The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science by Alan Lightman

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science by Alan Lightman From the acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams comes a rich, fascinating answer to the question, Can the scientifically inclined still hold space for spirituality? Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spiritual experiences? According to acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, there may be. Drawing on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists, Lightman asks a series of thought-provoking questions that illuminate our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience. Can strict materialism explain our appreciation of beauty? Or our feelings of connection to nature and to other people? Is there a physical basis for consciousness, the most slippery of all scientific problems? Lightman weaves these investigations together to propose what he calls “spiritual materialism”— the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting go of our scientific worldview. In his view, the breadth of the human condition is not only rooted in material atoms and molecules but can also be explained in terms of Darwinian evolution. What is revealed in this lyrical, enlightening book is that spirituality may not only be compatible with science, it also ought to remain at the core of what it means to be human.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show. My family, friends, my loved ones, the dearest audience that we have on the Chris Voss Show. After 13 years, you keep coming back for more and we keep trying to make better shows and better messages.

I'm starting a new experiment. You'll probably see this broadcast on the show about April 3rd or April 4th. But I'm doing sometimes a post-after show where I'm doing my thoughts on the guests, the books, and some of the conversations maybe that we had in the green room, or at least a summary of them and sharing those sometimes after the show. So we'll try that and see how it works. So when you see that on a, after April 4th, um, uh, there, and it might be, I don't know. We'll see how it goes.

We're testing it out. Uh, Trevor Noah from the daily show kind of gave me the idea. So, uh, check those out and hopefully you like them and if you don't well just write me and tell me you don't anyway as always we have an amazing guest on the show whose mind is far more brilliant than mine and that's why we do have guests on the chris voss show because we've all known how what an idiot i am uh we have an amazing prolific author he's written a lot of books alan lightman will be on the show with us he's the author of newest book march 14 2023 that comes out uh the transcendent brain spirituality in the age of science we're talking about science and

spirituality not something that people mix together a lot in their drinks, but we're going to put a martini, a glass and serve it to you today. He is an amazing prolific author. He's written many books. He's an American writer, physicist, and social entrepreneur. Born in 1948, he was educated at Princeton and at the California Institute of Technology, where he received a PhD in theoretical physics. He's received five honorary doctoral degrees. Lightman has served in the faculties of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some of you know that as MIT, we like to call it around here.

He was the first person at MIT to receive dual faculty assignments in science and the humanities, and he's currently a professor of practices of the humanities at MIT. Welcome to the show, Alan. How are you? Nice to be with you, Chris. Pleasure to be with you as well, my friend. Give us a.com, wherever you want people to find you, on the interweb, which is in the

sky. If you Google me, I've got a Wikipedia site, and I've also got a site at MIT. There you go. I'm not very much into some of the, the flickers, the Twitters and, and Instagrams. And so anyway,

well, you know, there's, there's still time, you know, there's still, you know, you can put up your bikini photos there on the Instagram or whatever you want

to do. You know, there's always that. That's what I, that's where I put my bikini photos. Anyway, I'm just kidding, folks. It's great to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. Congratulations on the new book.

How many books do you have? Because we want to get a plug-in for those, too, as well. Well, it's around 15 or 20. 15 or 20. You've got so many many you've lost count. Somewhere in there. Yeah, the book of mine that's the most well-known is a very small book, which I think is a secret to its success, called Einstein's Dreams.

Oh. And that book's available wherever fine books are sold? Oh, yes. Yeah, that book's available Wherever fine books are sold There you go So what motivated you to write this latest book That you've got That just barely came out And talking about spirituality And transcendent and science

And all that good stuff Well I've been interested in the intersection of science and spirituality for many years and i have a non-theist version of spirituality and um i call myself a spiritual materialist so i'm a materialist and that i believe that the world is made out of atoms and molecules and nothing more but i also uh like like all of us have spiritual experiences like feeling connected to something larger than myself or the appreciation of beauty or awe and so the new book is an attempt to show that that version of spirituality is totally consistent with science, and not only consistent, but those elements of spirituality can be given a scientific explanation in terms of Darwinian evolution.

