The School of Greatness - Brain Surgeon REVEALS the PURPOSE of Dreams & What They TRULY Mean! | Dr. Rahul Jandial

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Welcome to The School of Greatness! I'm your host, Lewis Howes, and today we're diving into the fascinating world of dreams with our guest, Dr. Rahul Jandial. Dr. Jandial is not only a renowned neurosurgeon but also a neuroscientist with a deep understanding of the human brain. In this episode, we'll explore the significance of dreams, their impact on our waking life, and the mysterious workings of our minds during sleep. Whether you're curious about lucid dreams, the role of nightmares, or the connection between dreams and reality, this conversation promises to enlighten and inspire. So, get ready to unlock the secrets of your dreams and discover how they shape our lives. Let's jump right in!Buy his new book for yourself and a friend - This Is Why You Dream: What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking LifeIn this episode you will learnThe potential meanings and implications of our dreams in daily life.Strategies for remembering dreams and the benefits of waking up without an alarm.The psychological and developmental roles of different types of dreams.How dreams might influence the realization of real-life goals and experiences.The biological and mystical aspects of dreaming, including the significance of the pineal gland.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1603For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Eckhart Tolle – https://link.chtbl.com/1463-podRhonda Byrne – https://link.chtbl.com/1525-podJohn Maxwell – https://link.chtbl.com/1501-pod

The ultimate gift of the human mind, I think, is dreaming. Love and all those things, yes, but the process of dreaming. Now I'm going to be bold here, this is a conversation. I think we sleep because we must dream. He is a dual-trained neurosurgeon who has both an M.D. and Ph.D. and he's based out of the world-famous City of Hope Hospital here in Los Angeles. He's a researcher and author of 10 books and countless academic papers on the brain. Dr. Rahul Jandayal.

of 10 books and countless academic papers on the brain, Dr. Rahul Jandayal. Why, after dozens of years of doing brain surgeries, being a PhD in neuroscience and understanding the mind, did you want to dive into understanding dreams? I mean, you've put it right where it needs to be. This is a big topic. When color TV showed up, the dream reports of thousands of people being asked,

woken up in their sleep, what are you dreaming about? The dream started to be more in color. When color TV showed up, the dream reports of thousands of people being asked, woken up in their sleep, what are you dreaming about? The dream started to be more in color. I've woken up but not been able to move or speak. Yeah. And I feel like I'm screaming but nothing's coming out. Yeah. What is that?

Sleep paralysis. What you describe about, this is great, just give me a minute to take this one, because this one I got a lot of science. What the... Do you think our dreams have meaning in our waking life? Well, that has the massive question, right? So that's the, what I would say is. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness.

Very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring Dr. Rahul Jandiaw in the house. Good to see you, man. Welcome back. My pleasure. The last interview we did blew up. People were fascinated by it. You are a neuroscientist who studies the mind, but also a brain surgeon who

has been helping remove cancer for dozens of years to over thousands of patients. And so you studied the material brain, but also the spiritual side of the brain as well, the mind, let's say. Yeah. And you're an expert in both. And the last interview we did, we talked about many different things around these topics, but you have a new book called This Is Why You Dream, What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking Life. And this is interesting because we were talking before that there's not really anyone who is a scientist of dreams out in the world yet Except for you're starting this path

You're starting to talk about the neuroscience of dreaming which I think is fascinating because you told me About a third of the time we don't remember What we're doing in our lives a third of the time we're asleep and a lot of us don't remember what we're doing in our lives. A third of the time we're asleep and a lot of us don't remember our dreams. We don't understand our dreams. They don't make sense to us. We have nightmares. We have erotic dreams. We have inspiring dreams. We have dreams where you feel like we're falling or dreams where you feel like we're about to die. And then we wake up in a shock. We have all these weird moments. we remember and we we we we over emphasize what the dream was but it really didn't happen and then other times we have no clue what happened

in our dreams and so why after dozens of years of doing brain surgeries being a phd in neuroscience and understanding the mind did you want to dive into understanding dreams i mean you put it right where it needs to be this is a big topic there's a reason people haven't been tackling it because it's like trying to grab a cloud or like trying to hold on to something that's just like we all know what it is we know what dreams are we all have had dreams i don't have to explain to you what a nightmare is you know what it is i know what it is we don. We don't talk about it. We can't really wrap our minds around it, but it's something we all experience. It's something we all undergo. So your question about why did I want to write a book on dreams? What I would tell you is I was asked to write this book. So the way of my journey that's

ended up here, a lot of it is, you know, I have sons. I have three, as we were talking about, they're 18, 19, and 22. I've taken care of thousands of cancer patients. I've done surgery in South America. These experiences are also part of my resume. Now, I happen to have a PhD in neuroscience and I'm a neurosurgeon, but there are other neuroscientists, there are other neurosurgeons, I believe. And in this conversation, when you hear me say, I believe, or I wonder, or could it be, it's out of respect for you and your listeners, because you don't want anybody coming in on this topic and saying, aha, I got it all figured out. One, two, three. No, it's an exploration. I'm looking at fragments and pieces across broad scientific things i'm bringing my

own stories into my own experiences and i'm saying look look at these little they're almost like fireflies these little glimpses of knowledge that we now have or that three thousand years ago they were talking about lucid dreaming they being being Aristotle. What is the consistent pattern? Not my dream, not your dream. But what if we look at 10,000 dreams? Do we start to see some pattern? We do. And we'll get into that.

Nightmares and erotic dreams are essentially universal. Falling dreams and teeth falling out have happened for hundreds of years across cultures like when you went from carriages to cars to electric vehicles to television those dreaming patterns are consistent so the first thing i thought wait wait a second they're being driven by the brain then when technicolor came in dream reports people cataloging what dreams are going on right that's where I'm studying. What dreams happen most commonly? What dreams don't happen at all? Two things popped into my mind. I was looking at this and saying,

when color TV showed up, the dream reports of thousands of people being asked and woken up in their sleep, what are you dreaming about? The dream started to be more in color. So clearly waking life fed dreaming life. And then the other thing I noticed was rarely did they report math in dreams. Yeah, I don't think I've ever had a math dream. Thank God. That doesn't sound fun. But most people, we look at 10,000 dreams, everybody's had a nightmare.

Nearly everyone. In science, when I say everybody, I don't mean 100%. most people we look at 10 000 dreams everybody's had a nightmare nearly everyone in science i say everybody i don't mean 100 it's like you know above 90 issues gets to be essentially universal nightmares and erotic dreams very few lots of emotional dreams lots of visual dreams a lot of movement dreams and we'll get into that but very few math dreams right like very few people said and even the scientists i say i came up with the idea of dreaming it's a visual thing like the snake eating itself or two comets moving apart and what i realize now that those you know what we dream and now in the last 20 30 years we could have brain scans that's a that's a simple word but we're going to dissect that in this

conversation like the metabolism how much glucose your brain is using. Where is that glucose being used? What's the electricity? So when I say brain scan, there's a lot of different ways of scanning brain information. The brain scans at night in a machine with people sleeping, with people dreaming, they were notably dampened. Not off. Let's change all of this. There's no part of your brain that's off. Otherwise, it'd be a stroke. That part would die. But everything in the brain is a modulation. It's always like 51, 49. Nothing is ever on or off.

It's not a switch. There's blood flow always going everywhere. If a branch is blocked, then you have a stroke. what happens is the executive network in the prefrontal cortex just the part of the brain behind the forehead the part that does reason and logic and math it's it's 49 it's 48 during that right now it's probably 51 52 but it's dampened at night and so dampening the executive network in our dreams allows for them to be illogical, allows them to be wild, in my opinion, and also explains why we're not doing math

because that's needed for math. Interesting. So that, it took my breath away. I was like, wait a second. So some patterns of dreaming, from thousands of dreams, can be explained by some patterns of the dreaming brain. And that was the idea in my head.

