The Rich Roll Podcast - How One Man Reinvented Himself Wholesale — Ruminations On Simplicity, Life In the Zone & The Great Iceberg of Consciousness

Episode Date: July 7, 2014

I started this show because I truly believe that too many of us are wasting our lives in a reflexive daze. Disconnected from who we are, what makes our hearts beat and what we truly need to be happy. Just trying to make it through the day intact. Pay the bills. And make ends meet so we can numb out to Dancing With The Stars. Living for the weekend, we celebrate by getting drunk and then do it all over again. You know what I’m talking about. It's no way to live. Believe me, I tried. Remember when you were a kid? No older than 11 when the world was wide open. Everything was amazing. Even the tiniest of things could provoke endless fascination. Pure joy in the simplest of activities like running around in the yard with a garden hose; jumping off a diving board into a pool or riding your bike around the neighborhood with friends. The effortless ability to be truly present in the world. Gifted with an innate sense of wonder – and a moral compass that naturally understood right from wrong, good from bad. Then we grow up. That child falls by the wayside. Drops away. Or simply becomes repressed as we morph out of that natural state of what it is to be fundamentally alive, only to step into the objective, material fear-based world of ego, status, and comparison that leaves us obsessed with the past and maniacally pre-occupied with the future yet never fully present in the now. This is the chronic collective human condition today's guest calls being lost in the rational world. A state of being that all too often leaves us anxious, afraid, depressed, isolated, lonely and sometimes even desperate – resigned to a life we're not sure we ever really even signed up for. I know what that’s like. I've been there. And so has today’s guest. But there is a way out. Because that inner child is still there – lurking deep down. We just have to find a way to access it. Tap in. Find a way to bring it to the surface. Unlock and unleash it. This is the path to the authentic self. This is the path to wholeness. This is what it means to be alive. And happy – not in a blissed out unicorns kind of way but in the sense that your life has directed meaning – a purpose that brings true satisfaction. SLOMO. That’s right people. Slomo. What the hell is a Slomo? It's not what. It's who. I first became aware of this world class character when an award-winning short documentary about a very strange man by an enterprising young filmmaker named Josh Izenberg landed on the home page of the New York Times at the end of March. What followed was 16 minutes of pure unadulterated awe-inspiring beauty about a man going boldly where most men fear to venture – letting go of all the trappings of his comfortable, previous existence to instead to pursue the simplest of lives. A life based on faith, purity, movement and the pursuit of what he calls “The Zone” – in his own highly unique and incredibly peculiar way. I implore you – before listening to this episode, please watch this short documentary. The experience of our conversation just won't be complete without it.

Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 94, with Slow Mo. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. How's it going? My name is Rich Roll. This is the Rich Roll Podcast. Thanks for stopping by. Today, we have a super amazing interview for you guys. This is definitely a very special episode of the RRP, so I'm so glad that you dialed it up. me thinking a lot about my own life, my own choices, and a lot about why I do this show and why I started this show. And I think that in reflecting upon that, a big part of why I do this show is because I truly believe that too many of us, too many people out there are walking around through their lives in kind of a daze. We're just trying to simply get through the day,

make ends meet, pay the bills so we can numb out in front of the TV and live for the weekend. You know what I'm talking about. And it's no way to live. And it has me thinking about what it was like when I was a kid. And I want you to think about that yourself.

What was it like when you were no older than say 10, maybe 11 years old at most, when the world was wide open, everything was wondrous, everything was amazing. with a garden hose or jumping off a diving board into a pool or riding your bike around the neighborhood with friends and the freedom that that gave you. And the ability to be truly present in the world with this innate sense of wonder and a moral compass that naturally understood the difference between right and wrong and good from bad. But what happens? We turn 12, we turn 13, 14, 15, and we grow up, right? That child slowly fades away and falls by the wayside, or it simply becomes repressed as we morph out of that world of subjectivity, that natural state of what it is to be fundamentally alive and step into the objective, material, fear-based world of ego and status and comparison that leaves us obsessed with the past and preoccupied all the time with the future, but almost never really fully present in what we're doing in the

moment, present in the now. And so what happens? We become anxious. We become afraid, sometimes depressed, isolated, lonely, and in many cases, even desperate and resigned to a life that upon reflection, we're not even sure we ever really consciously chose. Believe me, I know what it's like. I used to live my life that way. And so did today's guest. But there is a way out of this. And again, that's what this show is all about, because that inner child is still there. It's lurking deep down inside of you.

And we just have to find a way to access it, to tap into it, to find a way to bring it more to the surface, to, as I'm fond of saying, unlock and unleash it. And this is a big part of this path towards actualizing your authentic self. I mean, this is the path to wholeness. This is what it means to be alive and happy, not in a blissed out unicorns kind of a way, but in that sense that your life has directed meaning, that it has purpose, that brings true satisfaction to your day. So, slow-mo. That's right. Slow-mo. What is a slow-mo? Who is slow-mo? Well, I first became aware of this world-class character when an award-winning short documentary about a very strange man by a young, enterprising San Francisco

filmmaker named Josh Eisenberg landed on the homepage of the New York Times at the end of March. I watched it and I was amazed by this film. It's 16 minutes of pure, unadulterated, awe-inspiring beauty about a man transformed, about a man going boldly where most men feared adventure, letting go of all the trappings of his previous highly materialistic, successful existence to instead pursue the simplest of lives in his own highly unique and extremely peculiar way. And so please, I implore you before listening to this episode, really, you got to watch this documentary. It's embedded on my website on the episode page for this episode, or just Google slow-mo or Google slow-mo New York Times, you'll find it'll pop

right up. But if you're already on the treadmill, or you're on the track, or you're on the trail, or you're in the car, of course, you know, just continue to listen. But when you're back at your computer or your desk or your work or what have you, please dial it up and give it a watch because the experience of this conversation really isn't going to be complete without you watching this documentary and getting a visual sense of who this guy is all about. So what is he all about? Who is this guy? Well, born John Kitchen. Slo-mo is a very spry, vigorous 71-year-old dude who was raised by a pretty politically prominent family. They didn't have money. They weren't wealthy, but the name Kitchen goes back, I understand, generations back in the Wake Forest area of North Carolina.

And so his family name was of some note, I'm told. But anyway, he grew up in a dairy farm in North Carolina. He was a top student at Duke University. And he went on to medical school at Wake Forest and then got to work building this incredibly successful neurology practice in Southern California. And it was the kind of wild success that begets BMWs and Ferraris and multiple mansions and even a Neverland Ranch-esque exotic animal farm, if you can believe it. It's the kind of success that can, in the words of Slow Mo, make you an asshole. And by his own

admission, that's exactly what John Kitchen was, an asshole. But then something very interesting happened. A strange confluence of events that included a random encounter with a 91-year-old patient and then, quite ironically, the onset of his own neurological disorder, a rare and strange condition that's called prosopagnosia. You might have heard of it. It's that weird thing that happens when suddenly you lose the ability to recognize faces. They just become a blur and suddenly you can't distinguish one person from another. You're not sure if you met that person before or what have you. It's a condition that was made famous

by Dr. Oliver Sacks, who suffered from this and wrote about it. And it's also shared by other interesting people like Kurt Vonnegut or Tom Stoppard and the artist Chuck Close, one of my favorite artists. But what's interesting about this is that then the neurology doctor suddenly became the neurology patient. became the neurology patient. And what he could have perceived as a disastrous turn of events in his life and in his career and profession instead became his opportunity, a moment that he seized as a very specific moment in time

where he could change, not just little things about his life, but change everything, to completely become an entirely new person, soup to nuts, to live his life in accordance with a brand new theme. And that theme is, was, and is to do what you love. So what did he do? Well, he quit his job right away. He sold everything and he moved to a tiny one room studio apartment, a half a block from the beach

in the Pacific beach neighborhood of San Diego. It's a really cool kind of idyllic beach community in San Diego. And then he started to skate. That's right. Skate rollerblading, not just here and there, not just a little bit of rollerblading not just here and there not just a little bit of rollerblading all day every day and what he did that's really fascinating is that he developed he didn't just rollerblade randomly up and down this boardwalk he developed this unique slow motion gliding style that almost looks like a moving warrior three yoga pose. He's up on one leg. His arms are spread in front of himself.

And this very specific technique that he developed allows him to tap into what he calls the zone. And the zone is his term for a deep meditative state that's catalyzed by the lateral motion of his body moving sideways, you know, sort of like when a surfer is surfing a wave or skateboarding or slalom skiing, that lateral side to side motion that creates that kind of G force feeling. And that force impacts the tiny bones of his inner ear and gives himself a sense of being anchored to the center of the earth. It's this self-styled moving meditation technique that I guess allows him to tap into the beauty of the now. It allows him to fall deep into the present moment. And it's a practice that ultimately has allowed him to overcome his asshole-ness and become happy, like truly happy. And some might even say ecstatically happy. So 15 years later, Slow Mo is a Pacific Beach fixture. Everybody in the neighborhood knows who he is. Everybody loves the guy. And until this

documentary came out, which kind of went viral, and so a lot of people now know his backstory. But before that, most people likely assumed that he was some kind of crazy homeless guy or somebody with a mental disorder or possibly somebody who escaped from a VA hospital or something. But definitely a little nuts, if not altogether nuts. But what Slomo really is, is a treasure of this idyllic community. He's like communal property for the neighborhood, protected and beloved by everybody that lives there. And I like to think of him as like a modern day beachside monk version of the sadhus that inhabit the caves high in the Himalayas. Practicing his version of what it means to pursue a higher state of consciousness or what some might call even enlightenment.

It sounds crazy, I know. Maybe it's completely nuts. But according to Slow Mo, he's not crazy. It's society that's crazy. to slow-mo, he's not crazy. It's society that's crazy. And John Lennon agreed to quote from the famous Beatle, I think our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're run by maniacs for maniacal ends. I think they're all insane, but I am liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it. It's an honor and a pleasure to bring you Slomo's story.

So let's spin this wheel and see where it leads. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how overwhelming

and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from

former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself. I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by

recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com

who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen,

or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. So do you like going by John or Slow Mo?

What should I call you? Call me Slow Mo. Slow Mo? All right. Why not, right? Exactly. Why not? Well, there's a difference.

Tell me the difference. You know, take the American Indian. And actually, people in our culture before, say, 2,000 years ago, they were given names according to some aspect of their personality. And, you know, we're not used to that now, but the nickname is much more meaningful because it applies to the person. You earned it.

Yeah, but you could say you earned it, but it's from a different part of your family. It's from the world of strangers. It's given to you by people who were not, in all likelihood, not family members. And they're relating to you. They begin to relate to you first as an unknown. And then they identified you as an abstract, which is more in the category of a person.

So to me, it's a stage of development in a person. It's to separate him from the objective, credentialed, sort of legal side. Yeah, the moniker that is placed upon you without your involvement at birth versus sort of the true kind of actualized self that the world recognizes you as being. And it's parallel to the dichotomy of experiencing yourself during the first phase of your life as an object. in yourself during the first phase of your life as an object, even though you're subjective, you experience yourself as an object in the world. But as you evolve in the latter half of life, you begin to experience yourself as a subjective entity in a world which is objective and separated. And these sports, which are in a special category, nine-team sports, sports which are individual,

activities which are individual, evolve during that lifetime so that as a person ages, what appears to be an activity in the objective world becomes a type of activity in a subjective world, which this person spends his time more and more in a state of mind which is similar to worship as opposed to the state of mind that he would have had in the earlier phase of his life when participating in action. He would be in an aggressive state of mind fixed on the external world.

