Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Can Science and Spirituality Coexist? | Dr. Mona Sobhani

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Dr. Mona Sobhani, a cognitive neuroscientist, researcher, entrepreneur and author.After receiving her doctorate from the University of Southern California, Mona spent the next several years contributing her expertise in neuroscience to fields such as law, business, healthcare tech, venture capital, and research innovation centers. Then, following what she describes as an “existential crisis,” everything changed. Her strict scientific perspective, frameworks of thinking, and process for truth-seeking were no longer satisfying the bigger questions she had about life – she became fascinated by exploring the crossroads of science and spirituality. In her new book, Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist’s Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe, she details her transformation from a diehard scientific materialist to an open-minded spiritual seeker.Coming from a scientific background myself, this was a fascinating conversation – Mona has done the brave work to push up against edges of her own deeply-rooted paradigms and beliefs to ultimately reimagine her philosophies of how the world works. We can all learn from this type of thinking – deeply discerning, challenging beliefs, working your way through new information, and leaning into the fact that there are many things we don’t understand._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. If it's not obvious, I mean, one is to stay open-minded and stay curious. Like one of my personal mantras now is radical curiosity. And anytime I find myself sticking to something or like I did with you say, I believe I tried to remember. No, no, no, no. Stay radically curious. Like let's just keep learning. Okay. Welcome back or welcome to the finding mastery podcast. My name is Dr. Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist.

Now, the whole idea behind this podcast, behind these conversations, is to learn from people who are challenging the edges and the reaches of the human experience in business, in sport, in science, and in life. And we pull back the curtain to explore how they have committed to mastering both their craft and their minds in an effort to pursue their potential. Now, this week's conversation is with Dr. Mona Sabani, a cognitive neuroscientist, researcher, entrepreneur, and author. Now, after receiving her doctorate from the University of Southern California, Mona spent the next several years contributing her expertise in neuroscience to fields such as law, business, healthcare, tech, venture capital, and even research innovation centers. Then, following what she describes as an existential crisis, everything changed. Her well-established scientific approach and frameworks of thinking were no longer satisfying the bigger questions she had about life. She didn't abandon her scientific roots. Rather, she created more space to allow for new methods to be part of her process to build and understand and organize knowledge, which of course is one of

the main purposes of science. In her new book, that's exactly what she talks about. She titled it Proof of Spiritual Phenomena, a neuroscientist discovery of the ineffable mysteries of the universe. So she details her transformation from a diehard scientific materialist to an open-minded spiritual seeker. So coming from a scientific background myself, this was a fascinating conversation. I could deeply relate. And I think we can all talk a big game about pushing the frontier and getting on the edge and fundamentally committing to growth and change. Yet it is remarkably rare. And so Mona did all that work of getting up on the edge. And then when faced with the option to retreat to her status quo or adopt a new way of organizing

how she thought, how she used information to make sense of the world. She took the latter to ultimately reimagine her philosophies of how the world works. That's awesome. This is a great conversation, a wonderful emblem of change. And I think we can all learn from Mona. She holds the standard for discernment, challenging beliefs, and a deep fundamental commitment to understanding what we don't understand. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Dr. Mona Sabani. Mona, how are you? I am excellent.

How are you? Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. I'm excited to have this conversation with you because I think you're going to push into some spaces that are common amongst people and at the same time a little scary because what you're doing is challenging one's personal worldview, which takes a lot to do that. And so that's why I'm excited about this conversation with you. Now, if I could just come right out the gates here. And in your book, you start off with a really bold statement that you write, old me would

have hated new me. Can you give some context and talk about, you know, what you mean by that statement and who was the old you and who is the new you? Yeah. Yeah. It was the sentence that one of the sentences, probably the first one that popped into my head when I was going through this transformation that I went through in my life that kind of pushed me to write this book and the book that I ended up writing. And old me was a very typical, skeptical, hard-nosed scientist, kind of walked around with bravado and arrogance that I understood the world and had a lot of the answers because I had, you know, excellent scientific training. And that served

me really well for many years. And then it didn't serve me anymore. And I had a personal existential crisis, I had multiple things happen in my life that I couldn't explain with the scientific paradigm that I was trained in. And that caused me to explore other things like open my mind, read other texts, do some research, speak to people, just get curious, really. Because it was just a situation where I was forced to do that, really, to find, you know, meaning and to find ground again, because I was on such shaky ground. And where I ended up was as a completely new person. And the new me that I talk about in the book was someone who, I mean, old me went kicking and screaming as I transformed into new me, but it was somebody who

was more open-minded. You know, I still consider myself a scientist. I still followed the evidence. I didn't make any jumps or leaps in logic without at least some traditional scientific evidence. But the, yeah, knew me kind of broadens my definition also of proof and evidence to include personal experience, because ultimately that was very powerful in my experience during this transformation. And so new me just, I became more open to spirituality, which I never had room for in my life before I thought was garbage and a waste of time, to be frank, that's how old me would have described it. And anything that was considered woo woo or that wasn't studied in you know very peer-reviewed normal scientific journals I wouldn't be interested in reading but Numi was open to reading and learning about things that our current scientific paradigm doesn't have

an understanding of or explanations for because that was my personal experience. And so, yeah, old me would have had no tolerance for the new me. I would have thought she's stupid. She's been duped. She needs to believe in something because life is hard. So she, you know, is like bending her standards to accommodate views that make life living easier for her. That's, that's how I would have viewed new me. Okay. So old me was a bit judgmental, critical, dogmatic, rational, uh, craving, um, the rational experience and explanation of things, you know, more influenced by Aristotle. If that's, you know, the rational mind.

And then, so that critical, the word that you chose is like the old me would hate the new me. So that the word hate is jarring. It's not like the old me would be so excited about the new me. You know, finally the butterfly came to existence. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. The old me was like different. And I don't think I would enjoy being around the old you.

I know, I sound awful. Yeah, but let me just kind of put the context to it. Like, did you enjoy looking back? Did you enjoy life as the old you? So looking back, so this is a really, you know, interesting, obviously, transformation I went through that made me look at more than just spirituality. It really made me dive into psychology and the ways we look at ourselves and the thoughts we have, because I encountered all of that along the way. And you're exactly right. I wrote those things and went back when I looked at them. I'm like, I meant it. I meant she would hate me.