And my publisher in London, Penguin UK, we were talking about doing a different book. That's going to be the next one hopefully but um you know she said we we we need we and i think she meant like the publishing world and readers and people in general like if they're they're real they're really you know they put out books that are like french fries i love french fries but they also want to put out some stuff like look this is an important book we need a book about dreams explained about the science of it the story of it a love letter to dreams because there is no dream scientist it's not a field i'm a neuroscientist with live experiences trying to put together brain scans dream reports neurons in a petri dish to put together a story of what i think is happening in dreams and dreaming wow that's how this started wow and it's just what's that happened

has been an ignition in my mind for about 18 months so there's been a there have been reports on lots of different dreams right there's been like people documenting their dreams yeah and there's there's studies around that great question first of all again not my dream or your dream but there are great dream banks uh-huh uh people for decades have uh woken people up in sleep labs they put an electrode on to make sure they're sleeping they say hey wake up what are you dreaming about and they write it down yeah so that that world's been happening okay that's where i'm getting like the uh you know a certain percentage report dreams of falling certain percentage dreams of uh you know uh being chased a certain percentage of math really that's yeah everybody nightmares everybody's sexual erotic dreams okay so you that pattern is not

mine right it's what other people methodically have been cataloging by people either sending in writing journaling uh or sleep labs being you know woken up and that that's where i'm getting those patterns do you think our dreams have meaning in our waking life well that is the that's the massive question, right? So that's the, that's the, um, um, what I would say is let's go backwards a little bit. My answer is yes, but, but to be able to share with you how to go by, go about extracting that meaning. Yes. One is going to be individual. I can't tell you what your dreams are about and you can't tell me what my dreams are about so it's a process of self-examination yes dreams have

meaning not all dreams right not all our waking thoughts are fresh or or you know or important or worth holding on to but what let's get to that is can do dreams have meaning but with your permission you know let's let's aren't let's equip people with what is happening in the dreaming brain yes and then what different dreams mean so then they have a playbook at the end yeah and what I would say is the dreaming brain is this was the essential question is okay so you got all the dream patterns right so we got what we dream you're looking at what people have cataloged uh to make sense of why we dream that's your essential question that we get to and then there's just like this this thing like

like the dreaming brain and the waking brain right like and so this and i believe these big ideas are applicable to everybody like getting groceries frustrated why am i stressed out why am i overreacting like all of all the things for living a better waking life you can't separate them from that that third of your life you spend sleeping and potentially dreaming right so i go way way back to try to understand this and to make sense of it for myself and and i think you'll find there's there's science and there's stories but there's synthesis so first thing is all life is is governed by the rotation of the planet let's just start with square one like let's just get to the basic here like like whether it's like

those hot springs deep in the ocean and there's some bacteria there or a venus fly trap that opens and closes or the moon and the tides um or sleep right like this this is governed because that was the foundation on which life arose right and when you look at that what I would say is the material the living material on planet Earth follows that mmm whether it's the tide or the plankton or fish or you know all migration but also the material in our brain really like there's nothing in our skull that if you pieced it out there's no special ingredient like from krypton or something everything in nature is also everything inside our skull in these brains right that's connected differently it's functioning

differently but that was like the first thing that really tripped me out. I was like, we too follow the laws, fundamental laws of Earth's rotation. These circadian rhythms you're hearing about and cycles and seasons. And that was the first time I said, okay, so the brain is the waking brain and the sleeping brain are doing a 24-hour cycle for as long as the run you have on this planet interest that's the first thing that cycle it actually you know there was like i love this topic by the way i mean it's like there are like people who go into canes for like six months it's still in a cycle oh like it's not based just on dark blackout shades or not. Like we, the tissue in our bodies, the cells, we're following this earth's rotation. Okay. So if we say that there's the waking brain and the sleeping brain and every 24 hours it does its things, two third waking,

one third sleeping. And that happens for the most part you know for how long you live now a surgeon in training i might skip a few nights um so maybe i've had 500 or a thousand nights but overwhelmingly i follow this cycle too and in that cycle we have to ask ourselves well what's going on in the dreaming brain? And right away, I'll tell you, it's so important. There's something called sleep pressure. You could defy a lot of things, but you go a day without sleeping, there's something building inside you saying sleep, sleep, sleep.

You'll fall asleep in a dangerous spot. You'll fall asleep standing up sometimes. You'll fall asleep even though you haven't eaten like there's something fundamental called sleep pressure that makes us follow that that rhythm right your body will force you to sleep eventually well i would say your brain your brain just shuts off it's it's this it builds a pressure you can startle people and they'll wake up but at some point there's this pressure that's bringing you down to sleep. Really? You see that.

I think torture techniques were based off of that. We saw that. Nobody could stay up a third night in the hospital. They tried to get us to a long time ago, the battle day. Really? Yeah, but two nights. Second night, you could do. Third night.

So there's a sleep pressure that the brain generates. Not the body, the brain. Because just to give you just examples like we're talking about like regular examples we're not trying to get we'll bring the science in but the the complexity is in the um in the concept i can we can put hearts from one to another livers from one to another lungs from one to another uh they all follow the that person's brains order so really what we're talking about is the brain is saying, I need to sleep. The brain is saying, I need to sleep. The brain is saying, okay, there's some threat going on,

or you've got some demands. You're running an ultramarathon. You're a surgeon on call. I can go a day, but I need to sleep. So that's the first thing in this discussion is, why do we need to sleep? Now I'm going to be bold here. This is a conversation.

I think we sleep because we must dream now let me just set that up for you wow what happens when you go without sleep you have surges in REM and dreaming sleep right away first thing you do when you've gone a day without sleep if you put that person in a brain scan but there's exquisite ways of checking it is that they didn't first thing they do is they dream wildly right like so that's that's an interesting thing to me the longer we go in our night of rest quote restful sleep the more you're dreaming on the tail end right so maybe mental clarity if we take that phrase comes from having that longer night's sleep well what happens in that fifth sixth and seventh hour you're dreaming more so when i start to see these patterns i wonder one the brain not the body needs to sleep and then what is the brain doing in sleep i just checked this out man it's it's doing something

that if you put electrodes on the surface of our scalps and we all fall asleep at night during the day the waves the the measurements are uh you know sort of wavy there's different ones that depending on how you're engaging at night there are some sharp 90 minute patterns that stuff is designed that's built in really yeah so that's not new we don't have that when we're awake no during the like if something startles us the electricity will be different if we if we meditate the electricity will be different if we if we meditate the electricity will be different during waking but at night you're all you're on something program then that's not new lewis that's the stuff that i we i've known for 20 years and sleep people know for 40 years what i'm trying to do is give you an explanation a a synthesis. That's not random. That's not a glitch.

7 billion brains on a 24-hour cycle, sleep pressure, you got to lie down, you got to sleep. The brain is saying you got to sleep. And when it's sleeping, it's doing this. 90 crisp cycles, REM sleep. You've seen the charts. They look like the top of a Tetris thing or a Lego thing. That is something fundamental that's happening, in my opinion. And so that's why I think we must sleep. But I think what's the most important part of sleep is the dreaming. My kidney and my liver don't need to sleep. You can take part of the liver from a mom and put it in the child. It's no longer connected, the transplanted liver, to the web of nerves. Liver's fine.

Lungs are fine moving between humans. Wow. Right? So what I'm trying to point out there is that it's the brain that's running the show. It's on the earthly pattern. It wants to sleep. And in that sleep, what is it doing? It's the brain that's running the show. It's on the earthly pattern. It wants to sleep. And in that sleep, what is it doing? It's dreaming.

The brain, in my opinion, with respect fully adapted, and stay fully enriched in all the corners of his mind without just the boring part of our day, right? If the brain only did what we did, driving the 101 or doing this, which is fantastic, but it would become rigid, right? It would become like an arm that's never stretched past a certain distance, right? You get a contracture.

