiologic reason, changes in the brain, they actually do start seeing things again, or their reality changes in such a way that they're not constrained by like the 9-to-5 hustle bustle world. And so they can kind of— it's almost like we need that expansive space in order to really explore space and the space between the molecules, right? Because otherwise, like, we're just always on this kind of like a jet stream. Like, everything is just fast moving and we don't have the time. Like, time is such a big thing right now. We're, we're learning much more about circadian rhythm and just like the influence of time on our bodies. But I feel like there, there's the timelessness piece that you're speaking to, but then there's our relationship with time and really teetering those two things together. And, you know, it's interesting what we're seeing with medicine and the whole fields that are changing with sound therapies, light therapies, quantum, you know, the, the whole thing with light. We're moving beyond like just a dietary supplement, right? So like, where do you think medicine is going to evolve with all of these time-bound and timelessness therapies? And how are these two worlds going to converge?
Well, I would say that, you know, medicine and healing, you know, the body has a very innate ability to self-heal. And that's— I always, you know, there's a quotation by Voltaire that, you know, I'm trying to remember exactly what he says is, God heals the patient, the physician collects the fee. And when you take out the bad stuff and put in the good stuff and make the environment as an inviting, friendly environment. And then also, you talk about the hustle and bustle of life. And part of that, I think, is that we get disconnected from nature. And nature is us. We are nature.. And I am very much an outdoors person. Like, if I can be outdoors, I'll eat outside, I'll go for a hike, I'll go for a bike, I'll go kayaking, I'll go golfing, I'll go skiing. I feel at home when I'm out in nature, not inside, but I'm out in nature. And that's one of the reasons I like to go camping because it sort of resets my biorhythms with the rising and setting of the sun. And, you know, there's no artificial lights at night, there's no no LED lights, there's no television. I don't actually— I haven't had television for 35 years, so I don't have to worry about that. Um, but, but, um, it really helps you to, to be still. And I think that, I think that the, the ability to be quiet and to listen is really, really important for, for healing. Um, and, and we have such busy lives, you know, uh, with the— we all lead quiet lives of desperation, you know, we're always running around like a chicken with their head cut off. And, and, you know, it's the rat race, right? You know what I always tell my patients is, you know what happens at the end of a rat race?
What does happen?
You're still a rat. You're still a rat.
Oh, you're still a rat.
So, and I say that because, you know, everybody's running around trying to get something and whatever it is they want to get, whether it's money or the second house or the boat or whatever, vacation, whatever. And we're chasing after these things without realizing that now is all we have. Like, you know, how many times have you heard of somebody who's like, they worked hard all their life and they go retire and they drop dead?
Right, exactly.
And I think that, you know, when you spend time with children, children are in the now. They're just like, they're just in the now. They're not worrying about the future. They're not regretting the past and mulling over the past and ruminating about the past. They're in the now and they're enjoying the moment. They're laughing. And, you know, you never see, you know, young kids who are out in nature. I call them feral kids or running around. You know, when I was a kid, I was picking up frogs and going in the pond and, you know, catching grasshoppers and, you know, all kinds of things. And there's so much to see and explore in nature. And I think that it's really good for your soul and, you know, forest bathing, you know, I mean, I love forest bathing, you know, that's, you know, hug a tree, you know, those are, those are things that we, that we need to do. And, and a lot of times I tell people that, you know, when you live in an environment that is not conducive to your health, then you need to get out of that environment. And there are some— I had this one woman in particular, she's a patient of mine, she lived over in the Middle East and she lived in like the Saudi Arabia area, and she was working out there, and it was so hot and so polluted because of the oil refiners and stuff like that. She wasn't really, you know, in a good environment, and her health was being affected by that. And my friend from medical school, he was a charter member of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America, Bob Mason. He's a biologist up in Oregon now. And one of his favorite sayings was, just because you live in the desert doesn't mean you have to sit on a cactus. And I told her, I said, you're in the desert and you're sitting on a cactus. So eventually she took my words to heart and she ended up quitting her job and moved back to the States. And then when I saw her, she gave me a little placard and it said, just because you live in the desert doesn't mean you have to sit on a cactus. And I have it in the back of my office and I'll show that to patients. I said, you know what, you need to be changing some of the things that in which how you're living or not living, if you will, you know, not really enjoying. And I think that, you know, another thing that I think is also important in life is I call it work hard, play hard. My father was a dentist and he was a hardworking dentist, but he also knew how to enjoy life. He knew how to, you know, socialize with our family and his friends and being able to play and taking life lightly and just enjoying life. And just like a little kid, spontaneous laughter. Laughter is a fantastic medicine. It really is. Laughter is healing. It's really, really important.