And then I had to look at that. What does that mean? The way I see it now is I had built a defense, a shield of being smart around me. And anything that threatened that, which in my head included people and views that didn't, you know, resonate with scientific materialism, like the standard scientific paradigm threatened my superiority. And, and so, oh, my God, yes, which is how I saw it. Yes, yes, I know. I'm just being honest. No, no, well, you know, okay, so I love the honesty. And you know what, I, I. Well, you know, I, okay. So I love the honesty and you know what? I, I also have like this appreciation that you examined that word. You didn't just say it to be provocative or because it was a literally fun, like you, when it sounds like you might've written it that way. And then you re-examined like, whoa, I put the word hate, like myself would have hated and you stuck with it because it was actually accurate. Yeah.

Because I felt that every single day of this journey in the beginning, when I was encounter, when I was reading evidence starting to transform that hate and discomfort and judgmentalness and threat to my ego identity, safety that I had set up my whole life. It just shook me. And there was like such a retaliation, a very strong emotional retaliation that I noticed. And, you know, I was so used to that, that I thought that's just how I was in the past. And I was very unselfaware. And through this whole exercise, this transformation, I was able to start recognizing that and saying, whoa, where is all this emotion coming from? Like, why am I so

reactive? Why is it such a big deal? Aristotle would hate me too. Yeah. Like, why is it such a big deal if, you know, if something I believe in is threatened? What's the big deal? Oh man, but that's, I mean, it sounds easy now, but that took me a long time. Okay, because you're using beautifully charged words, crisis, transformation, retaliation. And so I want to start with the crisis, but I don't want to, I don't want to miss that you're using words that beautifully describe the turmoil, the

intellectual honesty and the alignment of honesty. You know, there's maybe a different way to think it. There's intellectual honesty, like, but then the honesty to be fully aligned with the way that you choose your thoughts, words, and actions, I think it's a much deeper level. And it feels like you're doing that. There's a deep honesty to choose words like hatred and retaliation and such. But let's go, if you're okay with it, can you go to the crisis and describe that crisis and, um, help maybe bring it to life? Like what it was actually like? Yeah, absolutely. So it was, it was, um, it wasn't like one event, although it was one event that, that was the tipping point. But looking back, it was, you know, a series of events, a series of

situations in my life. What happened was in 2016, I had a professor of mine from my graduate program. I wasn't in graduate school anymore, but it was a professor who I had worked with in graduate school, he was killed by one of our students in the graduate program. And that was already upsetting, already a very tough situation to deal with. But what was more, what was, what shook my worldview during this time was that my mother, I'm Persian, I come from Persian heritage. So in our culture, we have a tradition of reading coffee grounds for divination, which is looking into the future, which of course, Western mainstream science does not believe in, there's no evidence for that. But it's a part of our culture. And it has always happened in the background of our family parties. And my mom,

you know, allegedly was very good. Her friends would fight over readings. My friends would fight over readings. And so it was always there. So to bring it back to the story, what happened was she saw this event five weeks in advance, every week for five weeks. And she wouldn't tell me what it was. Afterward, she told me she knew it was a death, but, and that it was an unusual one. She'd never seen anything like it. And she usually actually doesn't tell me bad things because she doesn't want to, um, you know, uh, make it a self-fulfilling prophecy or upset me before it happens. But this one, she made up a whole point of saying,

I feel like I need to tell you because like, it looks pretty bad. You know, I just feel like I need to give you a heads up. And so when it happened and like for five weeks, I was on edge because I didn't understand how these readings work, but I had enough experience to know that if she said something like that, most likely something was going to happen because she was more right than she was wrong. And, and so then when the event happened I was just so shook not only by the event but that she like five weeks in advance this was coming up like what does that mean about time about fate about destiny about like our decisions you know like I was just so so shook but I didn't do anything with it it just kind of I kind of think of it as like, like legs of a stool,

like one of the legs was knocked out. It was still standing though. So I would still have my stool was still standing somehow. And then the next thing was two years later, I was still not in a great place. And then I, my mom saw this relationship coming and I was like, yes, a relationship, this is going to solve everything. I'm going to be happy now. And so it came into my life and didn't work out. And once that, that was like knocked all the other legs off the stool. And because I was already shaky, there's all these other things that happened. I already felt like there was no purpose. And that was like the deepest, darkest time of my life. I, looking back can't even I was the first time I felt despair I lost hope I was not optimistic anymore I just like I really just wanted to die every day

which I've never been like that before and and so then the whole thing on top of the emotions of the experience were the okay well this time the reading was wrong. Did something change? Is there fate or death? Like, what is, you know, like, I just couldn't make sense of up and down, left and right. I just, I had no sense of anything. And so it was just a full-blown crisis of, I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. Like this life is too hard. I don't know what the purpose of this is. And, um, basic, so that's the crisis. That's what led me into darkness and my dark night of the soul, which lasted for quite a few months or maybe even a year. And then, um, slowly, uh, you know, um, another series of events started to happen where I, I am kind of, even in that dark darkness, I was,

I was like, well, what can I do? You know, what can I, how can I make sense of this? And I thought, all right, well, let's focus on the readings. You know, does time not work the way we think it does as a neuroscientist? How is my, I'm looking at my mom, like, how is she getting this information that is so specific? Like she would say really specific, small, nuanced things that there's no way that she could know. Like, for example, the professor, you know, she would say, and she wouldn't know anything about him. I'd like never told her anything. Oh, he has a little boy. I can see he has a little boy.

I can see his wife is going to receive something from- This is the professor that was murdered? Yes. At the University of Southern California, just for context. And what year is this? That was 2016. 2016. And then what was, so your crisis is marked by two events and an experience falling after a despair, clinical depression. It sounds like severe clinical depression. Yeah.

And how closely in time did those two events take place? They were roughly two years apart. Two years. Okay. So the first leg that got knocked off was this telling from your mom that something in a five-week time is going to be tragic. And she had some details around it. When you looked back, you're like, okay.

So she knew more about it than she let me on. And then it forced you to say, okay, how can she possibly know this? And you, as a scientist, go through an investigation. You're like, there's a huge unknown factor to try to put some semblance to. And so you just kind of let it percolate for a little bit. You didn't know what to do about it, but it altered or shifted a deeper inquiry into something outside of the material, outside of mathematics, outside of ration or the reasonable explanations of things. And then you were twisted upside down from a relationship.