It goes to this, I mean, you know, a lot of what your life is about is dichotomies and more specifically the dichotomy of the zone versus the non-zone. I read your manifesto. And sort of the use of this word zone as being expansive, you know, really encompassing what, you know, maybe in more mainstream circles would be just known as God or the universe or whatever word you want to place upon it, higher power. And the idea of the subjectivity that goes hand in hand with being in the zone or being merged with the zone versus the objectivity of the non-zone state of sort of being in the world.

That's right. Right? Exactly. So in the most simplistic terms, if you could sort of expand on that idea, explain really what you're getting at with that. Okay. Well, in all the activities of life, this particular dualism exists

where a person can observe something in the zone or experience the zone, and it's quite different than the non-zone. All right. If you look at all those activities, they all have a set of intelligent and wise people who discover the zone within that activity. Now, the one I like to see people experience the zone is in the spectacular sports that we get to observe on television. Well, that's where it's most readily kind of apparent to the eye, right?

Yeah. It first occurred to me what was happening when I watched that movie with Chariots of Fire. One of my favorites. Yeah. You remember when the runner fell during, I think it was an 880 run, and his friends were in the audience. He fell, and then he got up and began to try to catch up with the other runners. And Van Gallis, who was doing the music, switches him into slow motion.

He's going in slow motion, though he's gaining on these other runners. And the cameraman switches it to the crowd, and his friends are standing up, and the girl, one of the women, says, do you see it? Or something to that effect. And what they were seeing really interests me, because I think that's what we saw when we watched Michael Jordan perform in the zone.

We were seeing something in the way that Amazing Grace uses the word vision. We were experiencing something attached to a vision, which was in another world. That is, the person who was—we were watching someone in a pure state of worship. And that's impressive. And matter of fact, that's one reason I think some of the people line the streets of Rome when the Pope goes up and down. I think he's supposed to be—and I say supposed to be, relatively close, at least a representation of a state of worship. But the athlete, when he's hitting three-pointers,

say in basketball, say four or five three-pointers in a row, he is almost by definition in what he calls the zone. Right. And the subjectivity aspect of it is that time is not a linear construct. Time is more an elastic idea, and it's an expansive place for the present where past and future are no longer. Whereas in the non-zone, the sort of logical thinking brain and the way we kind of carry ourselves through the world, we're basically spending all of our time thinking about the past or projecting the future right so so so it's really it's kind of come into vogue lately like it's it's sort of been captured now now it's called

the flow state or you know there's a book out about it and a lot of scientists studying it from a non-zone perspective, I would imagine. But the idea being like, how can we access more of this zone-like state in our own daily lives? It's a spiritual practice. It's not something that can be accessed through the thinking mind. You know, I think that any of us, and correct me because I haven't really tested the idea, But we could say, what is the purpose of our life? The first thing, the first purpose is to achieve some method to experience the zone. And then try to do everything you can from within the zone, because the zone is a superior state of mind, and it will produce the best athletics, the best behavior.

For instance, the problems that we're having in our country is that we've almost divorced the zone entirely from international and national politics. entirely from international and national politics that there's no zone. We're living in a country that's passed into the non-zone. And in a way, the people, the great athletes of which I would include you and the other people that are in their own way experiencing tremendous feats of athletic prowess, they are obviously a new, to me, the manifestation of a new type of worship that's taking place as they've been pushed a little bit to the edge of the society. In other words, they're not dominating.

The zone's not dominating. People in the zone, we watch it in athletics and all, but it's not the idea of people. So it's left a lot exemplary person in the world that we all would agree, in our individual lives, sure. But to think that the world has been in our lifetime bereft of really a lot of great people. From a leadership perspective. I mean, I think that, yeah, on the fringes, well, there's the athletes, of course,

but I would expand, you know, the zone idea to anybody who has created a great creative expression, like the artist, any great artist will tell you that their painting or their sculpture doesn't come from the intellectual part of their mind. They're channeling it from something else. And that thinking mind goes away and they're definitely in a zone like state to produce whatever it is that they're trying to master.

Right. I reckon the, I agree totally with what you said. I reckon the point I'm trying to make is that the practice of life, the practice of living is performed in some way, which is either falling into the non-zone or the zone. or the zone. And if you take a society, you can look at the society itself and see where the dominant part of the society resides on that spectrum. And if there is something that you could apply this knowledge to, not only to your personal life, but to the way we analyze any part of this life.

For instance, if you went to a country, you could say, well, how good is their music and how well, you could use any criteria, but what about how close are they as a society so that everybody can experience his own advancement into the zone? How zoney is a society? In other words, I think if you use some of these, if you think of societies, there are societies that you can point to that had no zone. They had very little zone. In other words, almost by definition, a Nazi society decides to perform totally in the world of objectivity. of objectivity. And probably the opposite, whatever

the opposite is, you would think would say that the society, I would say like an ancient Japanese society or something like that, the idea was peace and harmony so people could advance themselves spiritually. That was the goal.

You could tell that the thing was set up to advance that goal. And probably considering the depth of poverty and all the rest of it during the Dark Ages, it was also, the society was set up to give the main structure to the individual who could pursue a spiritual existence. that is, a zony existence, okay? I mean, they didn't have the wherewithal to experience it that we do now, but you could see with what they had, religion and spirituality and the state of worship was held as the highest form of endeavor.

It was a cultural prerogative. It was a cultural prerogative. It was a cultural prerogative. Yeah, and in modern times, I mean, you know, what are we left with? I suppose, in some respects, the Tibetan monks or certain, you know, removed cultures that have remained untouched by the gestalt of, you know, us sort of exporting our Western way of life across the globe, but it's only small pockets now.

And, well, I guess in certain respects in Indian culture, spiritual advancement is still regarded as a high form of living, whereas it's really not here. I mean, we talk about religion, but that's a different beast altogether. Now, think in terms of that we are doing it, but we're doing it in our way. And our way is the athletics of the single person, the person who's experiencing the zone.

Now, you can extend that into art, dance, or whatever, or maybe just getting in the state of mind by any method. But if you take that whole group that is dedicated to experiencing the state of mind of the zone and put them together, you could say that that same group is the group that put that same thing as a priority in other societies and in other times. It's one group, and it's going through time the last few thousand years. It started somewhere in Greece or Troy, out in that area, maybe in India. And it's moved across. It went through Rome, and it went up into Europe, and it came across.

Okay? The state of the—this is some sort of phenomenon, which has been—it's a state of mind. The shrinks would call it a state of mind that's been carried by human beings through this card over thousands of several thousand years. And it just changes form. Sometimes it's inside of cathedrals and churches, worshiping that way. Sometimes it's, well, in a lot of the Dark Ages, it was manifested in building beautiful buildings. The artists now are doing it, the ones that are contributing to the, that are making, that are actually where the zone produces the art. And that might be an interesting topic. There's art that's, you don't, I mean, I could paint a picture and not be in the zone.

Right. Okay. In other words, I might want to make money, which is, but anyway, that's a whole nother subject. But anyway, that's sort of holding on to the subject. Right, but this idea of tapping into a oneness and a power that's greater than yourself. And as an athlete, I've certainly experienced that. And there's no way that, you know, I know for a fact that the things that I've been able to do as an athlete don't come from my power. It's only by tapping into something larger than myself. You know, I'm very, very in touch with that. And I think that's

a, if you start to talk about that, then you start to get maligned as some sort of insane. No, no, no. But you shouldn't. You shouldn't. Because that's what I mean. Right now, the pressure of the social conventions is totally in favor of the non-zone. In other words, when George Bush said that he had learned more from, they asked him what single man that he learned the most from, and he said Jesus Christ, half the people responded with a nod that that's absolutely the correct answer for anybody that really has spent time reading the New Testament and thought in terms of other people looked at his head, that would have to stand out. But the other half thought that it was a cheated answer because it was using religion.

And so anytime a person, even if he starts talking about Buddha nowadays, you know, you can't even talk about Buddha. Buddha is out of style even in California. Think of that. I mean, this like, but this same group is pursuing the worship. They don't care about what you call it. They don't care if you call it the Christ, the fundamental man, the force, the spirit, whatever it is. They call it the soul.

Generically, it's what people call the soul. And the scientists that dominate the non-zone have declared for a long time now that there is absolutely no existence of the soul. That this is a myth. absolutely no existence of the soul. This is a myth. And even the Buddhist and other people, a lot of them would say something to that effect. So, again, it's the dichotomy of the nine zone and the zone. When you're in the zone, you never, and you can correct me if you agree with this or disagree, you never question whether there's a higher power or whether there's a God. It doesn't occur to you to question it. It doesn't occur to you to question that you exist as an entity of some kind of subjective,

something that could be called a soul. Those questions and doubts only exist when the mind is in the non-zone. And so why is this so difficult for us as a culture to grasp? I mean, we're so focused on, you know, our cultural priorities are to, you know, sort of move up the corporate ladder and accumulate these material goods and, you know, keep up with the Joneses and all of these sorts of things. These are the ideas and the thoughts and the mindset that we walk around with on a daily basis. is in the thoughts and the mindset that we walk around with on a daily basis. And this sort of greater truth is staring us in the face, and yet it's so difficult to access for most people.

I think it's like playing golf. Everybody's playing the same course, and everybody has to get through the same set of traps, you know? And frankly, if you look at the big traps, the big traps are fame, that's one of them, and money or power, and all the subdivisions of those and all that. But those are the... If you use an old way of thinking

that we evolved ontologically, each of us, we go through an evolutionary involvement. Like we start out close to, say, a chimpanzee behavior or something like that, and we gradually advance through the king. And you get to the top, and the top has some sort of benign of benign wise personality okay that's non-violent well and and that way of looking at it hell i'm i lost track of this idea all right we can get back to it but i want it, but I want to get into your story a little bit because you weren't always the philosopher king that you are now, right? So let's take it back. I mean, I want to hear, you know, I want to get into the evolution of what, you know, forged this identity known as slow-mo.

identity known as slow-mo. So, you know, back in the South, growing up on the dairy farm and going to medical school and, you know, what your life was like as a practicing, you were a neurologist, right? So what do you hear about that? Well, I started out on a little farm, but it was, looking back on it, it was the ideal place for a child to grow up on. As a matter of fact, it was so ideal where I was born and the family into which I was born and my childhood was so ideal from my perspective now of what's meaningful is that I almost thought that maybe this is a circumstantial proof for the existence of some prior existence where I chose to be born in the sense that it's perfectly unfolded yeah like and it was just uh the farm had a nice woods where you could run.

My parents were very benevolent people with no meanness or hatred. My older brother and younger brother were just as athletic as me. My sister was healthy and nice looking. I mean, the whole thing, and the fact that we didn't have money. We pretty much had two, at the most, three calls. Most of the time it was one call.

That is, during the whole period. Right, right. I got you. The first one lasted. I mean, it was not like, it was, I think looking back on it, the fact that we were poor, like really you had to have a hole in your shoe to get another pair of shoes. I remember that it was, it really was fun being that way.

But on the other hand, my father and his wife, my mother, had come from intellectual families. So we had all the books around and that type of thing. And they spoke well. From what I understand, it's sort of a prominent family. They come from in Wake Forest area, right? Right. And that area, it was like we were the poorest of the kitchens, but the kitchens, nobody was wealthy. There wasn't, as far as I know, there were no.

Wasn't spilling downhill your way, whatever was going on in the rest of the kitchen family. Well, you know, I don't think anybody was very wealthy in those days. But it was a name people knew the Kitchens. Yeah, yeah, because we had contributed a lot in the way of politics in various places and all that. So was your drive to

succeed as a doctor, did that derive from not wanting to be poor anymore or where did that kind of ambition come from? I think that the fact I think some of my life can be explained for the fact that I thought I experienced myself as being poor as a child. And I wanted to see what it was like to see, you know, where people were, I'd at least wanted to get close to experiencing what I thought was wealthy. I think that that's what everybody, there's a temptation.

