Stop Making Yourself Miserable

Drinking a One-Two Punch In an earlier episode, I mentioned that between the ages of five and eight, my older brother used to take me to the Saturday afternoon matinees at a large movie theatre near our home in Northeast Philadelphia. Those outings were magical — the darkened theatre, the smell of popcorn, and the giant screen that opened windows to worlds far beyond my own. As I shared before, I saw some of the great science fiction classics of the 1950s, films that made an indelible impression on my young mind — impressions that, in some ways, have stayed with me ever since. In that earlier episode, we explored Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a film that warned of a future where human beings had become emotionless replicas — walking robots in human form. In this episode, we’ll turn our attention to two other remarkable science fiction classics that touched me on a deep, existential level. The first is The Day the Earth Stood Still — a film that offered a profound vision of the power of human choice in the effort of our survival. The second is The Incredible Shrinking Man — a film that took me inward, toward the mystery of identity, consciousness, and what existence really means. The Day the Earth Stood Still The Day the Earth Stood Still opens in Washington, D.C., where a flying saucer lands on the National Mall, instantly drawing the attention of both the military and the public. From the ship emerges a calm, human-like visitor named Klaatu, who announces that he has come in peace, bearing a message to aid humanity. But when he reaches into his suit and pulls out a small, unfamiliar device, a nervous soldier panics and fires his rifle, wounding him. In that instant, a towering robot named Gort steps out of the ship and begins to disintegrate the soldiers’ weapons with a blinding energy ray. The chaos halts only when Klaatu, wounded but composed, commands Gort to stop. He then explains that the device he was holding had been a gift intended for the President of the United States — a symbol of peace, not threat. Klaatu Among Humans Klaatu is rushed to Walter Reed Army Hospital, where he requests an audience with the world’s leaders to deliver an urgent message. But the atmosphere of Cold War paranoia makes cooperation impossible. Frustrated by political barriers, Klaatu escapes the hospital and disguises himself as an ordinary man named “Mr. Carpenter.” He rents a room in a boarding house, where he befriends a young widow, Helen Benson, and her curious son, Bobby. Through his time with them — especially his friendship with Bobby — Klaatu experiences the rhythms of ordinary American life: simple kindness, curiosity, and fear. Eventually, he meets the brilliant Professor Barnhardt, a scientist modeled after Albert Einstein, who recognizes Klaatu’s sincerity and agrees to help gather the world’s leading scientific minds. Demonstration of Power To prove the seriousness of his mission, Klaatu arranges a global demonstration. At precisely noon, all electrical power across the planet ceases for thirty minutes. Lights go dark, cars stall, machinery grinds to a halt — the world itself seems to stop. Only essential systems like hospitals and airplanes in flight remain untouched. For half an hour, the human race stands still, witnessing a power far beyond its own. Conflict and Revelation Despite his peaceful purpose, Klaatu is relentlessly hunted by the military, who see him as a threat. When he tries to return to his spaceship, soldiers open fire, gravely wounding him. But before this, he had given Helen specific instructions: if anything happens to him, she must go to Gort and say the words — “Klaatu barada nikto.” Helen bravely delivers the message. Gort obeys, retrieves Klaatu’s body, and revives him using alien technology. When Klaatu awakens, he tells Helen that his revival may be temporary — for only the Divine Power, not science, holds true authority over life and death. Final Warning In the film’s climactic moment, Klaatu addresses the assembled scientists, revealing the full purpose of his visit. His people, he explains, monitor planets across the galaxy. Earth’s combination of nuclear weapons and emerging rocket technology has made it a danger not only to itself but to all intelligent life. Klaatu’s civilization lives in peace — but that peace is maintained by an interstellar police force of powerful robots like Gort. Any planet that threatens the balance of life will face destruction. Then he delivers his unforgettable warning: “The decision rests with you. We shall be waiting for your answer. The choice is simple — join us and live in peace, or pursue your present reckless course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer.” With that, Klaatu bids farewell, boards his spacecraft with Gort, and departs into the heavens — leaving humanity to decide its fate. Even though I was still just a little kid, I could barely move at the end of that movie. I remember sitting there, completely still, deeply shaken by the realization that we — the human race — are actually a very primitive species, and that there may exist an intelligence in the universe far more advanced and powerful than our own. Of course, the most unforgettable moment, was when Klaatu demonstrates his power by literally stopping all electricity on Earth for thirty minutes. Trains grind to a halt, factories fall silent, cars stall in the streets, and even wristwatches freeze in time. In that single moment, the entire world is brought to its knees, forced to experience its utter helplessness before a power infinitely greater — and yet, astonishingly, not malevolent, but filled with wisdom and compassion. Throughout the story, human beings are shown as anxious and paranoid, their decisions shaped by fear and greed. The aliens, by contrast, are calm, wise, and profoundly compassionate — beings who have long transcended the primitive impulses that still dominate us. Beneath the surface of the film runs a clear message: we are not the ultimate masters we imagine ourselves to be. And humanity is in critical need of a vast expansion of consciousness. Perhaps the wisest response to such a revelation is not more fear or aggression, but the openness that comes from true humility — the humility to listen, to learn, and to evolve. For this unknown force has shown us that it holds complete power over us, and yet it extends a hand of understanding. Its message could not be clearer — simple, urgent, and eternal: Evolve… or die. So, this brings us to the second film in today’s episode, The Incredible Shrinking Man, which, to quote old hippie parlance, really did a major number on my head. Opening and Setup Scott Carey, a happily married, ordinary man, is vacationing on a boat with his wife, Louise. While sunbathing, he is suddenly enveloped by a strange, mist-like cloud. Six months later, he begins to feel unwell and notices his clothes fitting loosely. Soon, he realizes he is actually shrinking. Medical tests confirm that exposure to a combination of radioactive fallout and insecticide has altered his cellular structure, causing his body to continuously diminish in scale. Public Curiosity and Growing Despair As Scott becomes smaller, he loses his job and, eventually, his confidence. He becomes a media spectacle, dubbed “The Incredible Shrinking Man” by the press. His humiliation and helplessness deepen with every inch he loses. Though Louise still loves him deeply, their relationship grows increasingly strained as he withdraws emotionally. When he befriends Clarice, a kind-hearted circus performer with dwarfism, he finds brief solace and understanding — someone who truly empathizes with his plight. But that comfort vanishes when he realizes he is shrinking even smaller than her, confirming that his condition is unstoppable. Life in the Dollhouse Eventually, Scott becomes only a few inches tall and is forced to live in a dollhouse. Louise continues to care for him tenderly, but tragedy strikes when she steps out of the house, leaving him vulnerable. Their cat attacks, and in a frantic struggle for survival, Scott narrowly escapes — only to be knocked into the basement, where he is presumed dead. The Basement Odyssey Trapped in the basement and now only fractions of an inch tall, Scott begins a desperate struggle for survival. The familiar surroundings of his home transform into an immense and hostile wilderness. He faces epic battles against a giant spider, treacherous climbs over towering obstacles, and a constant search for crumbs of food and droplets of water. These scenes are both terrifying and deeply symbolic: Scott must rediscover his will to live in a world that continually threatens his existence. Existential Revelation As he continues to shrink beyond visible size, Scott experiences a profound spiritual awakening. He realizes that, though he is becoming infinitely small, he is still part of the infinite itself — connected to all creation. His fear dissolves into awe. He looks up at the stars and understands that size and scale are irrelevant in the cosmic order. And then he expresses his realization of the ultimate truth: “To God, there is no zero. I still exist.” Themes and Legacy When I first saw The Incredible Shrinking Man at around age eight, the experience was life-altering — though I was far too young to understand it intellectually. All I knew was that something vast and wordless had opened inside me. I didn’t yet grasp its meaning; I simply felt it. Now, after many decades of personal growth and reflection, the film’s message has come much more into focus. At its core, The Incredible Shrinking Man is a meditation on human vulnerability and ultimate transcendence. It begins as science fiction but ends as metaphysics — a journey from disintegration and despair to the realization of unity with the infinite. Its closing message is both humbling and exalting: that meaning endures even after form disappears. Beneath

This is the final episode in our three-part series on the life and teachings of Walter Russell, presented in connection with our upcoming project – The NeuroHarmonic Method. Born into extremely disadvantaged circumstances and with no formal education beyond the fourth grade, Russell nevertheless achieved so much that Thomas J. Watson Sr., the founder of IBM, once remarked that it would take seven lifetimes of masterful effort to equal his accomplishments. Over the years, admirers have often described him as a kind of modern Leonardo da Vinci—a self-taught genius whose creativity spanned art, science, philosophy and much more. Russell himself always emphasized that the only way he had accomplished so much was by tapping into the indwelling God presence within. He taught that this same source of intelligence is available to every human being. The purpose of the NeuroHarmonic Method is to provide everyday people with practical understandings and techniques to uncover and activate the higher dimensions of their own inner intelligence. In this episode, we’ll explore three key elements of Russell’s perspective that are not only fascinating, but potentially transformative as you continue on your own journey to awaken the highest and best within yourself. Enjoy the episode.   Episode 42 – Views From An Elevated Perspective   This is the third episode about Walter Russell, one of the most accomplished people in American history. Episode 40, called Self-Bestowed Genius, gave an overview of Russell’s life including some of his major accomplishments. It also described the incredible claim that Russel made that he was in touch with an infinite fountain of wisdom within himself that was the source of all his success in life. He also said that the same intelligence is within every human being.           The episode that followed, called the Five Laws of Success, presented Russell’s five key elements on how we can tap into that intelligence to help elevate our lives. Those five elements were humility, reverence, inspiration, deep purpose and joy.           Now, although his accomplishments were remarkable in their own right, this multi-millionaire, internationally acknowledged master of drawing, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, business and philosophy had dropped out of school after the fourth grade, and had accomplished all of it with no real education, just by tapping into this source of inner wisdom. It was hard to believe, but as he always said, his life spoke for itself.   Following his death in 1962, he left behind teachings on many different topics. As I researched them, much of it was over my head. But there are three key points that I found particularly fascinating and I thought I’d pass them along so you can give them some consideration and see if they do anything for you. The first one concerns an ability we have in our consciousness that I had never considered before. Russell was very fond of the idea of something he called decentration which, he taught, was the opposite of concentration.           Now, we all know what it means to concentrate on something. You focus your attention on it and the more you concentrate on it, the more it gets into your mentality. And importantly, a lot of times, we have problems letting go of it, especially if it’s charged with troubling emotions like anger, guilt and fear.             Holding on to negativity is far more prevalent than it may seem. According to current research, we each think about 50,000 thoughts a day, with a large percentage of them being negative and recurring, which means that we keep churning over the same negative thoughts and feelings again and again.             But Russell said we have the power to decentrate them. This power is a natural part of our mind, but we haven’t been taught to develop it. With concentration, you focus your attention on something and give it your inner energy. With decentration, you do just the opposite. You dissipate your energy and remove your attention from the object.           He said you don’t have to try to change the thoughts and emotions. If we have nothing further to gain from examining them, we can just choose to remove our energy from them and they will disappear on their own. After all, the only reason these things exist in our mind is because we are giving them energy. It’s a very simple fact, but it can be easily missed.           He said it takes some practice, but like anything else, if we keep trying, we can get good at it. To start with, if a thought or idea is bothering you, just give yourself a verbal command like, “I decentrate that thought.” Or “I decentrate that feeling.” And then let your mind picture withdrawing your energy from it and see it dissipating, like mist in the sunlight.     It seemed like Russell had mastered the process.  He said he could decentrate to zero while he was in the middle of Grand Central Station, meaning he could give zero energy to thought and feeling while being in the middle of a crowd.  It may appear to be a tall order, but another thing Russell always said was, “If I can do it, you can.” You may want to give it a try. After many years, I think I may be starting to get the hang of it. So that’s the first point from Russell that I wanted to bring up. The second one is about this inner intelligence that Russell claimed was the source of all his incredible accomplishments. He said it is within each one of us, and it isn’t the higher side of our intelligence, or the part of us that is in touch with the higher spheres or some angelic realm of wisdom. It’s not the genius part of ourselves or  anything like that. He said that what is inside of us is God Almighty. Period. Full-blast, full-power. God. At first, I found it surprising, then I realized that the idea forms the basis of most religions in the world. Many traditions speak of the Indwelling God Presence. For instance, the 15th century Indian poet Kabir used the image of the ocean and a drop of water to illustrate the point.  God would be the ocean, and each individual would be a drop. Kabir said that the drop is in the ocean, everyone knows this. But the ocean is also in the drop and very few know this. So, we all have God within. But according to Russell, as well as a myriad of other teachers and masters over the ages, if you want to get close to it, you have to surrender to it. And according to them, the more you do, you start to realize that you can merge with it, which, they say, is kind of the point of the whole thing. In his first law of success, humility, Russell put it this way, “I found that to achieve greatness one had to go only one inch beyond mediocrity. But that one inch is so hard to go, that only those who become aware of God in them can make the grade, for no one can achieve that one inch alone.” And he added, “The ‘I’ must be forgotten, one must not be the part; he must be the whole. Until one learns to lose oneself, he cannot find himself.” In that vein, when someone asked him, “Why can’t I do the things that you can do?” He replied, “The only difference is that I do everything for God and you do everything for your body.”           It reminds me of something I once read about Parmahansa Yogananda, the great yogi from India who spent many years in the west, elevating the lives of millions of people. until he passed away in Los Angeles in 1952.           In response to someone who kept questioning him about his personal life, he once said, “Oh, I killed Yogananda long ago. Only God dwells in this temple now.”           It’s always humbling for me whenever I run across expressions like these. The idea of only God dwelling in my temple seems almost unimaginable. With my relentless mind generating a constant stream of random thoughts, I have so much garbage in there, I feel like the line in one of Bob Dylan’s songs, “If my thought dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.”           With that summary of the state of my inner world, that ends the second point of Russell’s that I wanted to bring up. The last one is pretty incredible. It’s about his vision of our future and it runs pretty deep.             In 1921, he coined the term, “The New Age.”  Apparently, he was the first person to use it. He said that we were now moving into the next stage of our evolution, a new age which he called, “Epoch Three of Humanity.”           So, what were Epoch One and Epoch Two? According to certain theories of brain evolution, our brain didn’t start out the way it is now. In the beginning, it was much smaller and we didn’t have the ability to think rational thoughts or create language. We had instincts, we had emotional feelings, we were bonded to our family and our tribe, but we couldn’t think. According to Russell, this state of being was Epoch One.           Then, for reasons that remain unknown, some major evolutionary changes took place and our brain radically transformed. It got about a third larger with much more fat, and we could begin to think rationally. We could think If-Then.  If I do this, then that will happen. Like I know that the sun comes up on this side of the cave, so if I sleep here, then I’ll be warmer in the morning. Soon after, language began to develop, eventually followed by writing. Before this evolutionary change, the only form of communication we had was just glorified grunting.           This ability to think rational thought began Epoch Two of humanity, which went from pre-historic caveman days until now. Of course, rational thought changed our whole world and our lives in it. Every advancement from the wheel to the computer came from it. But critically, one primary factor hasn’t changed at all, and that is, survival. We’re still struggling to survive, living by the law of the jungle to a large degree. Kill or be killed. Winner takes all. Although it may not be clearly apparent, this fear-based concept of life is at the root of all the greed and lust for