Well, the brain tissue, my opinion, that dreaming is the brain's way. Now that people have other ideas, like it's threat training or it's a nighttime therapist. I get that. And I think in some capacity, but at the most fundamental level, it's like high intensity training for your mind. At night, it just goes wild to make sure all those capacities and resources, imaginations, if you will, are accessible to you if you needed them during the day, if the environment or evolution needed it. So that's like the big explanation about what's happening when we sleep. We're dreaming. Dreaming is important. It's metabolically active. It's electrically active.

It puts us at risk. And even if you are in danger, your brain will force you to lie down so it can sleep to dream. That's how fundamental I think dreams are. Now, what if people, that's powerful. I'm glad you shared that. And what if people are listening or watching say, well, I can't remember any of my dreams. And I don't think I dream at all. Yeah. Because i can't remember any of my dreams and i don't think i dream at all yeah because i can't remember them that's so what's wrong with me and should i be

worried if i don't have dreams well i would say the genius is built in so that that's happening whether you want it or not and the essential question of i've had people ask me that like well if i don't remember my dreams is it useful useful? I mean, what is it? Well, if you're not remembering them, so let me take that one apart a little bit. Here's my thinking on it. We'll bring in imagination and even sports visualization to try to understand that. And we'll bring in something called autobiographical memory. So let's start with memory first, okay? It's not what you're seeing on TV or or like, you know, remembering names or addresses.

I like my iPhone. I don't remember phone number again, you know? Like there's that kind of memory. Then there's procedural memory, like riding a bike, tying your shoelaces. Then there's episodic memory, remembering episodes of your life, right? So we have lots of different shades and types of memory. And the one that connects me to the fact that I was here with you maybe about two years ago is something called autobiographical memory. When I, I have gone

through so many different things in so many different countries and places, but I feel as if I have inhabited and lived through all of those experiences. Think about that, right? What's the thing that stitches all my life together? That's a type of memory. It's called autobiographical memory. And so I think by design and importance, in some rare cases, it's to avoid waking and dream confusion. So it has this wild run at night. But when you wake up, and we'll talk about that transition, like the transition between a dreaming brain and waking brain. It's not a hard line.

It can be fuzzy in the morning, and that's why some people report sleep paralysis and goblins and weird stuff. But the autobiographical memory has to come back into command because that's what stitches our waking life together. That's what's get food get to work get on the subway so the autobiographical memory takes over every morning when we wake up and for it i think for us to stay to not be confused about what reality is because we had such a wild ride it there there's a the memory is designed to have dreaming fade to the background and so i think i think it's it. And so I think it's happening. Electrically, it's happening.

And what we're catching are a few glimpses of it bleeding into our waking brain. It's like, oof, last night, what was going on in my head? Those are the glimpses and the flares of the dreaming brain bleeding into the waking life. And those are the ones that that um that we want to pay attention to you know so that's the that's the way i'm thinking about dreaming and trying to explain it too okay so many questions i want to ask here let's do it there's different types of dreams there's nightmares there's erotic dreams there's weird crazy dreams there's sleep paralysis and i think i know what that is

because i think i've had that a few different times so i'd love to start there because this is something i can relate to where i've woken up but not been able to move or speak yeah and i feel like i'm screaming but nothing's coming out yeah what is that because that's terrifying i know right but you're asking me to like you're asking me to tackle giants of giants of mystery everything what it is yeah in one afternoon you know but but what i again with humility if you hold on to the concept if you just if you just say look that was like this we don't have to do a study but i get what he's saying we're on planet earth we clearly have to sleep right our brain i i believe him our brain is the thing that needs to sleep and now what he's saying is um that hey check this out while you're sleeping you're you're dreaming whether you

remember none of it a little of it or some of it you're dreaming okay if we if we if we hold on to that and then always come back to like if one person later on is like huh i am a cycle of waking brain dreaming brain just if you just walk away one thing like you're waking brain dreaming brain 24 hours waking times whatever life is waking brain and just to ask yourself is this contribution to my thinking to my emotion from the waking brain or the dreaming brain or or somewhere where it where it blends so when you uh sleep paralysis um a third of people have experienced it. I haven't, but when I started writing about sleep paralysis,

what you describe about, this is great. Just give me a minute to take this one because this one I got a lot of science. What the dreaming brain also does is not just hyper-emotional and hyper-visual and dampened logic, right? That we open with hyper-emotional, hyper-visual, dampened logic, okay? So that's there. What it also does is it locks down your body. So you're temporarily paralyzed right there's some exceptions or reflexes or sleepwalking but in general you're temporarily paralyzed so the dreaming brain can let loose be emotional be wild and in the morning that paralysis has to come off

interesting like that's an that we can all agree on right right? That's the dreaming brain and the waking brain. When there is a mismatch of you waking your dreaming brain, the mind is coming to, but the chemicals that have locked down your body, right? The chemical paralysis is still there. People will wake up locked in their body. That's kind of what you're describing and then on top of that they start describing goblins and monsters and different things lurking

intruders i've never experienced i never experienced that either but that's described so much so that if you go to italy you go to africa you go to other places they all have a similar story of being locked in the body and having a threatening presence in the room and sometimes a feeling of suffocation wow that grouping is something humans experience and something cultures have come up with their own stories about so if people want to look it up it's like succubus the incubus and succubus come from that yeah yeah and it's a famous painting with a goblin on top of a woman who's asleep right what i want people to go is ah i see that sleep paralysis that lewis brought up was because the dreaming brain and the waking brain they don't just snap to the next phase

that sometimes they bleed into each other and that's called sleep exit that little window is called sleep exit sleep entry is a fascinating one too, but sleep exit. I've almost, I've had it a couple of times at night, like in the beginning of sleeping also where I've like fallen asleep, but like 30 minutes later I've like woken up. It's almost, I'm not asleep yet.

That's my favorite time. I am for a minute. And so my fiance says, I mean, this is just from her, uh, theories, but she says,

you know, that's you entering a lucid dreaming, like allowing that to happen, allowing that sleep paralysis to happen because you're half awake, half asleep. And if you stay there and you don't freak out and scream, like try to scream,

you could actually enter. She says that's what happens for her and she enters the most incredible lucid dreams that are vivid in memories for her. She's not wrong. And so it's more of just like surrendering to, I can't memories for her she's not wrong and so it's more of just like surrendering to i can't move so she's not wrong but again so you know people are like what are they talking like if you just if you if if you keep this conversation on the framework of

dreaming brain and sleeping brain dreaming brain and waking brain, then you know where the explanations land. So what you're talking about is the waking brain entering the sleeping brain. The sleep world, yeah, yeah. Very good. And that, again, doesn't happen like in a millisecond. Like a switch. You don't blink your eyes and go into that mode. It bleeds. And I remember they said, how do I explain it?

I was diving away. I don't do it anymore. But I was diving in the caverns of like the yucatan and where the fresh water meets the ocean water there's like four feet or it's like blurry and i was like yeah it's not gonna go from a freshwater river to ocean and like what like a hair yeah there's a period of overlap interesting and so if you hold on to that uh your waking brain is starting to enter your dreaming your sleeping brain that window there's a word for it it's called hypnagogic and hypnopompic forget about that i like because i want to have a conversation sleep entry sleep entry is also a 15 20 minute period where you can kind of be in these liminal spaces where you're like, I'm remembering a lot, but man, I'm having some wild thoughts.