And the two of those put together was this existential crisis, it sounds like. And that existential crisis, if I'm tracking correctly, was marked by deep despair and like we said, like a severe depression. But even during that depression, it's as if you knew you were in it, but there was still more to go. You weren't suicidal. You weren't like wanting to end your life, it sounds like. No, not actively. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true.

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and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here.

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David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David D-A-V-I-D protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay. So then, so then keep going. So I was just in a non-exploratory non-research phase for maybe eight months or so. And then, then I kind of woke up a little bit and thought, okay, well, what is going on here? This is a really weird phenomenon. And it's profoundly altered my life, I might as well look into it. And so and this was not going to be a research project or anything. It was really just for myself, you know, for my own understanding.

So one of some of my friends had been to psychics or intuitive readers. And, you know, I was still old me at this point. So I was like, oh, I'm not going to go to a psychic. Don't be ridiculous. But they're like, what's the difference? Your mom does it for you on Sundays. And so I'm like, true, but that's different. But so we ended up, they knew some allegedly good ones who would turn you away if they couldn't read you, like they wouldn't take your money if they couldn't read you. And I was interested in that. So we went and then it turned into this fun project where it was me and two or three girlfriends. We'd go like at the same time to the same reader and then different readers. And then just over the course of a year, we'd go like at the same time to the same reader and then different readers. And then

just over the course of a year, we would, we kept going back and switching it up and comparing notes to see if, if, if they were saying general things to all of us. And it turned out that they were just so, you know, they weren't always right, but they were very, when they were right, they were right on like seven variables or like enough variables that you're just sitting there. Like what is happening right now? How could they possibly know this? And not vague variables, you know, just very specific things from your life and very deep things. Like they, like I say in the book, it's like they would reach their hand into your mind and pull one of the deepest, darkest things that you think in your head, but never tell anyone and pulled it out to show you. And they wouldn't be vague things that are applicable to everyone.

They'd be specific things related to specific events in your life. And so through that, that was just for fun. That was just for me and my friends to see, is this real or whatnot? The psychics also started mentioning like, oh, this was karmic. This is from a past life. This is reincarnation, whatever. And I didn't believe I wasn't even familiar with much of that. So I would just ignore it. And I would record the sessions and I would take notes. And I would just brush that off because it didn't make sense to me. I like I don't believe in that. So whatever. But then, but it was in my notes. So I, I had heard it. And what happened was a few months

later, I was listening to Chelsea Handler's podcast, not about any of this stuff. And she had a psychic medium on one of her episodes, Laurelyn Jackson. And I was just like listening in the background and the psychic medium starts telling the story of, of karma and reincarnation and describing the spiritual framework. And I just like ran over, turned it up. I started taking notes. I'm like, Oh, this is what the psychics talks about. It sounds familiar, but I didn't, it hadn't made any sense to me. And I just started writing it down just to better understand it. Cause I literally never, I'd never heard of it. And I thought, oh, how fascinating she's saying earth is like a school and we come here to learn lessons. And, and I didn't believe

any of it, but it was the second time I was hearing it. And so I was kind of like, okay, I'm just going to take notes. And then on the podcast, they, her and Chelsea Handler and Laurel and Jackson mentioned this book called Many Lives, Many Masters by a psychiatrist. I didn't know what it was about. They didn't say what it was about. They're just like, oh, it's such a good book. Everyone should read it. It's a case study of a psychiatrist. So I ordered it, didn't even read the description and it arrived. And then in the book was a third time the psychiatrist talked about how his patient under past life regression starts describing this spiritual framework. And I'm like, okay, this is the third time I'm encountering this spiritual framework I've

never heard of before. I, you know, as a scientist, I was just like, this is nonsense, but this is three different data points. And I'm a little curious and interested to learn more. And that is the point after that book is when I started doing actual reading and research into it. Like I'm going to read everything I can to either debunk this psychiatrist and this whatever so called past life regression, or learn more, you know, life regression or learn more you know I wanted to learn more about the spiritual framework and just understand it and part of the reason was because it started to help me make sense of what happened to me so the psychic intuitive readings that I had gotten the intuitives would say, you know, this was a,

they would kind of explain it in the spiritual framework. And I was surprised at how comforting that was. Because as a scientist, I was not used to even encountering spirituality at all. But them saying like, this was meant to happen this way, this had to happen this way for the next thing to happen. Or that, you know, them kind of describing it was unexpectedly comforting. And I guess that's why I was interested in learning more about the spiritual framework, because I thought, well, you know, nothing has helped me thus far. This is providing a bit of relief, like a mental reframe of this situation I'm finding myself in. What, you know, whether it's true or not, is it is a second, second and

separate issue that I can address. But in the current moment, this is, this is helping me and nothing else has. So let's, let's go with it. But then that old me would pop up and say, this is stupid. This can't be real. Who cares if it's useful to you? It's not true. And so there was a lot of this back and forth. And that's why I needed the research. I'm like, I need to read everything I can. I need to know if this is true or not. And that's how I started the whole project. And I'm like, I'm going to interview intuitives, mystics, like behavioral health practitioners, scientists. I just need to know what other people believe in. And if anybody believes in any of this stuff and if there's any evidence for any of it.

And so that launched me on this quest to do research. And again, it was really just for me. It wasn't meant to be published or anything. It was just for me. So you were prior to this inquiry, you were in the religion of science and there are a set of practices, you know, across all world religions and science has a set of practices and there's a culture involved in it. There's a, you know, there's a purpose. And so you, you were involved there. And this is the part that is materially important for me to understand is that you were applying what you knew,

the methods that you knew from the science of religion. And you were applying that to this new inquiry because you're like, wait, what is this? Which is where great discoveries begin, right? Like, wait, what is this? And what is the hypothesis? What is the research question? What is the hypothesis? What are some methods that I can go about and design a study to be able to better understand and confirm or, uh, or, or reveal that these hypotheses are null or accepted. And so all that slurs, uh, jargon that I just shared, you were using that. And what I want to know is, did you, when you would read, when you would be in an interview or you'd read some quote unquote research, because we're talking about parapsychology, we're talking about mystics, we're talking about things that don't