That's the reason, you know, you can almost see this person driving a car, a particular car, if he's able to eventually buy the car that he really wants, it's the one he saw when he was younger, in which he had some money to buy a car. in which he had some money to back off. But anyway, yeah. No, no. My grandfather had been president of Wake Forest and was an extraordinary, prominent kind of person. So I always had that to kind of fall back on.

My father was a... If everything blows up, you don't want to go back to grandpa? Yeah. My father was a gentle kind of, just a very kind, soft-spoken man with the ambition to be a farmer and nothing much more than that. Southern gentleman. Well, he had proven he could at least get through law school, but he just didn't take a liking to it and quit. And in some respects, his evolution predates your own.

It's a similar cycle, right? It is. It's very similar. And of all the children, I look like him and have a lot of the same little characteristics for what that's worth. Even though I had the usual conflicts with my father, I wasn't like I was closer to him than the other three. So you ship off to Duke. Went to Duke. Yeah.

The first year, I was first in my class. Really? Yeah. Wow. And I was thinking like, geez, I must be some sort of genius, you know. You know. And then I joined a fraternity. And I started drinking beer. For about three three or four years i'd call it my beer

drinking years i think those are the best years anybody can have frankly i know what that's like yeah well drinking beers with your friends at night and talking whatever it is politics or sports or whatever just that kind of fellowship is about as good as it ever gets. But anyway, I enjoyed that part, but my grades dropped to about half where I... Yeah, that'll happen. I know what that's like, too. You know, and looking back on it, my hero was Nietzsche, okay? I was planning to be some sort of mad intellectual, you know, with books all around me.

That was my goal. But after being in the fraternity and all that and kind of leveling out a little bit, I thought that being a doctor was a reasonable choice. And in a way, it was a choice out of cowardice in my case, because I was smart enough to do it, but it was a safe way to go through life. Almost like a lot of things that look like the dangerous things, for instance, the military, it really is the safe choice. But I made the safe choice. I can remember, I just didn't know what I wanted to do. And it's like somebody staying in graduate school. That's right. It's the burden of being intelligent and well-educated. You have, you know, I can't go be an actor. I've got to go. I'm too, you know, I need to go do the thing that I am capable of doing that society will smile upon me. Vietnam was raging at the time.

So that was also in the, people were, they were going and getting killed. I had some fraternity brothers that were killed the first year that they went. So... Stay in school.

I figured I'm not going to run, you know, I'd already decided I'm not going to run to Canada know, I'd already decided I'm not going to run to Canada. And it's about a 10% chance that I'm going to get shot. So probably it makes sense just if you get drafted just to go. But I didn't like the way they were prosecuting that war. And I really don't like the way we prosecuted these other wars since Vietnam. And I really, as a child, didn't like the way that we prosecuted the Korean War.

I was watching all this my whole life. I've been watching this stuff. It is absolutely disgraceful. So stay in school, become a doctor. It's an easy way to bow out of that equation. Stay in school, become a doctor. Yeah, well. It's an easy way to bow out of that equation. You don't have to do it, but it's not a bad way of life, particularly nowadays. The way our society is, the military, is a very good choice of a way to live. Well, I think we could do a little bit better with taking care of the troops when they come home.

We're not doing such a good job of that other than bumper stickers that say support your troops. You know, the level of PTSD and the level of care that these people deserve far outweighs what they're getting. You know, it's well known by anybody that reads history, and that might not include a lot of our politicians. But the troops, sometimes they come back from these wars where the politicians don't do so good, and they wreck the society. Now, the troops came back from Vietnam after they had been to some extent stabbed in the back. And they didn't do anything. The same thing happened after they drew a draw there with the first Iraq thing. Now the same thing is happening with these other two recent wars. And you wonder, the reason the VA is being in such bad repair is that these politicians are not under any threat from the returning soldiers like they have been in other societies, and I'm thinking Germany.

That the politicians here get away with this kind of stuff. The troops come back and they just tolerate it. Well, yeah, it's a tricky situation. I mean, the VA is such a massive bureaucratic organization. But you would think that the troops having the weapons would have some power. Why do they let themselves be taken advantage of like that by people who have, maybe they have paper power, but they don't have any guns. Well, I think that the transparency of the internet is starting to change that. I mean, you're starting to see articles and people speaking out, and I think there's a greater

awareness of that situation than maybe there was, you know, even a couple of years ago. So, you know, I hope that. Good. I probably went off on a little political thing. That's all right. But I want to get to the doctor part. Yeah. Sorry about that. That's all right. Hey, Matt, I got all day. I just don't want to keep you too long from your skating.

No, no, it's a good interview. Actually, I like your interview. I like the questions. Yeah, and I was at Wake Forest Medical School. Bowman Gray is the name of it. And again, it was a fabulous time with a great bunch of people, fantastic people, fellow students, and fantastic just general and a lot of heroic types. I had several mentors that were just, and still are, the top as far as human beings, the quality of the human being. And just a matter of fact, when you came, you showed up right on time. And I always watch that with a new person to see how close to the

time it is. Okay. And I can tell you a lot about it because we used to watch one of the head of the neurologic department, a guy named James Toole. And literally, he would walk from his house, which was two miles away, and get on the elevator and do all that and get through the hospital and to the chamber where he was going to lecture and would walk in right as the hand came to the exact time. And we used to notice he always did that, you know. And then you can notice who's before and after and how long and like that. And you see that there's a span. after and how long and like that and you see that there's a span but the the some of the other people i remember um there's the dean eventually the dean jane uh uh janeway dean um dick janeway had been in the movies as a child and he was just a spectacular person to watch and to listen to and so I just

I mean that the dean of the medical school had been in the movies was an actor he was one of the little rascals you know and that was a big thing in the South. We had no, we had no, see, California and Hollywood and all like that would be like, I don't know if the kids have anywhere like that now, you know, because the world, it seems so accessible. Yeah, it was a lot more mystique. Yeah, it would be way, way exotic and way out with exotic people. I mean, that's just downright bizarre that one of the little rascals was the dean of the medical school. He ended up being the dean of the medical school.

It's extraordinarily prominent. But he was just a unique and cool person. Anyway, it influenced me and some other people here and there. So I stayed in neurology. You know, these two had been in neurology and it was an academic thing. Like it was indoors work and no heavy lifting. Not like on the dairy farm. That's right. I'd learned that there's indoors and outdoors work. By the way, I've done almost a hundred I've done almost 100 episodes of this podcast,

and I can't tell you how many people that I've interviewed grew up on a dairy farm. Oh, really? There's a theme that is running through this podcast. I think you're like the fifth or the sixth. Really? Yeah, it's amazing. That is interesting.

I digress. Yeah, that's got to be something. I don't know what that's about. That's got to be, maybe, yeah, you can do one of those meta studies. Right. I'm going to, I think. So so then you so you hang out a shingle and start practicing.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I had to I went to finish my residency. I did two years at Emory and then three years of neurology at the University of Miami. And then I was in the at Emory, and then three years of neurology at the University of Miami. And then I was in the Navy for two years. I had signed a contract. Post-Vietnam?

Vietnam had come to an end, yeah. So were you ROTC then, or they put you through medical school? No, it was kind of a special plan called the Berry Plan, where you signed a contract in medical school that they'd let you finish your training then you'd give them two years later when you finished your training and um i was assigned to the hospital in long beach where betty ford and some of the others made famous years later it was a two-story either two two or four story, I can't remember. But I was there for two years, and then that's all I had to do, which to me, it was just a fabulous experience. I mean, really, being in the military.

You like being in the Navy. I love it. Out on the boats or the shore leave part? It was just the camaraderie. I mean, it really is worth? It was just the camaraderie. I mean, it really is worth it just from the camaraderie. Were you practicing medicine? Yeah, I was the neurologist that saw all neurological patients between El Centro, which I mean El Toro, which is about halfway up the road here to L.A., and then all the way up to Oakland. So I saw a lot of Marines and people like that. It was a real, real good medium-sized hospital with surgery and that type of thing, but nothing really exceptional.

When you say you were the main neurologist, were you surgery as well? No, no, no, just neurology, which is mainly things like seizures and strokes. But not operating on spines or brain surgery or anything like that. Neurology, which is mainly things like seizures and strokes. But not operating on spines or brain surgery or anything like that. No, but the reason it was really cool is I had a little office and I had two medics that were working. It was like a little, having been in training my whole life and then coming to this, it was just fabulous. It was a lot of fun. I just had to remember what, you know, when to wear the white. Right.

All right. So after that two years, do you stay in California? Yeah, I was living in Long Beach, which is close to there, where I was in the Navy. there where I was in the Navy. And I'd worked up there for three years in private practice with another man, another neurologist at one of the hospitals in Long Beach. And I would say at that time, I had almost lived the American dream. I had a house and I had a car and I was, I had clothes for the first time, I mean, nice clothes. And I had some prominence and I drove to work and I had a white coat and I did all that. So I kind of, I got a good taste of what it was like to be a doctor in Long Beach. And I was still kind of a loner.

That's something that I've always been kind of a loner. I've had normal relationships along the way, but I was still living alone and this type of thing. And so, anyway, I reckon, you know, it's funny, I'm kind of thinking of the listeners, you know, at this point. No, I don't think about them. Just tell your story, man. But I was alone, and I started, well, I started smoking a little marijuana here and there and began to have a few epiphanies. All right.

Up until then, I'd been absolutely straight. You know, like, I mean, I was like an eagle. Matter of fact, I was the youngest eagle scout in the country. Really? Yeah. Wow. I got it youngest Eagle Scout in the country. Really? Yeah. Wow. I got it in the minimum amount of time.

I was 11, I think, or 12. Wow, when you got your Eagle Scout. How many badges? It's like a ridiculous number. Well, it's just that you've got to really work on it all the time to advance it. You can only advance it so fast. So it was a matter of seeing i could do it do it and be the first one that never uh right right at least at that time you're this focused guy i mean when you set your mind to something first in your class you know until you start

drinking beer with your buddies but you know right all this sort of thing you're able to channel that side of your you're able to channel the non-zone when need be. Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you, looking back, I can see how, which, by the way, that was the part that I had the block on. As you get older, you advance kind of evolutionarily. Okay. And I could see that in my past, I could have easily been a soldier or a military type, not some sort of killing person. You're very regimented. Kind of regimented where it's just the world.

You ignore the inside. And I can also see how I could have been a clerk in a clerk variety, the same mind state and this and that. Right, checking the boxes. Yeah, and as I've gotten older, I've gotten closer to being, you know, it would almost, it might be,

the little bit I know about Geronimo's life is that he started out kind of a hothead and he ended up being more rational and reasonable and wise at the end. But I might be wrong on that. But anyway, where was I? So you were talking about basically that your medical profession is progressing, you're starting to have a good living, and then you start smoking pot once in a while and things are expanding or changing. Your perspective is starting to shift. Yeah, what I would say about it is I was at least a prominent doctor at the second biggest hospital there in Long Beach.

And I can remember driving to work and parking my car and looking back at the hood and thinking, like, why don't I paint some flowers on the hood? Of your car. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I didn't do it, but I could just, I got into that mindset where I, that young people get into when they get exposed to marijuana. I never before that ever noticed cats. I never looked at jewelry. I never thought about the visual feel in front of me as being a visual field as opposed to,

I always thought it was a concrete world, you know. In other words, I sort of could see how, and by then I was credentialed and well thought of and everything as a doctor and a neurologist, I was thinking like, wow, all that time I thought as a neurologist, I knew about the mind. I didn't know anything. And I was thinking like, wow, all of that education, I was an English major at Duke and I read lots and lots of books and all along the way and all that. I never had any insight into this way of looking at the world.