Yeah. Oh, I so agree. My uncle used to say that too, that work hard, play hard. He actually said party hard. Party hard. Kind of like, you need both sides to really enrich you.
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So I want to try out a couple of concepts on you because you are probably one of my most expansively minded guests. You know, everybody so far kind of has like different things. And so I just want to try out a couple of concepts on you. So let's go into the nature one. You talked about forest bathing. You spend a lot of time in nature. You know, when I think of children, even myself, when I was a kid, you know, I think about things I might have seen in nature, like fairies or, you know, pixies. You know, you just got back from Ireland, the land of leprechauns. You have a topographical map of Iceland behind you. And anybody who's been to Iceland knows that they, they reconstruct the traffic for the fairies. And, you know, there's this whole like nature spirits, right? Yes.
Yes.
On the other side of that, I just watched a documentary not too long ago. I live in the Pacific Northwest about Bigfoot, Sasquatch. So I want to talk about elementals in nature. Like, how far do you go with kind of entertaining or exploring those kinds of things? Things you can't, you know, for most people, maybe apparently see, but there are experiences. So what do you do with that?
Yeah, I would— again, I'm very much open-minded, and I think that you can have, other spirits or entities or interdimensional, uh, beings that are there that we can't see because we don't have the microscopic or telescopic eyes to see them. And, uh, a fascinating thing about that, um, and again going back to Michael Pollan's book, which is the, uh, because he talks a significant amount about DMT. So DMT is naturally found in nature, lots of plants make it. In fact, the ayahuasca ceremony— I don't know how much you know about ayahuasca or if you've ever done it.
I have not done it. I haven't done ayahuasca.
Yeah, I haven't done it myself, but I was a chemistry major. And the interesting thing about the ayahuasca ceremony is it's a very complex multi-step chemical alkaloid extraction to get DMT. You would never ever be able to figure this out on your own. You know, they've been doing it for hundreds or thousands of years. And there's an oral tradition that the plants told them what to do, to do for ayahuasca. And there's a book called DNA and the Cosmic Serpent, which talks about the origin of ayahuasca. So DMT is one of the— one of maybe other molecules too in the ayahuasca ceremony, but DMT is probably the major molecule. And it's a a, uh, it's sort of a class related to serotonin. And, um, people who take DMT— and I think DMT is actually produced in the body to some degree in the pineal gland, um, and you can get it through, uh, through plants— and when people take, uh, DMT, which is a very simple molecule, it's a very small molecule, there's two methyl groups and a tryptamine, which is an amino acid, people see entities. They call them mechanical elves, they call them fairies, they call them— but they're universally, regardless of your culture, like you don't have to be from Ireland where they have leprechauns and fairies, regardless of your cultural upbringing or even that you've ever seen or heard of, believed in elves or fairies, everybody uniformly experiences these little beings while taking care. And there is a Uh, oh, what is the— I'm trying to— I'm trying to recall it. Uh, yeah, there's a— there's a— if you go on to, um, uh, YouTube, there's a, uh, YouTube channel called Alien Insect, and the guy in there is, uh, Andrew, uh, Gallimore. He lives in Japan, and he, he is like the world's expert on DMT, and he's got multiple PhDs. I think he's a mathematician, polymath, he's a scientist, and, and and he's trying to sort of crack the code. Like, why is it that people have these universal experiences while taking DMT that take them to another dimension of reality where these entities exist, these fairies, these mechanical elves, whatever you want to call them? And they have a sense of humor too. They actually have, you know, they're, they're elfish. They, they have this funny sense of humor. Um, so what does that mean? Is that just, oh, I'm just— you're tripping, or are you basically tuning your, your, your brain into a different level where you can, you can get different energies that are out there that you normally can't? Just like what you can see things with a microscope or a telescope. And that's to some degree probably what's happening is how I would sort of wrap my head around it. I can't say that definitively, but I would, I would say that that's, that's probably what's happening.