Ah, so the transcendent brain, is this something, you know, what made you feel this was really important? Do people not make these connections between science? Do they see science as cold, hard facts and kind of a little lacking in personality and love and feeling and compassion and wonderment. Exactly. You hit it on the head. A lot of people feel that science is not only cold, but that scientists are out of touch with lived life. And I think there's another element which we've experienced in the last 10 years or so,

which is related to the polarization of our society. And one element of that polarization is the skepticism about science or the institutions of science, really a skepticism about all institutions. And I think that presenting a human-centered view of science, where you see scientists as human beings, goes a little bit of the way towards healing that polarization, just a little bit. And I love how you brought this forward in your book um we mentioned in the green room we were talking before about how yesterday as an as myself an atheist also in a materialist as you as you say i never use that word but i'm going to probably start using it now because i i believe in science and the universe and atoms and and all that good stuff um the you know and i had an argument with somebody on facebook big surprise there right um and it was it was a good argument with a friend but he he was was proposing this concept that

spirituality and the need for man's spirituality proves that religion and God are true. And so when I looked at your book, I was like, well, this is pretty smart because you're addressing not only the science of nature and the realities of it, but also why spirituality is important to us. And it doesn't have to be the proving of maybe a deity or entity or some sort of, you know, one of the 3,000 gods that man has created over eons of time. Tell us a little bit more. Well, first of all, I don't think that science can disprove the existence of God, and I don't think that religion can prove the existence of God. I think whether you believe in God, whether you believe in the soul, whether you believe in an afterlife,

all of those connected things is a matter of faith. You either believe or you don't believe. I believe, I think that there are many aspects of spirituality as I define it which may or may not include belief in God and what I try to do in my book and what I try to do in my life

is to embrace these spiritual experiences like looking up at the sky at night and feeling you're falling into the stars or commuting with a wild animal or appreciating a waterfall or feeling awe, that those experiences really do not require belief in God or many of the other beliefs of religion. I respect those other beliefs. I just think that we can embrace spirituality without them. And in fact, my version of spirituality is totally consistent

with science yeah i think you hit a button you know one of the problems we have when the in the mentality of humanity is we always have a black and white sort of things well it has to be either or and i think you hit a button in the middle where you're like, there is a balance here. And maybe, you know, one of the, I was raised in a religious cult and I've had to deal all my life with why do people believe things that are from, for some people's aspects,

you know, very out there. Why do people believe the earth is flat? Why do people believe Martians, you know, are, I don't know, in the, in our Congress martians uh you know are i don't know in the in our congress or something you know pick pick your pick your crazy and fill it in here um and i've often wondered why do people believe things and then hold so hardly to them because my beliefs have always evolved and developed over time i i like to think like science i keep an open mind to you know discovery and and that it's you know everything's kind of a theory and i like to keep an open mind

that the things you don't know uh you don't know are probably the things you need to maybe try and see if you can seek out and find but i think you kind of hit a middle ground because i the argument that i usually have as an atheist with religious people is that, well, you can't be moral. You can't have ethics. You can't have spirituality, love, kindness. You can't care about your fellow man. And I'm like, I've seen kind of what some of your religious people have done with that to the horrors of the world. And I'm not really sure the morals and the kindness and the fellow man things working out over on your side of the aisle.

And so, you know, you kind of, and they're like, well, you know, love, you know, you talk, people talk about religion, they talk about spirituality, love, feelings, and, you know, being a part of something bigger and things. And I think you kind of put your thumb on the middle ground of like hey spirituality is cool it's a part of us it's a scientific um that will tell us more about why why is spirituality a scientific foundation for our human experience well well let's let's take one element of spirituality which is uh feeling part of something larger than yourself. Just take that one element. I believe that that is the byproduct of another trait that has survival benefit. Two million years ago, when the first Homo sapiens were living in caves.

And there were, we know from archeological digs that there were something like 15 or 20 people in a community in a cave, that you really depended upon the other people in that cave for survival. You had a certain group of people, the hunter gatherers, who went out and got the food, and you had other people who stayed in the cave and kept the fire going or took care of the children.