And so the first thing I did was get in touch with the Indian, the Hindus that were working at the hospital. And they're pretty aware that there's another way of experiencing the world but they they've converted they had converted over to our way so i was thinking like wow that might be what um is going on with the mental institutions you know a lot of the people that have mental problems and whatnot why don't I just quit and go into psychiatry and see if I can find out for my own interest, really, because I wasn't married. I had no responsibilities except myself, what some of them are experiencing. And I got in the program down here, so I just quit my job up there, and I came down here.

Wow, you just straight—oh, wow. So it's just like that. Yeah. Yeah, I did it pretty quick. I mean, I have a friend down here that was able—that was kind of connected, and he helped. But they had a position. Down here being San Diego. UCSD, yeah.

Down here being San Diego. UCSD, yeah. And I knew if I did two years, I could be credentialed in psychiatry. So you had to do a residency. I had to go back. So here I am, a little bit of an older guy in the class, you know. Right. How old were you at this point?

Well, I'd gone through the Navy in three years, so I was probably about 30. Okay. So not that old. 31, maybe 32, somewhere in there. And I did two more years as a psychiatry resident down here, which, again, was just fantastic because of good people, friends, and the environment in San Diego. It was such a nice place. So all that, and then I figured halfway through that, I'd stopped marijuana, coal. Okay, so I'd gone. Why'd you do that? You're starting to have all these epiphanies. You're going to paint the hood of your car, and it's changing your career. There must have been a dark side to that, too, to make you want to stop. You know what? That's probably the most intelligent question you've asked already.

Looking back on it, that's where I made my big mistake. You should have kept going. But I was a loner. See, I didn't smoke with anybody. I didn't have any—I didn't— But this is not what responsible doctors do, John. We know this, right? Is that your fear of like— That was the other thing.

Like, it was a felony to be caught with marijuana. Yeah, it was not like it is now. Yeah. And, yeah, so—but everybody—you know, it wasn't really—I mean, I didn't do anything that was harmful. I mean, it would be like having an extra drink at the weekend. Right. I got you. I got you. But anyway, I got down here. I'd stopped cold, and I was straight again, you know, real straight.

And I decided to start a practice in neurology and psychiatry because no one down here was double credentialed that way. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it seems a natural nexus between these two things. neurology and psychiatry because no one down here was double credentialed that way. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, it seems a natural nexus between these two things. And it was, so I started a practice in downtown,

well, open Hillcrest, which is pill Hill. And, um, by myself, I had, uh,

I built up a nice little practice doing the, um, pretty much standard neurology. And I got married, had a son, got divorced about a little short of two years later after getting married. And I kept working, and my practice kind of changed over to a lot of evaluations for disability and personal injury and things like that. So the quality of it changed. I began to make what I thought was a lot of money. And I bought up, you know, bought an extra house and went through that, you know,

where I was kind of experiencing what it was like to have really good cars and all that. Yeah, you got the V12 BMW, right? You got a Ferrari? I had a Mondial Ferrari, which it was the only one of its type. I mean, I thought it was a big deal. That was the first thing. Then that 12-cylinder, which is the worst car i ever had why is that i can tell you listen i know and i do i don't think i'm not a germano file but this be everything that they say about bmw

is a lot of it's true some of it's not true but what what I find out with this 12-cylinder, you'd be flying along at, say, 45 miles an hour going down the street, and then suddenly it would just turn off and go on some sort of maybe two cylinders and come to a stop. And there were a lot of glitches, other glitches like that, and the wheels, and it was... I think they figured all that stuff out now, but all right. But at the time, not so good, right? But at least it looked good, right? So you got the Mondiale.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you get this exotic animal farm. What is the story with that? Well, yeah, well, I bought this place out in Ramona, up on top of a mountain, looking down on everything, and it was a big house, a 6,000 square foot house, three stories. And it had this big wonder looking down on everything. I was thinking like, whoa, this is really,

like I'm really turning into some sort of Faustian character. You're a baller. I'm driving a Ferrari and doing all this. I got this thing, so I started buying all these damn, I got a couple of people working there for me, like foremen. And so I started buying all these damn exotic damn birds. And seriously, looking back on it, it's kind of funny. I even dress like you can tell people that go through this phenomenon, whatever it is, of having more money.

Like a lot of the celebrities, you see them go through this. Well, they don't have anybody around them to tell them to cut it out, right? Like just a bunch of yes people? Well, I felt like the rest of y'all can wear a tie and a jacket like that, but I'm going to wear a special kind of jumpsuit. You're having like your own Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch situation? Yeah, exactly. And this was, you know, I don't know if I did it before Michael Jackson or did it. He got the idea from you?

Or if he got the idea from me. But I did see a connection there. Anyway, you know, it was a nice animal farm. We had almost every kind of farm animal there. The best thing I had was a two-hump Bactrian camel, which we gave eventually to the zoo. And we smuggled him a couple of... How do you even do that? That's a story in itself. This is an interesting story.

I had... The guy working for me was from Oklahoma. He had grown up on the farms and whatnot back there. And so I put out a, I had enough money where I could put out a notice that I was looking for a camel, you know, and I'd pay anybody that came up. Well, he. How do you put out the notice for that? How does that work? I didn't do it. It's like a rich guy thing. I know. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Listen, that's the part I was playing. Like for instance, when I would go to an auction, I would sit on the front, like J.R. Ewan. I was trying to be kind of like J.R. Ewan and my foreman who would dress down from me, so I was the prominent one,

he would sit there and do the bidding. Right. I tried to do the whole thing a little bit like, in a way, I was experimenting with the whole image thing, I reckon. The funniest, you got to get a chuckle out of this. I was putting together a small clinic, which never came up, but it was in Vista.

And I had some workers there, real nice people and educated people. And I drove over to see how it was coming in my Ferrari, okay? And I drove up to the building that we had bought. It was a little building, but it was, and it's two stories. They're standing outside, and I'm kind of dressed like in some sort of special jumpsuit,

like my own version of Elvis. And they're standing there just thinking, what a cool, he's our boss, he's just the coolest. And they're standing there, so I said a few things kind of like, you know, kind of super silly, and then I get back in the Ferrari and back up and slam right into a post. The universe is knocking on your door already. Yeah, that was the beginning of it.

The zone is saying, how much longer are we going to play this game? Yeah, exactly. Well, now, it kind of taught me that you're talking about earlier the way you referred to this bigger something takes over yourself during sports, something like that. Like there's a higher creative self, whatever you call it. Well, it's taught me that there is a self like that, but there's another little man that's guarding a door that he comes through, and that little guy won't open the door if he doesn't totally approve of what he sees you doing, okay? It's like he, and so I was totally, I was willing to, so to speak, well, if there is a God, I'll go to hell.

You know, I was, I'd already kind of, it was a little bit like, well, I'm going to play it this way. And I think in terms of now is how to bet if you had one roulette wheel roll with 10 and you had 10 chips. I think I was putting all my chips on black. But now I'm splitting my chips, five on red and five on black. Meaning what? Explain that. All right. Thanks for asking me that. I am absolutely a thousand percent devoted to the idea that there is a higher being of some kind that would make sense of this world that we're living in as humans. You could call that

whatever it is, God, okay? I'm totally devoted to the idea and the fact that mankind should strive in this direction as if he's an image and built in that image. I totally disdain the other way of thinking that it's just a fluke.

This is what science would tell us, a fluke. And what people, it's just now, get what you can and you're out of here. There's no afterlife and anything like that. On that side, it seems to me that the left hemisphere, which is the analytical hemisphere, comes to that conclusion. And it will always come to that conclusion. um dog uh hawking just made a a very good uh tv series uh program about why i don't believe in god and he couldn't any by reason he gives the most elegant argument who is this stephen hawking oh hawking yeah and it's recent too too. So it's at the end, so to speak, his final words on what—

Yeah. So basically, if you think this way, and if you're trained this way, and then you know the psychology of denial and repression and all that kind of thing, and how we're all tempted to fool ourselves. You cannot ignore this whole part. And to me, that means that if you're balanced yourself on two feet, you will have about half doubt and about half devotion. I see. So that's the idea of half on black and half on red.

Yeah. The scientists, the typical, the pure scientists is putting all his chips on black. It's an interesting thing because it seems to me that the most brilliant of the scientists have to engage the right hemisphere of the brain because it requires some level of imagination and creativity. And to me, it's bizarre because if you really drill down to say quantum physics and you really begin to understand how matter acts at the subatomic particle level it's so baffling and so extraordinary for example i don't you know i'll botch it but subatomic particles that are they're like mirror images of each other that could be you know on the opposite end of the earth that when one moves, the other one moves the

same way and all these kinds of crazy, it's crazy, right? So for me, when I look at that, that just gives me more room to believe that there's something greater, not less, you know? It's interesting. I agree totally with what you've said, because if you follow quantum physics or any of it, down to it, if you really follow it down, it does that for me too. And probably ought to back up and say that, yeah, that the intelligent scientists, the intelligent scientists must see, for instance, these paradoxes in quantum physics,

must see, for instance, these paradoxes in quantum physics, he must see that quantum physics that he believes, has been taught to believe in, is no more than a temporary imagination of the human mind. It's no further than the human mind. If you take the brain that produces the mind, at least according to what we think, you can hold it in your hand like this. Now, so the scientist has got to say, if that's the fundamental level, if he's really understanding it at that level, and it's not just a temporary looking, a temporary imagination of the mind, because it's, then he must be thinking that something that that size and that looks like a cabbage

can comprehend the underpinning of the universe. Now think how that diminishes the extent to which the universe, in other words, you would think that if a brain could comprehend the true quantum physics that really exists, I mean, if it could really, I mean, way beyond the mathematics that we know now and all that, just way, way, way,

so it really is right on it, that brain would have to be extraordinary. Yeah. Well, what it says to me is that we as human beings are extremely arrogant in this idea that we believe we're at the top of the food chain and that we're capable of understanding everything. And it's that mindset that pushes us forward to continually expand and develop technologies and all of this. But I think that it bears recognizing that we may never be able to understand these things in the same way that you could pick up a snake and try to teach that snake how to understand the human language for the rest of your life. And that the brain in that snake is not, it's just not advanced enough to understand that no matter what you do. And so I think we need to understand that we're quite

possibly missing that extra lobe or two that would, that would allow us to comprehend these things. I mean, our ability to perceive is so limited from the, you know, the auditory frequencies that we're able to pick up on through the visual spectrum that we're able to perceive. All these sorts of things are extremely limiting. And so for us to say, oh, well, you know, it's this or that, and that's the definitive yes or no, I think is extremely arrogant. And I think it hamstrings us from being able to be in that place of wonder where we can allow that imagination to flow and to really contemplate and embrace the idea that there is more out there and to be okay with that. That's not a threat to our time on the mortal coil.

Yeah. I like everything you just said. I agree totally. So, all right. So, you're driving the Ferrari, you got the crazy ranch with all the animals and everything's going good. I mean, what's going on spiritually at this time in your life or emotionally? I mean, are you starting to kind of question what's going on? Are you having that rich guy thing where you're thinking, why am I not as happy as I thought this would make me? Or what is going on with you? Well, I believe that the next thing that started to happen was gradual,

and that was a loss of my vision. So how long after this sort of collecting the crazy animals did that start to creep in? Probably, oh boy, I don't know. Just back in the 90s. I can tell you that I can remember for about a year, when I would look, it seemed like everything was real dim. And I'd seen an ophthalmologist a few times to correct my glasses before ski season. And he told me that I was almost blind, according to the way they defined it.

And I was thinking to myself, and I even told him, I think it was during the Clinton administration, I was just thinking that the Democrats are making too many advances. You thought that helicopter was coming after you? No, no. It's kind of funny that it's coincidental because I really did think, well, golly, if I'm disabled and legally blind, that means that Clinton and the Democrats have really made a lot of advances in Congress. You're starting to lose it. Yeah, no, I was thinking that they've lowered the threshold for disability so far.