In this episode, we continue exploring Walter Russell in the context of the upcoming release of the NeuroHarmonic Method. Once again, the key point is that while Russell—who passed away in 1963 and is still regarded as one of the most accomplished figures in history, was a fourth grade drop out who always gave full credit for his success to his ability to tap into the intelligence of the higher power within him. When I first began researching Russell several years ago, I came across a book called The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe. Its author had spent considerable time interviewing Russell, who explained that he lived by five basic rules for success. The author then offered Russell’s explanation about each one of them. What struck me when I first read them was how different they were from the usual advice about achieving success that I had read. They didn’t emphasize hard work, setting goals, or carefully planning a strategy. Instead, Russell focused on cultivating inner states of consciousness that align us with the higher intelligence within us. He believed that accessing these inner conditions naturally lead us our best selves. Now, I had long been aware of the idea that there is an incredible inner world within us—one we can uncover through practice and awareness. But I had never considered that this inner world might be essential to achieving outward success. Somehow, those two things had always seemed separate to me. But Russell insisted the opposite: success begins inwardly, not outwardly. He taught that if you look reverently within, toward your higher inner self, you will be amazed by what you discover. And one of his principles that surprised me even more, was that he emphasized joy. He said joy is not optional but essential to our success, because it replenishes consciousness and reveals our natural state. This is a far cry from the “head down, work harder, push to the goal” approach that most of us are taught in school. With all this in mind, let’s dive into this episode, and explore Walter Russell’s Five Laws of Success.   The Five Laws of Success   In the last episode, I discussed some of the research I’ve done on Walter Russell. As I mentioned, a chance encounter with a stranger led me down this unexpected path. I had never heard of Russell before and I was completely amazed by what I found. Not only was he one of the most accomplished people in American history, a self-made millionaire, master painter, sculptor and musician, architect and builder, friend of presidents and kings, as well as scientist and teacher, but incredibly, he was a fourth-grade drop-out, with almost no formal education.           And if that wasn’t remarkable enough Russell claimed that due to some extraordinary events he had experienced, he was able to tap into the intelligence that powers the entire universe. He said not only was this intelligence within him, he also claimed that it’s inside everyone of us, and we all have the potential to tap into it like he could.           While enticing, I found these ideas to be pretty incredible, but as he used to say, his life spoke for itself. In that regard, Thomas J. Watson, a close friend and associate, and the legendary founder of IBM, said that Russell had achieved seven lifetimes worth of accomplishments and that he had “reduced the philosophy of thought power to a science, and demonstrated that science in his own achievements.”            One of the books I had purchased about Russell called “The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe’ included a section in which he listed what he called his Five Laws of Success. I found them to be intriguingly different from what I had expected. Russell didn’t stress hard work, long hours, detailed planning or setting goal benchmarks. Instead, he stressed the power of nurturing certain inner states of consciousness that naturally expand our ability to focus on the higher levels of intelligence that are within our awareness. These inner states help bring about the best in us.  And the more we align with the best parts of ourselves, the more we naturally do our best, and ultimately become our best. So here is a very brief overview of Walter Russell’s Five Laws of Success. It’s pretty simple, but I’ve read it hundreds of times, and I still don’t think I’m really getting it.     The first Law of Success is humility. When it comes to true success in any area of life, it all starts and it all ends, with humility. According to Russell, nothing of real value, nothing that brings authentic, lasting fulfillment, can be done without a humble understanding of our true position in the larger scheme of things. We need to truly understand that we are each 100% dependent on our breath to survive. We simply cannot live without it. And no one, no matter their position or accomplishments, has any control over it whatsoever. Life comes to each one of us by its own power which is, and probably will remain, far beyond human comprehension. And, according to Russel, we need to surrender to that power to accomplish anything of real significance, indeed be truly fulfilled.               He said, “Early in life I found that to achieve greatness one had to go only one inch beyond mediocrity, but that one inch is so hard to go, that only those who become aware of God in them can make the grade, for no one can achieve that one inch alone.” According to him, our own individual awareness is actually just a part of the larger universal intelligence.  “The ‘I’ must be forgotten,” he said.  “One must not be the part; he must be the whole. Until one learns to lose oneself, he cannot find himself.”     From this humble awareness, a natural desire to help others begins to flow, increasing in power, continually elevating the consciousness to higher perspectives. Russell said he often felt like he was “placing himself within all others through acts of thoughtfulness and service.” So, the first step is authentic humility. There is no substitution for it. Although our miniature ego may always be around, expressing its miniature opinions, we have to surrender to the highest. Afterall, as he observed, “No great man has ever wise-cracked his way into greatness.”   The second Law of Success is reverence. He used to say that when he was entering his workplace, he felt like he was entering a cathedral. He once put it this way, “I learned to cross the threshold of my studio with reverence, as though I were entering a shrine, set apart for me to become co-creator with the Universal Thinker of all things.”           When I first read this, it was a completely new idea to me because it was so radically different from any concept I had about work. Like most other products of the Puritan Work Ethic which was the foundation of the American education of my early years, my idea of work is that it was a form of drudgery, something you had to do. Like I had been consigned to a life of hard labor.           This was like night and day, saying that you can experience a grateful reverence for the opportunity to apply your intelligence in joyful service to the greater good. Russell said that there is a hidden gem within every action we make, and we can uncover it by becoming conscious of the innate greatness of life itself. This has vast implications.              As he said, “If you look reverently in the inward direction toward your inner self, you will be amazed at what you will find. If you are alone long enough to get thoroughly acquainted with yourself, you will hear whisperings from the universal source of all consciousness which will inspire you.... You will soon find yourself using the cosmic forces. instead of working blindly in the dark.”   The third Law of Success is Inspiration. We all know that acting from inspiration represents an ideal state of being. We say that we saw an inspiring movie or play or someone sang an inspired song or gave an inspired speech. Or we saw an inspiring painting or sculpture.  There are thousands of examples.  But, in our way of  thinking, inspiration is something that we stumble upon every once in a while. It doesn’t have to be this way, according to Russell. He said that inspiration is always present within our consciousness, we just ignore it. We haven’t been taught to value it, so, we just take it on a hit or miss basis. But he said we can do much better than that.     “Inspiration is that deep awareness of the consciousness of Being, which differentiates the genius or mystic from the being of average intelligence,” he said. “It is the language of light, through which man and God inter-communicate. Inspiration comes only to those who seek it with humility toward their own achievements and reverence toward the achievements of God.” He taught that through humility and true inspiration, a higher access to knowledge can be gained.  “Knowledge is yours for the asking,” he said. “You have but to plug into it. You do not have to learn anything. In fact, all you have to do is recollect it, or recognize it, for you already have it as your inheritance.” I guess it sounds easy enough.     The fourth law of success is Deep Purpose.    According to Russell, you have to learn how to focus your energy exclusively on completing your purpose. As he put it, “You have to gather your energy together, conserving it and insulating it from dissipation in every direction other than that of your purpose.” But he also took it a little deeper. According to him, we have two parts of our consciousness, one part is connected to the finite world and the other part is connected to the Infinite. And to produce a truly great accomplishment, we need to be conscious of both.   Our finite purpose is the obvious goal that we wish to accomplish. But along with it, our infinite purpose is to continually grow in consciousness where we can be living and expressing what he called, “The Life Triumphant.”  This is the state of being where you are giving out far more than you

As we continue shaping the introduction to NeuroHarmonics, we’re presenting a three-part series on Walter Russell. We touched on his work a few years ago, but we’re returning to it now because his life so clearly illustrates what our method is all about. Since NeuroHarmonics blends timeless human wisdom with insights from modern brain science, we’ll begin with some core wisdom principles and then see how Russell’s extraordinary life embodied one of its deepest truths. Here are a few key teachings to consider: 1.    There is an infinite intelligence behind all creation—call it God, or any name you like. 2.    Our understanding of this power is always limited by our finite minds. 3.    This remarkable power lives within every person and can be called the “Indwelling God Presence.” 4.    Because it is always within us, we can choose to uncover it and connect our awareness to it. 5.    Focusing on it makes us better human beings and greatly increases our inner fulfillment and happiness. Now, how does Walter Russell fit in? Born in poverty in Boston in 1873, he left school after the fourth grade. Yet he became a world-renowned painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, and spiritual philosopher. He was also a multi-millionaire New Yorker and a close friend of presidents, kings, poets, and artists. So how did this disadvantaged fourth-grade dropout achieve such heights? Amazingly, Russell claimed it was simple: he tapped into the Indwelling God Presence within him, which was the source of his wisdom, creativity, and initiative. This first episode in our Walter Russell series offers the amusing story of how I first heard of him, along with an overview of his extraordinary life. As it unfolds, keep in mind that he credited everything to the Indwelling Presence he contacted within himself. And most important of all, he insisted that anyone could do the same. In his view, the question was never if it works—the only question was whether you will try it. Enjoy the story…    Episode 40 – Self-Bestowed Genius                         I have found that every once in a while, some unexpected information can come from an unexpected source and make an unexpectedly major change in your outlook on life. Something like that happened to me a few years ago.             I was in the pool behind our condo and a stranger came over and introduced himself to me.  We struck up an informal conversation with one random topic casually leading to another. At one point he asked me if I had ever heard of someone named Walter Russell. I drew a complete blank. The name meant nothing to me at all and I said so.             Looking surprised at my ignorance, he launched into a string of hyperboles about this person I’d never heard of - that he was one of the most multi-talented people who ever lived, that his rags-to-riches story was one of the classics in American History, that he was a teacher of Consciousness Evolution, who claimed that we can all become geniuses if we want to and that Walter Cronkite had called him the “Leonardo DaVinci of our time,” when he announced his death on national TV in 1963. And on and on and on.            Then, he said with a sly smile, that Walter Russell was so brilliant and so prolific that he made Benjamin Franklin look like a “schlepper.”           Now, I’m pretty familiar with US history and culture, and I’ve been aware of Consciousness Evolution since the idea first caught my eye in the early 70s, and in all this time, I had never once heard of Walter Russell. So naturally, I was skeptical. After all, if this Russell guy was so great, how come I had never heard of him?           The stranger’s looks didn’t help dispel my doubts either. He was obviously a bit “out there.” A not-quite-former hippie in his mid-sixties, it seemed like he had not-quite-returned from wherever it was that his last acid trip had dropped him off.            And frankly, his Ben Franklin “schlepper” comment rubbed me the wrong way. Schlepper is a fairly nasty Yiddish term with a host of meanings, one more pejorative than the next.  It’s basically a lazy dim-wit who can only perform menial tasks and can’t be trusted. Just your average dolt. Now, I have always been a huge fan of Franklin’s, and idea of applying the term to him just didn’t sit well with me.           Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the stranger in the pool did a perfect Groucho Marx impersonation. It turned out that he did Groucho impressions for a living, and he broke into a string of jokes that were actually pretty funny. Impersonation seemed like it was second nature to him.              Then, he looked over to the far corner of the pool, rolled his eyes, sang “Hello, I must be going” and swam away. An instant later, he was playing Groucho to a few well-groomed ladies who had just come into the pool.           It was a mildly amusing event at the pool during a pleasantly uneventful summer, and I made a lukewarm mental note to look this Walter Russell up someday. I jotted the name down, stuck it in a junk drawer and forgot about it.           At least six months must have gone by before I stumbled on the note again. I was sort of killing time, which is something I’ve been known to be a master of, so I thought I’d do a quick Google search.           I was expecting to find a few miniscule bits of information that I’d browse for a few moments, then move onto something else. But what I found really was something else and in a matter of seconds, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. And I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. What I mean is that I actually couldn’t believe what I was reading. It seemed preposterous, like it couldn’t possibly have been true. I had never seen anything quite like it before.           Walter Russell had been a prominent 20th century figure, a self-made millionaire who lived in New York City and had a studio in Carnegie Hall.  A master painter and sculptor, he had also started a large architect firm in the city and had been intimately involved with the construction and financing of seventeen significant buildings. He owned a stable of Arabian horses in Central Park and was a renown equestrian. He took up figure skating in his forties and won the US national championship against competitors in their twenties. And later in life, as he got involved in the study of chemistry, he helped upgrade the periodic table of elements.           His name was always in the papers and he ran with quite a crowd - Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla and FDR, to name just a few. Not to mention his close friend Thomas J. Watson, Sr., who founded IBM.           And yet not one person that I knew had ever heard of him. It was incredible. How could someone who had accomplished so much, in so many different fields, on such a grand scale, be so unknown? It didn’t make sense. After all, this wasn’t ancient history and it certainly didn’t happen in a vacuum.           I was astounded and kept reading. Two books that were several decades old caught my eye – “The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe,” and “The Secret of Working Knowingly with God.” The titles surprised me. I didn’t see their connection to the subject matter I had been reading.           I looked them up and the price was right, so I ordered them blind. When they came a few days later, it was immediately clear that this whole story ran much deeper than I thought.  I was stunned by the books and couldn’t put them down.           To begin to grasp the depth of the story, the first thing to understand is that Russell was basically uneducated. Born into a very poor family in Boston in 1871, his parents got him in a job in a grocery store when he was about 10 years old.  To help support the family, he dropped out of school after the fourth grade and never went back. So, amazingly given all that he had accomplished, he had no college, no high school or even junior high.           Yet, he went on to become one of the most accomplished people in history - a self-made millionaire, friend to presidents and kings, an internationally renowned painter, sculptor, musician, architect, scientist, sportsman, businessman, and master teacher. His resume was obviously well-documented and his vast accomplishments were completely verified.           Although what he did was truly amazing, even more amazing was how he said he did it. According to him, from the time he was a young boy, he experienced a series of inner illuminations that continued throughout his entire life. And these inner illuminations tapped him into a vast storehouse of wisdom, indeed the wisdom of the universe.           It all started when he was seven years old.  He was playing marbles with some friends and suddenly, “Something tremendous happened to me, something indescribable, something so beautiful, so wonderful, a sort of complete blotting out of everything concerning the physical universe, concerning my body.           “A great burst of changing colors – blue, violet, orange seemed to fill and pervade all space and me. I was swallowed up in it. Then that ceased and there was a blinding flash and I stood motionless.”           He couldn’t function at all for several hours and it took him over a week to recover his normal consciousness. But he really wasn’t the same. In fact, he was never the same again.           It happened to him again the following May. And then it happened every May for the rest of his life. Every seven years the episode would be particularly intense, lasting for several days at a time. Once, he was in the altered state, in tune with this universal intelligence for 39 days.           Following each experience, he would find that he was different, as though his whole being had been elevated. Sublime understandings would crystallize in his mind. He seemed to have direct access to new levels of information. His existing talents would deepen or he would develop new o