have, I think, a ton of research. At least I'm not versed in it, so I need to put an asterisk there. But when you would go and investigate, were you using it as a scaffolding to harden your approach or were you really like, and thereby you would dismiss, you know, what the, um, what a seemingly quote unquote, small T truth of the research would reveal. And you would just use that to scaffold onto your existing philosophy or, or religion of science, or were you using it in a way where it was like, oh, let me follow that, like more curious, like, oh, that's really interesting. That's really interesting. And more of an explorer of this unknown. I think I was just exploring really. And because I was very, very skeptical, even though I feel like maybe it's hard for people

to understand because they're like, you're looking at the literature in the first place, which means, I don't know, maybe you believe, or I'm already going to intuitive readings, which some people might think implies that I believed in it. And it's hard to describe that you. It's hard to know if you believe in it. It's hard to because our training is so deep that, and we're, neuroscientists are trained not to trust our brains and not to trust our experience because that's how the brain is. We create stories, there's perceptual misperceptions. And so you're constantly questioning your experiences. And like, yes, I recorded the reading.

Yes, I think I, you know, I think I was being unbiased, but I'm probably not, I'm not a good judge. And so your personal experiences are basically garbage, even though they're very powerful. It just, it's like you have experience to get convinced and then your training comes back and knocks it over. So that's why I turned to see, has anybody done scientific studies on this? And I, like you, thought no one had. And that's why my initial thing was, oh, I'll have to talk to, person to person, I'll have to interview these intuitives because no one's ever talked to them before. But I learned, not on my own, I started interviewing people who are involved in parapsychology, which has a terrible reputation.

It's almost psychology. Just below psychology. That was obviously given by a scientific community that wanted to marginalize. It's even known, like what you're talking about is even considered fringe still, I think. Yeah, I think. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Okay. So you started to find some pockets of research that held up?

Yeah. Yeah. So I reached out to the Winbridge Research Institute and Research Center, and they do research with psychic mediums and intuitives, and they have like a quintuple blinded protocol where the reader's never interacting with the person. They're making it up. What's wrong with the double blind? It's been around for thousands of years. No, I'm joking.

Okay. So you're saying there's a higher level of rigor because they want to put a tall flagpole that like there's good science here. Yeah, because there's so much criticism against their study designs, which I think is pretty funny because it's true. I read the studies and they were way better controlled than a lot of regular psychology studies, which are like, sorry to everyone, but garbage. And so yeah, they have these very strict protocols because they're used to

being scrutinized, heavily scrutinized. So anyway, I reached out to them because I read one of their papers and I was like, this is crazy. You know, they, they focus on mediumship. So getting information from, I don't know, I call it disembodied consciousness, but they call it spirit. So, but I reached out to them. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You can't just put that in there. Disembodied consciousness. Okay. So that assumes that there's an embodied consciousness. Is that more like what Carl Rogers and some thinkers would call the collective conscious?

Yes, I guess so. Yeah. Okay. So you're saying that there is, there is a, there is a one unifying consciousness that exists. Um, I mean, I think the jury is out. I think there's a lot of this, that's something I was researching. There's a lot of different philosophies. It turns out a lot of different worldviews. Um, I believe, yeah, there's something like a universal consciousness, but I didn't come to that lightly

and i still i still do not like to say i believe because i don't want to believe anything i want to stay open to everything i was going to challenge you on that word like there's a there's a difference like as a applied i'm an applied scientist that we have to pay attention to the words that are explicit in trying to point to something, right? So by the way, just to get weirder about it, like words are pointing to something. And so this is where neuroscience really has been dogmatic in like what we're pointing to is actually a representation of something. And so if we're going to get caught in the representation, the meaning that the meaning making of the representation, we're already two or three or 15 degrees away from whatever, quote unquote, is the source. And like, I hope that that wasn't too esoteric, but that is a problem that we have with science. No, absolutely. Yeah.

As well as language in general, let alone relationships. So I just want to say one more thing about that. Yeah. I, I now think of people, everyone as us all having data sets in our mind. Cause I really am such a scientist. Like I think of it as like an Excel spreadsheet And we're constantly adding data, which means you have to constantly update your model. And I'm aware, you know, I come from one very strict, like Excel sheet that was saved and could not be updated, which is my scientific mindset. And now it's been opened and updated. And I'm not going to close it again.

You know, like, I'm just going to let data keep being added to it. And probably my model will have to keep updating so that's how i think of it now oh i like that you know like and then the next level is like um the excel sheet that lives online constantly saving to the you know and maybe even open source available to others to like there's a there's a fun analogy here that you're making about your model of, I think what you're saying is knowledge, but it's also your working knowledge of,

no, no, it's your working model of your set of first principles, your set of philosophical worldview, if you will. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people

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could get really down into the weeds here, which I want to assume best intent in your approach to discern this new understanding that you're being forced to confront and that you use good science rigor to be able to confront this new thing. And that new thing had some evidence that you come to, or some research that you came to find to respect, but also it was this new research that you're reading about would confront, literally square up and confront the model that you had built and saved and then tucked away, the Excel sheet we're talking about now, you had saved that, that was probably non-consciously built or below conscious

awareness being built by the age of eight. It was kind of baked. And so to re-examine that is hard. That is hard work. So that's the part I want to understand. And I also want to understand, like, maybe do this two ways. Okay, because let's do it in this order. The first thing is, what did you come to find out? What are you coming now to say, here is what I have learned? Yeah. So I came to find that there actually is a lot of really good research that's been done in looking at psychic phenomena, which is what they call it, or psi phenomena. And so for me, it was two issues, actually. From my personal experience of everything I just described, there were two issues. One was the psi or psychic phenomena. What is going on? How does that work? How are people getting information? How does time work if it's true? And the second thing was the spiritual framework that I got interested in, because it turned out there was evidence, some evidence, which I can

talk about around that. And so I went to look in the literature and it turned out that psychic phenomena has been studied for like over a hundred years. And William James, the father of psychology was extremely interested in it. He wrote a lot of great papers and books on it and would attend spiritualist seances. He writes about this excellent medium that he had many encounters with. I think a lot of that's just been erased from the history of William James and many other great thinkers from the late 1800s, early 1900s. But since then, the U.S. government has put a lot of money into a psychic research program they funded for over 25 years. But since the government can be a controversial

subject for some people, I also found that a lot of other labs had replicated these studies. And like I said, since they're so closely scrutinized by other labs, they've reworked their protocols over and over again. So when I went to write the book, I actually found a meta-analysis of meta-analyses. There were that many studies of these kind of looking at psychic phenomena of like, can somebody send thoughts to someone else? Can somebody predict on a computerized trial what the next card is going to be? Can they, if we show them something kind of similar to quantum physics experiments, if we show them something after, similar to quantum physics experiments, if we show them something after, does it affect their behavior before the experiment? So there were hundreds of these experiments, enough that, like I said-