Right. But it was kind of a joke because I enjoyed skiing so much. You're driving around and you're living your life and you're able to function. But then when I was practicing this forensic neurology, I started noticing that I couldn't really tell if I'd seen somebody before or not. So I got my eyes checked by a bunch of doctors and they all kind of agreed that there was a problem with optic atrophy

resulting from a severe case of drusen crystals, which is some kind of condition that people get occasionally. And so I said, well, gosh, my business is going down, and I'm—I qualify—you know, I'm kind of getting older anyway. I'm unmarried. I got—I don't have any mortgages. So I just put it all together and figured, like, well, I'll just change, you know. There had to be some level of profound unhappiness or dissatisfaction going on with you. Concurrently with that to really make you want to change that drastically, though, at the time.

It must have been. Because it's almost, on some level, some level okay you know you're going to have trouble practicing medicine with this condition i mean is it was it really prosopagnosia is that is that how they that's that's what they you call it um the condition where you can't you have difficulty i think i could i think i could have continued um but so there had to be some there there was a momentum going on where this opportunity, it's almost an opportunity, presented itself where it said, now I can finally. I don't know if you saw this documentary they made on this, but the turning point that I can identify was an old man that I saw in the cafeteria in the hospital when I was at the kind of at the top part of working hard as a regular doctor and I had mouthed off to him about uh how does a young good-looking strapping guy like me get to be some old gnarly character like he is right he's

like 91 years old he was was 90-something, yeah. And he just, he turned and shouted at me, do what you want to. Now, that was in the setting of me knowing almost everything that an average doctor should know about what's a good diet, what's the right thing to do for this medicine, I mean, this particular disease, how much do you do this? I'd gone through a society where everything was given to me of what to do.

And it was the first time in my life that I'd ever thought, gosh, if a person just does what he wants to, for instance, maybe bacon, if I really like to eat bacon, maybe in my case, it's what I should be eating. You know, and I was philosophic agreement that, man, there's a certain set of categorical imperatives inside of us. And instead of, and I saw medicine as being like a bell-shaped curve where they were taking everybody to be the same. taking everybody to be the same. And it was just so obvious in neurology because we expect this nerve to innervate that particular finger and so on. But then I was thinking like, whoa,

if I just did exactly what I wanted to, what I really wanted to, really wanted to, and maybe it would guide me down a road where at the end I would be healthier and happier than I would have been if I had tried to travel down the road that I heard that you should eat this and you should do this and maybe you shouldn't do that and you shouldn't think this kind of thought and blah, blah, blah. It just goes forever. So having all that knowledge of here's how you eat and live to be healthy and happy, inside you're not happy.

I mean, in the documentary, you're a self-described asshole, right? Right. And is that just in your ego and in your arrogance and driving your Ferrari around and disdain for your patients? your ego and in your arrogance and driving your Ferrari around and disdain for your patients. Yeah, it was kind of a Faustian thing. I can remember. I think I experienced the same thing that Faust did. But Faust didn't get a way out. You know, I've been meaning to check on that. Yeah, it's been a while.

I don't understand, am I speaking out of school on that? Did he? No. But I think, you know, when you talk about Faust, you talk about literature. When I look at the arc of your life, it really is, you could not, a great writer couldn't script these dichotomies and these, you but that gives you the ability to see. You're a neurologist, and then you suffer from this neurological disorder that you would think imprisons you as a result of your many years of being a doctor, and yet that's what sets you free. And you're this loner who enjoys his time alone,

and it develops this condition which you would think would isolate you further and that's what's created greater community for yourself you know and this idea that uh that you stared at the end of your you were staring at the end of your career but that's really where your life began it's beautiful you know and you couldn't you couldn't dream that up. If you wrote it down, somebody would say, well, that's fiction. Well, you put it together mighty beautifully. I appreciate you saying it that way. Where I'm at now, I live here half a block from the boardwalk. It's a two-mile stretch of perfect skating.

The feeling that I get when I skate I know is the zone. I can get in the zone very easily that way and sustain it. My thoughts when I'm skating are the type that people naturally have when they're in the zone, the way I relate to the people and what they see up and down the boardwalk. So it really is about as close to paradise. I live next to the zone in a way. But the paradise isn't geographical for you. The paradise is your ability to live within this zone-like state that you're able to access through what you do every day,

which is get out and skate and high-five people and listen to music and tap into, you know, that more primal part of who you are that allows you to connect with, you know, your higher state of consciousness. That's exactly right. I call it, the way I visualize it, and I can tell you, you understand all this type of stuff, is that the ego is in a room that has a little door. And in front of that door is a very small little soldier who is you when you were five years old before the left hemisphere began to take over he knows right and wrong he knows uh when a person's

arrogant and when they're not he knows a person the way everything should be. And he watches you. Now, you have to please him. Otherwise, he won't open the door. Now, when he opens the door, you just call it the primal part of ourselves. I call it, the Christians call it the Christ. I think that's what they mean by the Christ. The Christ.

I think that's what they mean by the Christ. I call it, because I don't want to restrict it. I think the Christ is a good name for it, but so that people don't get hung up on whether or not that's correct, is the fundamental man. Because I think the spirit is the same thing that exists. If there is a man that's equal, if we are equal, it's the fundamental man is the thing, okay?

And if he's in us equally, I guarantee you he's in the birds and in the animals. But he only comes out and manifests himself when a person's in the zone, and that's when that little guy agrees to let him, it's safe, and he comes in to the, the fundamental Christians would probably say that this is, you have to invite Christ into your life. This is the idea, is that you have to behave in such a way that this happens to you.

Well, I think that that sense of higher consciousness is always there, but you have to do something active to tap into it, whether it's skating or meditation or any variety of things. You know, it's sort of that idea that, you know, God never leaves you. You leave God. It's always there. And whatever your concept of that higher power is for yourself, you found a very specific and unique way of accessing it, your own personal brand of tapping into it,

which is fascinating. But in many ways, it's your version of accessing a meditative state that allows you to be a more actualized version of yourself. And the biggest theme of this podcast is how to unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. So you call it the fundamental man. I sort of I generally refer to it as the as a more actualized version of yourself.

But I think it involves that regression of tapping into that childlike nature that exists within all of us that gets worn away over the years. Let me inject right here. Please do. It's worn away over the years. Let me inject right here. Please do. The way you do it is you do what you want to. In other words, that self will find its way like water unless you restrict it. instance, if you get to a, you have to learn what you really want to do. How much do you really want

to eat? How much do you really want to sleep? How much do you really want to be this person or that person or be this and that? And just gradually cone down on it. And what that will do is prepare you. It will open. That path will unfold for you. Well, I have a couple observations on that. And the first thing is that I might write down a note because I don't want to forget. But the first idea is that most people are so disconnected from themselves that when you sort of beckon them to ask themselves what it is that they want or sort of tell them go do what

you want most people don't even know what that is and it's not their fault. It's because the non-zone, as you call it, or our culture, has created a situation where we are disincentivized from tapping into that part of our life and it's not considered acceptable or okay. And we're like, you know, in all honesty, most people are just trying to get through the day. They're trying to put food on the table. They're trying to take care of their kids. They got to pay the bills. And who has time to entertain this notion of, you know, what makes me happy or what it is that I want to do?

And so I think that pushes buttons when you say just do what you want to do. I think the knee-jerk kind of reaction is, well, good for you, slow-mo. You know, you had a nest egg and, you know, it's all fine and dandy reaction is, well, good for you, slow-mo. You had a nest egg and it's all fine and dandy, but I don't have a nest egg. I don't have that luxury. And my story arc isn't as dramatic as yours, but it has been a journey towards that trying to tap into the fundamental man and doing what I want to do. And I walked away from a law career, you know, it's not, it's not in certain respects, the themes are the same. And my response to that is generally, you know, I'm not, I'm not telling people to go out and be irresponsible, but you've got to find a way to connect with yourself and start to cultivate

a better relationship, a healthier relationship with yourself so that those ideas of what you may want to be or may want to express more fully start to percolate up. And then your life can be about trying to find at first subtle ways of expressing that more. And as you walk that path, as we just said, you know, that path will get laid out and those bricks will start to fall in front of you. And it's a matter of following that lead. I think you've spoken it very well, but I want to, yeah, please go ahead for someone listening right now saying, because I'd be the first to say that Beavis was very wise when he told Butthead, there's always a catch. Beavis was very wise when he told Butthead there's always a catch. That's your soundbite.

But I want to say something to the people that might be listening on this idea that you have to be responsible and make money and put food on the table. One of the things that surprised me personally is how much people liked me more when I was pleasing myself than when I was trying to please them. It's that Buddhist idea of the best way to heal the world is to heal yourself. It sounds selfish and self-indulgent, but there's a great truth in that. Let's take an example. I can visualize someone listening to this broadcast is struggling to make enough money to put, say, give his family something. something. But if he doesn't really want to do that, okay, if there's something else that he really wants to do and he does it instead, has the courage to do it instead, then what will happen is his family will be happier because he's happier doing something that he really wants to do. Now, the problem is he may think he wants to do one thing and he really doesn't. You've got to know

what you really want to do because society has programmed you in such a way that you figure like, well, if I really want to do that, it's got to be wrong. Okay? You've got to be careful to really know what you want to do. A lot of people, Ezra Pound said that if you were honest, the only things you'd really want to do is make love and lie around. Well, but the point of that, extrapolating on that point really, is that the things that make us happy are incredibly simple that you think, well, that can't be it.

Like for me, I like, you know, the sun is coming out right now. I feel the sun on my cheek and that makes me happy. Or out right now. I feel the sun on my cheek, and that makes me happy. Or being out on a trail with the sun on my back and being able to connect with my breath. Or being, you know, in the ocean swimming. These are the things that make me genuinely happy. And I remember as I started to engage those more, I thought, that's kind of great. This is what kids do. This can't be, you know, what it is, but, you know, we're hardwired with millions of years of

DNA to, you know, live in a more primal state than we've created for ourselves. And, and I think that, you know, you're an example of what it, what happens when you can connect with that kind of primal urge and the direction that that can lead you in. But I think it does go back to exactly what you said, which is you got to get right with yourself. You know, we're so bombarded with signals and distractions and information that it's impossible to be silent with yourself, to be able to tap into the frequency of that higher consciousness that is trying to speak to you.

And it's work. That doesn't happen just because. Or you can't just flick a switch. You have to put energy and time into that in order to ensure that whatever decision you do make about where you're going to invest your time in the future in a way that will make you happy is indeed the appropriate path for you.

Does that resonate with where you're coming from? Yes. It's all in the word want. It's interesting because the words are applying to something that's very hard to know, really. What does a person really want? Well, it's subjective. It's purely, yeah. Yeah, I reckon you're talking about that we're wired a certain way.

back that we're wired a certain way. One way you could say that this thing may be working is that biologic tissue has to get to a certain stage of development to create a mind, like to have a brain with a mind. And then the mind has to get to a certain stage of evolution to produce what we would call the zone. Okay. And the zone is the result of a natural evolution so that, well, give me an example. In the TV series, it's excellent called The Vikings. I don't know if you've seen that. I have a friend on that show, actually. Oh, really?

Well, good for him. Which one is he? His name's Donal Logue. I don't know the name of his character. He's a bearded guy with long hair, but they all are, right? I haven't watched the name of his character. He's a bearded guy with long hair, but they all are, right? I don't know which character. I haven't watched the show yet. Well, according to the archaeology and whatnot, it's very accurate.

It's a good program. And you can tell that their hierarchy, first off, and this would be true of the Nordic cultures, be true of the Nordic cultures, that they were extremely loyal to law, that they really were, they were societies that believed in the law. The law of nature? No, no, their law. Their law, right. It wasn't, they weren't societies of men. Below the, I mean, even the chief and people like that had to obey the law.