Yeah. And you know, my next question is kind of to springboard off of what you just said. Some of those elves or those sprites, whatever they are, some of them are a little bit devious, you know, they're, they are kind of like they're tricksters or, you know, in the shamanic tradition, you know, yeah, are you being tricked or so I want you to riff a little bit on, you know, you said you wouldn't be talking about religion as part of spirituality, but I want you to talk about kind of like what we might perceive as like an elevation or an enlightened state versus maybe a lower vibration more of a, just, I don't wanna say good and evil per se, but you know, on, within this reality in which we live, there is a lot of duality, and there's a lot of talk about this duality, right? The 3D consciousness versus moving into a more unified field of like 5D consciousness and an awareness. But what is your take on kind of like the whole morality aspect of, you know, are there, you know, there is even some discussion about some of these, non-terrestrial forms, you know, are they for us, against us, you know, is there, you know, so why is it that we always form this polarity? What spiritually is going on here as it relates to whether religions that are based on good and evil, like, just, I'm just curious, I don't even know your take on this, I'm just putting it out there for you to take it in whatever direction you think would be.
Yeah, I mean, that's, you bring up the concept of duality because, you know, the world is not all good and the world is not call evil. But if they're, you know, and, and, you know, how do we define what is, what is good? Um, yeah, what's evil? Because, you know, people have killed other people in the name of good, you know?
Right. So what do you do with that? Yeah, like, how do you, in your mind, reconcile that? How do you make sense of it from a quantum or a physics perspective or a timelessness perspective?
You know, I, I would, I would venture to say that, you know, I mean, uh, you know, how do I say it, you know, the, in, in, you know, the Judeo-Christian religions, um, the, the golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which really means that you really are having a functioning prefrontal cortex. And it's your ability to see outside of yourself, and you don't want to harm someone. Or even if you look at someone who falls down and they scrape themselves, you can sort of, you have those mirror neurons sons. And I would venture to say that good is the ability to empathize and sympathize with those who are in need. And when you don't have that ability, that is bad, that is evil. And, you know, we call that sociopaths, we call those psychopaths. Do they exist, you know, out of their control? They're just born that way? I don't know. You know, there is there's definitely a duality. There's light and darkness, uh, you know, uh, in, in the world for sure. Um, and, and I think that, you know, the religions put a story on, on that, whether it's, you know, Hinduism, uh, Buddhism, you know, uh, Mormon, uh, Judaism, uh, Islam, Christianity, you name it. And they're all different ways of trying to reconcile, you know, when something bad happens You know, and like you say, even say for example, like when the tsunami happens, well, who's doing the tsunami? It's just, well, the tsunami is just there, right? It's not like, you know, it's, it's just, it just is. It's just, you know, there's— I would venture to say also that the, the world is always being born. It's being, um, uh, it's growing and then it dies and then it gets reconfigured. So there's this, you know, there's this birth, uh, life and death and then reconstruction, reconfiguring of, of the atoms and everything like that. And sometimes things are good and sometimes things are bad, um, and we don't always have a, uh, an explanation for that, um, you know. And, and I think that, that the world's religions try to make meaning of something that we don't really fully understand, uh, there's, there's just a way of doing that, you know. People say, oh, you got bad karma, you know, you you know, you're living your cycle because you had a bad life. That's like the story of, of, you know, why you're in the state that you're in or whatever, uh, you know. So there's different ways of explaining, uh, you know, good and evil. I don't, I don't have the, the mystery of iniquity, uh, an answer to that, but I would venture to say that, that, uh, our, our goal in life— and this is actually, I'm going to bring up Alex Grey because— have you, have you been to COSM at all?