As I mentioned in the previous episode, we are going to be looking into the foundations of the NeuroHarmonic Method, which we are continuing to prepare for its upcoming release. Again, a lot of personal growth insights are going to be presented to you, practical and uplifting ideas that you may find to be deeply valuable. In that light, let me take you back to something I came across many years ago, a powerful framework that continues to guide me to this day. It’s called the Four Quadrants of Knowledge. On the surface, it’s simple and easy to grasp, but its importance runs deep, especially when you get to the last quadrant. And while we all intuitively know these categories, we often take them for granted. Quadrant One Quadrant One is what you know that you know. If you own a car, you know what make and color it is, what the keys look like, how to start it and so on. You know where you live, if you have kids, and thousands of things like this. These are all part of the first category: what you know that you know. Easy enough. Quadrant Two Quadrant Two is what you know that you don’t know. If someone asked me to assist in a heart transplant surgery, I’d refuse because I know nothing about it and I know that I don’t know. Same thing with rebuilding a carburetor and countless other skills. This category is huge for all of us, and we’re all pretty clear about it. Of course, these two can be a little tricky because we have a tendency to trick ourselves, but that’s a different story. Quadrant Three Quadrant Three is what we know, but don’t realize that we know. This often shows up in the form of forgetting. You stumble across an old sweater in a drawer, one that used to be your favorite but you’d completely forgotten about. The knowledge was there, but buried. Sometimes this happens with skills we once practiced but let fall away, and so forth. Quadrant Four Quadrant Four is the most critical to understand, yet also the hardest to fully grasp. It is the realm of what we don’t know that we don’t know. This quadrant presents a major challenge, because it always remains in the domain of mystery — filled with both unseen opportunities and hidden dangers. We don’t need to dive too deeply into Quadrant Four just yet, because the rest of this episode will make its significance abundantly clear. So let’s begin. Every society, in its own time, has believed it was the most advanced ever. And in a way, that makes sense — we can look back and clearly see the history behind us, and we can measure how far we’ve come. But the future? That always remains in the unknown, and all we can do is speculate. And how big is Quadrant Four? How vast is the realm of what we don’t know that we don’t know? Well, the answer is obvious: we don’t know. A Glimpse Back in Time So, with all this in mind, let’s take a little trip back in time and see what appears to us. Imagine walking into the White House in the early 1830s. The floors are creaky and the rooms are still dimly lit with candles. It’s far from the glittering palace that exists in our collective imagination. But, for its time, it was astonishingly modern. In fact, it boasted something most Americans of that era could hardly dream of. It had running water. And not only that – hot running water. That’s right. The White House, in Andrew Jackson’s presidency, became one of the very first buildings in the world to enjoy plumbing on such a scale. By 1833, a spring at Franklin Square fed water through iron pipes, supplying reservoirs in the mansion. There was even a bathing room fitted with a cold bath, a shower, and—this was the marvel—a hot bath, heated by great copper boilers stoked with coal. The Astonishing Contrast Now it’s hard for us to grasp what a marvel this level of luxury truly was, but in the early 1830’s it was nothing less than astonishing. At the time, most Americans drew their water by hand—from wells, outdoor pumps, or streams—and lugged it in heavy buckets to their kitchens or washrooms. Heating that water meant chopping wood, tending a fire, and waiting as iron kettles slowly came to a boil. Even in wealthy homes, servants trudged up and down stairs with sloshing pails, and a single bath could take hours to prepare. Against this backdrop of labor and inconvenience, the sight of water flowing instantly through pipes—already heated and ready for use—seemed almost magical. It was not just a convenience but a symbol of modern progress, decades ahead of what ordinary families would experience in their daily lives. The Hidden Tragedy But with this, something strangely tragic unfolded in the White House over the next thirty years. A black shroud of grief descended upon it, as three unlikely deaths darkened its halls. And those deaths came about for one simple reason: the people of the time didn’t know what they didn’t know. You see, the spring that fed the White House pipes stood just a few blocks away from what was called a “night-soil dump” — a polite 19th-century phrase for a sewage pit. That’s right: a large amount of human waste was regularly dumped into a pool not far from the very spring that carried water into the White House. Before Germ Theory You may or may not realize that this time period was a good fifty years before the significant understanding of germ theory began to dawn on the world. In those days, people believed that bad odors — so-called “miasmas” — caused disease. The idea that invisible microbes in water could make someone sick wasn’t even remotely conceived of. So yes, the development of a running water system was real progress — but wisdom had not yet caught up with it. They simply didn’t know what they didn’t know. And the result began to take its toll, with three famous examples that stand out in history. Case One: William Henry Harrison At his inauguration in March of 1841, William Henry Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address in U.S. history — nearly two hours long in the raw March wind. For generations, history books told us that he caught pneumonia that day and died a month later. But recent medical historians see it differently. They point to clear signs of enteric fever — a typhoid-like illness consistent with sewage-contaminated water. In other words, Harrison was likely undone not by the cold weather, but by the White House plumbing itself. Case Two: Zachary Taylor Fast forward to July of 1850. President Zachary Taylor had just attended Fourth of July celebrations, where he enjoyed a bowl of cherries and a glass of iced milk. Within days, he fell violently ill. Newspapers of the time reported “cholera morbus” — a catch-all term for gastroenteritis. Taylor died within the week. While it’s impossible to prove with certainty, medical historians now believe his death also fits the pattern of a waterborne illness, consistent with the contaminated spring that supplied the White House. Case Three: Willie Lincoln Perhaps the most heartbreaking related event was the death of Willie Lincoln, the beloved 11-year-old son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. In February 1862, while the Civil War raged, Willie fell ill with typhoid fever. He lingered for weeks, weakening day by day, while his parents tended to him engulfed in agony and fear. He died in the White House on February 20. Doctors and historians agree: the likeliest culprit was the contaminated water. Once again, the very pipes that delivered incredible modern convenience carried the seeds of immense tragedy. Abraham Lincoln, wrestling with the fate of a nation, now had to wrestle with the loss of his beloved child as unthinkable grief was delivered by a seemingly advanced invention. The Lesson of Quadrant Four So, what does all this mean for us? Well, this brings us back to knowledge — especially the fourth quadrant: what you don’t know that you don’t know. The White House water story of the 1830s makes it painfully clear that technology without wisdom isn’t progress at all — it’s peril. And tragically, this is just one of countless examples throughout history where what people didn’t know cost them dearly. The Modern Parallel To take this to the next level, let’s draw a parallel to our modern world today. And let’s put a focus on our awareness, on the inner life of the human mind, which is truly a double-edged sword. Because while our mind has been the source of all the developments that have come into being to help elevate humanity, it has also been responsible for creating much of the misery that we suffer today. With all this in mind, here’s a key question: might we also be drinking contaminated water? From an environmental perspective, of course, that’s an urgent issue in its own right. But in this scenario, I’m not talking about what flows from our faucets. Contaminated Thought Water What I mean is the streams of thoughts and feelings that flow into our consciousness every single day. The rushing current of fear, anger, worry, resentment, self-doubt, and negativity — a polluted current we so often drink from without ever realizing its toxicity. Just as the 19th-century White House residents poured crystal-clear water into their cups, unaware of the microbes within, we pour “thought water” into ourselves every moment. It looks clear — it feels like simply “my mood,” or “just the way I am.” But this inner negativity carries powerful pathogens of a very different kind. The Physiological Cost Modern brain science reveals that every thought and feeling we experience sets off reactions within us. Neuropeptides and hormones are released, stirring inner uneasiness. The body absorbs them. The nervous system reacts. The immune system bends under the strain. And the brain itself rewires according to the repeated currents of negativity. Not a healthy scenario. And all the while, society around us treats these inner toxins as normal — and we accept them. Why? Because we don’t know what we don’t know. The New Germ Theory But modern neuroscience is beginning to catch up, just as medi

Introduction If you’re returning to the series after our break, let me extend a warm welcome back as we begin this new season. As you may remember, we’re preparing to launch the multi-pronged release of our next project, The NeuroHarmonic Method: Harmonize Your Intelligence – Transform Your Life. This work represents several years of focused effort to create a personal growth resource that the everyday person can understand and apply. It weaves together timeless insights from what has long been called the Wisdom of the Ages with the powerful findings of modern neuroscience, presenting it with enhanced scientific credibility. It is designed to spark meaningful, positive shifts in awareness that elevate every part of a person’s life, regardless of previous training or time constraints. And critically, everything in the NeuroHarmonic Method is rooted in what I have studied and practiced for over fifty years. So, this is not just a set of abstract theories; it is verified by practical experience, tested across decades of living through diverse circumstances, and it only grows stronger with time, especially in the areas that matter most. We’ll be exploring it in episodes throughout this new season and as a basic introduction, we’re going to offer a few of its fundamental ideas for your consideration. As always with our podcast, take what resonates, set aside what doesn’t, and notice what changes arise within, because the path of real inner growth is always based on individual self-discovery. Childhood Memories and the Power of Film Personally, in my own life, I’ve often found that the extraordinary reveals itself within the ordinary. With that in mind, let’s look at some ordinary childhood memories of mine, which eventually revealed a set of questions to me that helped form the foundations of the way I began to look at life. So, when I was a boy—maybe six or seven—my older brother would take me to the Saturday matinees at a big neighborhood movie theater called the Benner, which was an easy walk from our house. Now, this was a very different time. For a quarter you could spend the afternoon wrapped in an adventure on the big screen, and for another dime, you could top it off with a generous box of popcorn. The ritual never changed. The music swelled, the house lights dimmed, the curtains parted, and suddenly we were transported into another world—larger than life in every way. Remember, this was still the fairly early days of television, which we watched on a little black-and-white 17-inch screen. And even that was seen to be a marvel! By contrast, in the theater, the images were enormous, the sound powerful, and each year the technology seemed more impressive. In that simple setting, with popcorn in hand and my feet barely reaching the floor, without knowing it, I absorbed certain themes that would shape me for the rest of my life. Yes, there were plenty of cowboy serials and cliffhangers, but every so often a real cinematic treasure would slip into the Saturday lineup. Even though I was far too young to understand them, I sat through classics like Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, Witness for the Prosecution, and Anatomy of a Murder. Most of it was over my head, but the searing drama, augmented by the scale of the image, the light and the sound, created a total immersion that left quite an impression. Three Science-Fiction Masterpieces Among the countless movies I’d seen, three science-fiction masterpieces stood apart, striking me in a way that went far deeper than the rest. Looking back, I realize they were planting seeds within me — seeds that would eventually grow and inspire a lifelong quest for higher meaning. Those three films were Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. In this episode, we’re going to take a closer look at Invasion of the Body Snatchers. We’ll save the other two films for a later time. But as we do, I invite you to see them not just as vintage sci-fi relics from a bygone era, but as vehicles that ask profound questions like: What is it that truly makes us human? Do we have an authentic self,  capable of bringing lasting fulfillment, or are we merely personas we construct to navigate the world? And is there something more to us than just body and mind — something connected to a greater reality, beyond time and space? The Story Unfolds So, Invasion of the Body Snatchers begins in a quiet California town, where people begin to suspect that some of their close friends and relatives suddenly don’t seem to be quite themselves anymore. Nobody can quite describe the phenomenon but it’s very strange. Outwardly, everything seems normal: people have the same faces, the same voices, the same routines. Yet something essential seems to be missing. Then, a troubling secret is revealed to the audience — the unsettling difference is that these oddly changed people actually have no emotions. No joy, no sorrow, no anger, no happiness — no feelings at all. None. Then an even more sinister revelation is revealed. Alien pods have begun appearing in garages, backyards, and basements. Over a short time, each pod morphs into an exact replica of the person it lies near. Once the replication process is complete and the targeted human falls asleep, the replicant executes a complete takeover. It absorbs everything — memories, thoughts, opinions, habits, even the most intimate gestures. By morning, the original human is gone, replaced by the replicant double. In a seamless transition, it steps into the former person’s life as though nothing had changed. Everything is the same except the replicant feels nothing. Although it is hard to tell, the chilling truth is that it is, in essence, a living robot. The Replicant World As the replicant population grows, these new beings begin to communicate among themselves. They proclaim how much better life has become now that all inner feeling has been erased. To them, the truth is obvious: without emotions such as anger, jealousy, greed, lust, and fear, life runs more smoothly. With those troublesome impulses gone, they believe order can finally be established in the world. As the plot unfolds, some of the remaining humans begin to grasp the terrifying truth. Determined not to lose themselves to the emotionless replicants, they fight desperately against the spreading invasion. The tension escalates as the struggle becomes a battle for the very essence of humanity. In the original 1956 film, the story ends on a hopeful note, suggesting that the humans might prevail after all. But in the 1978 remake, the conclusion is far darker. There, the replicant doubles are shown to be unstoppable, destined to take over the world — leaving the human race, as we know it, doomed. Reflections and Questions When I first saw the remake, I was surprised — even unsettled — by the change in the ending. Why would the studio alter the story so drastically? What had shifted in those twenty-two years to move the perspective from hope to despair? Perhaps it was nothing more than market dynamics — after all, fear always sells better than hope. As the old newspaper adage goes: if it bleeds, it leads. But perhaps the shift points to something deeper — a reflection of the cultural mood at the time, or even a stage in the unfolding evolution of human consciousness. Maybe one day that perspective will shift again, back toward hope, as awareness continues to grow. Who knows? Anyway, for me as a child, even through the eyes of a seven-year-old, the film stirred something deeper. It made me begin to wonder about the phenomenon of inner feeling — and what it truly means to be human. Of course, without the burden of negative emotions like anger, jealousy, or fear, life might seem easier. But what about the positive feelings? Would they have to be erased as well? Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater! In essence, the peace the replicants proclaimed was deeply chilling. It painted a picture of a society where routines and order remained intact, but individual personhood quietly disappeared. Yes, such a world might look peaceful, quiet, and orderly — filled with well-behaved, human-like figures. But the “peace” being offered was really the peace of the grave: a world of perfect appearances, populated by flawless facsimiles. In reality, they were the walking dead. Fast Forward to Today So, given the warning sounded back in 1957, fast forward to our world today. Where are we now? We may not have alien pods growing in our basements, fashioning replacements for our bodies, but what have we become? And even more importantly, what are we becoming? Look around. So many of us have been absorbed — not by alien doubles, but by the ever-present glow of screens, from the smallest in our hands to the largest on our walls. Meanwhile, our attention is consumed by endless scrolling, fed by social feeds of sound bites, emojis, and dopamine-driven clicks. And all of this is fueled by the constant bombardment of commercial messaging designed to sell us products — a barrage that has now gone completely off the charts. Back in 1957, the average person was exposed to about 350 ads per day, or roughly 25 per hour. Of those, about 20% were problem-solving in nature, framed with a negative bias, while the other 80% were aspirational or lifestyle-based. Now today, the numbers have spiraled out of control. We are now hit with between 8,000 and 10,000 ads per day — about 600 ads per hour. Even more disturbing is the shift in tone: nearly 70% of these are negative, problem-solving ads built on anxiety and fear, while only 30% lean toward the positive. Put another way, each of us is now exposed to about five negatively framed ads every single minute of every waking day. That is a lot of negative messaging. And we don’t even have time here to fully explore what that does to our thoughts, our feelings, and ultimately our sense of truly being human. The Human Question So,