And then in the hierarchy, there was a chieftain that we're all, the warlord that we're all familiar with. But above the warlord was the mystic. And the mystic was the only one that there was no reprisal against. You couldn't kill the mystic. I mean, warlords had to defend themselves. The mystic had tenure. Exactly. The mystic.

All right, so if you look at the Bible, the hierarchy is the mystic, the top. If you look at something like... Well, Native American cultures. Native American culture. Native American culture. That's right. The mystic... Or the gurus in India.

So the mystical part of the personality, we think, is the top. And we care less about animals that we think don't have that. If we think a dog's got it, we don't eat dogs over here because we think that a lot of people think that there's a heaven for humans

and there's going to be dogs in there because they're not any less divine than we are. And so basically the idea is that the mystic, whatever his desires are and whatever he thinks, this is the top. And I don't mean the epileptic. I'm talking about the true mystic. And those things are very consistent with what all the biblical and ancient writings have said, even Marcus Aurelius and people like that. have said, even Marcus Aurelius and people like that.

And that is, what we really want, most of us, is peace of mind. Aggression and revenge are attractive, as are the deadly sins, the seven deadly sins. All of them are attractive to all of us. But a state of peace and goodwill and love is preferred. That's the one we want. And I think that we're all chasing it, but we're chasing it in the wrong way because we're in a world where we think that the way to get that is to sort of, you know, succeed in our modern definition of the term. And then we get there and then we think, what happened or what's wrong? Or why aren't I not feeling the way that I thought that I would feel when I got here? And then you feel ripped off. And then you feel resentful.

And that can lead you down a very dark path of despair. So you found a way out. Found a way out. So I want to know, did you just have this epiphany and literally overnight sell all your stuff? I mean, what was the logistics of how that all went down? Well, I quit, and I started doing exactly what I wanted. I mean, that was my theme every day. Everything fell into place so nicely.

It seemed to me like it was a gift from God to get me out of my medical state, my business. I mean, so you had this 91-year-old gentleman says, do what you want. And did you kind of ruminate on that for a while? Or how long was it before you just decided? Yeah, I did. I mean, I started doing it immediately. I started doing what I did. I mean, I started doing it immediately. I started doing what I want. Of course, I felt guilty as I'll get out. For the first few years, I remember when I would wake up, I could hear the freeway, thinking like I should be on the freeway.

You know, after a while, you don't hear the freeway anymore, the distant sound of the freeway. And what are your peers, your colleagues, your extended family members chirping into your ears around this time? Well, almost everybody thought I was probably nuts or sort of semi-nuts. Some of my family members kind of politely came out and visited me. They're going to do an intervention? Yeah, that type of thing. Right. The, I mean, it never really came to the surface and I never could tell at a point like that.

There's always, you have a streak of paranoia, so you don't know for sure, you know, just how much a person is sort of evaluating the level of your mental faculties. Well, it's a tricky thing because I think the dividing line between dementia and expansion or the quest for enlightenment, it's like a Venn diagram that perhaps could overlap. And especially the way that we perceive somebody who makes a counterculture decision to be, you know, for lack of a better term, a seeker. That's not something that's going to be embraced. That's something that's going to be marginalized. And kind of the words that would come out of the mouth of that person can sound crazy to somebody else.

When, in fact, maybe these are the words that we should all be eating well to me i know both sides i think it's like combat you've got in the middle third of life you you cannot always do what you want to you have to make a living. And there's some realities there. I mean, we have to survive. But if you get a chance, as much as you can, I think you ought to stay in contact with the other side, the zone, of what I think Christ called the kingdom of God. It's inside you. It's inside you. And you should try to call back some small part of a day or week to be in touch with that so that later you can just dive right into it and be in that state as much as possible when you're older.

Yeah, I mean, in the documentary you say that you were lost in a rational world. It's a rational world. And the question that you were asking yourself is, on a daily basis, how much of your life was devoted to spirituality and how much of your life was devoted to financial gain? And when that balance tipped too far in the wrong direction, that's really when you started asking yourself these questions. And the universe, I guess you could say in certain respects, really conspired to answer that question for you. It did. I feel like I'm in therapy sometimes. You summarize these things so perfectly.

I mean, this is really helping me understand myself. Good, I'm glad. But we haven't even gotten to the skating part, right? Like in the top 50 things of, you know, like what makes me happy? skating part right like in the top 50 things of you know like what makes me happy like where does the how do you you know how does it boil down to putting on the rollerblades i mean at some point you must have been doing this already where you realize this is something that made you happy but where does it where does the the sort of dawning realization come in that this is literally what you want to just basically do all day every day day. Okay. There's a song where the lyric is,

if I were a rich man, I would pray all day. That's in Fiddle on the Ruth. If I were a rich man, I'd spend all day praying. Well, I had identified that the best state of mind, and we all know different states of mind, best state of mind and and we're all know different states of mind but the best for me was what i call the top spiritual state of mind uh or the zone and that i discovered when i was skiing i'm taking a picture okay yeah i i discovered when i was skiing uh i i would go skiing every winter. Oh, whoops. Hold on. Do that one more time. Sorry.

New film there. I got to take a Polaroid of all my guys. I had done enough skiing over the years that I knew that the sliding, and I investigated this, lateral acceleration momentum um gives a certain feeling that the reason people get the feeling of exhilaration on carnival rides or racing around a corner in a car um is the that acceleration expands the inner the experience of the inner ear experience of balance. So it's the side-to-side motion. Yeah, it's got to be a force. That's right.

It's got to be a force. Neurologically, it activates a whole other set of receptors. Anyway, I'd experimented with this over the years with skiing so that at the top of the hill, I would get as close as I could meditatively by standing there. And then I would kind of gauge the size and the extent of this. And then when I would carve in turns, I would see that it got much larger and more intense. So it dawned on me that this was the source of, for instance, when Hillary, they asked Hillary why he climbed mountains.

Sir Edmund Hillary. Yeah. Not Hillary Clinton. No. Sir Edmund Hillary. Hillary Clinton. No. Sir. Sir Edmund Hillary. Yeah, yeah. As you know, he said, because they're there.

But there's a real answer to that question. The real reason has to do with balance. When a person is in a precarious situation, for instance, climbing the wall of a mountain or something like that, the sense of balance expands. And what that is, it's at least in my own judgment wrote the first part of the whole Bible, called the I Am experience. In other words, the soul and the sense of balance are identical to each other. That's what I'm saying.

Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So the meditator, what he's doing is he's concentrating on part of the sensory apparatus for balance, which wants to plumb itself with the sun of the earth. Yeah. Well, this idea of I am kind of harkens back to Hindu texts and the idea of self and oneness. Right, right.

Being present. Yeah. Meditation techniques that revolve around doing just that, anchoring yourself. Like envisioning that anchor dropping down from the base of your spine when you're in that lowest position. Right, right. All the way to the center of the earth. Okay. So Buddha could do that really.

It's assumed that he could really do it well. He's got his inner ear dialed in, right? He's got it dialed in to the center of the earth. Now, suppose he had had inline skates or a teacup at Disneyland. See what I'm saying? His meditative experience would have gotten larger. That's what happens to all the people that get addicted to these sliding sports. For instance, the surfer, the skateboarder, skiing, on and on.

It's the exhilaration of the I am experience which results from adding the acceleration component, that is the force component, to the stable component that's plumbed to the sun of the earth. So what is it neurologically that's going on in the inner ear that allows you to kind of experience that, like neurologically? Okay, here's what I, the way, from my knowledge of the anatomy and so on, and it's incredibly, a lot of details. Right, which is for the layperson. But the layperson, if you look at the brain,

you can remember that a big part of the brain is the lower part, the cerebellum. It's about a third of the size of the rest of the brain, and to some extent, to a large extent, and sort of a parallel system which is at the tip of the nerves. That is the proprioceptive sense. All right. That part of the brain picks up information from the inner ear, from the semicircular canals, and from the otoliths, which are plumbed to the center of the earth on both sides. And there's a background feeling, which we call the sense of balance. It's the sixth sense. which we call the sense of balance.

It's the sixth sense. It's the same sense that the ancients would call, thought existed in the pineal gland. The neurologists don't make any identity of the sense of balance with the I am experience. But meditatively, if you watch it from the inside while you change your sense of balance and you know that this is what they're doing, or at least it's consistent with what they're doing when they meditate, and then how much of our sports have to do with acceleration,

and then the feeling of the zone, and you put it all together, it's a state of epiphany. It's a state of I exist as a subjective entity. I am what I am, which is this. Now, what this is, is the result, at least if we go back to a scientific way of looking at it, of these receptors stimulating part of the brain, which as a result of curved space or gravity or gravity waves. And these waves, obviously most of them are coming from the sun of the earth, from the gravity of the earth, from the gravity of the earth. But a certain number come from the sun and the moon.

And it has a constant background. It's a little bit like micro background act of the mind. For instance, we have six senses. You can count them. Sight is a predominant one. When you see something, this six sense is just there. Right, it's on low hum.

Right, it's on low hum. The sense of balance is imperceptible. You hear something, it's on low hum. Right. You smell and eat something, it's on low hum. The sense of balance is imperceptible. You hear something, it's on low hum. Right. You smell and eat something, it's on low hum. You go through life as if it didn't exist. Well, the sense of balance never really gets lumped in with the other senses.

That's right. We don't really acknowledge it as one of our senses. That's right, because it is identical to us. That's what I'm thinking. Right, because you wouldn't know what it would be like to be, you can't be born without a sense of balance. I mean, you can have a tweaked sense of balance, I suppose, but you couldn't be born without what it feels like to feel gravity, right?

So we wouldn't know what that would be like. And there's no place in the universe where there's absolutely no gravity. I think that you can tell that it will accommodate to itself. Like if you spin in a circle after a certain period, it'll come balance out. can't balance out. By what I can experience and watch is that there's sort of a limit of time of how long a person can literally stay glued in the zone,

in an epiphanous state, like from acceleration, okay? And it's a matter of a few minutes, probably. But in essence essence what you're saying is that is that by by uh engaging your body in these lateral movements that you you can access through rollerblading or surfing or skateboarding or what have you it's really just a means to access a state of higher consciousness that would be a little bit more work if you were just meditating. So it's almost like it does the work for you, so you're not fighting your mind trying to get into that state.

It's just a natural result of the motion that you're putting your body through. And that allows—so it's a moving meditation for you. That's right. That takes us back to the idea that the athletes are fundamentally the same group of people that were worshiping in other forms. In other words, what they're doing when they get addicted and they do it fanatically, it's a type of worship. It's identical to the same feeling that a person would get on Sunday if he went and sat quietly in a church or synagogue or something like that. It's that fundamentally, that's got to be the unifying, if there's anything that unifies religions and gets any following whatsoever, it would have to have a component of it would have to be the same state of mind. Right. Well, that is definitely a unifying thread through every, you know, aspiration.

The athlete here is finding, and he is also, and that's what I'm saying is in that category, he doesn't think of himself as being a worshiper, but if you really look at it and and that's what I'm saying, is in that category. He doesn't think of himself as being a worshiper. But if you really look at it and thinking that's what he's doing, he's a monk. That's what I was just going to say. I was going to say, you're actually, you live a very monk-like existence, incredibly simple, and you wake up and your day is about devotion. It is, yeah. By engaging in this meditative state of higher consciousness.

I live for it. And when I'm not in it, I'm literally just waiting to die. Like, I can see why the average doctor I observed that I knew that retired lived two years and then died. Usually because, at least the way doctors have been up until recently, maybe they still are, they really didn't have much of a life other than just working away as a doctor. That was their whole thing. So they were totally unprepared to be anything except maybe to drink, you know, at the last.