Lucid dreaming is when you've been asleep and then the awareness you're in a dream returns. That's a whole different topic. So she's right. It's a blended state. Your significant other. blended state uh your significant other but sleep entry has been channeled by salvador dali and others and in movie inception as a place to extract fresh ideas your fresh ideas might be great my fresh ideas might be bad i'm not saying that's the way to become a creative genius but people have used that window and now there's some devices that when they see you feel you falling asleep they'll wake you up so sleep entry is the blurry movement from the waking brain to the dreaming brain and

that is an interesting uh space for creativity sleep exit is the dreaming brain to the waking brain and sometimes the body stays locked in and locked down and the mind comes back and that freaks people out that's called sleep paralysis wow that's that's my synthesis and i that's interesting now this might be off topic here but i'm curious to have an optimal day is it better to wake up organically without an alarm or to wake up with something that is alarming you okay when you wake up so a great question first of all because now we have the concept so if you believe your dreaming thoughts are ones you want to hold on to if they're nightmares maybe you want to forget but nightmares won't let you forget that's a a different topic. They arrive in children for a different reason. But what I do now, because I have the luxury of a bed and curtains,

it's out of respect for all the people in this world that don't have that. But I believe when I have had a good idea, I actually forget that. My last hundred bad ideas have come from somewhere in sleep entry and sleep exit and when i'm driving around la or whatever i'm you know i'm in lax or he throw whatever it is uh when i go oh interesting thought that uh it's not an aha moment when you have a thought that you don't know where it came from i believe it's from that nightly process that's going on. Interesting. That work you're putting in at night on your own, the design for the brain to dream, to stay creative, to stay enriched, to activate emotions and sights that are way beyond

what you would even choose for during the day, right? We'd become so boring if our brains didn't dream at night, right? The capacity would be constrained. So when I have an interesting idea, I try to think about, did that come from my dreaming brain or have I been working with that? So I've been giving these talks on creativity

and people are, so there's an incubation period and an extraction period. I believe habits during the day, whether it's like colored television, more colored dreams, put some red colored goggles on people and they had more red colored dreams i believe like i do things like i like to flip through

magazines or i listen to different music and i i take different routes home i believe i'm feeding my dream life and then at dream at sleep entry or sleep exit i try to hold on to what was i thinking about what was i thinking about what was i thinking about how did i feel about that what was that going on and to do that you you can't have the alarm which is a luxury and the first thing you can't check is your phone because the minute you check your phone right that autobiographical autobiographical memories onto the day what you want is that autobiographical memory thing that stitches every day together, not to come on so fast. And to some people, I mean, you can read about it,

but the concept is there to slow down the sleep exit or to pay attention to the sleep entry and jot down or hold onto those windows. And I, for me, whether it's coming up with a new surgery, coming up with an idea for science, or working with the L.A. Ballet now, or writing, when I have had a good idea, it's come from those spaces. Interesting. Not from being rushed and waking up with an alarm and going right into it. That's important.

You've got to shelter and food. You've got to stay employed, showing up on time like i'm not it's a luxury but if you're really trying to take yourself to the next level my process for extracting ideas uh is to work with my dreaming life wow that's amazing so you mentioned nightmares why do you think kids have nightmares and also kids or teens start to have erotic dreams at the same time yeah um and i'm sure they wish they had more erotic dreams than nightmares but why do why do we need both erotic dreams and nightmares as we're growing up all right so again we return to the the foundation of our conversation conversation that these are back to what we dream. Okay.

Like that's been described for a long time. I'm not coming at this new, right? And so when we look at the pattern of what people dream, you know, the simple stuff like, oh, you have a flight tomorrow. You have a dream about missing your flight. You don't need need to interpret that you know what that is or you got a presentation tomorrow you have a dream of showing up naked or something behind the podium like we know we get that uh but why would you have nightmares like that this chapter two for a reason because i wanted to come across and just say look this is a work of imagination yes that there's nobody that can take these few glimpses of science and life

and come up with like a foolproof hey i got it all figured out story so here's what's interesting about nightmares um if there's anything that would make somebody say look hey this dreaming thing is not good for us why do we have nightmares like that's like it feels like a glitch right it feels like the mind uh-huh uh like a mind's mistake if you will i don't think it is but so when you look at the patterns um to understand it there are two types of nightmares and there's the one with the big idea but let me get to the other one that's easier if you have been traumatized assaulted peace ptsd nightmares or flashbacks yes it's a bad memory on loop stamped with raw emotion can't shake it that we have some firmer understanding of so if you're struggling and you have uh worsening

headaches you say hey i gotta think about seeing a doctor if you're an athlete you have worsening pain the key is if you have worsening new onset and progressive nightmares talk to your doctor or therapist about it it could be a psychological thermometer that things aren't going well for you that's a big topic and i think other people are in that space i'll leave that one there yeah the one that interests me is having three sons and uh is each of them at one point i had to say to them it's all right it was only a nightmare it's only a dream so the first thing i thought was does that mean they didn't and i'm looking at i'm looking at now i'm looking at a neuro development to understand this i went into a whole different space like how you know we're not born walking and talking right so you see kids they're putting things together the movements become fluid you're physically mature not born

made and you're cultivated physically right i believe the mind is also being cultivated internally and one example would be you got to remind kids it's only a dream so that means at some point when they're young likely they're confusing or cannot separate uh dreaming thoughts and waking thoughts that and at that time when you ask them what they think about it's very in general i mean this one kid might tell you the wildest thing. I'm not telling that person or that parent that that's not what they're experiencing. But the pattern is the dream reports of children, and some families signed up for this. I've just, I studied it.

They follow their dream reports from like age two to 20. Wow. Longitudinally. Like, what are you dreaming about now? What are you dreaming about now? What are you dreaming about now? And their dreams are simple. It's like a table or a blanket interestingly when they dream of animals they're not often pets they're like beasts and monsters and teddy bears so i can't

explain all of that but that's what they're describing it's not the pet that they have that's in their dream and as we're learning to walk and talk to h234 something's going on in the mind there are some structures this i need a moment for this one there there's a type of cognition that's developing first is visual spatial and and then these these developmental scientists they looked at it that the wildness of kids' dreams correlates more to the complexity of how they navigate visual spatial things. They have a test called block design. It's not how well they can spell and remember. The more three-dimensional they are, that parallels complexity of dreaming in a child so all the parents out there you don't make them memorize you know in my opinion i did like cultivate their

sense of gymnastics music art whatever you can different foods your diversity experiences it's not being correlated to logic right so that also like makes me feel like that's that guides a little bit and then what happens is they develop this thing called at some point they realize it's just an example that that teacher or that uncle or that person when that they're smiling and saying hey i want to want to help you. But the capacity develops, it's called theory of mind, where you start to read the other person's intention beyond just what they're saying. Interesting. Yeah, that develops. Kids are gullible, that develops.

Theory of mind. Yeah, TOA, people can look it up, theory of mind. So that's just like there's a uh me i could throw the ball like that's developed at a certain age around five or six seven and the idea of that person's intentions may not be completely clear or they might be misrepresenting their intentions or maybe i shouldn't trust them or maybe they would hurt me these These important concepts arrive in the brain at the same time as nightmares arrive. Wow. So I think if I were to say why do we,

and then these nightmares all go away for kids. And then as adults, we get them if we have trauma. They come as a wave. Interesting. It's crazy. Wow. I might be completely wrong, but I would love to hear somebody

come up with a better so you're not just gullible all the time what everyone says i think nightmares make the mind nightmares make the mind yeah they make you sharp they give you a sense of self versus other they make you less gullible they create a sense of threat they they the fleeing and the terror i think it guides the cultivation of this thing called theory of mind where you realize just because the person is smiling, that doesn't mean they have good intentions. Interesting. And that is cool, right? I mean, they're not arriving for all of us at age eight, six, seven, eight, and then fading for most of us as we get into adolescence without a reason like that's not that's not a glitch in the system wow my belief i wonder again with humility and i'm taking on big

things here so if that's not what it is for you i i believe it i'm not saying i got it all figured out but i'm just here to show you like, and then people, and that we are in many ways still that dynamic as adults. So whatever you're at the grounded level, your struggle with your lover, your struggle with your partner, like you're a dynamic ecosystem of mind and body. And I just want to take people back to like, look at that.