Wait, wait, wait. That last one was a mind bender. If we show them something after the experiment, does it affect their understanding before the experiment? Yeah. So there's this experiment by Daryl Bem from Cornell. Actually, he did a bunch of these experiments to, I don't know if he was a believer or not believer. I think he just did it to see if it would work, but he did, I think, nine different experiments with

over a thousand participants. And one of the experiments was that they would, they divided them into two groups, students who came in, and they had to memorize a list of words. And then they would have one group review the list of words after they did the test, and the other one they wouldn't. And then they found a statistical difference between the two groups where the group that reviewed the list did better than the group that didn't, which I agree is very difficult to wrap your mind around. Yeah. So that is, that is like playing on multiversity, you know, like the multiverse, not multiverse, playing, playing in the multiverse. It sounds like.

And there's a lot, those studies that he did have, there's been a lot of back and forth about. And there's actually an excellent article I saw that Tim Ferriss had posted about some statistician talking about this whole back and forth and saying either psi phenomena is real or our stats are wrong. I just wanted, like for reference, when we talked about the government, are you talking about the studies on remote viewing and yes like that type of like yeah stargate yeah and i okay so how how deep of a dive did you take there um i spoke to them actually um i read their papers i read their books when i read some of that not original research but just like the cursory bits it it was like debunked. And then I don't know if that's, you know, if that's, um, to flip, you know, chase a red herring, like it's, it's disinformation. It's actually, we're saying it's disinformation because it's actually real

information. You know, I get complicated and it gets complicated for me and all of these double entendres that seem to take place with government coverups and all that. And I am a bit like Occam's razor. So I love that you say that because it's true. So with that's why I mentioned, that's why I said that thing about like the SRI stuff to me was very fascinating. But in terms of scientific standards, they like selected, this is back research back in the seventies. So, you know already, the methods were not as good as they are now. But they were selecting for highly gifted, quote unquote, psychics, they only you know, they had a few, like two or three original people that they worked with repeatedly. Their methods were like to pick a card from a, you know, box of note cards, because it was the 70s. And and have someone drive out to somewhere in San Francisco

and have the remote viewer draw their location. But to me, what was interesting was that it was, first of all, I've applied for grants from the government. It's hard to get them. And even when you get them, it's hard to get them renewed. And the fact that it was funded for 25 plus years from different agencies, again, maybe it's misinformation. I mean, who knows? But if that were true, tells me there's something

there. The other thing is that they took it from research, just research for knowledge, and turned it into a military operations. Like they trained people in the army to have these skills, and then they actually used it in operations. And there's records of this. And even Jimmy Carter, president Jimmy Carter talks about how they used it for a mission. Okay. But you know, I understand that people, some people don't believe anything from the government. So there's been a lot of replications of that type of work in hundreds of different labs over the years. Since then, a lot of recent ones, and those are included in the meta-analysis that I mentioned. So if it was

the only source of information, I agree, questionable, but there's been others that have replicated it. So yeah. And in your research, is remote viewing a real phenomena? It appears to be so. Which, and for clarity, so we're talking the same thing, is that a person can be in location one and never have been in location two, but can see what's happening in location two. And one of the famous experiments is that somebody was able to find the geolocation for an airplane. I think that's one of the ones that- Yes, the Jimmy Carter one. Yes. Yes, the Jimmy Carter one. Okay. Withstanding the misdirection double entendres and all the

disinformation potentiality, you're saying, okay, yeah, I've done my own independent stuff. And like, yeah, there's something here. It definitely seems so like I said, if you use the same standards applied to other science and other research, then yes. And I'm not the only one there. They had a whole like review committee of that work to a statistician who said the same thing. But again, could be misinformation, whatever they paid her off, you know how people are. But anyway, yeah, what I read, I again, let's just say you'd have to get dig in and get fancy with the statistics for it to be wrong. Like all of the studies across the world

from all the labs. And, and if you use that standard, then a lot of our other science is also not very good. So. Okay. So how do you explain the psychic phenomena where somebody can look at a coffee bean? They can look at a tea leaf, they can look at a flower, you know, a palm, they can look at a set of cards, and they can see a person's future. They can see something in the future that is unavailable to the non mystic, the non psychic. Yeah, so this is a hard one to answer. And this is one that I have a lot of trouble with, which whenever I would say, okay, let's just say psychic phenomenon is real. Like this evidence looks good. I have this exact question of, but how, how, and, and a lot, cause a lot of it is symbolic. They talk about, you know,

people who do it say a lot of it can be symbolic and for a reductionist, when you're coming from our scientific paradigm, reductionism is what we use. Symbolism doesn't make sense really, because you have to reduce the symbol into parts and then the answer should be in the parts. And I've struggled with this and this is where I have to, the scientists are going to abandon me. I don't have an answer from science for that. I haven't found anything to explain that. I had to go to philosophy or spirituality. I found this from an author, Richard Tarnas, who wrote Passion of the Western Mind, about how we've evolved into our Western worldview. He talks about this worldview that a lot of indigenous cultures have and that many cultures over, you know, humanity's history have had, which is believing that, again, I'm sorry, I'm departing from science. But is that whatever the universe is, is created of meaning.

And that's why, you know, Indigenous people or people who grew up on the land say, like, I can derive meaning from the direction of the wind, from the way the leaf falls, from the way the birds are flying. They can divine information. And they say it's because meaning quote unquote is embedded in the universe. Now, I don't know how to make that into science or, but that was the one thing that I read that helped me understand, like I didn't find anything in any of the scientific papers or articles about psychic phenomena or anything that came close to helping me understand, okay, well, what does this mean in the broader picture of things? as a counterpoint, which is, isn't that all quite simple? That, you know, isn't it at some level convenient that religion and philosophy was designed because science couldn't explain things yet?