And you really were dependent on each other. If you got isolated or shunned or thrown out of the cave on your own, you would have a quick death. And so there was survival benefit in being part of a community, that is being part of something larger than yourself. Just one other element, and then I'll shut up, on the appreciation of beauty, which is another trait or feeling that I associate with spirituality, that both Darwin and Freud have argued that the appreciation of beauty is a byproduct or closely related to sexual reproduction, that when you want to have successful mating with another person, you look for a person who's healthy, who has good coloring, good facial features, strong. All of that ensures a successful mating. And it's not hard to go from those qualities to beauty in general.

We know that bright flowers attract pollinating insects. And so it's very easy to understand that the appreciation of beauty is related to a trait that had survival benefit. And so it's scientifically ingrained in our biology. It's ingrained into our biology yes uh these certain experiences that we have that and and by by arguing that they had survival benefit and are ingrained in our dna uh i don't mean at all to dismiss the majesty of these experiences yeah the the wonderment and and amazing nature of these experiences but you know yeah and and and for the propagation of species as you mentioned we look to healthy thin we're looking for healthy really and we look for you know women they they they have studies that show

that when women in based on their cycles of ovulation will look for a man who has a cut jaw who has very defined features and then maybe that changes based on their thing uh you know we look for we look for healthy people people that are successful and and part of that is to propagate the species to mix our dna in such a way that the survival will fit us. And the universe kind of works that way when it really comes down to it. And you study how the universe, you know, some species go extinct, some, some survive, some don't. Uh, you know, we were recently challenged with our survival with the COVID virus. Um, you know, for a while there were kind of like hey it's gonna end up like one of those movies

like you know we're contagion or whatever we're we're all get wiped out um and and uh it it always seems to be that that is the the game that we're involved in the survival of the fittest but yeah you bring up a good point i never really thought about that aspect of beauty because i probably never uh studied uh darwinism and stuff like that in depth. And so that same sort of aspect connects to like when I go to the beach or when I look up at the stars or I see the waves in the ocean, I feel some sort of connection. Yeah.

Yeah. Let me ask you this. Is that connection sometimes equated to my biological nature? Like sometimes some people have theorized that the reason we love the ocean really soon we love water is because we're beings that probably walked out of that water at some time in our evolution and crawled up on the land and somehow you know i mean we're we're built with salt I mean, somehow we still have that affinity to our mother, if you would. Yeah, that could be.

I mean, water, of course, has a particular attraction. But I think that all of these elements of spirituality that we've been talking about, the feeling of being part of something larger than yourself, the feeling of awe, the appreciation of beauty, the feeling of connection to nature, that all of them are hardwired in our DNA. Let's take our connection to nature, our feeling connection to nature, which of course a lot of people associate with spirituality. For most of our two million year history, we've lived out in the open. You know, the bricks and glass of our modern life are very recent phenomena. And when you live out in the open, understanding nature is a matter of life and death. You know, the first thing is habitat selection.

Where are you going to choose to live? And you want to live, you know, by a stream, for water. You want to live in a place where you can get protection from predators. You want to know something about the weather. So habitat selection is the highest priority. And an understanding of nature is a critical ingredient of selecting your habitat. So so from that, you know, from two million years ago, I think that it's built into our DNA to have this kinship with the natural world. And our ability to view it and try and process it and understand it, largely from the propagation of our species.

Like you say, I've got to be able to go out and go, hey, there's a lot of snow here. This is not going to survive well if I'm out in this. Maybe I should move to a warmer climate etc etc you know it's it's being able to process the data do you think do you think animals uh experience spirituality well when you say animals you mean non-human animals non-human animals i should say because we're animals too i've been called that a few times. Some of us more than others. Yeah, mainly me. But I think that animals experience, of course, we don't know what it's like to be in the mind of

another animal, but I think that animals probably have experiences which we would associate with spirituality. I know that the animals like to be in groups. You know, if you can see groups of wild hyenas that are that are hunting together, that there's there's there's a sense of being a member of a group, which is larger than the individual. So, you know, you might, you know, indirectly associate that with feeling part of something larger than yourself. So there might be certain behaviors of animals, of non-human animals that we can associate with spirituality. Of course, if you go down low enough in the food chain, you get to a single-celled amoeba. I doubt that that even has a consciousness,

much less feelings of spirituality. So it's probably a graded phenomenon. And you can say that about consciousness itself, which, of course, is the primary mental experience that that uh the crows and dolphins probably almost certainly have some level of consciousness uh so all of these things are graded you know going from single cell amoebas all the way up to us you know the interesting thing about religion is the footprint of man's footprint on it which i think gives away in my opinion gives away its its intent or its its core intent um you know