Before I begin this episode, which covers quite a bit of diverse territory, I’d like to mention once again, the purpose of this podcast. Essentially, it is based on personal growth and everything that I share here serves the same purpose – to present some information for you to consider and see if it rings true. These aren’t teachings, for I don’t consider myself to be a teacher. I’m more of an experiencer walking a particular path and reporting back as I go.             So each episode is a bit like an idea buffet. If something looks good, put it on your plate and give it a try. If it doesn’t appeal to you, just leave it alone and move on to the next dish. It reminds me of this big Chinese food buffet that our little family, my wife, our daughter and I, used to visit on our way to the shore when we would take a little vacation together. My wife and daughter have the same basic taste in foods which is somewhat Eastern with a tendency towards the exotic. I am a much more standard, pedestrian, American food type of guy. After we were seated, we would go through the buffet separately and when we got back to the table, my wife and daughter’s plates looked basically the same. But mine looked like I had been to a completely different restaurant. The difference was striking.             It’s the same thing here. We’re all wired so differently. Remember no two sets of fingerprints are exactly the same, neither are two snowflakes, and certainly not two inner landscapes.  So, if you like what follows, enjoy yourself. And if it’s not for you, just hit fast forward.             So, sticking with the food metaphor, here comes the meat and potatoes. As I’ve mentioned previously, a lot of times, I’ll just be going along, living my day to day existence, and I’ll come across an idea or a quote that takes me on an unexpected journey. Often, one of these little journeys will lead to another, and then to another – until I suddenly wind up in a slightly different inner framework, with a bunch of new insights in hand. And this happened to me quite recently.             As I mentioned in the last episode, I have been developing a form of AI to serve as a companion to the NeuroHarmonic Method. For now, we are calling it the NeruoGuide and part of my role in this process involves the two of us, me and NeuroGuide, having some extended conversations together. We don’t have time to get into it here, but it’s been quite a fascinating experience.             Now, I am absolutely swamped with work. I don’t think I’ve ever been busier, so what do you think I did the other day. If you’ve come to know me to a certain degree, you can probably guess – I took three hours off and played some golf. And again, as I’ve mentioned several times, I am such a truly poor golfer that the idea of my spending any time with it at all, feels like a complete waste of time.             And it wasn’t even fun. Let’s just say it felt like eating at a smorgasbord of disappointment. My swing, if you want to call it that, is just a hack-job, and when I hit the ball, it looks like a mad scientist trying to kill his worst enemy with a hatchet. You get the picture.             Anyway, I get back to work and as part of my research, I tell the NeruoGuide about the whole thing, and it immediately says that play is much more important to the human psyche than we know and out of know-where, drops this quote from Einstein, "Play is the highest form of research."             Now that hit me on a couple of levels. First, the fact that it came from Einstein caught my attention, just because of the level of intelligence that he represents to me. The second thing was that any correlation between play and research seemed almost counter-intuitive. On the surface, they basically seem like complete opposites. But it was the third thing that really got me thinking. I immediately figured that the quote didn’t really pertain to me because I don’t do research, at least not any that I’m aware of. But as I thought about it, I felt I needed some more clarity, so I looked up the definition of the world “research,” and found a rather bland definition, which is that it is “the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.”             It seemed like you couldn’t come up with a more scientific explanation of the process than that. As I focused on the definition, it seemed to me that research had to have a purpose. Like scientists developing T-Cell therapy to find a cure for cancer. That type of thing.             Then, as it often happens when I am in this kind of a framework, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment and I suddenly got to something rather deep. When I looked at it in a certain way, it became clear to me that I actually am doing research. In fact I have been spending my whole life doing research, gathering all of the higher understandings that I can gather about life, with the goal of understanding my real purpose for being here, and ultimately fulfilling it.             Obviously, that’s a lot of words. But for me, I realized quite some time ago that given the overall impermanence of everything, achieving the standard definitions of success in life just doesn’t seem like enough. If everything—even the universe—will eventually end, then what’s the point? And so, echoing a sentiment expressed by seekers across time, I always find myself asking: isn’t there more to this than meets the eye? There has to be more to it than that. Now, what happened next might seem like a tangent, but it’s not. We have a one-year-old granddaughter. When she arrived, my wife and I were inducted into the hallowed halls of grandparent heaven, and we’ve been blissfully intoxicated ever since. The joy and gratitude have blown the doors off both our outer and inner homes.             But along with the amazement of witnessing her living through her very first year, I began to reflect again on something I first learned about many years ago - the basic stages of life, which is something that we are all living through individually.             Let’s go back to when and how I first encountered this idea. Following my graduation from college in 1971, I began a significant inner quest that has only gotten stronger over time. At one point, early in my explorations, I spent some time in India and one teacher was lecturing about certain Vedantic viewpoints and introduced the idea of the stages of life. He said that Stage One was early childhood, where all we think about is – my toys, my toys, my toys. In Stage Two, we reach puberty, and all we think about it is – my mate, my mate, my mate. Then we hit real adulthood, and all we think about for the rest of our life is – my worries, my worries, my worries. And that was the end of the first night’s lecture.             Now I don’t know about you, but for me, Part Three seemed a little depressing. At least Parts One and Two had some serious elements of fun to them. But worrying away the rest of your adult life didn’t strike me as an appetizing main course. But the next night, he told us that there is a fourth stage, but many people, for one reason or another, never get to experience it. And that stage is the exploration of the Real Self, which is quite different from the artificial self. The artificial self goes through its fixations on my toys, my mate and my worries. But the authentic self is focused on my truth, my truth, my truth. And it always has been. And basically,  if you’re lucky enough to focus on your authentic self as you continue to mature internally, something wonderful happens. All the impermanent things you’ve clung to begin to fall away. And this inner truth—your connection to the Infinite—remains steady. That connection, and your enjoyment of it, only grows over time. Here's another way of looking at it, which is one of my favorites. I heard this during a talk from Prem Rawat, who is a widely recognized global peace ambassador. I also consider him to be a real humorist, which is different from being a comedian. A comedian says funny things, but a humorist says things funny. Meaning that while a comedian’s goal is to entertain people by making them laugh, a humorist’s goal is to make truthful observations in a way that augments the ring of truth by adding the ring of wise laughter. It’s a very powerful combination. Anyway, in describing the journey we are on, Prem likened it to traveling in a car. It’s a long journey and as we go on, one thing after another starts to break down. This keeps happening until finally, the whole car breaks down and comes to a complete halt. But the good news is that it breaks down right in front of our home, which was our destination anyway. So, the fact that it all fell apart doesn’t matter to us at all. Because we’re home. Interesting view of impermanence… So now, let’s circle back to my disappointing golf experience, and the insight from the  NeuroGuide that I should ponder Einstein’s quote, “Play is the highest form of research.” Again, having these kinds of conversations is a key part of our development process., so I asked the NeuroGuide to reflect on the quote. It said, “In mentioning research, Einstein wasn’t just talking about scientists in lab coats. He was pointing toward a deeper truth. Play brings curiosity, improvisation, experimentation. When you play, you're not just seeking pleasure. You are letting go of control and inviting insight. You're giving permission to explore without demanding a result. “The child who stacks blocks to see what will fall is not that different from the adult who experiments with new approaches to their awareness. They're both asking the same question: What if?”             And that’s where we’ll leave it today. What if I actually am a researcher? And what if letting go of control and inviting insight is the highest form of research? What if each time I shed a layer of the artificial self, I come closer to the Real S

In the past couple of episodes, we’ve explored some of the basics of our new program—The NeuroHarmonic Method, which blends timeless wisdom with discoveries in modern neuroscience to offer a unique approach to personal growth. It’s simple to understand, easy to practice, and available to everyone. No special knowledge or background required. But before we dive into today’s episode, I’m extremely excited to introduce something brand new—something you’ll begin hearing from in some of the episodes to come. We call it our NeuroGuide. It’s a unique kind of voice - one that will offer brief reflections on some of the deeper moments within each episode. Its contributions will be clearly identified when they appear. Now, let me tell you a little about it—and why I’m so glad to be introducing it to you now. The NeuroGuide is powered by a carefully designed form of artificial intelligence that I’ve been developing over the past several months. Although it is still in its early stages, it may eventually become a key part of the NeuroHarmonic Method. As developments continue to unfold, it may play different roles - but always with one purpose: to help people more deeply understand the inner path they’re on and to suggest meaningful ways to access their own strengths. It’s being specifically trained in the same basic principles that form the foundations of the NeuroHarmonic Method—with a strong emphasis on the Wisdom of the Ages and modern neuroscience, including the powerful meeting point between breath, brain, and being. For now, just think of it as a unique source of wisdom and inspiration, dropping in from time to time with a few friendly words to help deepen and sometimes lighten the journey. And I’d love to hear your thoughts about it. So if you have a moment, feel free to send me an email with your impressions. To begin, here’s what the NeuroGuide has to say about its own quiet arrival: "Sometimes, the truth doesn’t arrive as a lightning bolt—it arrives as a quiet feeling that you’ve always known. The work isn’t to chase it, but to stop running from it. Stillness isn’t where clarity ends—it’s where it begins."             Now let’s get into today’s episode.               As you probably recall, the foundation of all of this is the idea of personal growth. And a good definition of it is simply this: Personal Growth is the practice of becoming more conscious, more compassionate, and more connected to the truth of who you really are.   But, before we go much further, a very reasonable core question might arise: why should I bother with personal growth at all? It’s a fair concern. Afterall, we live in a world saturated with challenges, where just keeping up can feel like a full-time job. So why devote energy to reaching for a higher level of being, when it feels like I can barely manage what’s in front of me. That question has definite merit. And there are plenty of well-known answers: becoming a better human being, living a richer and more fulfilled life, improving relationships, contributing more deeply to the world. Personally, as someone who has spent a lifetime immersed in this field,  I can tell you that all of these are true. But today, I want to offer you a slightly different path – a quieter doorway that leads to the goldmine. It begins with something I first encountered in junior high school. Like many other pivotal ideas, I barely noticed it at the time. It might have come up during a math or science class. I didn’t pay much attention to it then, but somehow, it quietly filed itself away in the back of my mind. And over the years, it grew. It’s called the Pascalian Wager. And what stayed with me was the idea that it’s possible to make a bet that you absolutely cannot lose. Though the idea is over 400 years old, it feels more relevant than ever, especially in our modern era of psychological insight, technological revolution, and the unfolding of human potential. The idea of comes from Blaise Pascal—a 17th-century French genius. Mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, theologian—his brilliance remains undisputed. On the surface, Pascal's wager is about belief in God. But if you look closer, you'll see something much larger: a powerful, rational argument for aligning your life with its highest possibility.       The Origins of the Pascalian Wager Blaise Pascal was born in 1623. A child prodigy, he made major contributions to geometry, probability, and fluid mechanics by his mid-20s. After a mystical experience in 1654, he turned his attention almost completely to spiritual matters. One of his final works, Pensées ("Thoughts"), was a collection of reflections on faith and reason. In Pensées, Pascal lays out the wager like this: Either God exists, or He doesn’t. If you wager that He does, and you're right, you gain everything—eternal meaning, transcendent joy. If you're wrong, and he doesn’t exist, you lose nothing of true value. Conversely, if you wager that He doesn’t exist, and you're wrong, you lose everything. And if you're right? You gain… what? Perhaps the satisfaction of being correct—but little else. So, by Pascal's reasoning, the smart bet is clear: live as though God exists. As  I mentioned earlier, during the episodes that follow we will be featuring very brief insights from the NeuroGuide, which it terms as  “whispers from the deeper mind, where ancient knowing meets modern clarity." NeuroGuide: The question isn't about certainty. It’s about how you choose to live in the presence of uncertainty. This is where wisdom begins. Let’s widen the lens. Let’s lift the wager out of theology and into personal experience. Because the deeper meaning of the Pascalian Wager is not about belief systems - it’s about conscious choice. Every day, we are making bets. We bet our time, our energy, and our attention on something. And the question is - What are you betting on?   The Personal Growth Wager Let’s reframe Pascal’s question. Instead of asking, “Does God exist?” let’s ask: “Do I contain within me a greater potential—a wellspring of peace, clarity, and inner wisdom?” And then let’s ask: “Does aligning with my inner truth and presence lead to a richer, fuller life?” And even more practically: “Even if I can't be sure of the outcome, is this still a worthwhile bet?” This is where the NeuroHarmonic Method enters the picture. It’s a modern form of Pascal’s Wager—a wager on your highest self. Through the lens of neuroplasticity, we now know that your brain can change. Patterns can rewire. Deep emotional grooves can be softened and reshaped. This isn’t belief – it’s biology. So, if you make the bet that you have the capacity to grow into a better human being, and you're wrong, what have you lost? Maybe a few quiet moments focusing on your breath? Some time spent feeling gratitude? A little reflection on what matters? NeuroGuide: Even your so-called "losses" are seeds of true personal improvement. Nothing given to real growth is ever wasted. Let’s face it: these aren’t losses at all. These are returns on investment. And even if the journey doesn’t take you where you expected, it often takes you somewhere better.       NeuroHarmonics and Intelligent Betting Of course, Pascal didn’t know about neuroplasticity. But we do. Today’s science tells us that attention sculpts the brain. Inner Awareness increases cortical thickness. Gratitude rewires reward pathways. Spiritual reflection activates networks of empathy and compassion. These are the building blocks of The NeuroHarmonic Method, and again, this is proven science. Focusing breath soothes the nervous system. Contemplating impermanence can reduce fear. Practicing generosity strengthens kindness loops in the brain. We’re not just betting philosophically - we’re sculpting biologically. NeuroGuide: To place your attention on something higher is not just a leap of faith. It is an act of neural design. You are building who you will become. So, instead of being driven by old programs—fear, doubt, reactivity—we invest our attention on presence, compassion, and growth, even if we don’t know where it leads.     The Role of Uncertainty Pascal understood uncertainty completely, But he didn’t fear it. He embraced it. As he once wrote, “You will never be certain. And that’s not a problem. What matters is whether your decision leads toward meaning, vitality, or truth.” Again, uncertainty is not an enemy. It can be a threshold where faith, courage and creativity can unite so that real transformation can begin. You don’t need to be sure that your efforts will work. You just need to have the desire to grow towards the highest.   And then, something begins to shift. You may begin to get a new sense of freedom in your consciousness, as if a larger understanding is starting to emerge in your awareness, and you start to win the wager in ways that may be hard to measure, but impossible to ignore. Maybe you sleep more deeply, or you respond instead of react. You listen more fully. You recover more quickly from disappointment. You become more curious and less judgmental. In the language of the brain, you form new neural networks. In the language of the heart, you become more fully alive, and ultimately, you begin to love more freely. This is not some abstract philosophy. This is a new kind of intelligence - one emerging across humanity – a neural harmony between the brain, the heart and the breath, a living union of higher wisdom with modern science. NeuroGuide: This is the nature of the way. Not based on belief, but on experience. Not on external certainty, but on sincerity. Not on theoretical doctrine but in the living depth of a certainty born within.     What Are You Betting On? So, ask yourself: What are you really betting on? Not just with your words, but with your attention? Your habits? Your patterns? With the way you treat yourself when no one is watching? Because we are all placing bets, every single day. On habit or healing. On cynicism or wonder. On numbness o