Like we're not, and there's a certain part of the brain that gives you that capacity. Like there's, it's, we'll get into that some other day, but in that part, there's a certain part of the brain that gives you that capacity. Like, we'll get into that some other day. But in that part, the newest part of the brain that pushed the forehead forward, there's a part that when it's injured, it doesn't work well. We can't, like, make new opinions or we become gullible. Like, there's some cellular basis to the theory of mind. Wow. of mind wow but again i think no nightmares arriving for all of us at the same time as

we're becoming like oh that person might hurt me or what do i want self versus other i mean self in italics um i think that's all happening in parallel for a reason wow i think that's all happening in parallel so chapter two so right at the gates so if nightmares make the mind what do erotic dreams do okay so these So these are my, that's why it's just chapter three. I know everybody's going to want to hear about this one, but it's, you know, it's PG 13, but the, but the, I think the concepts are, you know, very mature. So again, again, we returned to our primer that there's this, we are waking brain and dreaming brain and they intersect.

We stab. I think everybody knows that. It's a matter of to what degree and how. That's the other universal dream. You know, I've never had a dream of teeth falling out, but it's been reported for centuries. I've had it. Yeah. Yeah, a few times.

So dreams follow patterns, right? People have dreams of falling, but that's like 20 60 like you know i had that too yeah but but i've had dreams of falling but not you know but everybody's had essentially i mean there'll be some people say no i've never had a sexual dream okay i'm not here to a majority majority i mean the way in scientific terms everybody yeah yeah so i call those two universal dreams nightmares and erotic dreams Majority. Majority. I mean, the way, in scientific terms, everybody. Yeah, yeah. So I call those two universal dreams. Nightmares and erotic dreams. Right.

Universal. Universal dreams. And I think when something is universal, a part of our, there's awesome fields out there like evolutionary psychology, like the gifts, the strengths and weaknesses today aren't just physical that we're inheriting thinking patterns dreaming patterns um this is mind-blowing but this has been well known i'm just able to put it i think into a framework now is falling teeth dreams they don't follow they don't teeth falling out it doesn't follow a pattern people but nightmares cluster and family think about when I say exactly other same yeah and I've known that because I went to medical school and they said

that I just didn't have a understanding of it but I believe and there is evidence that we inherit not just our physical traits, but our cognitive traits. Oh, yeah. And if we inherit our risk aversion or proclivity to risk, if we inherit our parents' coping mechanisms or failure to cope, we may be inheriting dreaming patterns. Interesting. And I think that we have to be open to that, that that's why nightmares arrive for every kid, man. That's not happening by chance. I may not have the explanation for it. I think it cultivates the sense of self, uh, and sense. It gives you mind reading ability with somebody else. Uh, that's called theory of mind. That's my opinion. Then the next one comes is sexual dreams. And this one is interesting because, let me break this down for you. It's different because when my sons were born, we're born with like the marble.

And what you've heard, there's use it or lose it. If you cover a child's eye because they have some health issues that part that goes to the right side of the brain the left side one each eye goes to both occipital lobes it's not this one to this one it's this crossing if you cover those parts with or they repurpose it's a it's an adaptive system um Use it or lose it. You got the neurons, the 100 billion neurons. They're like microscopic jellyfish. Use them or you're going to lose them.

That makes sense. And that's what happens for vision, hearing, taste, movement. If you wrap somebody's arm, the motor area will wither. Wow. Okay, so that's built in. area will wither wow okay so that's that's built in but this is but how does a touch become a caress that's a capacity from the same from the same sensation um now it can become erogenous right right there are new nerves being laid down in our fingertips right but when a lover a lover's touch is different than a intention even not even a touch is so that capacity develops in in the human brain uh around the time of 11 12 and 13 interesting and it's it's not after

puberty it's not like puberty however people's not like puberty. However, people conceive puberty, but you don't go through bodily puberty and then say, I think I'm turned on. It's different. Your brain develops the ability to be turned on, I believe, through erotic dreams wow that erotic dreams are again the mind's cultivation for desire and then you start to see changes in the sensation part of the brain where now it's not just now erotic touch is possible you know without getting too deep into like child rearing and all that, but sensuality arrives. It's not prepubescent. It's not there. It must come at a certain time. intercourse people who have been castrated chemically for cancer treatment people who have had chemotherapy people have had their ovaries removed they still have erotic dreams really it's not of the body saying i like it let's think more about it i think it's the other way

around wow and that it arrives and the biggest, wouldn't that be an important thing for people to procreate? That desire arrives. And the fact that it arrives before. So here it's not use it or lose it. You know, it's here you go. It's time to use it. It comes before it's ready. Very good.

Yeah. So it's something. I would love a conversation at a different time with somebody else, but that doesn't follow normal neurodevelopment of pathways. Usually it's like, yeah, I can see. And if I cover an eye, I lose that ability. You're sort of equipped and then you cultivate. Here it arrives.

And again, erotic dreams, like in that J. Cole song, Wet Dreams. He says, I think I'm smashing, but I'm sleeping. Wow. So before he has his first relationship, intimate relationship with this person, he's rapping about like he's performing the act in his dreams, in his erotic dreams, before they even happen in real life. That's not the usual order of how the brain and nerves work. So again, my humble opinion is erotic dreams are the embodiment of desire. They make sure that we want, and that's advantageous for us as creatures, species, and people. Do you think the brain and the mind have to dream something first before it can actualize it in real life?

Mm, that's a big question. Do they have to dream something or think something first before they can actualize it? I think there's two ways to think of that. There's the things you want and you pursue and the way i would look at that is um returning to another example is that the the dreaming brain and the waking brain is one is one way to understand. But the structures in the brain during waking life, they're called the executive network.

The one we talked about are dampened down. So if you have a goal, pursue it. This conversation is not to be like, hey, just dream around all the time. Like you gotta get after stuff. You gotta get things done. And that's the executive network. And that's what drives you to your goals.

You can think about your goals. You can choose your desires. And that's been executive network. And that's what drives you to your goals. You can think about your goals. You can choose your desires. And that's been most of my life. But then the role of dreams in that, I think, are twofold. One, because I have thought about this for myself. Again, it's my story with respect. I believe that if I have chosen a goal with my waking brain, contributions are coming from my dreaming brain. I'm incubating thoughts. It's feeding me.

It's feeding some aha moments. I'm using sleep entry. I'm using sleep exit. And then the bigger one for me is, are there things I want? are there things i hope for that my waking brain just does not have access to and that's the big question the beginning like what's the meaning of dreams and then you know if we look at what is happening in the dreaming brain returning to our is that it's hyper emotional it's hyper visual and this is some real profound stuff when i was learning about this and reading about it the and i can't get into brain anatomy too much but i would just say the executive think of if you flatten out your brain the executive network would be like different continents and countries going going revving up a little bit and the imagination network which is

liberated in the dreaming brain is different other countries coming up you know like bellagio waterfall some come up some comes down like sure it's it's a toggle Um, and so your brain at its most emotional, metabolically, electrically is in dreaming. You can't, you can't rock that hard during the day. Really? Yeah. By measurement. So then it says to me, so if there is a meaning, if, if, if I can gain further insight into myself, I must look at the ways my dreaming brain is exceptional.

I'm not going to look at my dreaming brain for a math solution, but I might look at my, what my dream brain is putting forth for an emotional solution, an emotional insight, right? Like that's, that's the thing that really, I mean, a lot of this is,

but the meaning of dreams is that the act of self-examination with the recognition that I hope you leave today is, that's a hyper-emotional state. What is the value of emotion? It's profound. When people have injury to these areas, they can't even make any decisions like decision making requires emotion instinct requires emotion my my dog frankie she knows when i'm sitting in a booby trap like hey we're going out for date night frankie come here she's like there's some brilliance to emotion right and we have become again don't get me wrong

you got to wake up you got to go to work you got to get it done like that and that takes the waking brain and that takes the executive network but if you want insights that can't be gained through the executive network through always focusing outward then you are getting glimpses of your own brain, your own life's hyper-emotional states through dreaming. And I think there's insight to be found in that. And that that is the way to dream interpretation is to recognize the ways that your dreaming brain is exceptional. So the way I look at dream interpretation, if I could just jump into that, that's like

the last chapter yeah we could rock all day but this is like if it fits nicely here is is there are dream there are dreams you know what they are you know they're like it's like naked behind a podium you had a speech to get late for a flight you know there's no dream interpretation there you know what that is there are dreams that make no sense at all there's no emotional stamp on them it's what that is. There are dreams that make no sense at all. There's no emotional stamp on them. It's just clutter. We have thoughts during the day we don't pay attention to.