a god made in our image as if we're like the the most greatest being that was ever created in the universe give me a break have you seen us lately um and i think biologically, the way we're built and have evolved really isn't a perfect sort of image. I mean, we're kind of a mess, really. I mean, the way we breed, the way we drop children out. And there was some report I read one time that we're really not the most perfect evolution of being in the universe. And we don't even know what else is there uh and and to declare that somehow that's the universal being that's the the main puppet master behind everything in the universe is quite uh damningly self-centered and and egotistical when it really comes down to it but it seems that it seems that, you know, to me as an atheist, religion was designed to quell or give security to an insecurity of why are we here? What goes beyond?

You know, why is there lightning in the sky? You know, when we first experienced the world, like you mentioned, this caveman, you know, we didn't understand why, you know, why the sun was up sometimes and lightning storms and people died. And we were just astounded by, Oh, you know,

whatever. Is that like the first scene in, in space odyssey night, uh, 2001 or whatever. Um, but do you think that maybe, maybe that's why people really aspire to religion?

Because they're searching for that spirituality and some sort of validation, and they find it in this store that goes, hey, God is the person you've been searching for. Well, I think what you said is true. I think there's another aspect of religion, and I think it's, and this is, I'm saying this, you know, whether or not God exists, because we don't know the answer to that question. But I think that religion, most religious traditions that I know of are an attempt to deal with our mortality. Our mortality, our awareness of our own individual impending deaths is a powerful force in shaping our culture and shaping our psychology. And we all would like to think that there's something after this mortal life, you know, with the mortal body and all the aches and pains that we have and the limitations and growing old.

We would like to think that there's something eternal of us that lives beyond that. And I believe that belief in the soul, belief in an afterlife, belief in heaven, partly comfort us when faced with this infinite dark hall of nothingness. Yeah, I've had people say to me well what if you know you're an atheist what if you die and it's just a black nothing and you're gone i'm like well i won't know i'm gone i'm not gonna be floating in the ether somewhere going this sucks you know maybe i will i don't know there that could be there you know we're always floating in space somewhere in some black hole going damn it whatever this was um no so we had an uh we had a uh famed uh psychiatrist on earlier we're talking about the maladies of the mind on a previous episode and one thing he was discussing was it used to be with with human medicine and, you know, we couldn't determine things or understand, you know, like viruses and different things.

But with physical human health, we can now put things in a Petri dish. We can measure them because you can look in the Petri dish and go, you know, or amoeba, as you mentioned earlier, you can go, hey, there it is right there. Okay, there's proof. And one of the problems you have with psychology is you can't really put someone's mental brain in a Petri dish and go, oh, well, chemically A plus B is not equaling C here. And so it's still kind of, it's still sometimes regarded as a pseudoscience because you can't do that, but it is still a science in itself. But it's much harder to determine stuff because there's not that exacting science. Did you find that center of same experience when you're trying to define science and spirituality and bind the two?

No, I think that everybody knows what science is. It's an attempt to understand how nature works and what laws nature follows.

And spirituality, different people define it in a different way, just like people define religion in a different way or define God in a different way. So I think you have to define your terms when it comes to spirituality. And I define my terms right at the beginning of my new book. I list the experiences that I associate with spirituality and even though those are experiences that you can't quantify the way you can quantifying how many seconds it will take a ball to drop to the floor when you drop it from one meter.

Although you can't quantify it you can give examples of the experiences you're talking about and because all of us have had experiences like that people will know what you're talking about and that's very interesting because you can't like a like a talk before you can't take spirituality and put it in a Petri dish. We all experienced, we all kind of know what it is, but you can't like point to it and go, well,

it's a single cell organism that, you know, does the thing there. And so I'll just say one more thing. The fact that you can't quantify it doesn't mean that it's any less real or any less profound or important. I mean, there, you know, how do you quantify falling in love that's true you can't put that in a petri dish either i tried yeah but it's one of the most wonderful experiences that we human beings have so yeah and then so is divorce