And we, you know, like every world religion, almost every world religion has like bizarre stories. No reasonable person would say, oh yeah, okay, yeah, I get it. 500 years old, cool. Or like, you mean the ancient text was buried by, you know, these sea monsters and then they're, you know, they're brought back in just the right time. Like, okay, it's a bit crazy making when you think about some of this stuff. So my simple contrarian point of view, and I don't want to be dismissive, but just to see your response to it, is the simple mind is looking for a simple answer. And we will accept things when something feels so big that we can't get our arms around it. So we'll trust the quote unquote expert to tell us

what the best reasonable answer is. And we will even squint and look away at things that don't make logic sense, but they feel good to us. Just like when you were in despair and just like when you were at your lowest point that you felt comfort in somebody speaking quote unquote truth into you and your future that you said, oh, well, there it is. No different than a depressed person that is attracted to a charismatic cult leader. No different. And I'm not saying all people that are depressed, you know, but there's a, I'm talking about

this moment of craving for an explanation and that deep craving is looking for a simple response. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft and what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature i tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently which has made a meaningful difference in how i show up the next

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them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. And then, so kind of point, point me off of that. And, and yeah, cause I know you've wrestled with this. Oh my God. Yeah. That was my whole part of my whole crisis. So that is the typical explanation we get in Western science or the kind of dismissive, you know, you, yeah. And that's well drilled into my head. So that kept coming up for me. And you know what? It's true. So I'm never not going to say that's not true. That is true. But also, it is also true that there is good scientific evidence for psychic phenomena. And unless our stats need to be reworked. But even when you take it out of the lab and don't look at scientific studies, it's most people's most people.

We call them exceptional human experiences. But most people have experienced one of these kinds of things. And it's not that you're creating meaning because a lot of times what you perceive turns out to be true. And that's what you call a veridical vision, right? It's, it's, and then that's when you can take your science loves to dismiss it as a subjective personal experience that can be dismissed. But when you can take that subjective personal experience it and link it to an external event, and it was accurate, and meaning it was veridical. It turned out to be true. So for example, you know, and a lot of people have, these are so well-documented. I woke up in the middle of the night. I saw a vision of my brother, you know, whoever,

or my sister who's who lives halfway across the world. And she turned and her brain was bleeding out the back of her head and she disappeared. And it was like 3.03 a.m. I went back to bed. I wake up in the morning. My sister shot herself at 3.03 a.m. Halfway across the world. There are so many stories like this and we just dismiss them. But that's called a veridical vision.

It's something you perceive, a subjective personal experience that can be linked to an external event that turns out to be true. Those are not so easily dismissed. I mean, they are, but they shouldn't be. And to me, so what you everything that you said, and the belief that we crave to make meaning and our brains are meaning making machines all true. Do we need religion and spirituality for comfort to get through a difficult life? Definitely true. Do we need religion and spirituality for comfort to get through a difficult life? Definitely true. Do we link all those things together? Yes. But it doesn't make the other stuff untrue. That's how I've come to. I mean, it took me a very long time to accept that and organize these things in my mind because it's actually a catch 22. It's like your

paradigm says you must follow the evidence, but then when you follow the evidence and it takes you to an impossible belief, and then your paradigm says impossible things cannot be true, and you're just in this cycle. Okay, yeah. In some respects, it's really easy to say, oh, this stuff sounds weird. It's so against this early model that I've built, again, below conscious awareness by the age of 8 or 18, whatever, that model of the world and yourself and all of the indoctrination somebody has had in the science or atheism or you know deity based um philosophy that

by the way like it's really interesting just not to get too lost in this that um we either are defining ourselves by deity science or atheism but atheism is still kind of pushing up against like no there is no god no God. So this question of God is, it's a really important question. And so there's a two-parter in here, which is maybe it's just easier to get up against something that pushes, forces us to push against our worldview. And just to say, I think it's kind of bullshit. I think it's easier in that respect, but it's also easy to swallow the tradition that your family or islam or confucianism or buddhism or what sikhism like it's like spoon-fed and so this is why i wanted to have the conversation with you because in many respects you you created a um an adoption into the science model and then

you said wait hold on crisis let me re-examine some stuff and then you are you are exploring using a scientific model and lens to understand things that aren't easily explained okay so let me drill right down into the central thing what do you do like really what do you do inside when you have you're on the edge of a intellectual aligned embodied conflict with your worldview like how do you entertain that do you put it away do you do it like squint your eyes and go deeper do you like what do you do in those moments it was one of the most well it was the most difficult thing i've ever gone through in life it was it's it's it's like we already talked about my first crisis and then when i started being in the depths

with all of this stuff and my mind was opening was crisis number two i call it my identity crisis because then i was um starting oh i lost i lost you yeah yeah okay sorry i think my airpods died i think so only was very uncomfortable with these things. But suddenly I felt compelled to learn more and to make sense of what I was experiencing. And so I would buy these books and then I would be sitting with these weirdo books around me and I would judge myself and be like, oh my God, now I'm the kind of person that reads Skinwalker Ranch or whatever weird book it was. And I'm like, what am I doing? Like, who am I? This is not what my training trained me for. And I would have these like crisis moments throughout the day. It was like my mind was just in a crunch of like curiosity, wanted to learn.

I just wanted to learn more to make sense of everything. But, you know, my identity was so judgmental, and so like, threatened by everything I was learning. And it was, it was like, very mean, I was very, very mean person to myself, and probably still but when people push back, I understand. because, because questioning and changing your worldview is really, really hard. And it's the hardest thing you'll, one of the hardest things you'll ever have to do. And like, even thinking back on it now, it's excruciating to think about for me. And so I understand when people dismiss it because it is hard. They don't even know how hard it is. I actually went through it and I'm like, I don't want to do that again. But, um, like,

I guess in the, I, my strategy, you know, maybe sounds nice in hindsight, but in the moment it was basically a loop of, of read, read, like be open to um old identity comes back knocks it down uh but then you know I review my own personal evidence I review other stories more studies you know take it in old identity comes back and it was this spiral for God knows how long probably for like a year um and it was just excruciating. And the spirituality actually helped with that, the traditional, you know, kind of mindfulness. That's, I had already been meditating for years, but I started to really pay attention to my thoughts. This is when I started hearing the difference almost of like the new stuff I was learning and open curious, and then the old

identity. And that's when I, there started just, just the space between all the thinking. And I could just start to see, oh, wow, like this is an identity. This isn't who I am. And even though I'm feel like I'm losing myself, I'm not these thoughts. So, yeah. So I'm feel like I'm losing myself, uh, I'm not these thoughts. So, yeah. So I, I, I'm going to come like maybe full circle here with you in a fun way, which is when I was in graduate school, there was a, something drilled into us, which is if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. And if you can't manage it, you can't grow it.