I think marijuana is a better choice than drinking, you know, at the last. I think marijuana is a better choice than drinking, you know, frankly. I think what I found out, and I'll put in a plug for this, if anybody's still listening to this podcast. Oh, they're listening. I've experienced life to, I'm 71, and I've seen this right and wrong and what's sin and what's ethical. I can, I've taken a good look at all that. And I can, wait a minute. I'm going to jog your memory. Yeah, jog my memory.

So you were talking about accessing a higher state of consciousness. Oh, yeah, yeah. Back on, here's the ethical system. Assuming that this model of the mind is right, okay, generally right. The ethical system is that everybody should, if they can, maintain and take care of one sin. I think we were meant to have one sin or one vice. For instance, smoking cigarettes would be considered a vice. Smoking marijuana is a vice.

Indiscriminate sex, frequent sex is a vice. Gluttony is a vice. Indiscriminate sex, frequent sex is a vice. Gluttony is a vice. On and on and on. All these people that have lived before us, they were right. These are vices. Now, part of us does well if we have one vice. We cherish it. We take care of it. So I'm getting an idea of what your vice is yeah

your life will fall apart if you add a second vice or third vice as a physician i've never seen an alcoholic who had only one vice have any problem i've never seen a smoker that had only that vice have a problem. I've never even seen a heroin addict or an amphetamine addict that had only that particular thing. The point is, I think that we can all live longer if we have one vice and we perfect it, live longer if we have one vice and we perfect it, but not add two. Now, if you don't need a vice, you can be judgmental, and that counts as a vice. Well, I don't think anybody's without vice on some level. My point is to have only one and perfect it. But why not work to try to overcome all your vices? Imperfectly, of course.

We're human beings. We're going to err. We're going to, you know, screw up and all these sorts of things. But why not commit yourself to always be trying to be better? Well, there's no reason not to if that's what you want to do. But there's a couple of things in favor of having one vice. Mark Twain identified the first one, that is, you have something to stop

if you start feeling too bad, okay? Or if the doctor tells you you've got to stop. There's always that one last thing. Yeah, one last thing you can do. Now, it also gives you something to do in the last part of your life. You can think to yourself, do I have enough time left that would justify changing my vice? And this is a worthy topic of your own existential.

In other words, the question you ask to stop a vice is a lot more interesting than to be a person who doesn't have a vice that decides maybe to start one. Yeah. I mean, I think that, like I said, I think we all have our vices in one form or another that are ramped up to whatever volume they're at. But I don't think there's anyone walking the planet who's vice-free, you know, completely. And I think the people that are the most judgmental about other people's vices are probably harboring secret vices of their own that they don't want other people to know about. I don't know how we got down this tangent. I think that having one, the main thing I tell the young people out here, and I try to get through them seriously, the point is, because they're drinking, smoking, doing everything, what they need to do is come down on one vice and just do one,

so their own life won't deteriorate. Right, but I think that, I mean, what if your one vice is crack cocaine? That's not going to end well. I bet. Yeah, but I think that's purely hypothetical. I don't think there's ever been a person who had only that particular vice. He probably had several vices. And there may be an exception to this.

But I think that, for instance, there have been people that function quite well on amphetamines, um, but they use it, the ones that get in trouble, drink and use amphetamines. Well, if you're, yeah, I mean, if you're, if you're an addict, you're an addict and the addict, well, I'm in recovery. I have been for years. Um, but I know, you know, one truth, which is that, you know, just because I'm not drinking doesn't mean that the addict isn't alive and well. I'm looking for something else to latch on to. So that's where the work is. My question to you would be, if you don't have any vices at this time, would you be happier to select another vice that was not maybe destructive as alcohol and then have that?

In other words, and I'm not asking if you have any vices. I have plenty, but go ahead. Well, anyway, I think that, in other words, I'm putting a plug in for one vice. I think that, in other words, I'm putting a plug in for one vice. Everybody should take it seriously because if you have no vices, you are isolated from the best part of humanity. You have a tendency to be judgmental, which is the worst possible. As I said, you turn into an asshole. Well, I think another way of putting is just to say to to embrace uh the imperfections of what it means to be human and yeah exactly perfect and to not and to not be hard on yourself because you're not perfect or holding yourself up

to some kind of impossible standard and to you know really just try to enjoy your life a little bit more. Right? I mean, but getting back to the skating, right? So we've got to talk about that a little bit more. So what I want to know is, I want to know, like, what's a typical day in the life? Well, I get up about 9, 9 o'clock or something like that, drank coffee watch the news why are you doing that that's not monk like shouldn't you shouldn't be watching the news poisoning your brain i know i i've always been addicted yeah to i'm one of those people and i and i i know the virtue of of stopping paying attention to all that but But I still, I love history. And I love the, frankly, it comes under the heading that I can't see,

when people say God loves man, I always thought that might be stretching it. Like there's nothing that lovable about man. But I could see God being fond of us because there are things about man, for instance politics, that I'm fond of watching. I like to listen to it. I like the idea of the historical, the way man has been the last couple of thousand years and being a part of that. And the whole thing, even if I was God and had nothing to do but watch it, I would probably enjoy watching it.

I enjoy Fox News. I enjoy watching the other networks, just the playoff. I enjoy the propaganda. I enjoy watching the other networks, just the playoff. I enjoy the propaganda. I enjoy Putin. I enjoy Assad. No wonder you got to skate all day. Clear your brain of all that nonsense.

I enjoy the whole fact that the human beings are involved to this extent. And that I got to watch it and be a part of it. I think it's just exciting and interesting. Now, as far as evolving, using it for involvement, no, it's not at all. It's not at all meditative and it's very different. No, as soon as I leave that and start skating i'm in a whole

nother situation so when you start to skate how long does it take you to access that's that zone like right it right now i can do it like in a second or two because i've i've worked at it facility yeah i just as soon as i call it right it's right up here. It's at the top of the hill. I'll take a left turn and start down the hill. And as soon as I do, I will drop into a state of mind which is just infinitely different. But it took me a couple of years. Like the first trick is to get in the zone. You have to find what I call a gate that is something to help you get in it, whatever it is you're doing.

Then the key is as soon as you get in it, to stay in it. And I just worked at it for the first few years I was skating. I had this every day and night to work. And so now I can drop right into it. It would be like when I was in the Navy, I did some research on hypnosis. And one time I had seven different Marines in the hospital as patients with this study and this phenomenon. Because there were a lot of people fainting and having syncopal episodes in the young people and i found out that some people you can hypnotize very quickly like in a moment other people takes a long process okay so there's a lot of variation of how quick a person can get into the zone.

Some people naturally can do it very quickly and others can't. I was sort of in between. I could get in it, but to stay in it more than, say, 30 seconds or a minute. It's a practice, right? It's a practice, yeah. You say with meditation, you're sitting there and then a thought pops up and you go down that train for a while and then you go, oh, yeah, I'm not supposed to be doing that. You bring it back. And then, you know, when you start off, you can't sit still for five minutes and it's just you have to work at it. So it's it's that's the whole trick.

is that the zone, in Amazing Grace, they make a distinction between sight and vision. And all religious types do. Sight and vision. And that distinction exists in your own life. Yeah. The sight that you lost, they gave you the vision. Right, right. When I'm skating, I'm not seeing anything. I'm you the vision right right when i'm skating i'm not seeing anything i'm seeing

the vision i've see it's like i'm not looking at anything but the the the whole picture is it's in the world of the unseen which by the way you said something about time uh space stretching it does stretch. It changes. The thing that makes us think that it doesn't change is that we rely on vision. Once you begin to study space, when you're not looking at it, you learn that it does change size according to movement, just like Einstein and them said. Even though it's very small, but we are a lot smaller than we think. In other words, the visual world we live in, which includes us, has given us a false idea of size and also where things are relative to each other.

And when you skate in and out and around people, you learn that there's a lot more space than you thought there was, than your mind is seeing. And you learn that there's a kind of a super throughness of space, which is added to by acceleration. For instance, it's a lot harder to hit a person if he's in one state of acceleration that is plumbed to the earth, say standing still, and you're in another state of acceleration, which is rotating, say, in a pendulum, which would be carving a turn back and forth. So you can change the space. You have to believe that you, in the vision that you're seeing with your mind's eye. And what is it about your specific technique where you have one leg up and your arms in front of you that enhances you accessing that zone-like state?

I don't have the final answer to that question. I was asked that a bunch of times. All I can say is there's some advantage. The feeling is maximized by being on one foot in that position. It seems like if I try to maximize the feeling of acceleration or this feeling of the zone, of being meditative, which is the feeling I'm trying to get, not acceleration per se, but the feeling, is that I will naturally go into certain positions. Number one is I think that the hands, I've noticed that the hands and the fingers will naturally fall into certain positions in meditation. The positions, you can see it in the ancient religious paintings, that they will often have the two fingers like this, you know.

And then the Buddha position is very common too in people that are deeply meditating. Right, the thumb and forefinger touching each other. These are automatic positions that have to do with the body language and so on of being meditative. And all I can say is a lot of birds seem to be meditating standing on one foot. Well, it's a single anchor to the center of the earth, right? You have both feet down. They're moving around.

Which one's the anchor, right? One leg down, and it's a straight shot down, right? Yeah. Yeah, it could be. You know, I think of it that way. It's kind of like a moving yoga pose, though. It's like Warrior 3. Exactly. That's kind of like a moving yoga pose, though. It's like warrior's weight. Exactly.

It's like warrior's weight. That's exactly what it is. And it adds to the meditative experience. Now, because you have to go in and out of people, if you meditate, usually you're alone, right? Think about this. To get meditative and to be right next to your fellow man of all types, of all ages, and close enough that you could touch him. And you're moving by so that nothing is harmful going to happen. But what I've experienced being that close to strangers continually, and I'm in the zone, completely in the zone, me and meditative. It would be like Buddha walks out of his zone and asleep walks right into the crowd of people

and begins to experience them in their normal state. To me, it's the type of anthropology that's just unreal. what I've learned about mankind by being in this world of strangers next to them and among them in a state of meditation. It's sort of like taking the red pill and the matrix and being able to see through the maya, the illusion. And so what is your, you know, when you look out upon mankind or you're watching the news in the morning, you know, what is it that you're seeing that we're not seeing? Good. I love your questions. meditative state of mind that I've so far gotten is I feel that everything exactly the way it is is the best possible. In other words, I wouldn't want to change anything, like even a death or somebody getting cancer or something like that. I would, in other words, I see the whole thing and I get close enough, I can see it like, wow, it already is the best.

The end, like for instance, the dialectic of trying to figure out whether we should do this or this in politics or something like that. The fact that we don't do this or this, but somehow or another kind of waver in between with a lot of argument, I think could conceivably, if we could test it, would be the best. In other words, we only know that the world can be one way. It ends up whatever this way or that way. It ends up one way. So in a way, we have a choice whether we believe that that's the ultimate way it could have been or whether it had gone off in some other way, that it would have ended up worse.

So I sort of see that in the best states of meditation, that I wouldn't want to change anything. Not even man's hostility to each other. I wouldn't go around saying, love your brother and all that. Or I wouldn't cure the poor or the alcoholic. I would see the whole thing as an absolute perfect kind of subjective organism that's evolving and growing like a plant or something like that. that's evolving and growing like a plant or something like that. And that everything, people in different stages of this evolvement,

if you look at the individuals, but the whole thing is on some sort of path where it's feeling its way into the future and it knows what it's doing, okay? And it knows what it's doing, okay? That it's even in small ways that you can't second guess God. I sort of feel that. Now, when I feel a little less meditative and petty, I can think of all sorts of ways that I would improve the world and do this and that. But every one of those times, it seems to me I've fallen back into the non-zone

as if I would know, for instance. Right. You're placing your judgment on something that you're not, you don't have all the information. Take this situation we've got here with the immigration, okay? Uh-oh, we're going to get political here. Well, it's just an example. Say what to do with the children, okay, that have come to our border. This is a good example. You could take either one direction or the other direction.