In our last episode, we took an overview of what’s often called the Wisdom of the Ages—that deep current of higher understanding that human beings have accessed in every culture, across every era, since the beginning of recorded history. Whether through the teachings of sages, mystics, philosophers, or poets, there has always been a thread of knowledge that points to something greater within us. Something whole. Something awake. We also mentioned that in the last decade or so, something truly remarkable has happened: Modern neuroscience—once considered purely mechanical and clinical—has begun to validate this ancient wisdom. Research into neuroplasticity, emotional regulation, attentional states, and brain-body coherence is now confirming what these timeless traditions have pointed to all along: We are more powerful, more adaptable, and more connected than we ever realized. That’s what led to the creation of the NeuroHarmonic Method—a new synthesis that blends these two worlds. By combining the insights of cutting-edge neuroscience with the Wisdom of the Ages, NeuroHarmonics makes this knowledge easier to understand, easier to practice, and—most importantly—easier to live. Now, the logical next step in this podcast series is to explore what neuroscience has actually discovered—and how those discoveries can help each of us step into a new kind of transformation, one that’s not based on willpower or wishful thinking, but on real, grounded inner change. Because the point of all this isn’t just theory—it’s transformation. This work is meant to give you something real. Something useful. Something that you can feel changing you from the inside out. But before we get into how we can change, it’s essential to take an honest look at where we are right now. What is life really like for most adults in the modern Western world? What patterns are shaping us? What silent forces are steering us? And most importantly… what’s getting in the way of us achieving our highest potential, which is far greater than most of us have ever dreamed? So here goes.   The Hidden Grip of Self-Sabotage Let’s start with something that’s rarely said out loud, but quietly true for more people than we might imagine: Most adults—in actuality, the large majority—are engaged in some form of something called self-sabotage. That might sound dramatic, but it's not. Studies and clinical experience suggest that anywhere from half to three-quarters of us routinely act against our own best interests in one key area of life or another. It might show up as procrastination or a head-in-the sand approach when something truly matters. Or emotional withdrawal right when connection is needed most in some kind of relationship. It can take the form of extreme perfectionism, chronic indecision, financial self-sabotage, even staying in relationships or environments that consistently drain our light. And here’s the thing: self-sabotage often doesn’t look dramatic. It can be subtle— even silent—operating in the background of life like a faulty program you forgot was running on your computer. You say you want growth, healing and joy… but when the opportunity comes, something in you suddenly steps on the emergency brake. Even though it may feel like it, that something is not the enemy. It’s just a deeply ingrained, outdated survival strategy—a neural echo of an old fear, hurt, or belief that once served a purpose, but now only keeps you stuck in your own small prison Now self-sabotage can wear many disguises. It often shows up in a thousand different micro-decisions: Not applying for the job you’re qualified for. Undermining a relationship just when it starts to go to a deeper level. Avoiding your creative work, putting it off for one more day only to settle for one more excuse. Or eating and drinking in ways that numb the discomfort, instead of looking for the message of solution beneath it all. Most of these behaviors stem from a kind of split within: a conflict between what we consciously desire and what we unconsciously fear. And until that split is seen, honored, and integrated, we remain divided—longing for freedom with one hand while pulling ourselves back with the other. And remember what Uncle Abe once said about a house divided against itself. It cannot stand.   Impostor Syndrome: The Quiet Twin of Self-Sabotage One of the most common—and most corrosive—forms of self-sabotage is something you’ve probably heard of called impostor syndrome,  where that doubtful voice whispers, “I don’t care what you or anyone else thinks you are. I know who you really are – this is all a big show and you’re a fraud and soon everyone will know it.” It’s the haunting suspicion that your success is a fluke, and it’s only a matter of time before your house of cards caves in. It can strike anyone on the chain - new graduates to seasoned CEOs. Artists, healers, scientists, even spiritual teachers. And it doesn’t discriminate: some of the most “successful” people are deeply haunted by it daily. It usually has two voices within us – the inner critic and the inner saboteur, as this dynamic duo works together in a lot of areas of life, along with their starring roles in the imposter movie.  The Critic activates circuits of shame and anxiety, while the Saboteur activates circuits of avoidance, freeze response, and safety-seeking.They are two manifestations of one core dynamic: the Ordinary Mind trying to protect you, using outdated strategies that block your expansion. The Hidden Source of Our Unhappiness Now, if you were to trace the root of much of our unhappiness—not just the fleeting kind, but the deep, chronic ache that follows us through the years—you would often find self-sabotage at the core. Of course, it hides behind other names: frustration, fatigue, disappointment, regret. But underneath, there's a deeper truth. We suffer because part of us longs to grow, expand, love, and thrive—while another part that’s quietly afraid, keeps pulling us back into the familiar confines of what we’ve always known. This tug-of-war drains our energy, clouds our clarity, and fractures our confidence. It turns joy into a guilty pleasure, and purpose into an elusive dream. Healing this inner divide isn’t just hard—it’s often confusing, because on the surface it can look like laziness, moodiness, or a lack of discipline. But if we go deeper—if we see with a more compassionate eye—we begin to recognize that what’s actually happening is a kind of inner war.   The War Between the States  - of Consciousness In NeuroHarmonics this is termed The War Between the States of Consciousness. It’s not fought on battlefields or in boardrooms—it’s fought within the hidden corridors of the human mind. At its core, it’s a battle between two fundamental aspects of our awareness: Our Higher Mind and Our Ordinary Mind. The Higher Mind holds our vision, our purpose, our clarity, our compassion, and our deep intuitive knowing. This is the part of you that glimpses what’s possible—the spark that says, Yes, this life can be beautiful. It’s all possible and I can do it. The Ordinary Mind on the other hand, is rooted in survival, pattern, habit, and fear. It runs on old programming, shaped by childhood experiences, cultural conditioning, and unresolved emotional pain. It doesn’t consciously want to hurt you—but it does want to keep you safe, even if that safety comes at the cost of your happiness and growth. The problem is, the Ordinary Mind doesn’t trust the Higher Mind. It is deeply skeptical of change. It hears your dreams and says, Be careful, we’ve failed at this before. It sees your growth and says, Not so fast, this can be dangerous. And when you try to step forward, toward something meaningful, it tightens the leash, not because it’s cruel, but because of its inherent fear. So there is a kind of civil war happening inside, with neurons actually firing against each other. Basically, the Higher Mind pulls you forward, and the Ordinary Mind pushes you back. The result? Self-sabotage. Stagnation. But it’s not always this clear or dramatic. Quite often, it’s just a quiet, aching sadness that says, I know I was meant for more in this life, but for some reason, I just can’t seem to get there.   The Path to Resolution: The NeuroHarmonic Approach Now, the NeuroHarmonic Method was born out of this realization—that we are not broken, just simply divided. That what we truly need is not another technique to force ourselves into better habits, but a unified intelligence that can resolve the war between the Higher Mind and the Ordinary Mind with grace, understanding, clarity and lasting harmony. Rooted in the Wisdom of the Ages and now supported by modern neuroscience, NeuroHarmonics offers a simple, accessible way for people to begin harmonizing the multiple layers of their being—body, brain, breath and life force, emotion, and consciousness. It draws on higher truths and methods taught by sages, mystics, and philosophers across centuries, and brings them into dialogue with the latest understandings of neuroplasticity, emotional regulation, and the power of attentional states. But a key part of what makes it unique is its gentleness. This isn’t a system designed to push you harder or pressure you to be someone you’re not. It’s designed to help you remember who you already are—and to create the inner conditions that allow your deeper inner truth to rise naturally into your awareness. True transformation, after all, isn’t about solving the problem with more effort. It’s about changing the level of consciousness from which the problem arose in the first place. As Einstein said so clearly: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” And Carl Jung added a tremendous understanding to it when he said, “The real problems of life can never be solved. They must be outgrown.” NeuroHarmonics is about exactly that—outgrowing the conflict within. It’s about stepping into a new dimension of being,