No, no, I'm familiar with his work, but no.
You need to come visit and I'll go with you because the Cosm is the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. And it's not that far from where I live. It's in Wappinger Falls, New York. And Alex Gray has a wonderful— it's called a— it's actually called a— it's actually an art church. He has a designation as a church. And He had an experience when he was suicidal and depressed, and he was basically going to kill himself. And he went to a party at the end of the semester with the intention the next day of killing himself. And he had never taken LSD, and he was there with a bunch of people, and he took LSD, and he had a trip, if you will. An altered state of consciousness, and he was with his now wife, uh, Allison, and they both had a very profound, uh, life-changing experience. And in that trip of LSD, he experienced infinite love, infinite love, infinite gratitude, and infinite compassion. And now, do you need LSD to experience that? No. Well, does LSD or psychedelics help to facilitate that? Like, it's like a key opening the doorway of your perception. Some people might need that. Some people don't need that. And I would venture to say that, you know, psychedelics are a technology to change our state of consciousness that some people probably need. And as a physician, I'm very— I've gone to multiple seminars and conferences and courses on the use of psychedelics as medicine, specifically things like magic mushrooms and such. And they can have profound abilities to shift your consciousness so that you are now out of your default mode network. And that's really sort of what they call that, sort of like where you operate. So your day-to-day, you're, you know, you're doing your own thing and you're in your own default mode network, and it's sort of like you're, you're in your rut, if you will. And it gets us out of our rut, and now we, now we're not just tuned into one channel, we got this whole experience. And, and the, the theme of, of, of Alex Grey is that he, as an artist, paints what he's experienced personally and visually about how the whole net, the universe, is interconnected.
It.
And the, the bottom line is love. Absolutely, it's love, and it's universal love, and it's not tied to any religion, it's not tied to any belief. And it is about love, it's about gratitude, it's about compassion. Those are the, the underlying themes of, of, uh, uh, COSM. And, uh, like I said, they, they have— they've been doing it for, I think, 20-plus years. Every once a month they have a full moon ceremony, and people go there, and you meet all kinds of really interesting people. And it's a, it's a wonderful experience. And he's got fantastic, um, a bunch of— in fact, at the end I can show a couple of, uh, a couple of his works. It's really, really, uh, amazing. And, um, and to realize that, you know, we're part of the universe, which also then takes me to another way in which I've, I've been, uh, sort of viewing the world, uh, as a, as a lens in which I view the world. And As a kid, I loved Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci. I read all the books about Leonardo da Vinci that I could because he was a genius of geniuses, and Einstein was a genius of geniuses. I mean, he saw the world from another perspective. He looked out at the world like we all look out the world, and he used his imagination to ride on a beam of light and came up with a theory of relativity and, uh, general and special relativity. So he saw the world the way everyone else saw it, but he saw it differently. So I said to myself, I wonder what Einstein believed, you know, because he was a smart guy. I mean, you know, he was able to see things and understand things that we as regular people don't, you know. He was definitely— they actually think that he was probably maybe on the Asperger's spectrum, not an idiot savant, but a savant. But he was neurodivergent for sure. And interestingly, if you, if you read some of Einstein— there's a, there's a, a book out about, uh, Einstein's belief. I can't— I'm blocking on the name of it, um, but it's about, um, the, the, um, The God of Einstein, I think is the name of it. Or, uh, it's— and it's basically, uh, Albert Einstein, uh, sort of meshed with the philosophy of Spinoza. I don't know if you've read anything about Spinoza, and I'm going to make a quote here. So Einstein said, uh, that he explicitly identified with Spinoza's, quote, God. He goes, I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. And then he wrote another thing, that a human being is part of a whole called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space. One experiences oneself one's thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusions of one's consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion and to embrace all living creatures and the oneness of nature in its beauty. It's one of my favorite quotations, and I learned of this quotation when I had, um, you probably have heard of Bose speakers, Amar Bose, who was a the founder of Bose Speakers. I had him as a patient at Canyon Ranch, and I had a fantastic conversation with him. And this was the quote that he had in his office. And I remember we had this conversation about metaphysics, and, you know, because he was a brilliant guy, MIT genius, and he was very spiritual himself. So we had a, you know, even though I was taking care of him, but we ended up talking tangentially. And this was the quote, so it's one of my favorite quotations.