You can justify either direction. And you could probably say, well, it's going to fall somewhere just kind of in the middle, and it'll just kind of ends up out there somewhere where you could, the historians can write both sides as if they knew that it happened this way or that way, and you'll never really, because it's just going to all kind of disappear. Instead of being, well, we do this and this, we keep our country at the integrity of our country. That's the definition of a country. Or, no, I'm going to prove what a good person I am.

So like somebody up in San Francisco who's going to you know, to show what a wonderful person she is. A good person up in San Francisco. A bleeding hard liberal. I mean, you can see. You're a conservative guy. Yeah. You can see the justification for both positions. And I personally kind of see that this is, it's not something that I personally know the answer to.

And though I was tempted, I grew up in a society. See, I was born in 1943. We were born in the middle of a patriotic time. I was. And there was a country here called America. We called it America, the United States. Us, U.S. We still call it that, don't we?

Let's stop being a country, though. During the—what you've got now is kind of a territory, okay, because they're not treating it strictly as a country. I mean, the government has taken on another relationship to this area of the continent. And so I can see, I grew up thinking we had a country, but I've been able to see, well, if nobody else wants a country, or if half of them don't want a country in the old-fashioned sense, where, you know, we're really in it for a country. Half of them don't want a country in the old-fashioned sense where, you know, we're really in it for a country. I can go either way. I can see the advantage of going either way.

I can see that you can justify yourself, believe in either side. There's no nothing specifically more correct about globalism than there is about provincialism. I mean, like you say, I could come down and just care about this right here, or I could care about whether there's life on other planets. I mean, in a way, it's, I've just,

I kind of see that it doesn't really, this is a thing that's in the hands of the people and in history, not in my hands. Right, well, I mean, essentially what you're saying is it's not for you to judge. You're sort of in this observer role of what's going on. were in politics and you have the responsibility for your fellow man, the fiduciary responsibility, then it's your responsibility to be a patriot. Okay.

And that, I think, is a responsibility that is being not taken seriously by a lot of our leaders. True patriotism. Well, it depends on your definition of patriotism. Exactly. We don't want to go too far down a political black hole here. You know what I mean?

It gets blacker and blacker. So, yeah, we should probably wrap it up. We've been going for over two hours. That's good. Well, you're a good conversationist. Thank you. But I wanted to wrap it up kind of with one final thought thought which is something you've said in the in the beautiful documentary which we didn't even really talk

about but i thought josh eisenberg did an amazing job with that movie and i was so touched by it and uh and after i watched it i was like i gotta find this guy i gotta talk to him so i'm so happy that we're sitting here and doing this and it was it was uh I can't imagine the result of that film being at South by Southwest and I heard you went to the screening right that must have been something and then for it to be in the New York Times how has that changed your life or has it well it hadn't changed my life at all, but I've gotten just absolute amazing feedback from all corners. It seems to me that almost everybody that saw it really liked it. Now, I wouldn't have necessarily expected that, even though it was a nice little documentary. But for some reason, almost everybody, and I mean, personally, I've heard from hundreds and maybe thousands.

And it's coming from all over Europe and South America and not just here, Ireland. There were some people from Ireland yesterday that came, you know, Germany. People knocking on your door all the time now? Or just out on the boardwalk looking for you? No, no. You know, I think of that little place there is going to one day end up like when you're in Amsterdam, you go look at where Van Gogh lived, and it's like a little place like that. Like I had a photographer here the other day taking a picture of where I lived.

But nobody bothers me. As a matter of fact, you know, like I feel that I'm in a protected company. Well, you're an institution down here. There's nobody in this community that doesn't know who you are. And I would imagine that they, you know, I don't know, like it's probably cool for them that you got this exposure, but they probably also feel protective of you. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's ours, like, don't get too close or don't mess with them. Yeah, that's right. You know, I remember thinking that, let's see, the guy up in San Francisco, Tony Bennett, he tries to live a normal life is what I saw on TV one time

and goes to the grocery store and that type of thing I thought at the time when I saw it I was thinking like that's what a person ought to do is really just stay simple and like they are and still be who they are now that's all I do

I don't change I'm in this state of mind. But frankly, it hadn't changed my—I think I'm old enough where it has not affected my ego. I had a guy—I used to have an ego. Now I got that part. But now, you know, one of the interviews, this lady was saying, Slow Mo has life figured out. Slow Mo has life figured out. She said it about three or four times.

And I'm standing there going like, gosh, that's a disappointment. Because if I've got it figured out, it could be all that good. Right. I mean, that grabs headlines. You know, that's a catchy headline that will get people to listen or go to that website or what have you. But, you know. But I'm very modest about the slow-mo. I feel that I'm on a mission from God,

as they would have said in the Blues Brothers. I've not done anything to commercialize it, which if I was early in my life, I would have done it. You're wearing, just so people are listening, if you've watched the documentary, you're wearing the same shirt, the same hat, and the same cargo shorts that you were wearing in the documentary right now. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just, um, no, my, my whole existence now is, um, is the world of subjectivity and what, um, what we really are on the, on the

side of subjectivity. And, And you said in the documentary, and this is probably a great place to close it, that you feel that you're on the tip of a great iceberg of consciousness. So maybe you can just expand on that a little bit. The image, thanks again for a great question. To me, the metaphor of an iceberg is the perfect metaphor for a lot of things um the main thing is the human being himself um the tip of the iceberg

is usually we think of it as being the part that's the tips of various nearby icebergs. Say they're talking to each other and one of them knows that this one is so-and-so, the specifics. But the major part of the iceberg is generic. It's under the sea. It doesn't fit the tip of the iceberg, but when I'm skating, the tip of the iceberg, but when I'm skating, I feel like I'm at the tip of what is the human mind. It's the top, the very peak.

And but what I see when I relate to other people now, it's all below. It's all generic. For instance, with all due respect to your individual person, I see you as one more of these. And you've been here before, before, before, before. And you've had other capacities, other lives, the the generic and this is the tip of the iceberg at this moment you know and um you're carrying the consciousness which is you're obviously very much aware of your self-awareness and it's part of the iceberg but it's always been there and it came part of the iceberg, but it's always been there,

and it came from under the sea, and it'll pop back up like another tip, another tip, and so on. I like that. Thanks for talking to me, Slo-Mo. Yeah, thanks for talking to me. All right. Well, wow. Well, that was something, right? Holy smokes. That was some heavy stuff. I hope you enjoyed it. It was interesting to hear how fundamentally conservative slow-mo can be on certain issues. I'm not sure I expected that. I tried to keep it out of politics,

but hey, it veered off a bit here and there on a few tangents, but that's okay. I'm pretty sure you got the full slow-mo experience and that's what I was going for. So mission accomplished. When it was all over, slow-mo and I continued to talk for, I don't know, another 45 minutes. And it was pretty cool. I almost felt like I should have kept it recording because he shared a couple more really fascinating insights about his life. And at the end of it all, he said to me, he turned to me and he said, well, Rich, I hope you don't mind, but I would like to now consider you my friend. but I would like to now consider you my friend. And so that was pretty cool. A final anecdote. After our interview, I decided I was going to go for a run along the boardwalk.

I'm like, Hey, I'm in San Diego. I'm right here. I'm at the beach. I got to take advantage of this. I'm going to go and go for a run. And Slo Mo was getting ready to go for his second long skate of the day. So I put on my running shoes, he put on his skates, and we both went in our respective directions, said goodbye to each other. And I did an out and back on the boardwalk. And as I was circling back and coming back towards where I'd parked my car in front of his apartment, here he comes, slow-mo coming right at me in full warrior three yoga pose glide mode. coming right at me in full warrior three yoga pose glide mode. Up on one leg, his hands extended in front of each other, wild eyed, totally present. And yet in a world completely his own. I waved at him, I smiled. And not only did he fail to recognize me, it was like nobody was home. me. It was like nobody was home. So I can attest that his condition is real. And by that, I don't just mean his prosopagnosia. I mean his altered state of consciousness. So again, if you have not

yet seen the short doc on his life, please do it. Embed it on my site. Google it. Google slow-mo. You'll find it. And if you want to learn more about slow-mo, he actually has a website. Who'd have thunk, right? It's Iamslowmo.com. And on his website, the most interesting part of his website is that he has this treatise on there, or it's probably more aptly titled A Manifesto, on the subject of the zone and the non-zone, the subject that we kind of opened the podcast with talking about. It's super dense, it's super long, but it's also kind of awesome. So you should check that out. You should definitely read that. And he also has a Facebook page.

It's not him, but there's lots of stuff about him on this page. And I think it's facebook.com forward slash slow mo fan. If you're inspired by slow mo and trying to unlock your own version of a more authentic life, but not sure how to start, well, you can always check out my new course at MindBodyGreen. It's called The Art of Living with Purpose. It's all about how to set and achieve goals and really begin that process of unlocking a better version of yourself, restructure your life, etc. You can find that on the homepage of mindbodygreen.com. It's good stuff. Two hours of streaming video content and online community, downloadable tools, all sorts of good stuff. Of course, there's also my ultimate guide to plant based nutrition course also on mindbodygreen.

Similarly structured a little bit longer in terms of video content, a little over three hours, all good stuff for your plant power provisions. Go to richroll.com. We have nutritional products. We have garments. We have signed copies of Finding Ultra. We have our digital cookbook. We have our meditation program, Jai Release. So go check that out. You know what to do. If you want to support the show, best way to do that is to tell a friend and thank you so much for spreading the word. That's how we are building this plant power revolution. That's how we're getting the word out there. So thank you guys. Also, for those moments when you're going to buy something on Amazon, click on the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com right there on the homepage or

any of the blog pages or bookmark it to your browser better yet. So you don't have to always go to my site. And then when you're getting something on Amazon, use that link, get what you're going to get. It doesn't cost you a cent extra and Amazon kicks us some commission change and that helps us keep going. You can also donate to the show at richroll.com. There's a donate button. And thank you so much for everybody who's doing that. A great way to show the love is to Instagram

an image of you listening to the show, whether you're out exercising or commuting or at work or whatever you're doing. I love that stuff. Thanks. A lot of great ones came in this week. I tried to comment on all of them and share them. So tag them with my name. It's at Rich Roll. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook, Twitter, all those kind of places. I'm at Rich Roll pretty much everywhere. Also, and finally, if you are in New York City on July 9th, you can join me in Brooklyn at the Powerhouse Arena, 7 p.m. in the Dumbo neighborhood for the book release party for John Joseph's new book, Meat is for Pussies.

John Joseph is a big-time favorite on the RRP. He's been on the show twice. I'm going to try to sit down with him again when I'm in New York City. His book is coming out on July 8th. He's having a big party for the release, and I'm going to get up and say a few words. I'm pretty excited to help him launch this book. And also really proud of the fact that I wrote the foreword to the book. So you can pre-order it now on Amazon. Check that out. Really happy with the words that I was able to put in his book and so glad that it made it into the final edit. And I hope to see you at the event again, July 9th, Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn.

For more information on that event, you can go to the link on my website or go to powerhousearena.com for details into RSVP. So you might want to do that soon though, because space is limited. Okay, that's it. This week's assignment, find your own version of the slow-mo zone. Maybe it's taking a walk in the woods. Maybe it's a swim in the lake. Or maybe it's just 20 minutes silent with yourself shortly after you wake up in the morning. But engage that side of who you are and lean into it.

It's not selfish. It's self-care. And there's a big difference. See you next week. Peace. Plants.