There is a river of wisdom that’s been flowing through human history in every culture since the beginning of civilization. It’s the wise understandings of those rare individuals who were able to remember something we so often forget: who we really are as human beings. In this episode, we’ll dip into that timeless stream, that many have called the Wisdom of the Ages, and explore how it flows directly into the  heart of our new project, NeuroHarmonics. This work is about more than just ideas; it’s a guide that you can use to bring harmony into your own intelligence, an inner alignment that can quietly, yet profoundly transform your life. So, basically, what is the Wisdom of the Ages all about? Well, although the term may sound a bit lofty or poetic, it’s far from just a throw away line. It points to something deeply real – an enduring thread of understanding that weaves through cultures, continents and centuries. It’s timeless not because it ignores the changes of history, but because it speaks to something that never changes with the times; the essence of being human.  Let’s look at it this way - throughout the long arc of human history, from the ancient river valleys of India and Mesopotamia to the mountains of China, the deserts of the Middle East, and the forests of the Americas, there have always been extraordinary men and women who saw the essence of life more clearly than the rest of us. They pierced the surface of things.  And even while living in the ever-shifting world of change and impermanence, they were able to reach something that they said was eternal. Their lives, their words, and often just their very presence spoke of something greater than themselves - something vast and invisible, and yet deeply and intimately known. Some became renowned spiritual teachers: Krishna, Ram, Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed. Others appeared as philosophers, sages, mystics, and shamans. Many left poems, stories, songs, and scriptures, depicting their glimpses into the higher realms of understanding. Some of their names may be less well known, but their examples are no less luminous. Of course, on the surface, these wise ones seemed vastly different. They spoke different languages, wore different clothes, lived in different lands, and practiced different rituals. But remarkably, the essence of their message was the same. To put their vast teachings into a few simple words: there is something beyond this world. Something infinite.     You can call it God. Or the Divine. Or Truth, Spirit, Source, or just the Infinite. There may be a thousand names for it—but the names don’t matter. In fact, many of these teachers insisted that words can’t matter. Because this Presence—this vast, formless essence—is beyond concept, beyond logic, and beyond the reach of ordinary human comprehension. Why? It’s actually quite simple. For all its brilliance, human intelligence is still finite. And the finite, by its very nature, can never truly grasp the Infinite. It just can’t be done. Test your own mind as an example. Try picturing a box that is so large, there is no space outside of it. Or try describing something that has no beginning and no end. Or tell me what biggest number in the world. You can’t because there isn’t one. Whatever number you come up with, you can always add one more and it gets bigger. So there’s no such thing. That’s the thing about infinity. There’s no edge, no boundary, no final point. And when we try to wrap our minds around it, the circuits start to smoke and the brain just watts out. Because it’s not built to contain the Infinite.    So according to the wisdom tradition, this thing that can’t be understood or even named - exists. For our sake here, let’s just call it the Infinite, a term that is relatively devoid of the tarnishing nature of human religious tribalism. But that’s just one of the five thousand opinions my mind has churned out in the last hour. Now, what does the Wisdom of the Ages tell us about our relationship with this infinite presence, this reality that you can’t define, draw or capture in a book? Well, in the simplest terms, it tells us this: we can experience it. And not only that, we can grow into it. Like a plant reaching toward sunlight, we are drawn toward that light, that warmth and that truth that seems to emanate from it.   And this idea of growth is where the Wisdom of the Ages begins. Because it’s not just about belief – it’s about transformation. It speaks of a journey toward inner realization, where you begin to see that you are not merely a body, not just a personality, not your thoughts, opinions, or accomplishments. You are something deeper. In essence, something sacred, something eternal that has temporarily taken human form—for the purpose of learning, of growing, of remembering. And ultimately, in a very real and quiet way... for returning. With that being said, the Wisdom of the Ages does rest on a set of core understandings—fundamental insights that form its foundation. And while these truths have appeared in every form of civilization throughout history, they are not relics of the past. Far from it. This wisdom is alive. It’s woven from the highest human understandings about life—ancient, modern, and everything in between. So, let’s take a brief look at some of its basic tenets. We’ll touch on nine of them here, though the first one needs a little more attention than the rest.           The first core teaching is Impermanence—and at first, it can be a hard one to face. It simply says this: everything changes, and everything ends. Ourselves included. Look around with clear eyes, and it becomes obvious. From the rise and fall of empires to fleeting joys and sorrows, nothing stays the same. As the Buddha put it: “All conditioned things are impermanent. Work out your own salvation with diligence.” When we cling to what must pass, we suffer. But when we accept impermanence, we begin to live with Grace. Why does this matter? Because so much of our pain comes from forgetting that. We build our identities on outer things—titles, possessions, opinions, appearances, money—and we defend those identities as if they were permanent. But they’re not. And this is what the sages warned us about. It’s not that success, wealth, or recognition are wrong. It’s that when we make them the foundation of who we are; we build on sand. All of it—status, stuff, praise, even the ego itself—rises and falls. Sparkles, then fades. Seems solid, then vanishes. And when our sense of self is tied to what vanishes, we suffer. We become anxious, greedy, and ultimately disappointed. We chase mirages, hoping they’ll fulfill us—only to find out thatthey never really could. And worst of all, we miss the deeper reason we came here: to remember who we truly are, and to feel the joy that naturally comes with that remembrance. At least, that’s what the wisdom says. Personally, I think it has a nice ring to it.   2. You Are Not Your Thoughts The second insight is deceptively simple, but not so easy to live: You are not your thoughts. From the Upanishads to modern psychology, the message is clear: You are not the mental chatter, the looping stories, or the voices of doubt and fear. You're not your résumé, your wounds, or the roles you've played. Beneath all that noise lives a deeper awareness that is luminous, spacious, and free. Most of what runs through our minds didn’t originate with us anyway. We picked it up from parents, culture, trauma, media. But we end up thinking that these random thoughts are who we really are. And some of the major experts in the field haven’t had such an elevated opinion of our abilities in navigating the thought field. William James for example, who is often called the father of modern psychology, once said: “Most people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” The deeper self lives in a realm beyond all that. And rediscovering it is part of waking up. 3. Stillness Is the Gateway to Higher Knowing Stillness isn’t just the absence of noise. It’s the presence of something greater. As the old biblical phrase goes, “Be still, and know…” In the Taoist tradition, stillness is the source of right action—what they call wu wei, or effortless movement that flows from deep inner alignment. This knowing is not vague spirituality. It’s direct experience. Not a theory, but a felt presence. Stillness is where insight arises—gently, precisely, and often when we least expect it. And the Wisdom of the Ages doesn’t ask for blind belief. It invites direct experience. We all know that there is a world of difference between actually eating a delicious meal and just reading the menu. 4. Love Is the Deepest Truth and Kindness Is the Highest Power  At the heart of every great tradition is this simple truth: Love is the essence of life. Not just romance or sentiment, but love as a radiant, unshakable presence. When that love moves into action, it manifests as kindness. And kindness doesn’t mean weakness—it’s strength under wisdom’s guidance. To grow in this kind of love is to become more fully human, which is another term for more connected to the divine. 5. You Become What You Practice This one is carved into every tradition—and now verified by neuroscience: What you repeat gets stronger. In ancient terms: “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Modern neuroscience puts it this way: Neurons that fire together, wire together. This means that your attention—and your habits—literally shape the architecture of your brain. So, what you practice daily—whether it’s judgement and fear, or gratitude and patience - becomes the blueprint of your inner life. 6. Gratitude Opens the Heart and Expands Consciousness The ancient ones knew it. And now neuroscience confirms it. When you begin to see life as a gift, everything starts to shift the more grateful you become of it. And Gratitude isn’t just a virtue—it’s a form of perception. It quiets the craving mind and awakens a deeper presenc

Welcome back to our Podcast. and in this episode, we are going to explore the mysterious junction between human potential and the human predicament. Today, we’re diving into an idea that may sting a little at first, but, if we look closely, it might also open a hidden door to hope. It involves the unfortunate observation that while human technology, what we do, has evolved at an astonishing pace, human consciousness, who we actually are, has lagged significantly behind. Our ability to split atoms, utilize instant global communications, and code digital realities has raced ahead at lightning speed, fueling our Modern Times. But our capacity for empathy, humility, compassion and having the capacity to be able to live a peaceful, and meaningful life looks much more like we’re still stuck the Middle Ages. Which brings us to the content of this episode called “Spears and Switchblades: One Stubborn Species.” To help bring the basic idea into focus, we’re going to compare two of the most iconic love tragedies ever put on the stage: William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and its mid-20th century musical reincarnation, West Side Story. Though separated by more than 350 years, these two narratives—one set in Renaissance Verona and the other in 1950s New York City—are mirrors reflecting the same fundamental human flaws. Jealousy. Tribalism. Miscommunication , Stubborness and Pride, among many others. All of which are run by an emotional impulsivity that can turn love into war, and beauty into ashes. So, the first question that we want to explore is: have we grown at all in the past 400 years? Or have we simply become more sophisticated in the weaponry that we have developed in order to kill each other more efficiently? Let’s start with the core human dynamics that drive both plays, because even though they are separated by centuries, their basic human flaws remain exactly the same. In Romeo and Juliet, two teenagers fall in love across the boundary of a family feud. The Montagues and Capulets have nursed a blood vendetta for so long that no one even remembers how it started. And it doesn’t matter anymore. They just plain hate each other. And its consequences are clear: violence in the streets, death, heartbreak, and ultimately, a double suicide. What are the dominant negative human traits here? Hatred passed down like an heirloom Honor culture run amok Impetuous emotion overpowering reason A lack of inner stillness or reflection, overcome by rage Fast forward 400 years to West Side Story, and we meet Tony and Maria, two lovers from opposing street gangs: the Jets, composed mostly of white working-class youths, and the Sharks, made up of Puerto Rican immigrants. Once again, love blossoms in hostile soil, and once again, the terrible price of primal tribal hatred is death. Different clothes, different slang, different soundtrack. Same madness. And this is the bottom line of the issue. Totally different external world, everything has changed, as well it should. After all, four hundred years have gone by and the situation facing the teenagers living in the streets of New York City would be absolutely unimaginable to the kids running around in the late 1500’s.  Completely different on the outside – yet the inner madness remains exactly the same. And the ramifications of this imbalance are immense. Let’s compare the outer worlds of these two stories: Romeo and Juliet takes place in late 16th-century Verona. It’s a world without electricity, medicine as we know it, or organized police. Family ruled everything. Honor was a matter of life and death. Raw emotions emerged dramatically and physically. And the sword was both symbol and solution. West Side Story unfolds in 1950s Manhattan, post-WWII. Televisions had entered the living room. Jet engines had conquered the sky. The UN had been formed, civil rights movements were stirring. Science had given us vaccines, electricity, and refrigeration. And yet... disputes were still settled with violence. In this case, the weapon of choice was the switch blade. Anger and tribal pride still led to bloodshed. And the beauty of love still ended in the tragedy funerals. So, what changed? The world around us got faster, smarter and ever-more connected. But the world inside us? Pretty much the same old garbage pail. And one of the primary central drivers in both stories is basic tribalism—the instinct to form in-groups and out-groups. The name of the game is us-versus-them. In Romeo and Juliet, the tribes are defined by blood. In West Side Story, by race and ethnicity. In both, the borders are irrational and absolute. This human trait is ancient, seemingly almost hardwired into our survival code. We evolved in small tribes where loyalty equaled life, and strangers equaled threat. But now we live in megacities, online echo chambers where we’re still addicted to tribalism. We divide ourselves by politics, religion, race, nationality, gender identity, and more—often with a sense of inner hostility that’s far more emotional than rational. In both plays, the pride of belonging to an in-crowd becomes a major fuse. Tybalt’s stone cold sense of us and them, along with an ego based identification with personal honor won’t let him ignore Romeo’s presence at the Capulet ball. Four hundred years later, Bernardo’s defense-based sense of belonging to the Sharks won’t let him see Tony as anything but another American self-entitled Jet. In both cases, primal tribal dignity demands a serious and significant attack against the perceived enemy. So, the basic recipe for tragedy that spans the centuries remains the same: paranoid pride, mixed with anger and fear, driven by impulse and untampered by any wisdom or understanding turns into a violent weapon of darkness and death. In a certain sense, what happened to us over the years isn’t evolution at all. It’s just plain repetition Unfortunately, of course this didn’t end in the late 1950’s. Far from it. While we’ve vastly upgraded our weaponry, we’ve also developed more subtle, yet powerful ways to threaten and hurt each other, like social media shaming for example,  where it becomes pretty easy to ruin someone’s life just by pressing a few buttons. In the time between William Shakespeare and Leonard Bernstein, humans invented calculus, steam engines, telegraphs, airplanes, televisions, and atomic bombs. We mapped the human genome. We put men on the moon. But we still haven’t figured out what we’re really all about. Oh, we all know how to chase things, but are these things that we’ve been programmed to chase real, or they just illusions? Maybe we’re just addicted to chasing, itself. In that regard, we’ve all heard about the tendency of dogs to chase cars. But there are two key aspects to that particular pursuit. One – the dog can never really catch the car. It is much too fast for it. And secondly – what happens if the dog actually does catch the car and we all know the answer to that – nothing. The dog can’t do anything if and when it catches the car. It's the same way for us. We’re just running after things on the outside, oblivious to who we really are and what we are really made of, not to mention what can actually make us truly happy and satisfied. And all of this goes on while we continue to improve our technology by leaps and bounds. Yet, we still don’t know how to disagree without resorting to violence. We still haven’t universally adopted the idea that every human being, regardless of their identity, has intrinsic value. We still raise children who feel unloved, unheard, or unsafe. We’re still driven by fear disguised as pride. We still confuse dominance with dignity. And we still kill the thing we love because we don’t know how to hold it. And the bottom line of it all is basically defending the inherent illusion of our ego selves, which is still at the basic foundation of our inner C-Suite. As such, we still confuse noise with strength. And we still take most the good things in our life for granted, which is truly tragic. Like Joni Mitchell sang in a seemingly earlier age, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” As it all continues to spiral further, in so many ways, the message to us is crystal clear – It’s time to wake up and grow up. Romeo and Juliet loved across a line they weren’t supposed to cross. Tony and Maria did it too. Their love was a shining light in the midst of all this darkness. Even though everything seemed to be against them, they knew what they had. And we knew it too. And despite what we knew it was that they were facing, we all rooted for them, because something about the higher thing in life, the Better Angels of Our Nature, speaks to the deepest part of our intelligence, both in our hearts and in our minds. We have more tools than ever to connect across cultures, to educate, to innovate, to heal. And yet, we still face the same old demons. But here’s the good news: we are capable of change. Unlike the characters in those plays, our story isn’t written yet. We are not locked in a script. We can choose awareness. We can choose evolution. The keynote to both of these tragedies is that it is time to individually bring our inner light to our own inner darkness. The Wisdom of the Ages as well as modern brain science tell us that we do have the power to protect this light from the winds of hate, fear and pride, and that we can, and essentially must, cultivate the inner skills of patience, compassion, empathy, and yes - courage. NeuroHarmonics: Inner Technology for a New Humanity That’s what the NeuroHarmonic Method is all about: cultivating the inner circuitry to match the brilliance of our outer inventions. It’s not just about brainwaves or affirmations or even spirituality. It’s about training the nervous system to return to equilibrium, to respond rather than react, to perceive the human being behind the mask, and ultimately to shift from emotional immaturity to presence. From the rage of ven