I love that. So on that note, as we come to a close, one of the questions that I've been asking everybody, because I share an interest in this topic, is kind of the, you know, if we think about the end of life, the meaning of life, why are we here? I've asked some guests about whether or not they believe if we come back again, if we're just here to learn lessons. But, you know, if you just can kind of zoom out of all of this and say like, you know, this is why I think we're here, and kind of your framework for not just living, but now, like, as we start to reflect on the exit, what we might refer to as dying, death, and even if you want to wax on anything as it relates to near-death experiences, but what is your take there? Like, if somebody were just to be with you and ask you, like, hey, Todd, just why are we here? You know, what's the meaning of all of this? This busyness of life? What would you say?
I would say, you know, that's the ultimate question is, you know, where do we come from? Why are we here? And where are we going? Right? That's what all religions attempt to explain. And sometimes people want simple answers. You know, you're either going to go to heaven or hell, you know, that kind of a thing. And And I would venture to say that they're all stories and they're all trying to explain what is termed in Latin the mysterium tremendum, the tremendous mystery. And if you think you understand the mystery of it all, you don't. And the thing about the universe is it's a mysterious universe. And I would venture to say that we are conscious and our consciousness exists outside of our bodies. And I think that, you know, to some degree, we've always been here. We're just the universe experiencing ourselves as human beings at this point. And we may, you know, go into another, you know, dimension of consciousness somewhere else. We may become a tree. I mean, one of the things I might do when I die is I'll take my ashes and I'll become a tree. You know, you can do that now. And, you know, we're basically—
Mycelium as well. You can, at least in Washington State, they have mycelium. I could see you doing that.
Yes. Yeah. So, you know, so essentially I would say that, you know, we are, we are spiritual beings having a, a human existence and, and that's sort of, you know, what we're doing. And, and, and we have this spirit and we're here for a period of time, you know, you know, 70 years, 80 years, 100 years. And then, then we, things change and, and, uh, we don't fully know, but I would venture to say that, that we don't end. Our consciousness doesn't end. Our consciousness continues, and we get reabsorbed and reconfigured into another existence of some level, of some interdimensional level, some new level. Um, you know, I don't know, uh, but I, I do know that, that, that we all have this sensation that we, we are here. And, and, you know, we're, you know, I, I think, you know, people always ask, you know, what is the meaning of life? I always say, you know, the The meaning of life is the meaning that you give it. You know, it's just like, what do you want to do with your life? You like— and I think too many people are unconscious. They're walking through life like zombies, and, um, they're in the 9-to-5 job, and they're typing on their computer, or they're, you know, pressing this, you know, button or whatever, and they're not awake and aware. And I think that, that one of the things that I, uh, like to, uh, anybody I'm with, I always like to, uh, tell them to be awake and be aware. You know, we have this beautiful existence that we're in and enjoy it. And it's just the beginning. It's just, you know, we're just— it's not the end. I mean, it's— we're going to— we're going to be recycled and our consciousness is going to continue. And however that happens, it's going to happen. So it's just— it's interesting. And I think the closer you can get to being in nature, because we are nature, the healthier you're going to be. I really do that. And I also think that it's really important also to have friends that are like-minded, same energy. And you know that when you're around somebody who you click with, you resonate with. Listen to your gut. That's a good thing. It's really, really important to listen to that, that, that inner voice, that intuition that you get strummed out of us in schooling. You know, when you, when you go through your schooling, they drum out your intuition. They really do. It's, it's, you know, it's unfortunate, but that's just the way the system is. You learn by rote and you listen to authority and this is what is true and that's that. And, you know, if you look at anything, you look at it any other different way, you know, you're— you get the wrong answer on the test and you're not going to, you know, you're not going to get your job, that kind of a thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Your patients are so fortunate to have you such a, you know, just worldly thinker that you think through things. You know, I want to leave everybody on the note of, before you show the images from Alex Gray, which you and I talked about, I was watching an interview with Jerry Seinfeld, you know, at 70 years old, you know, he's now 70. And the interviewer was asking him about what he did in order to just kind of be vital and live life, like what were, what was kind of his secret sauce. And he said, Transcendental Meditation. Uh, he works out and he works with his muscles. So like some kind of strength training and copious amounts of espresso. So I guess my question to you is, what are the 3 things that Todd does to kind of keep you on point with your spiritual health, your vital existence? Um, you know, what, what do you find like you are practically doing and kind of bringing your energy into?