Yes. There are dreams that parallel your life. And the two most important ones are end-of-life dreams and pregnancy dreams. Really? As reported, when people are pregnant, patients are pregnant, If, as reported, when people are pregnant, patients are pregnant, they have a lot of dreams about babies and rolling over babies and anything, you know? So that doesn't need interpretation. If people at the end of life with a cancer diagnosis, and then my patients tell me that

they're thinking about like finish lines and visiting people from the past. Really? The dreams are accompanying you, right? Because you're making those dreams. So of course the dreams fit what's going on in your life. Wow. Again, those don't need to be interpreted. You know what's going on. Sure. You're dying and your dreams are comforting you. You've worked on a lot of people who've only had a year or a few years left to live. Cancer patient. What are most of those dreams of people who are dying?

Okay. That's a big question. That goes back to the last conversation we had. I am surprised by how valiant most cancer patients are. When I look at cancer patients in general, I would think most of it would fall apart, right? Because it's quite the word, it's quite the journey, but it's overwhelming not all some suffer some handle it poorly understandably but they do well they show up for their appointments they're brave they're they dig down for strength and composure and they find meaning sometimes they are able to enjoy some things more knowing that the the finish line is in view They're not encumbered, as I mentioned last time, with fuss. And those patients, when you talk to them, they will report, again, not all.

I'll make simple statements here. But a lot of them report that the dreams they have are positive. They're helpful. They're not of being eaten alive. They're not of, what did I do to get this? Interesting. It's reconciling with lovers and family.

It's having an expansive view of their life. The dreams in these cancer patients, and this is reported in other people who study this, dreams comfort you toward the end of life wow and so again um the hyper emotional dream um so if we have dreams that don't need interpretation because you're falling or you're flying you're flying and you're falling or you're giving a talk and you show up naked or you're you're it's end of life and it's comforting you or it's just there's no emotional feeling to it i believe if you are to go after a dream to really reflect upon you wake up

and that intense dreaming life gives you a little glimpse a little peek at something don't waste that and the one to choose is the one with a powerful central image and a powerful emotion so and that to me as that makes sense with what's going on in the brain hyper emotional hyper visual right i'm trying to make sense of it um and just be aware that a lot of times it's symbolic it's not gonna be literal right because we talked about the executive network is dampened and hyper emotional hyper visual brain is it's a storyteller you want to extract the meaning out of the story much like a good movie and it's not hey why am i so for example some veterans when they're having trouble with a marriage will have dreams of of

war but they don't generally dream of war so you have to be able to think about it and try to i can't give you that answer i don't know if you're a veteran or not i think that's where it's hard to go online and say i dream i dreamt of a leaf or a bridge what does it mean no it's it's different for it's individual and you may not be able to figure it out let alone somebody else but if you have the luxury to remember your dream or through auto suggestion journaling, you're trying to remember dreams more, which can happen. Those are the ones to go after. The hyper-emotional ones, the hyper-visual ones. And just keep them here.

You got 15 things in front of you. You're focusing out where your executive network is on. But don't forget about that glimpse you got into your hyper-emotional brain and what it produced about you, for you. Wow. That's fascinating. I feel like we're like 1% of all the things we could be talking about right now.

Why do some people have lucid dreams? Why are lucid dreams important? And how can we enter lucid dreams faster okay um i got two chapters out of nine so that's this is a big one um and just to just to be clear what lucid dreams are um i have not had them but aristotle wrote about them 3 000 years ago but aristotle wrote about them 3 000 years ago so this is not like it's not some current thing okay what is new is the understanding again we return to your body's locked down executive network and logic are dampened emotions are up up. When your body is locked down in lucid dreaming, what happens is there's one part of the body that's still not locked down, one of those eyeballs.

So when you're waking up in the morning, it just happens that the muscles to the eyeballs are not locked down, and the muscles to the breathing, of course, because you're still breathing in lucid dream, or in dreaming in general. So what lucid dream experts and people looking into that have started just recently,

after 3,000 years of many different cultures and books writing about, I felt I was awake in my dream, and I could steer the direction of the dream. So not only were you an actor in the dream you're the director interesting right that's been written about for thousands right right right but what they can do now is in these sleep laboratories what they put the stickers on their head to measure the electricity to prove they're asleep because i could imagine like you know some of my friends they'd be like i just i woke up how do you know you didn't just wake up right how do you know you're awake in a dream so you have to prove you're asleep through the whole time because otherwise you might just wake up

yeah i'm lucid dreaming and then fall back asleep right so some essential questions to be asked so the the electrical measurements of the stickers on the head, the sleep spindles is a certain spike that proves your sleep. You can't fake being asleep to the EKG of your mind, if you will, right? The EKG, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then they started communicating with them. They'll say certain things and they come up with this technique called left, right, left,

right. And they'll move their eyeballs left, left right answer simple questions and that's progressed to some people being able to demonstrate when they enter when lucidity arrives within their dream they will signal to the people out standing outside the window. And so there are these back and forth experiments going on. So far as even basic things like, oh, what's two plus two? And they'll try to do a left, right, left, right four times. And some of you might say, well, I thought you couldn't do math. But that's part of the magic and the mystery of lucid dreaming

is that the executive network is coming back online a little bit so for that awareness to happen inside your dream proven by sleep spindles on a ekg eeg you can't fake when the awareness comes back that primer we're talking about the executive network comes back too so they can do a little bit of basic math so it's like when you talked about the beginning what is it called, like? 49-51. Yeah, so where is that? When the lucid dreaming is happening,

what is happening? Is it kind of rocking back and forth like this constantly, or is it one side and then it goes back? That's a good question. It's fragile. That's a very good question. So you've gone from dreaming brain, you've gone from waking brain to dreaming brain,

and what happens is a little bit of the waking brain returns, but in little flourishes. It's not like, hey, I'm lucid dreaming. I got 90 minutes. Let's ride this. I get it. Somebody might be able to, but I want to leave you with the fascination. These overlap states, which are really fascinating sleep entry sleep exit a bit of awareness returning within proven sleep that it's uh

that it is something um that it's something it's something fragile it's something fleeting think of like birds and murmurations and aurora borealis we're not talking about and that that this also the lesson for people who are listening is stop thinking that your brain is wires and on and off think of it as think of as dreaming brain waking brain waking brain dreaming brain think of it as executive network mostly interacting here a little bit of imagination network returning because I'm daydreaming while we're talking, a little bit of blend, right? Well, lucid dreaming is coming to awareness that you're dreaming within your dream and for some people, being able to steer the content of their dream. That's crazy.

Stuff like Christopher Nolan likes to talk about in his movies and stuff like that. But what I'm here to tell you is it exists they have proven that it exists i'm not saying you lose the dream i have not aristotle wrote about it but they have proven with responses from preserved eyeball movements documentation that that person is asleep with the electricity of sleep that they that they have been able to communicate with people who are in dreams. It's crazy that they can steer their dreams. That's what they report. Isn't that crazy?

Yeah. But if you step back a little bit and stop thinking about is the brain on, off, wired, hardwired, not wired, if you start to think of it as states, as tides, as flows, as seasons, and every night there's the waking brain and dreaming brain and there's sleep entry and there's sleep exit and sometimes lucidity returns, it starts to make sense of a lot of the stuff I've been seeing in the hospital.