You know, so this is very much like if you can't measure it, like you're wasting your time. So I, I, I swallowed it and became a good student of science. And then at some point I was like, this is stupid. What do you mean? I can't see my thoughts. It was very simple for me. I can't see my thoughts, so how am I going to measure them?

I know I can manage my thoughts, but I can't measure them. I can't see them. There's no material weight. There's no contour to thoughts. There's like, so what do you mean? It sounded so stupid to me at a level. So then it became very simple to me, which is, okay, some people have eyesight that's different than my eyesight.

I have 20-20. Baseball players can have 15-20 or fighter pilots can have 10-20. So they see the world in a very different way. Some people are colorblind and some people see what we call a normal spectrum. And then there's ranges in that. Like some people I know can actually see a whole different set of purples than I can see. And I'm not talking about just cause I can't label them, but they on a spectrum, they can see it differently. So, so it's like, why not? What, why not be open to some people can experience things that I, I can't because I don't have that thing, whatever it is, whether it's eyesight or tactile touch or access to simple math or

complicated math made simple. And we could keep going on and on about this not well understood human experience. And so why not? So I've gotten to a point, in a less painful way to you, like, why not? And so not to make light of it at all, because I think that it feels too dogmatically simple to only be entertained by things we can understand. But the pursuit to understand things better is materially important. And that's actually why I wanted to talk to you. That's why this podcast exists, to understand better.

And this, for me, holds a place, a special place that you're representing, which is examine your first principles, examine your worldview. And don't be whimsical with that thing because that worldview that you've adopted has probably served you well or your heritage well, and there might be new. And there might be a convergence of old and new that we meet in the middle in some amazing way, in some amazing place. And so I get confused by where we're going with truths. And I don't use that word lightly by any means. And if I could ask you a big question, what do you understand to be true? And I'm thinking truth with a capital T here. And for me, anyway, for me, truth is, it's both things. And I admire people in some ways now. Old me used to think they were stupid, but people who

have a personal experience and believe it, I actually admire that. I'm like, wow, you trust yourself so much. Like I don't like, so for me, I need, um, you know, personal and, uh, scientific proof, um, to find it or, or not even scientific actually just i guess somebody else has to have written it or observed it or i guess that's still in my mind kind of from the scientific training of like reproducible right or repeat or looking for patterns, things that have emerged multiple times in human history, whether it's in the humanities or sciences or just anecdotal personal experiences. But the thing I don't like about that is what you were talking about. If there's one person who has eyesight that no one else on earth has, and it's different. And it's not reproducible.

No, the person has it. Are we not going to believe them? How isolating? Like how, how, how invalidating to an N of one, like an N of one in research, like that's a, that is real. That is still research. Even a case study is real research and it's pooh-poohed often by the double blind, quadruple blind is a new phrase for me, placebo trial controlled studies. So Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health. This is about creating the conditions for growth. Now, hair health is one of those areas that often gets overlooked until your hair starts to change. That's when people pay attention.

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hope people will hear this and do with your experience, your crisis and your transformation by examining with a scientific rigor phenomena that is poorly understood? I like to come at it from the angle I just mentioned of because I do think we're in a very divisive moment. And I if there's one thing, like these stories, hopefully help you understand is that we shouldn't be so dismissive of each other and each other's experiences, and that there's a lot that we don't know. And actually there's a lot of evidence, but that's, that's besides the point. Yeah. One is, is for the scientists, I would say actually most of the scientists I spoke to were pretty open minded. They just don't have time to do the research themselves. But they would all like whisper their personal experiences to me. And so I think for one, we should all just come out and talk about them because then it wouldn't be so stigmatized because I really do think it's a very typical human experience. I think we've just made it exceptional and stigmatized and marginalized. And I think if we just came out and talked about

it, we could make it more legitimate, make people who experience it feel less stigmatized or marginalized, and maybe we could even study it. And I bet if we did, you know, we'd have a more cohesive model of things that made sense that didn't just ignore anomalous data points, which in neuroscience, we have a lot of things we can't explain. So it might encompass and explain some of that. The other thing is that we didn't talk about this a lot, but I talk about some of the healing modalities that in the book that I partook in that were kind of spiritual based. And they really helped me heal. And I think a lot of them are altered states of consciousness. And so I write a psychedelic newsletter now, because I just think it's so important with all the research that's going into it. Like these

states are very, very healing and there's a long history of using these states, um, through most cultures in the world for most of humanity for healing purposes. And I really think it's important that we, uh, turn back to those and, um, kind of move away from this very Western model of, I mean, I'm going to get knocked out for this, but, you know, productive, like everything for production, microdosing to be more productive at work. No, like go home, take an hour, like take an altered state in any way you can. It's really, really healing. And I think it could help us show up in the world, you know, more centered, more calm, more mindful. And you're talking about, yeah, you're talking about those experiences, altered states being from exogenous, meaning something that you're taking from, or even meditation,

meditation, exactly, reading poetry, conversations with people of wisdom, journaling, napping. Yes, spiritual self-transcendent practices. Yeah. And what are your two or three go-tos? Meditation, sound, meditation, sound healing. I don't know, I guess different words for it. Psychedelics, when it's legal, wherever I am. And journaling. here, like, you know, she's, she just is missing this appreciation for Christianity or Islam or, you know, Judaism. Like if she just believed in God, like it wouldn't be so complicated.

Yeah. Um, I just not there in my personal experience yet. I mean, I hasn't been my i'm not like i said my updating my data set um every day so i never would have thought i would be where i am now so i can't predict where i'll be in the future so i'm open i really love that answer you know like there's a gentleness to it um there's an openness obviously that you've earned um could you become a psychic me yeah um i i have precognitive dreams i noticed and i i know i never i have i can't believe i'm saying this but but, and I, I've always had them, but since this, I started writing them down because, you know, kind of like, let me make an effort to write this down and see if they come true.