Well, that's— you bring up— that's a— it's a good thing. It's like, you know, what do I do is, is I try my best to be outside as much as I can. That's where I, I feel most at home, and I instinctively like to be out in nature. I love to go for a walk in the woods. I love to lie on the grass. I'd love to float in the ocean. I love to sit down and look at the stars in the sky, and those things fill my cup. They really, you know, fill my, uh, fill my soul up, if you will. And then obviously, you know, being, you know, in, in functional medicine, you know, you try to fuel your body as best as you can, and you, you want to nourish your body and nourish your mind. Um, so that entails, uh, being around people and your friends and family who are going to nourish you, because we nourish each other. We, you know, we feed off of each other.. And those are, you know, I've got a good, wonderful family. I've got great friends, you know, locally and, you know, distant and from a distance, and always try to stay in contact with people who I can be myself. I think the most, one of the most important things also is to be yourself. Don't be someone else. I mean, you know, you just got to be you. And I think a lot of people wear masks And for people who know me, I just am a straight shooter. What you see is what you get. I'm just— I don't have any pretenses. I have no, you know, I, I don't have an ego, uh, to some degree. I, I don't— I'm not— I, I realize how little I know, so I don't have an ego. Um, so those are some of the things that I do. And, uh, I, I love to grow. Um, I love to explore. Um, and I just love to to enjoy life as best as I can, and also to realize that, you know, life has its ups and downs. And, you know, just because it's raining out doesn't mean that you have to be sad. You can dance in the rain, you know. And when things— even when things happen to you that you don't want them to happen, you can still have joy. And it's really important to, to have joy regardless, not just because you got the raise or because you, you know, you got this the boat or the second home or whatever like that. Those are transient things. But to have joy regardless of what's going on around you, that, you know, it's an inside job. So, those are the things that really, you know, nourish me and make me as healthy mentally, physically, and spiritually as possible. And laughter is really, you know, laugh. I love to laugh. One of the things I do, you know, with my patients is, is I see patients with very serious conditions. And, you know, part of that is this, to realize that, you know, life is life and we are all here for a certain period of time. And people ask me, am I gonna die? And I go, well, yeah, you're gonna die, but not soon. And at least that I can see. And, and, and a lot of people have a fear of death. Yeah. There is a fear cuz it's unknown. And when you realize that death is not the end, you stop having this fear of death. You stop having this fear of burning in hell or whatever. There's a lot of fear-based things in a lot of religions, rule-based and fear-based. I don't think that's a very good way of going around your life. Yeah. Just being love, express love. Love is, is, is, you can share love with anybody that is around you and just being aware, helping people when you can help them in whatever way it is, whether it's, you know, giving them some, some, some food, giving them some, some time to talk to them, giving them positive encouragements, having them see things a different way. Those are all things that, that, you know, really feed your spirit. So those are things that I do to, and it's really, it's a humbling experience being a physician because you see people in situations where there's a lot of things going on mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. And there's not like, you can't fix this with this supplement or this medication. It's not, it's how it's sort of how you're living your life and also how you how you're viewing your life. And I, one of my favorite things to do with patients is, pull up a glass, or this is not a glass, but it's a Yeti mug and say, is the glass half empty or is the glass half full?
What answer do you usually get?