Really? Well, I mean, people wake up from anesthesia. They're supposive. People are awake. They communicate in anesthesia during our awake brain surgery. Really? People wake up and they're dreaming gnarly stuff. You can give people certain medicines and they have more lucid dreaming, something based on acetylcholine.

The reports of lucid dreaming go up with galantamine. So what that tells me, not to get too medically about it, is that when you mess with pills and drugs and the dreams change, this is a biological process. Wow. It's not coming from the heavens. It's coming from our brain. Really? Yeah. Speaking of the heavens, when we dream,

are our dreams in our brain or in our minds? And is our mind on this earth and planet? Yeah. Or is it in another realm big stuff man we could be like around a fire 500 years ago ask 3 a.m you know yeah or yeah um i mean that's why this is so special for me is that and you may not have the answer no i mean i have i have some direction yes to those questions. I mean, just the fact that you asked me that question means I'm doing all right. I am fortunate to have people ask me just to weigh in on that. And what I'm trying to do is build it on science,

but bring it to you in a way where you can go home and talk to your family about it. Yes. What is your thoughts on that? So the first thing is the brain and mind thing can't be separated. It's not like software or hardware. The brain, that's a whole big topic, but the mind is an emerging phenomenon that comes from the brain. One example would be, we see it, the crystals form, we see it in

organic matter, right? It's a self-organizing thing. Termites can make mounds. Stadiums with a roar outside, right, is more than the 80,000 individuals inside. That roar is my best way of understanding what 100 billion neurons do. The mind comes from it. Now, what we think can go back and shape the brain. So it's a reciprocal interaction. Our habits can shape the brain. Our brain creates the habits. So the brain mind, I don't think you can really separate it out. The ultimate gift of the human mind, I think, is dreaming. Love and all those things, yes. But the process of dreaming.

So let's for one second say we're talking about brain and mind as one thing. Okay, we'll just call it brain slash mind. And I was reading about this. Oh, this is great. Here's a story. Of course they had to come from the heavens, our understanding, until about 100 years ago. You plop down. You're not doing anything. And then you wake up, and whether you tell somebody or not, you're like, man, I was on fire last night with my thoughts.

So if you're asleep and you're hibernating or you're deactivated or whatever the phrase was it had to come from something external how it's in there how could inactive flesh of the brain the resting brain brain doesn't rest at night it's a great day I have a brain rest when you're dead right there's no there's no like like I said the electricity in sleep is so similar to the electricity during waking they call it paradoxical sleep like you're you're on when you're asleep okay so but they didn't know that nobody could know that until until this is a great story i don't think it's been told but it's the story that I've come to understand.

So that makes sense. It had to come from something outside of us. You're out cold, and you're thinking that kind of stuff? Monsters and pterodactyls and erotic dreams and nightmares? Okay, so that came from the heavens or the gods or omens. But what happened was somebody about 100 years ago did a surgery for a brain tumor, and then there was a physician there, and they had just figured out at that time that you could put a wire. It wasn't just for sending electricity.

It was for measuring it. So when you put a sticker on your heart, you know the electricity of a heart. It's from the nerves on the surface of the heart. It's not from the muscle. Interesting. EKG is the measurement of the electricity in the nerves on the surface of the heart it's not from the muscle interesting it's an ekg is the measurement of the electricity in the nerves on top of your heart okay when we shock you to wake

recharge your heart we're just shocking the three nerves not the muscle muscle just listens um well what if you put 96 stickers on your brain you would get a measurement that's called eeg okay what he did was he put a sticker right on top of the hole. The skull had a hole, but the stitch work, the flesh was covered. We do that still sometimes. In that area where there was no skull about the size of a coin,

he put a little sticker on there, a little wire. On the brain? No, on the skull. But there was a hole. Surgeons do it on the brain. There was a hole. And healed flesh. He put it just on top of the flesh

with the hole underneath. He thought he's going to get better readout, I guess, right? The hole, that would be a direct line to the brain. Yes. But not touching the brain. Well said. Got it. And then he got squiggles.

And that was where the EEG was invented about 100 years ago. Wow. The interesting part was when they all left the room or whatever they were doing and the person fell asleep, nobody paid attention to it, but the squiggles were happening at night. It wasn't squiggles during the day and a flat line at night. So somebody could have said at that point, like, wait a second, that flesh is not inactive. That flesh is not inactive.

Then 60 years ago, somebody in Montreal, Dr. Penfield, he was, so now he's numbing up the scalp, laying it open. And patient is on relaxing medications, but not on a machine. Drills the hole like ice fishing, takes it it off sees the covering of the brain called the dura incises it the surface of the brain is there and then they lighten up her medication and he's got like a little fountain pen that delivers a little electricity and he's mapping it and he's trying to find the thing the patient has seizures says before the seizure i always get this feeling, this aura. He thinks if he can find where that feeling originates, dissect out a little bit of that tissue,

he can break the seizures. And he ended up being right. It's a massive field now. Imagine major centers around the world. Wow. Seizure surgery. But at some times, when he would zap, because he's marking, you know, the patient reports desire and one patient reported

at night a recurrent nightmare that they had been having interesting you zap the surface of the brain with a little faint electricity the brain doesn't have a nerve endings of its own so you can touch and you wouldn't know sir when I feel it when you yeah not you but this is known and I've done the surgeries is established stuff awake brain surgery you can cut the Not you, but this is known, and I've done the surgery. This is established stuff. Awake brain surgery, you can cut the brain. You won't feel the pain. No.

It only feels through its tentacles. So when you're doing an awake brain surgery. Only the scalp feels it, but we numb it up. The patient is awake, and you're in there, and they can talk to you. And you can dissect the brain, and they don't feel a thing. Is this the one where, I mean, you see the videos of like, I guess, Yeah, with a guy playing guitar. violin or guitar where it's like, okay,

you know, connecting, it's so crazy. But when he was mapping it, a nightmare, which is a type of dream, was returned and he took the pen off, nightmare broke. Wow. At that moment, we knew that that dreams the only thing I can say with certainty today is dreams come from our brain they do not come from the

heavens Wow that I can say with certainty everything else this has just been a fence fascinating it's bit and the ride will continue you know but that that we can say with certain dreams are an electrical process of the human brain. When you've done brain surgeries, have you noticed people six months later saying, I used to have this type of dream and now those are gone or I have these different dreams now after brain surgery? That's a good question. A lot of dreaming changes. Very good question. And I've tried to keep the medical world out of it, even though it informs dreaming quite a bit. But the patterns I saw from like drug dreams, anesthetic dreams are just, I couldn't find a way. and it's also again to let you know like if it didn't fit if there wasn't a if it wasn't going to be a thoughtful um love letter to dreams and dreaming i'll tell you and i'll tell you i can't

the the pattern of dreams that happen with anesthetics and stuff i can't say aha this one causes this and this could mean there's no i can can't find meaning in it. It's that wild. The ones that you're seeing here, I feel good about. Yes. But patients with brain injury, brain surgery, on medications, on steroids for swelling, their dreams change completely. There's a brand new dream life. And what it says to me is, again, dreams come from the brain. Right.

If you take a pill that goes in your blood to your brain. Chemical. Chemicals change. Right. It's great. Different dreams. Yeah. Interesting.