And yeah, I realized that they're very, I mean, sometimes they're so insignificant. They're like little things, but they're very specific. It'll be like, I'm turning into a white driveway that like goes really uphill that I've never been in before. And that happens the next day, you know, sometimes, and sometimes they're bigger and more predictive, but, um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm, I'm not looking to, to, to do that right now, but apparently most people have some sort of ability. So who knows? Your openness is present and noted, you know, it's like your openness is really available, which is it's warm.

And at the same time it is it's electrifying because it's like, you know, you could go anywhere, like it could be amazing anywhere, you know? So I don't know yet. And so that part, I fall in love with that type of, I don't know. I don't know where we could go. Like, so, all right, that's really cool. And then give us a couple of takeaways. Help us be better.

What are some, a few things that you'd say, you know, concretely in a sentence or two, like try this, do this, explore this. I mean, if it's not obvious, I mean, one is to stay open-minded and stay curious. Like one of my personal mantras now is radical curiosity. And anytime I find myself sticking to something or like I did with you say, I believe I try to remember. No, no, no, no. Stay radically curious. Like, let's just keep learning. I'd also like to think of it from that's from the me perspective, from other people's perspectives. I try to remember people have different experiences. Stay open mindedminded, be kind, listen. I always, if people are telling me a story,

I always say, I believe you, um, because it doesn't matter what you're telling me. If it's a personal experience, I want to believe you. Um, and I think, I don't know. I also kind of have a, um, adventurous mindset now about practices, as I mentioned. So for me, it's exploring as a neuroscientist, I'd like to explore the different ways we can be conscious. And I encourage that for everybody, because I think when you try different states of consciousness, even if it's like falling asleep and waking yourself back up, like even if it's just hypnagogia, I think it brings a new kind of awareness to your everyday waking reality in ways that I find difficult to explain, but I just find it very useful. Thank you for the clarity of those three. And is that theta brainwave kind of thing that you're talking about, like when you fall asleep and coming back out, that little window of beautiful theta brainwaves, is the the myth true, you know, or the, that that's what like Einstein used to do to solve things or is that, is that more myth urban legend? No, I've heard that. I actually

was writing about this in one of the recent newsletters I wrote about psychedelics. Cause like some scientists actually use psychedelics to solve problems, to think of new things in creative ways. But I think it was Thomas Edison used to do this. He used to hold like two metal balls in his hand and like fall asleep. But the balls would, he would drop them if he fell asleep to wake him up so he could catch the insight before he fell asleep. But, and I found that to be true too. My best epiphanies are right before I fall asleep. And so, yeah, historically, a lot of scientists, I was reading about this for that newsletter, they use these practices to capture insights. And yeah, it's probably, well, who knows actually. So it wasn't Edison. I'm sorry, it was Edison, not, who did I mention earlier? Einstein. Einstein. So it was Edison not, who did I mention earlier? Einstein.

Einstein. So it was Edison that used to do that? Edison for sure did. I heard a rumor, I couldn't find a good reference for it, but I heard Tesla did as well as some musicians, some famous musicians back in the day. But it was hard to find good references. Yeah. But anecdotally. I read that you illuminated that um

crick dr francis crick yes yeah kind of decoded yeah yeah the double helix like he he reports i guess i don't know if you have got hard evidence there but he reports that he was using yeah psychedelics to be able to unravel that insight? Yeah. He said that while he was on, I think an LSD trip, he saw the double helix, which is actually very commonly reported on ayahuasca trips. People see this kind of like double helix. But for him, he had the insight that it could be the structure for DNA and another Nobel prize winner. Also, I, oh, shoot, I forgot his name. Oh, Cary Mullins, the guy who created PCR, had that insight as well on an LSD, or from an LSD trip. I don't know what to make sense of all these things. Like, I just had some really,

I've had a handful of folks that are pointing to, and I know it's vogue, you know, to talk about microdosing and psychedelics. And like, there's a thing that's to and i know it's vogue you know to talk about microdosing and psychedelics and like there's a thing that's taking place or whether it's a you know um i don't know there's research that's there but also there's a there's a zeitgeist trendiness that is taking place you know certainly in the kind of hip cultures in LA, you know, like, I, I, I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm reserving right now. Yeah. Like the, right. So I'm reserving my experience. I have not, but the, the research is interesting from credible people like yourself included that are like saying, Hmm, there's something here. But I've just had,

this is back to like, my deeper question with you is like, when you have new information in the face that is counter to existing, well swallowed worldviews. So like, I don't know, I'm just, I'm just not there yet. And it could be quite frankly, because I've lost so many family members, my favorite uncle and my other dad's uncles, like to suicide and drug addiction. And like, so just the hinting of it actually puts me in a place like, hmm. So, you know, anyways, that's my personal journey in it, but like, there is some Yes. Yes. a lot of people doing it around me. And the only thing that somebody actually mentioned to me, oh, you'd be interested in reading the literature because sometimes quote unquote, paranormal things happen on psychedelics. And that was actually where I started looking into the literature, but then I found the modern day research, you know, clinical trials. And then from my normal

neuroscience mind, I was like, whoa, these results are, we don't see things like this in behavioral health or mental health. Like nothing has been able to treat PTSD or depression that well. And that's what got me interested in the psychedelics. But then it turns out they're just interesting many reasons for clinical trials, for creativity, for insight, for spirituality, for paranormal things. So yeah, they're pretty, pretty wide use. Where can we follow your research? So most things are on my website. It's monasabani.phd.com. You could sign up for my psychedelic newsletter there. And my book, which the publisher titled it proof of spiritual phenomena comes out. It's coming out soon you can pre-order it

okay where do you want us to pre-order is it on mona sabani you can get it from my website um i mean you can order it but it's sold wherever books are sold so amazon barnes and noble wherever okay and that's s-o-b-h-a-n-i mona is just like it sounds. M-O-N-A. You got it. All right. Wonderful. I hope our community is able to, one, continue researching your research and support you in your journey of writing about your crisis and about your findings. And at the same time, challenge themselves to look within to examine the principles that they are operating from so mona thank you thank you so much for having me it was an absolute delight speaking with you all right thank you so much for diving into another

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