court no i'm just kidding i'm doing jokes people we We set them up and put them down. But no, I really like what you put down here because being able to understand this and identify that, hey, it's okay. You can be spiritual. You can maybe believe in whatever you want and the feelings you're having, but they don't necessarily mean that you got to go give somebody 10 of your income every month or whatever but if you want to do that i mean that's your business just stay just don't knock on my door on fucking saturday morning and wake me up and try telling me about joseph smith that's all i'm saying man it's go go go do whatever you want just keep it out of my backyard and lawn that's all i'm saying those are the jokes people um I've lost the five people that listen to the show from the LDS church. And one is my mom, evidently. So let's see. This is really important, though, to people that make this scene. Like I say, I had this argument on Facebook yesterday. And the person was making their argument that spirituality and the need for spirituality, that humans seek that and they seek, you know,

stuff like love and feelings and stuff, is a validation and proof of a being in the sky. And I think what you've done is really great because you've said, hey, it doesn't mean you don't have to take it different places. You can just dwell in it. Like I got people say to me, you know,

how do you have morals? How do you give it? How do you not walk around and murder, raping, killing everybody? Cause you're an atheist. You don't have any morals cause you don't subscribe to religion. And I'm like,

you can follow the golden rule and just be a good person and identify that being a good person to other people in your human, uh, in your human arena, uh, probably we'll make it so they don't kill you too. You know, it seems like a good idea. I actually sometimes think, you know, I don't know, what would Jesus do? I mean, most religious tomes or books are kind of good self-help books that be trying to be a good human being to other human beings. I think you can take good things

from them. But that doesn't mean that I need to give you, you know, my paycheck or send my estate to you after I die or, you know, I don't know, help that guy with the arena in Texas, you know, buy more cars and planes and stuff while he preaches. But if you want to do that, hey, that's your own business. One of the things you discover in the book, I think you did a lot of different investigations on how we find purpose and embrace spiritual experiences

uh you want me to talk about how we find purpose sure if you want it's your book i'll let you run with it was that your question uh kind of about i was kind of i was just giving you a softball general lead out there so you could smack whatever ball you want back in okay well is it three strikes and you're out no no by no means no you can do whatever you want it's your show okay i guess well uh if we're talking about purpose, I don't believe that there's any cosmic purpose. That's my belief. I think that each person has to find purpose for themselves and meaning for themselves. So you mentioned the golden rule, which I think to me summarizes the best that it's in all religious traditions.

And that's something that guides my life. I mean, when it comes down to it, the question is, how should I live my life? That's the bottom line, right, of all of this discussion. How should you live your life and i don't believe in any cosmic meaning or any cosmic purpose but what i do know the same way that descartes said i think there are for i am i know that i feel pleasure and pain i know that that's true. And so, since I feel pleasure and pain, I might as well live my life to maximize my pleasure and minimize my pain as long as I'm not hurting other people. And when I use the word pleasure, I don't mean just getting a massage and eating good chinese food i mean all everything that

brings me pleasure you know friendships love uh creativity intellectual pleasure reading a good book everything that brings me pleasure so i want to try to live my life to have as much pleasure as possible and as little pain as possible while not hurting other people. There you go. Of course, there's some other people that pay for that to go the other way, but that's a whole masochistic, sadomasochistic thing. You know, I did find my purpose in life, and I believe this is a purpose that we can all agree on tacos, tacos and pizza. I mean, who can disagree with that? If you you are then you need to do some soul searching i'm just kidding folks you can do whatever you want maybe you hate tacos

um but no i i think it's really important what you put down in this book because like i say as he as the arguments that i always have in humanity they're always black and white and in in in life there's gray areas and you, science flushes a lot of this out and tries to find it. And I've always loved science's aspect where it's always in theory. In fact, I've had people argue with me that, like, well, science is a theory. And you're like, well, religion is an exacting science? And they're like, yes, it is. And you're like, you have 3,000 gods you guys have created plus,

and there's probably five more in the last half hour. Well, science certainly doesn't have all the answers to everything. There are a lot of really important questions that science can't answer. But in terms of the view that science is just a theory, my view of science is that it's over the history of the last couple of thousand years that it's been giving us better and better approximations to reality. And, you know, if we didn't have science, we wouldn't have smartphones and computers and the internet, and we wouldn't have antibiotics and a lot of other things that are part of the pleasure of daily life. Yeah.