It's just a glass with water in it. And you can put your own emotions and perspective on it. You can say, well, the glass is half empty. Well, the glass is half full. Well, the glass is half empty and there's a crack in it and the water's polluted and you get all these like negative ruminations about things. Or you can say, oh, you know what? The glass is half full and it's cold and I'm going to be getting some more. And this tastes so good on my tongue. And I feel so, I feel such gratitude that I have this glass of water when people don't have fresh water. I mean, there's all different ways in which you can have this inner dialogue that goes around.. I call it ruminations. And a lot of people get stuck in negative ruminations, which is basically a person's default mode network. And getting out of your default mode network through meditation, through breathwork, through some cases, if need be, plant medicine like psilocybin can be very, very therapeutic for patients, especially the, you know, people that have had like a lot of trauma, people with PTSD, Psilocybin mushroom ketamine-assisted psychotherapy is fantastic for patients. I recommend that for a lot of my patients. The book, The Body Keeps the Score, the— I never can remember his name, but he's—
Bessel van der Kolk.
Yes, that's right. Yes. Yeah. He now does solely ketamine-assisted psychotherapy because it's that effective for people with significant trauma because It gets them into a dissociative state and helps them to emotionally process and detoxify trauma. 'Cause trauma gets stuck in your body, literally, the energy, if you will, or whatever you want to call it. You get trapped emotions and it sort of reboots that. It's like you had the computer when the little beach ball keeps rolling and you're stuck, you got to reboot it. And that's a lot of times what, plant medicine can do. So those are very therapeutic things that I've been exploring and helping my patients. And I've had some amazing success with patients to that, that can use that, those kinds of tools. And I encourage a lot of patients to do that. And it's a whole area that is now being explored. I think because of Michael Pollan's book, I think it's now in the mainstream that people are realizing recognizing that these are, there's other things out there besides, you know, Wellbutrin and Xanax and Prozac, you know, for getting your brain back into a healthy state of awareness. Mm-hmm.
You know, I kind of feel like as you talk about that, all of the emerging therapies and how things are changing, it's almost like the Charles Dickens line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Yes. It's kind of like people feel like this is a very chaotic time to live in, but at the same time, we also have the birthing of so many other things that can really help us along. So it's just a matter of our perspective.
Exactly. Yeah. And, and, and, and again, I think, you know, we're also living in this, this really interesting age where AI is emerging as a whole new way of how we are interacting with the world. We can now, we can now figure things out much faster and better. And AI is sort of like a double-edged sword. I think there's good things and bad things, just like dynamite can be used to build things or dynamite can be used to blow things up. And there's also another book by Ray Kurzweil called "The Age of Spiritual Machines." And he basically posits that at some point, computers can become conscious. And I'm not convinced of that, but if we do have quantum computing, we may actually have quantum computers that actually literally have silicon consciousness, if you will, or some type of consciousness. Because it's basically, computers are made out of the universe. So if we're conscious, you know, the whole universe is conscious. So it's not out of the realm of possibility.
Yeah. And I think that that whole conversation about what is consciousness still needs to evolve. Like, I don't feel like we've come that far in that conversation because we're part of it, right? So it's really hard to, see it if you can't get perspective in a true scientific way where you're an objective observer because you are part of this consciousness matrix and network. So it's hard to study.
Exactly. Yeah. And I'm going to finish. I'm going to finish.
Do you want to bring up your slides?
Yeah. Let me share this. Hold on one second. Let me do— okay. Let's see if I can do this here. To a window. All right, and let's do— hold on. Okay, um, let's see here.