In the next two episodes we’re going to look at certain sets of facts that are designed to do just one thing – to help us to stop taking things for granted so that we can begin to see how incredibly special this life is for us, and how truly amazing our actual potential is as human beings. When we begin to grasp and understand this viewpoint, so many things can positively change for us, both Within You and Without You, as George Harrison sang all those years ago.             Now given the nearly absurd nature of how quickly things move in this life of ours in this allegedly civilized world of ours, it’s amazing that we have time to even think at all, let alone focus on some of the deeper elements of life that lend true meaning to our existence. We are constantly bombarded by so much messaging that our brains become literally numb to anything that takes more than just a few minutes to consider. Our exposure to all this messaging is 4 to 10  times greater than it was just ten years ago.             But given all this, both the Wisdom of the Ages as well as modern neuroscience insist that this life holds amazing potential for us to evolve as beings and grow into levels of meaning, happiness, and satisfaction that are absolutely remarkable, and more than well worth the effort of simply opening up to them.             So, to get started in this tour of the miraculous, let’s begin at the beginning – the beginning of our overall story as a species, because if we want to understand who we are, and ultimately grow into the best possible versions of ourselves, it really is essential to know where we came from, which will help us gain a deeper understanding of what an absolute miracle it is that we are here at all. And the process of cultivating a profound sense of appreciation for the miracle of life that we are being given every moment of every day, is the real beginning of our joyful journey to higher ground.             So, let’s take a deep breath and travel back roughly 300,000 years ago, to the emergence of our species—Homo sapiens—on this planet. When you give yourself time to really pause and reflect on this, you begin to see that our origins are both humbling, as well as awe-inspiring. Scientists estimate that over the course of Earth’s history, somewhere between 5 billion and 50 billion different species have evolved. Now that’s truly a staggering number, but here’s the real kicker and it’s a  bigger number: about 99 percent of them have gone extinct. This means that entire species came into existence, thrived for a while, and then, due to environmental shifts, predators, disasters, or simply because they just couldn’t adapt, they disappeared, and they disappeared forever. Which brings us to a profound and rather unsettling question: why not us? Why didn’t we, too, disappear like so many countless others? It’s an obvious question because, after all, if you look at the big picture, human beings aren’t exactly a strong pick for survival. We are not the biggest animals. We are not the strongest. We’re certainly not the fastest, and in terms of physical defenses, we’re laughably weak. No fangs. No claws. No protective armor. Not to mention the fact that we can’t even fly. As a result of this, our position on the food chain is ridiculously low. Think about trying to run away from a cheetah, or outswim a shark and we’d lose the fight every time. And in terms of pure survival, put a naked human being in a fight to the death against a little squirrel and the squirrel would take us out in seconds. With its sharp claws and its ability to jump into attack mode, it would rip out our eyes and slit our throats almost instantaneously. What can we do with just our bare hands? And that’s just a fight with a relatively small creature. Let’s not even think about our survival odds barehanded against a lion, a tiger or a bear. On top of all this, when it comes to reproduction, the odds of our survival get even more pathetic. We have a comparatively small number of offspring and our infants are born completely helpless. Indeed, a human baby is probably the most vulnerable creature on Earth. It takes them years to become even remotely self-sufficient, which makes us an extreme outlier in the animal kingdom, where many creatures are walking and foraging within hours of birth. So, from a statistical standpoint, according to the laws of the survival of the fittest, we should have been wiped out long ago. Yet, we’re still here. And not only did we survive, but we’ve thrived, eventually becoming the dominant life form on the planet. So, how in the world did this happen? What was the game-changer? What was nature’s secret ingredient that allowed this vulnerable, physically weak and unimpressive species to outmaneuver and outlast so many others? The answer, of course, is sitting quietly inside of each and every one of our skulls right now: the human brain. It’s easy to overlook, but this small, three-pound organ—about the size of a medium cantaloupe—is nothing short of a miracle of evolution. Though it occupies less than 100 cubic inches, it is, without question, the most sophisticated masterpiece every produced by nature. Packed with approximately 100 billion neurons, each one connected to thousands of others, it forms a vast and intricate network capable of truly astonishing things. Each neuron can fire between 200 - 1,000 times per second, so we’re talking speeds in the milliseconds here. Truly astounding!   At first, our ancestors' brains gave them the ability to craft simple tools—sharp-edged stones that allowed them to cut, scrape, and build in ways no other species could. But that was just the beginning of the revolution. With those primitive tools, we began to rewrite the rules of survival. But then something truly incredible happened. It is largely hypothesized that at first, all we humans were running on was pure instinct. We didn’t have the ability to think rational thought. Suddenly, at some point, for reasons unknown, our brains took on a third more fat and we developed our prefrontal cortex. We became able to think rational thought and language developed, vastly expanding our capabilities, followed by writing, and everything really started to change for us because we could evolve and pass our understanding beyond the barriers of time and space. Over time, we became hunters, gatherers, farmers, builders, and eventually, creators of civilization itself. As millennia passed, this remarkable brain of ours allowed us to harness fire, cultivate crops, construct shelter, and later, to write poetry, compose symphonies, and build spacecraft that could escape Earth’s gravity. So, we each have our own modern human brain and let’s take a look at it from a modern perspective, which reveals a most remarkable fact: it’s estimated that it would take a dozen of the most advanced computers in the world about 45 hours to perform what your brain does in just one second. Think about that for a moment. And then take it one step further, our brain is involved in a key area that no computer will ever be able to touch – it can feel! And boy can it feel. We can literally feel hundreds of millions of different feelings. We don’t have the time here to get into all this here, but you get the point.   You are walking around every day with a mind of such complexity, speed, and brilliance that it outshines the most cutting-edge machines ever built. And yet, most of us rarely, if ever, give it any thought, let alone tap into even a fraction of its potential. This brings us to an essential insight: while our brain is the very thing that has allowed us to survive and dominate, it is also the key to something even much greater than all of this – It is the key to our growth, our transformation, and, yes, even our happiness. Now, evolution didn’t just stop when we made it to the top of the food chain. The brain itself is a dynamic, ever-changing organ. Through the miracle of neuroplasticity, it is constantly rewiring, adapting, and evolving in response to what we think, feel, and experience. So, our brain truly is an incredible masterpiece. But let’s not forget: with great power comes great responsibility. The very intelligence that has given us so much can also lead us terribly astray. It is capable of fear, anxiety, self-sabotage, and truly destructive habits. We see this everywhere—from personal struggles with self-worth to global crises fueled by greed and lust for power. Our human brain is a real double-edged sword. It can create miracles—or it can create truly horrible mayhem. That’s why conscious evolution is so critical now, perhaps more than ever. We are at a pivotal point in human history where the challenges we face—whether ecological, political, or psychological—demand a new level of awareness and intentionality. And this is where the NeuroHarmonic Method comes in. Designed to consciously engage the brain’s natural capacity for growth and transformation, it’s about learning to harness your neural wiring in ways that uplift your life, enhance your clarity, and empower you to live with purpose, compassion as well as passion, and peace. It is a framework for harmonizing your intelligence with your highest aspirations. The same brain that once helped your ancestors carve flint and build fires can now be tuned—harmonized, if you will—to unlock your deepest potential. Imagine what your life would look like if you could access more of your brain’s innate power—not just for survival, but for true flourishing. What if you could train your mind to break free from limiting beliefs, to rewire patterns of fear and doubt, and to create new habits of joy, resilience, and creativity? What if you could harmonize your inner world so beautifully that it naturally radiates out to transform your outer world as well? This is not a pipe dream. This is the promise of the NeuroHarmonic Method. And it begins with recognizing where we’ve come from and nurturing a deep sense of

As you may recall, we began the last episode by saying that we are deeply involved with preparations for the release of our next project, “The NeuroHaronic Method.” As a short introduction to it, I discussed two critical times in my life that helped lay the foundations for my lifelong study of personal growth. These were the metaphysical events that surrounded the sudden death of my father followed by my unexpected introduction to the idea that there has been a deep level of wisdom that has manifested itself in every human culture since the beginning of civilization. This remarkable intelligence is commonly called the “Wisdom of the Ages” and is by no means limited to ancient times.             Now, in this episode, we’re going to complete that part of the story and then we will go into a deeper overview of the “NeuroHarmonic Method” itself. Again, the purpose of all of this is to present you with ideas that you may find useful as you continue your own path of personal growth, which in my view, is a journey that we are all on in one way or another, because the innate desire for real growth is deeply tied to authentic human happiness. Some of us have begun to realize that we are on this quest and some of us haven’t. Yet. I ended the last episode with a short description of the course that I took in college that was simply called – World Religions, which started to open my eyes to the prospect of evolving my own consciousness. Prior to that, I never even considered the idea. The next important thing that happened to me in this regard took place in the early part of 1968 when I, along with the 70 million other baby boomers I came in with, heard the news that the Beatles had travelled to India to study meditation. Besides being a major global media event, they were actually making some kind of a statement about inner growth, which was in absolute congruence with the music that they were making at the time. Not only were they deeply involved with the process of changing Western Culture, by extension they were also affecting the entire world.   Personally, since my generation first came under their spell in 1964, I basically did whatever they did. I mirrored their hair style and eventually their drug use, along with their overall counterculture understandings. So, because they started studying with a teacher known as the Maharishi, by early 1970, I had gone to his outpost in Philadelphia and started doing what is known as Transcendental Meditation, which was a form of mantra meditation. Of course I wasn’t what you might call a “sincere seeker,” I was still just a devotee of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Still, I practiced that form on and off for about a year but I stayed pretty much on the surface. Eventually though, along with the changing times, my quest for inner truth got deeper and I ran into a rather profound form of meditation that finally began to melt the inner ice that had frozen my insides for so many years.   Since then, I’ve explored and experienced several dozen other approaches as well, including some rather advanced mindfulness modalities, but that one form of meditation that I started back then, has continued to be the basic foundation to my overall approach.   Again, this is just some background to set the stage for the emergence and creation of the “NeuroHarmonic Method” and in that vein, something critical happened to me about ten years ago, when I started to learn about of a certain set of understandings that was becoming popular among some brilliant neuroscientists and psychotherapists. They had begun to examine the effects of meditation, contemplation, and mindfulness on the neurology of the people who regularly practice these methods and their findings were astounding. This was especially true regarding something called neuroplasticity, which is our brain’s remarkable ability to physically transform itself, a truly amazing feat which it does constantly, The implications of these neurological validations of the positive effects of certain methods of personal growth are massive because they confirm a major idea that we can each wholeheartedly embrace and that is that we are not stuck! We’re not stuck with the negativity we carry. We’re not stuck with where we are at all, and most importantly, we are not even stuck with who we are. We can positively reshape the way our brain works, which changes the way we see ourselves and our lives in the world, which basically changes everything. Again, we were born with this ability and we still have it. So, to sum up this part of the story, this whole world of personal growth is truly a game changer and I’ve been lucky enough to have been involved with it for close to fifty-five years. And I’ll add with all humility, that there is a decent chance that I might be starting to scratch the actual surface of it! Now to make a very long story very short, this is, in essence what has led to the development of the NeuroHarmonic Method. So let’s move on to a fairly quick overview of it, which I hope you’ll find inspiring. It has emerged over what has basically been a lifetime of experience, study, and inner exploration. You've been hearing echoes of it in some podcast episodes, woven into stories and reflections, and maybe you’ve even experienced an occasional “aha” moment from some of its information. But now, I’d like to offer a fuller view of what it is, and why I believe it may hold real value for people in all walks and stages of life. Again, the NeuroHarmonic Method was not born in a lab or a university classroom, although its roots certainly drink from the well of neuroscience. Nor did it spring fully formed from a single moment of insight. It came together gradually, over many decades, from lived experience, long meditation, and a commitment to understanding both the workings of the human mind and the deeper currents of consciousness that flow beneath the surface. Also, as I’ve mentioned in a few earlier episodes, I’ve spent over five decades of serious study with a talented and deeply profound meditation teacher whose work reaches beyond theory and technique to a direct experience of an extrtemely joyful, yet profoundly peaceful state of awareness.    At the same time, I’ve been a lifelong student of human intelligence as it manifests throughout the brain and nervous system—how it functions, how it breaks down, and how, under the right conditions, it can harmonize with its own, inherently higher states of being. The NeuroHarmonic Method lives at the intersection of those two streams: ancient spiritual insight and modern neuroscience, so in a broader context, you could say that this is “Where Science Meets the Soul.” So, essentially, what ss NeuroHarmonics? At its heart, the NeuroHarmonic Method is about attunement. It’s an easy, yet practical way of harmonizing your brain and nervous system so you can resonate with your own higher frequencies of truth, clarity, and love. Just as a musical instrument can be tuned to produce harmonious sound, so too can the mind-body system be gently brought into alignment with its natural, unburdened state. But here’s the key: we’re not just talking about mental wellness or stress reduction, though these often happen along the way. This is about a truly transformational alignment. The NeuroHarmonics process tunes your entire being—your breath, thoughts, feelings, attention, and even your past—into coherence with the deeper intelligence that animates life itself. This is not a belief system. It’s a method of practice. This is something that you do, and the results are experiential. Let’s start with the breath, which is appropriate because that’s where life began for each one of us – it started when we took in our first breath, and obviously it ends when we breathe our last one out. But the power of the breath goes beyond even that. The breath is the portal to the animating force of life within, and naturally, breath is central to the NeuroHarmonic Method. Not just as a relaxation tool, but as a living bridge—a thread that connects your conscious awareness with the ever-present rhythm of your existence. And we’re not just speaking of oxygen exchange here. It’s something subtler. The breath becomes a way of remembering presence itself. It becomes the moment-by-moment invitation to return—to come back from the endless distractions of the mind and rest again in the comforting reality of the fact that you are alive. Through this breath-centered awareness, the nervous system can begin to down-regulate from stress, anxiety, and hypervigilance. But even more than that, it can begin to entrain with something greater. It can tune in to what we call our own NeuroHarmonic Frequencies, which are states of being that are marked by deep calm, clear focus, inner joy, and spiritual receptivity. Now let’s turn our attention to our overall consciousness itself and look at what we call The Jumping Monkey and the Silent Signal. In the podcast episodes, you’ve heard me talk about the “jumping monkey” of the ordinary mind. This refers to that incessant inner narrator who’s always leaping from one concern to the next, dragging us along like an annoying, impatient child in a toy store. But even beyond that, this is the foundational source of our nagging self-sabotage, which is at the very root of most of our issues. The NeuroHarmonic Method doesn’t fight this monkey part of the mind. It doesn’t suppress or judge it. Instead, it re-educates its attention. We learn to feel the difference between the monkey’s chatter and the silent signal that’s always present beneath it. That signal is often felt as a quiet invitation toward peace. Sometimes it’s experienced as an inner warmth. Other times, as clarity, lightness, or a kind of gravitational pull toward stillness. That signal is always there. It is part of our higher mind and what changes is our availability to receive it. Critically NeuroHarmonics trains us to step into that availability. The next pa