In fact, those big, powerful churches wouldn't be able to process my credit card if it wasn't for science. Oh! See what I did there? Look, we're talking here on Zoom or some version of Zoom zoom whatever your platform is stream here that that's right that's made possible by by science we wouldn't be able to have this conversation really i thought jesus was the one yeah well i'll send in my time no the internet's slowing down the audio is breaking up anyway whatever man yes there are some times where we wake up and we have to pray that the show is going to work

because Microsoft's update is throwing all the ports or something like that. But I think this is really important because you put your thumb on the middle area, the gray area that binds everything together and goes, hey, you can still be spiritual. You can still be a human being. Let me ask you this. I'm jumping back a bit to our conversation about how you mentioned, you can still be spiritual. You can still be a human being. Let me ask you this, and I'm jumping back a bit to our conversation about how you mentioned animals operate in a tribe. I love wolves, and I have two Siberian huskies, and we kind of have our little tribe,

and I've studied wolves and their tribes and stuff. Is there not only a connection to each other, but is that also maybe part of like a survival thing? Like, well, I need to stay in the tribe. Like you mentioned earlier, you don't go outside the cave, otherwise, you know, the only mammoth issue or whatever the case may be. Is there a survival mechanism that we're inherently, you know, saying, hey, man, stick with the tribe.

Don't go out of the tribe. I think definitely there's a survival mechanism. Food, the acquisition of food, the power of beings working together to achieve something. Yeah, there's definitely a survival benefit of being part of a group. But there's also a cultural aspect of this individual versus the group. And in the Western world, we value individualism, especially in the United States. And in Asia, there's more value being a member of a group. It's a difference in mentality.

I was in the correspondence club in Tokyo a few years ago, and there were a bunch of journalists there. It's for journalists, and everybody was exchanging their cards. And there were some Western journalists and some Japanese journalists. And the cards of the Western journalists all had their name in the center of the card and the name of their publication in smaller letters in the corner of the card. And the business cards of the Japanese and Asian journalists had the name of their publication in large letters in the center of the card and their personal individual names and this difference in the collective versus the individualism in the West versus the East. So there's a cultural dimension to this, too, in terms of, you know, being an individual or being part of the group. But I think that deep down, all of us, whether in Asia or in the United States, we originated in these caves in Africa and we all had to depend upon the group for survival. You bring up an interesting point. One of the arguments we have a lot,

there's been a lot of arguments on facebook and with my friend groups about elon musk i've seen a lot of my friends i've seen a lot of worshiping in the capitalism unbridled capitalism markets uh and and worshiping you know some of these people that you know make a billion dollars as gods or being above us or you know really hero worshiping some of these individuals and you you look at some of them you go well elon musk didn't like just create spacex and suddenly it's putting up rockets there's a lot of people that went into that and he may not have been as influenced as maybe you thought he was or maybe in you know like people will scribe just about every idea that or or nuance or innovation that spacex or tesla or any other company has done like well

that must have been his idea and you don't know that it was i mean there's very large corporations with lots of individual minds to it i think it would be hard to ascribe to like anyone like this was their idea um i had friends that worked for steve jobs that helped build the original iphone and you know i mean a lot of their innovations and things were theirs i you know steve was just going yeah that sounds good to me um you know maybe steve sold the general idea of it but you know the the hard work and labor and and it's kind of funny like you mentioned we come to this thing of of well oh it, there's one man who's responsible for it all. Interesting kind of thing to think about. Yeah.

Yeah. And so you flush this out in the book. You talk about all these things. You ask some pretty good questions, I think, to help make people self-reflect in the book of what's going on. When people usually say transcendent, I usually think of something like meditation. Is transcendent, is transcendency and spirituality the same thing? Or is transcendency a higher level that we get through that spirituality? Well, I use the word transcendent to mean going outside of yourself, going beyond yourself, going to something bigger than yourself.