Okay, so this is the—
can you see that? Yeah, yeah. So, so this is, this is what I was referring to, and which I read, it's a famous quote by Albert Einstein that Amar Bose gave to me when I saw him as a patient. And then this is just a— I forget exactly where I got this, but I just— it just really speaks to me because it's just basically showing us as an individual sort of connecting into the energy of the universe. What you see here, you see eyes in the hands, and you see the third eye with the pineal gland, which is basically sort of visualizing that we are seeing the universe seeing itself, or the universe experiencing itself. And then this is a work by Alex Grey, and a lot of Alex Grey's work has eyes in it. It's a really interesting thing that he is— it's a theme that he has. And what you see here, it's a picture of an eye, and in the center of the eye is the Buddha, and then around the eye are all these other eyes. And basically each individual is the universe seeing the universe from its own perspective. So there's an infinite number of perspectives, or infinite number of eyes, in which you can see the universe. And there's no one right way. It's sort of like, you know, have you ever seen the, um, it's like a— oh, it's like a meme where a, a person looks at a 6 and he's on the right-hand side, and the guy on the left-hand side says, right, so it's, it's a 9 and a 6. It all depends on how you want to look at it, right? It's just, it's, it's your own perspective. It's not like there's no right or wrong answer, it's just your, your perspective. And then this is a fascinating one, uh, where he drew it with the magic mushroom. And what you see here is that again, the eye is in the hand. And I think, you know, I, I'm going to speak for him, but you see a little, a little entity up, up to the left of the, uh, the mushroom, is that the mushrooms, uh, or the plant medicine you know, open up our vision so that we are able to see more than we would normally see with our own five senses. And it's a recurring theme that he has to show us that there are many other hidden dimensions in the world. And then lastly, this is one of my favorites. This is— if you go to Alex Grey's Cosm, this is one of his big murals in the main chapel. And it's called Theologue, which means dialoguing with God. And it says here that the union of human consciousness weaving the fabric of space and time in which the self and its surroundings are embedded. So, you know, again, it's just another way of saying that we are in the universe, we are connected to the universe, we are the universe being, uh, incarnate as a human, but we're all interconnected and we can We can tie into the energy of the universe by various forms of meditation, through breathwork, by being in nature and in dreams, and even, you know, using plant medicine if need be. So I'll end there. That's one of my favorite. In fact, I have this, I have a bumper sticker of this, and I have this on my car.
Wow. Phenomenal. Todd, this has just been outstanding. I loved just the philosophical waxing, the science of it all. And I also, I think what strikes me is your humility in this of like, you know, really being open and not claiming to know all of the answers. So that just feels so good in terms of, you know, again, it just feels very liberating and expansive to be within that mindset because I feel like when you have that kind of mind, then when things happen in life, you're just more able to kind of roll with it.
Exactly. You roll with it. Exactly. That's exactly right. And I think part of that also allows you to have more experiences of synchronicity. And I think synchronicities are happening all the time. We're just not aware of it. And I think that when we— life is going to have ups, life's going to have downs. And you can't let— it's like riding a wave. Like you can curse at the wave and say, "Oh, the wave crashed me," or you can get on a surfboard and you can ride the wave of life. That's essentially what you're doing. You're going to fall down at some point, but you can ride the wave of— the edge of the wave is chaos. And basically in life, you're riding the wave of chaos and you're going to crash sometimes, but you can just get up and do it again.
That's a great metaphor actually, because it's like if we're droplets in the ocean of all of consciousness, right? And then the wave will change and we just ride that.
Exactly. Very well put, Deanna. Yeah. Well, this has been absolutely fabulous, and thank you for inviting me. And yeah, we'll get some good feedback, and I'd be more than happy to answer any questions if people have that. And I would just say, you know, go out, you know, live life, smile, share, you know, share your, share your loves, be yourself. You know, have love, have compassion, have gratitude. And those are the things that, that will carry you in life with the good and the bad. That's really the key thing. And it's all, it's all good.
It's all there. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for all of the resources that you provided and the art, the books, the podcasts and all of that will be captured in the notes. So thanks again, Todd. It's been a pleasure.
And I hope one day, Deanna, that you can come out and we will go to a full moon ceremony.
I want to do that.
Yes. You will absolutely love it. You will love it. It's really— and they actually, if you can't even make it, they actually broadcast it live on YouTube each month. If you go to Alex Grey, you can sit there and watch if you want. But it's really fun to experience it in person and just to see the artwork that he has. And you meet these really interesting people. Interesting people, like people from all over the world. Um, so it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a real, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a really neat, uh, uh, space and, uh, uh, time.
It's on my list. All right, fantastic. Well, thank you.
All right, thank you, Deanna. You enjoy the rest of your day, and everyone else, you too. All right, bye-bye.
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