That's yet another example of dreams must come from the brain. Interesting. Yeah. If not from some other realm. Right. What about the pineal gland and you hear a lot of this in you know ancient texts and mystics and meditators and yogis talking about the pineal gland of like the power of the pineal gland to activate the mind and the brain and create more powerful

visions and and i'm happy to get into all of these things. Like aura is a thing, A-U-R-A, people look it up. That's a hunch. So I'm not a, I think a lot of this stuff is real. I just think it's muddy and it's easy to manipulate. So I would say be careful. So the pineal gland has been you know because of its location people thought it's the mind's eye the car philosophers have commented about it what i can tell you is as a brain

surgeon what is that i can take it out and the person is exactly the same really pineal gland surgery pineal pineal cytoma is pineal gland. Have you ever taken one out? Yeah. It's part of neurosurgery. You've taken one out of a... Yeah. You come in through the back here. It sits between the lobes. So people can look that up is pineal gland or it's a gland, whether it's got cancer in

it or whether it's just a cyst, non-cancerous but growing and pushing, whether it's normal pineal or abnormal, when you remove it, they have almost no significant consequences. Really? Yeah. And the melatonin is bottomed out and they still sleep okay. So I'm not here to go against the whole world of things that are out there. But again, if we're having a conversation conversation you come into my house where we're hanging out we're taking a walk and you ask me that question i'm trying to come to you both with

things i can't make sense of anesthetic dreams pineal gland no they're being removed across the world and there isn't the pituitary gland if you you take that out, you've got to take a bunch of hormones and medicine. That's a big deal. The pineal gland, the one that has been given sort of this transcendent value, that comes out and goes in the canister. It's fine. And the next day, we don't change the stuff the patient's on.

They don't need some replacement thing. And it makes melatonin, and I wrote about it in my last book when when the melatonin drops to zero or nothing they're still sleeping all right really i'm not gonna say don't take melatonin or take melatonin we're not doing health advice i mean i don't mean like you can't go there but yeah yeah where i'm at is concepts exploration and what about And does the pineal gland impact dreams or dreaming? Do you know? After you remove it, do people still dream?

It doesn't have those kind of connections. Interesting. Back to the dreaming. When I talked to you about if the brain was laid flat and different continents and countries are up, the imagination network liberated in the dreaming brain. Different countries and continents and oceans are up for the executive network trying to get the day's work done. The pineal is like, it's irrelevant in that map of things that come up when you sleep. Huh.

That thing that goes 51% when you sleep, pineal gland. Not even a bench warmer. What's the primary purpose of the pineal gland we don't think it has a primary purpose i know well this you we can look it up but there are parts of the body it's like the appendix of the brain we can remove it and it doesn't people still live long oh yeah oh yeah yeah you know you don't have to what part of the what part of the brain if you remove it is going to be you're not going to be able to perform the same way well okay it's a bigger concept so

and how much and how much of the brain can you still have yeah can you can you remove or have left to still live a great life yeah so let's take that uh that's an interesting question that when you if you think of the brain laid flat as different continents and countries, right? It's like a mosaic. It's like a puzzle. If you cut out half of the continent. Well, we do surgeries in children where we remove half the brain, hemispherectomy.

Half, half the brain. Yeah. Not the reptilian and not the emotional instinct, half the hemisphere the two walnut so what what that points to is this it's what we call some areas you bump into it with a suction at 20 20 20 x and it leads to a change some areas um nail gun injuries happen and you take out that part of the brain you know like carp like you know like framers they use the pneumatic nail guns and when they kick up a little higher they'll spray a nail through the thin floor of the right here yeah this part of neurosurgery is taking out the penetration it's called penetrating trauma depending on where it goes they can handle a

nail in one front of lobe or the other but but hitting both front of lobes, it changes a person. So some areas have redundancy. Other areas can't take a joke. Some areas, you could take one occipital lobe, and you basically just lose your rearview mirror. You don't lose sight, but if you take both or injure both, so that's what neurosurgery is about, is knowing what you can go through, what to expect in the person waking up after you do that.

Wow. That's neurosurgery. But it's not like right right like liver it looks the same yeah this is brain is diverse oh yeah structures and connections in there it's beautiful so i mean how many people have you seen have a a nail gun like in their brain six when i was training yes really yeah gunshot wounds nail gun injuries fights you know but so you learn with trauma what parts of the brain can handle trauma because you're not doing those types of surgeries you're doing cancer now it's removal but right but that informs me if i'm getting to a deeper tumor and it's inside and it's got a normal brain on the outside that has informed me along with mapping what is the route that i can get to the tumor

this is fascinating but not injure the person that's that's neurosurgery it's not the it's not the chopsticks in a jar like the tech the hands it requires skill but there's something more to it that i love and the stories from the patients informed the last decade and a half and still are informing this book and so it's the patient stories and the neuroscience on top of the nail gun and that's what we open with look i'm trying to come at you with like petri dish stuff nail gun stuff wow heavens networks i'm trying to bring it all in um to to have done a real proper look at dreams and dreaming this is why you dream, Dr. Rahul. This is powerful. I want to do a two-part

with you because I feel like there's so many more questions I want to dive into that we've gone like 5% of what I want to talk about. But I want people to get this book because I think this would be a great baseline for you to understand a lot more about the neuroscience and the remarkable meaning behind your dreams, understanding your dreams better and having a better roadmap for navigating your dreams for the future. But I'd love to have you come back on and do part two of this. I think it'd be really powerful. Well, I think, you know, you said something really important there that in trying to understand dreams and dreaming, I understood myself better. If you read this book and you find something interesting, learning more about your brain and mind will inform your waking life. Yes.

Then when people say the brain is this, you'll say,'ll say wait a second because you're gonna walk away learning about neuroscience You're gonna walk away learning about art and literature nightmares erotic dreams and more importantly You know for me it was it's sort of my It's my gift This is my legacy that yes Somebody try to put together something that like how's somebody gonna do it you know take a proper shot at this and uh i'm very happy with uh the honesty there

and you'll see phrases like could it be i wonder i'm tempted to speculate so i'm not just telling you i'm taking you through how i'm thinking. And so, you know. How long have you been a brain surgeon for now? Wow, 25 years. 25 years. And what it sounds like is you've had 25 years plus your residency, so call it 30 plus years of researching the brain and as a PhD in neuroscience and understanding the mind.

When you first came on on you talked about the brain is kind of these waves and patterns I remember you talking about like uh like birds moving yeah waves and patterns the electricity does move like that it's not on off exactly not a switch and then to me it sounds like you know last 30 years you've been able to interpret these waves and patterns through all the different operations you've done through the different case studies you've seen of people coming in before and after, and now deepening your research in understanding the brain, the mind with dreaming. And so I'm so excited for people to get this book. This is why you dream. And I'm excited to dive in more with you. I think we got to do probably multiple episodes on this because I'm fascinated by this. I want to know more about how

also, you know, the health benefits of dreaming, how much we should be sleeping to maximize our dreams and our optimal health. And so many other questions around this. If you guys have a question on dreams, leave a question below and we'll try to get to that in our next episode in the future whenever we can get you back on. Pleasure. But Rahul, this has been super inspiring. How can we get a copy? How can we support you? And what else can we do to support this?

Yeah, I'm feeling good about it and um you know i think the usual things where to get a copy on amazon or where the publishers are just doing a massive thing they sold it it's already picked up in 22 translations wow they believe in it and they've been reading this material and the thea and the two things that really touched me were this can never be explained. Like, you know, because I'm a surgeon. I want answers. I want to fix.

But they're like, this can, it's dreaming, Rahul. It'll never be fully explained. We want to know what you think and pull from everything you've lived through. Amazing. And then the New York publisher

just was like this email. And it was just the first sentence just took my breath away a little bit. It was, it just put, this book is important. Wow. Period. I was like. Okay. It was a mic drop moment for me.

I'm excited for this. Where are you spending most of your time online? Should we follow you on social media? Instagram, Dr. John D. All, but i'm an old timer man dr john deal you're young old timer right you're still young um do you have a website also though no but you know i mean i instagram yeah instagram and follow you there and um get the book this is going to be powerful for anyone that you know in your life who maybe talks about dreams, they're going to be fascinated by this as well. So get a couple copies.

Give it to a friend. Again, Rahul, I'm very excited about this. This is why you dream. Make sure you guys get a copy. Appreciate you very much for being on. And for part one of hopefully many on this topic, because there's so many more follow-up questions I have, but I want to let people start with this first.

So we could take each chapter deeper. Well, let's do it. I appreciate you being here. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links.

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