And that's a transcendent experience. So I think that transcendence is a piece of spirituality. It's not all of spirituality. When I look at a sunset and I admire the colors and the textures, I'm not sure that I'm going outside of myself in that experience. But if I'm lying on my back on a clear night, looking up at the stars and feeling like I'm merging with infinity, then that's going out of sight of myself. So I think that they're not quite interchangeable, that transcendence is a subset of spirituality but anyway that's that's my personal view there you go and i usually transcend after eating tacos so there's that too as well um is let me ask you this because you've given me a lot to think about here um is is it possible that the fact that you know i look at my dogs and they're beautiful and I love them and they love me back.

And obviously I have feelings about, you know, being in the tribe with them and being able to that is finite and this fantasy that we want to do, or I'll call it a fantasy in my opinion, to there's some sort of extension beyond this life? Because we love this experience so much, there's almost an egotism that we're allowing to run rampant, that this can't just end, that it's so beautiful that we shouldn't appreciate it, or that it can go on forever, even though it might not. And it's a beautiful ego fantasy that we sell to ourselves, I guess is what I'm asking. Well, I think the ego may or may not be involved with this desire for eternity, for life after death. But the experience of being alive, of consciousness, which is so hard to define. It's so vivid and so unique and so unlike everything else being present in the world.

It's almost impossible to imagine that dissolving into nothingness. Yeah. We just can't imagine it. We can't imagine it. Yeah. I mean, I often told people,

I mean, if there was some sort of afterlife or maybe i just be adrift as some sort of spirit in the universe or some weird or ghost or you know whatever sort of pick your fantasy um if there's anything i would love to retain from this life is the beauty and my dogs and my memories um you know i i constantly tell youth to make great memories and live your life and collect great stories. That's why we do the show, just collect stories and why people live their life and what they talk about and write about. Because it's a real fabric of life.

It's that juice. It's the experience as opposed to the, the, uh, end of the journey. And, and hopefully in my older life, I'll retain my brain or what's left of it, um, to sit and think of my memories, even though my body may not be up to the par and speed that needs to be. And you hope that you're sitting on a rocking chair thinking about all the wonderful things and experience you had in your life. And yeah, it's, it's hard to let go. I think I would say there's like a bit of egotistic

sort of narcissistic thing that like, well, I'm self-important and I should go on. Um, I don't know. I guess we'll find out. Uh, there's, uh, I guess what was the old, it was a Jimi Hendrix who said nobody gets out of your life or somebody. Well, we might find out, but we won't be able to tell anybody about it. That's true. I haven't had too many people come back and be like, yeah, that afterlife thumbs up. There's no Amazon reviews on that quite yet. I'm still watching.

Let me ask you this. Some people say that the reason we feel that way, that connection to the universe, is because we're made up of the dust of the stars, as it were, maybe to quote some writers. Or, you know, I've had authors on that have written about how the space dust and the dust of Mars was probably blown here through space and seeded life here. And that's why we have this weird sort of feeling or connection. Mars, is there maybe some sort of implant of Mother Nature or our universe or our molecular makeup that causes us to have that connection? Well, I certainly believe, and I think there's a tremendous amount of scientific evidence that all the atoms in our

bodies, except for the two smallest atoms, were made in the nuclear furnaces of stars, which then exploded and blew their atoms out into space, and some of those atoms condensed into our solar system and planet Earth and us. So there's a lot of evidence for that. I don't see how that could have imprinted in our brains any connection to the stars. The fact that we are connected to the stars, that our atoms were made in stars is something that science has proven just in the last 100 years or so. It's something that we know intellectually, but I don't think that that has increased

any deep-rooted connection to the stars. On the other hand, I do feel that being connected to the cosmos is one of those spiritual experiences that we have. But I think it originated not from our atoms remembering that they were once part of stars, but because of these survival, these traits that had survival benefits when we're in caves of being connected to something larger than ourselves so it's not at the atomic level i suppose it was the atomic level i we would notice that like snakes would be like i don't know doing yoga or trying to find some sort of meaning in life looking at the stars or something they seem pretty busy about their own thing. That's true. Well, I'll have them on the show. We'll ask them. But you're right. We don't

know. I mean, they could be, maybe they're just slithering around. In the meantime, they're pondering the universe and their place in it. And they're probably thinking about their snake god that is in their image that clearly overrules all others. And he behaves like a child

who has some sort of sadomasochistic properties of like he's angry one minute and whatever. But you're like, but he's all seeing and all knowing. Can he get his child's behavior under control? I don't know. So with this spirituality mixed with science, how much is this going to cost me per month? And do I have to go every Sunday?

Well, you don't have to go every Sunday? Well, you don't have to go every Sunday. Thursday is the seventh day of Vest. I don't think you have to tie 10% of your earnings to anybody, although you could buy a thousand copies of my book. Oh, there you go.

See, I knew there was a catch. Yes, right, right. But I think it's, that everybody can do every day. And I think one of the curses of modern life, which is also one of the blessings, is that we have the Internet and we have our smartphones. And the pace of life has been sped up to an unhealthy degree, in my opinion, because the speed of life has always been regulated by the speed of communication, and our communication has gotten insane. So I think that in order to at least be open to these spiritual experiences. We need more space. We need more silences. We need to slow down a little bit.

Definitely. Maybe turn off those cell phones so much and things. I always thought the curse of life was politicians, but I could be wrong. We like politicians. They're good. There's some good ones. It's kind of like human beings.

There's some good ones. There's some bad ones. So, you know, try and stick with the good ones. But this has been very insightful, Alan. I'm going to send you my check and fill out whatever form I need you to join it. Join this religion later. Well, it's not a religion. It's spirituality, right?

Right. There you go. And buy lots of the books, damn it. I'll buy mine and subscribe to it. But no, I love how you've done this and nailed it. I, in all my lack of any sort of knowledge or insight or intelligence, had never really thought about how there's a middle ground. I'm kind of mired in it when I really didn't think about it

because I'm always kind of spiritual and feelings, but I still believe in science. And I've always kind of spiritual and feelings and, but I still believe in science and I've never really, I've always kept them separated, but I never identified it and said, Hey, you can have spirituality and science at the same time. And you don't have to send your check off to somebody, which is what I'm big on,

as you can tell. Um, you know, it's a way I, I always kind of, that whole thing of, of selling me something that I have to pay for now, but I don't get to receive later when no one can come back and do Amazon reviews. Um, is kind of one of the issues I've always had with the whole aspect.

And, you know, George Carlin does that great bit on how come God's always broke. Like, evidently he's all seeing, all knowing, but he can't manage his money. So he just needs money. Like what's going on with that? So, you know, that's kind of where I've always've always been uh anything more you want to tease out of the book before we go alan uh well we've covered a lot and uh i've enjoyed enjoyed your perspectives chris and uh i i think this book with all my books, I hope that it provokes people to think, maybe think about some things they haven't thought about. I know that everybody's a thinker, but maybe think about some things they haven't thought about.

And I hope that they're entertained. There are really no rules for a writer except for one rule. You've got to keep the reader interested. That's true. That's true. I think you should write your next book and i'm not telling you what to do i'm just suggesting here i think your next book should be the connecting the spirituality of tacos and spirituality there i'm sure there's a petri dress science uh experiment you can do in there to connect those two because there definitely is something going on i'm there's something going on

i'm just saying is i'm might it be big footish but there's something going on between tacos and spirituality and human kind in fact if it was it wasn't for tacos i don't think we'd be here as a species or something i don't know maybe it's the one thing that stands between us and nuclear annihilation maybe i don't know we can all get along with tacos anyway that's my big that's my story i'm sticking to it, boys. Thanks, Alan, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Chris, for having me on your show.

Thank you for coming. And congratulations on the next book, the new book. You want people to go check out the MIT site to get to know you better if they want to stalk you? Well, if they Google me, they'll find a Wikipedia page and also an MIT site. So if anybody wants to know anything more about me or wants to send me an email, that's how they do it. There you go. And of course,

order up the book, wherever fine books are sold, stay away. There's this alleyway bookstores. You might get a, you might step on a nail, rusty nail and get needed tetanus shot. So go, go where only where fine books are sold. Stay away from those alleyway bookstores. You might step on a nail, rusty nail, and need a tetanus shot. So go only where fine books are sold.

The Transcendent Brain, Spirituality in the Age of Science by Alan Lightman. He's going to be on the show with us today, March 14th, 2023. He came out. And also go to goodreads.com, FortressCrispFoss, YouTube.com, FortressCrispFoss, the big LinkedIn newsletter this will be on,

and our LinkedIn groups over there. Thanks for tuning in. Be good, be true, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. That should have us out.