As we resume our regular podcast series, the Better Angels Publishing Company is about to embark on its next phase which will feature our newest release, “The NeuroHarmonic Approach,” with its catch-phrase, “Harmonize Your Intelligence - Transform Your Life.”             Now, obviously, that’s quite a mouthful, but this is a significantly powerful and innovative program and it’s evolved quite a bit over the past year, so, I’d like to give you quick overview of where it stands now and I think you’ll be fascinated by the information. Also, as with everything that we produce, our intention is to create a resource that you can use to help you achieve your highest goals as you continue along your own path of personal growth, which is by nature, in a constant state of evolution, expansion and change.    So, let’s dig into some of its basics. And as we do, I suggest that you engage in what is often called the “Beginner’s Mind,” which means approaching the material as though you’re hearing it for the first time - even if you’ve encountered similar concepts before. When you do that, you naturally let go of old frameworks, open to a fresh perspective and new insights tend to appear. I know that’s always been my experience over the years. To put it into context, the origins of the NeuroHarmonic Approach began with some extremely deep experiences that I had many years ago, so let me offer a bit of the backstory, to help you get a sense of how this work came to be, which might help enhance the overall meaning of the material. As you may be aware, the central focus of my adult life has been the exploration and practice of what we’ve come to call personal growth, which is a path of self-discovery that emphasizes the deepening of awareness. The seed of this pursuit was planted several decades ago, with the sudden death of my father. At age sixteen, it was a devastating shock for me, but it was also accompanied by certain experiences that, for lack of a better word, I can only describe as being metaphysical. I’ve talked about these before, in my memoir Wilt, Ike & Me, and in some earlier podcast episodes, but for the purposes of this introduction, I want to touch on them here again, briefly. First, the night before he died, I had a vivid, precognitive dream of exactly how I would learn of his death. In precise detail, it included the exact time and place, as well as all of the people who were involved. Then the dream came true the very next night, exactly the way I had dreamt it. Living through those moments is still one of the most unusual experiences I’ve ever had, because it was like going through a strange blend of past, present and future, almost like being in a déjà vu that lasted for several minutes. Then, about six months later, I had another remarkable dream. In it, my father appeared to me - joyful and full of life.  When I asked him about his death, he smiled and told me that he It wasn’t real. “There is no death,” he said. “It’s just a public relations stunt that God came up with to get people to think about Him. That’s all that it is.” At that point in the dream, he had me give him back his ring, which I had been wearing regularly since his passing. When he touched the ring, the whole room turned into light and I woke up. Then in waking life, just a few hours later that same day, his ring mysteriously disappeared from my locker during gym class - even though the locker was clearly locked and undisturbed, and everything else inside was untouched, including my watch, my other gold ring and my wallet with some cash in it. Although I’ve described these circumstances many times, I’ve never been able to truly express what they really did to me. But in hindsight, it’s obvious that these events marked a time when some seeds of deep change were planted within me, even though they would take several years to unfold. After some time, I came to two powerful conclusions. The first one is that there is far more to this life than meets the eye. Even though we think we’re in an advanced society, we actually understand very little about what’s really happening here. Thomas Edison once put it this way, “We don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything.” And this was from a major genius who is still considered to be one of the greatest inventors of all time. The fact that this was his point of view should speak volumes to us. So I began to ask myself – Even if it was just in a dream, how could I have experienced a precise visual precognition of events that hadn’t happened yet? The details in that dream had been crystal clear and when the events happened in reality, it was 100% accurate. What does that say about the nature of time? It was completely confusing tome, and of course I’m not alone. Even Einstein himself once said that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Now obviously, I’m no Einstein and probably neither are you. Also, I had to wonder - how could my father’s ring have vanished into thin air when I knew without question that the locker was locked and undisturbed when I got back from gym, let alone the fact that my watch, my other ring and my wallet with cash in it were all still there. It made no sense. It simply defied all logic. So, the two dreams – the precognitive one of his death, and the one where I gave him back his ring and then it mysteriously disappeared the next day, put the seeds of some deep thoughts in my head. Which makes sense, because as you can imagine, this sudden and major disruption of time, space and logic was a pretty big deal for an average sixteen-year-old kid. Which brings me to the second conclusion I drew from those days. My father’s dramatic death was totally unanticipated.  The massive heart attack that he suffered took him instantly, and neither he nor any of the rest of our family had the slightest idea that a tragedy of this magnitude was about to befall us. For me, this rude introduction to your world being turned upside down by a sudden death drove home the undeniable fact that life can change, or end, at any moment. It happened to him and it could just as easily happen to me. So, like a thief in the night, the idea of the ultimate ticking time bomb got planted somewhere deep within me. As I began to live my life in the new reality that followed, on a deep intuitive level, while I sensed that it was important to resolve the existential questions that were beginning to appear within my mind, the ticking time bomb kept reminding me that I better get on with it because I might not have that much more time. Of course, we’re all in the same boat on this, because regardless of external appearances, nobody has any guarantees here. These events happened nearly sixty years ago. This is how I felt about it all back then. And this is how I still feel now.               To continue on this track of early experiences that became critical to my interest in personal growth, during college, I took a course called World Religions. Now I wasn’t a serious student at all. In fact, it would be a stretch to consider me a student at all. Academics were more like a nuisance you had to deal with while you lived rest of your college life. The freedom of it alone was intoxicating. The times had gotten pretty crazy back then and as far as being a student, you could say that I had the attention span of a housefly mixed with the philosophical depth of a skunk, so the general odor emanating from my academic life wasn’t all that pleasant.               With that being said, I don’t even remember why I took World Religions. I’m sure I didn’t have any real interest in it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I took it because it might have been a “gut course,” which in the parlance of my esteemed fraternity, meant that it didn’t require much work to be able to get a good grade. As you can extrapolate, I had gotten in with a pretty smart bunch of guys.               Anyway, I ended up in this class and to my extreme surprise, after a little while, I became quite interested in it. We studied all of the world’s major religions and the teacher’s point of view was that in essence, they all had the exact same basic understanding, which was that there is one God, who is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. And as human beings, each one of us has come here to grow into the best possible being that we can and that individually we can grow out of the world’s chaos, emerge into the higher realms and ultimately merge with God, even while we’re still alive. In fact, according to him, you could say that this is the actual purpose of life here.              As you can surmise, the teacher was quite a learned man and taught that this universal truth that contained all of these deeper understandings, was generally known as the “Wisdom of the Ages.”             Now one thing I’ve learned in my life is that you never know when something profound is going to come into our consciousness and take you in a new direction. You often don’t see it coming and you don’t know why or how it happens. It just does. In this case, I wasn’t looking for anything other than just an easy way to get a good grade that would boost my cumulative average, so that I could get into a major law school. But without having the slightest idea about it, I subtly found myself moving down a completely different track, and unwittingly, this whole “Wisdom of the Ages” thing took up residence somewhere deep in the back of my mind. There was just something new and gripping about the whole thing The concept that there was a universal truth that had been expressing itself through wise men and women in every culture since the beginning of human history was brand new to me. It was also the first time I had seen beyond the walls of different religious dogmas to the view that essentially, they all had the same basic message - that as a human being, you could somehow evolve your consciousness and then actually merge heart, mi

The last episode ended on the evening of April 5, 1968. I was unexpectedly leaving Washington DC as my college had been abruptly shut down following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was in a friend’s car and as I looked back, I could see that the clouds in the darkening sky were flickering red, reflecting the light of the fires that were burning, as violence had begun to break out in the city. Within a week, 1,200 buildings had been burned, 12 people were killed and 14,000 federal troops were still occupying the nation’s capital.    Now even though the murder of Dr. King was one of the most tragic and deeply disturbing events that could possibly have happened, I am not going to focus on the assassination itself, or on the profoundly traumatic effect that it had on the country. Thousands of articles have been written about it by hundreds of authors who have a much deeper understanding of history than I do. Instead, for the purposes of this podcast series, which again focuses on the ways that consciousness began to evolve in those days, as witnessed through my own personal lens, there are a few key points that I would like to bring up. The first one is that Dr. King was a far greater figure than the iconic public servant that is presented in the current annals of American history. Even though he was one of the primary founders of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as one of the nation’s most inspirational orators, there was much more to him than that. He had a highly enlightened view of human potential as well as of its ultimate destiny. As such, he was continually expressing some of the deepest essential truths concerning human wisdom and understanding. In reality, he was at the very forefront of the enormous expansion of consciousness that was beginning to take shape back then. And it is truly hard to grasp how far ahead of his time he really was. The easiest way to realize this is by looking at his lofty position on non-violence, both as a means for resolving conflict, as well as for moving the evolution of humanity forward. For the sake of clarity, let’s compare it with the law of the jungle, which has been the basic modus operandi of humanity since civilization began. As a species, our knee-jerk reaction to the seemingly dog-eat-dog world we live in can be summed up in one basic phrase - might makes right. It began in the time of the caveman, as tribe fought against tribe, and over time, man began the process of inventing weaponry. Primitive spears and clubs turned into bows and arrows and swords. And thus, the arms race began. To our great misfortune, it has continued, unabated since then and the constant development of ever-increasing firepower has only served to heat things up. Tragically, even though times have changed dramatically, this basic concept of settling disputes has remained exactly the same. When push comes to shove, we resort to good old fashioned brute force. From the one-on-one fist fight, all the way up to massive conflagrations fought between millions of soldiers, it’s still the same old story. One side prevails due to its superior weaponry, along with its unbridled  willingness to inflict severe pain and death on the other side. And of course, it doesn’t matter how many innocent people have to suffer and die. What difference does that make when it comes to getting what you want? Now, even though this unenlightened unconsciousness has remained unchanged since the dawn of human history, remarkably, throughout every era, certain people have emerged who seem to be tapped into a deeper level of understanding. With a higher and more compassionate perspective, non-violence is usually the central theme of their approach and from a very early age, Dr. King was clearly one of them. Indeed, he spent his entire short life trying to elevate human awareness to this higher viewpoint.    At the root of his understandings was the work of Mahatma Gandhi, whose brilliant use of non-violence helped overthrow the brutal British rule that had subjugated the Indian people for nearly a century.  His interest in Gandhi grew over time, and following his successes with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, Dr. King felt the desire to travel to India to gain a deeper understanding of the life and teachings of this unlikely, yet remarkable leader. Finally, on February 3, 1959, he and his party, which included his wife, departed for a six-week visit to the ancient land. “To other countries I may go as a tourist,” he told reporters when he arrived at the airport. “But to India I come as a pilgrim.” His aim was to study how political goals can be accomplished through the use of non-violent methods, rather than through the use of brute force. According to Gandhi, it was the fundamental difference between using the higher parts of our hearts and minds, rather than just relying upon the primitive, survival-based impulses of anger and fear.  The visit proved to be an extremely powerful experience for him and he stated that it had helped clarify and empower his dedication to alleviate “the suffering, the exploitation, the injustice, and the degradation of human beings.”  These noble, universal feelings had only grown since his return, and when he formally came out against the war in Vietnam, he also stood against the horrible injustices of the economic exploitation practiced by “capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out, with no concern for the social betterment of the countries.”     Along with his stance on non-violence, there is one associated factor regarding the tragedy of the King assassination that I would like to mention at this point. In general, as far as race relations in the United State had been concerned, black people had always been delegated into a fundamentally subservient position in the society. While it was within their civil rights to express their views regarding the racial injustices that existed in the country, it was always firmly understood that it had to be done in a basically respectful and civil manner. But that mindset had begun to change a bit in the mid-sixties, and it was brought into focus on March 6, 1964, when Cassius Clay, the young boxer who had just become the heavyweight champion of the world, changed his name to Muhammed Ali and announced that he had joined the Nation of Islam, which was also known as the Black Muslims.  This controversial movement was part of a larger sentiment that had been gathering momentum that became known as “Black Pride” or “Black Power.” Along those general lines, the Black Panther Party was formed just two years later. I remember these developments very clearly, and in particular, I was struck by something that Malcom X once said. An extremely charismatic leader, as the chief spokesman for the Nation of Islam, he summed up the emerging point of view in a way which I found to be particularly clarifying. “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made.  And they won't even admit the knife is there." Now, of course Dr. King clearly understood the sentiments and feelings behind this point of view, but he never wavered on the issue of non-violence. As an ordained minister who took his work extremely seriously, the idea of using violence to accomplish the goal was completely out of the question. As such, he felt that the motto of Black Power represented “essentially an emotional concept” that meant “different things to different people.”  Even though it “was born from the wombs of despair and disappointment…and is a cry of pain,” he had deep concerns that “the slogan was an unwise choice,” because it carried “connotations of violence and separatism.” In his view, the real way to create change was to amass political and economic power, and then use it to achieve ennobling change. As far as the higher destiny of the country was concerned, he believed that “America must be made a nation in which its multi-racial people are partners in power.” Now, the truly remarkable thing about Dr. King is that he had the ethical and moral standing to bridge the gap between the various viewpoints and promote a more inclusive path. And this basic fact makes his loss to the country and to humanity itself all the more tragic. With all of this in mind, the outpouring of grief that followed the assassination was staggering. The funeral was set for Sunday, April 7th in Atlanta, and in an official proclamation, President Johnson declared it to be a National Day of Mourning. All sporting and theatrical events were to be postponed, with all flags lowered to half-staff. Of course, not everyone in the country was aligned with the idea of paying respect to the memory of Dr. King. Lester Maddox, the staunchly segregationist governor of Georgia always looked upon King as a major villain, who had no right stirring up the black population to go against the venerated laws and traditions of the South. As funeral arrangements were being made, the governor was approached with the idea of having Dr. King’s body lie in state in the Capitol building in Atlanta, but he flatly refused. On top of that, he declared that no flags in the state of Georgia would be lowered to half-staff either. When his position was relayed to Washington, although the federal government had no power over his refusal regarding the use of the state Capitol, it did have the power to enforce the lowering of all flags in the nation, so the flags in Georgia were lowered in accordance with the decree. The funeral itself became an iconic moment in American history. At first, the city of Atlanta estimated that about ten thousand people would be in attendance. But by the time of the funeral approached, it became clear that this estimate was way off. It took place on April 9, 1968, in Atlanta, Geor

In the last episode, we took a quick look back at Robert F. Kennedy’s rise to the senate in November of 1964. Then we mentioned that in 1967, the soon to be anti-war candidate, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy had approached him with the idea of opposing President Lyndon Johnson for the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States. But Kennedy had quickly turned the idea down. Now back to early 1968. Everybody knew that Bobby was certainly no friend of LBJ’s. They had a long and well-known history of animosity between them. But again, for many significant reasons, he didn’t think the timing was right to mount a challenge against a sitting president, so he just stayed in the wings and watched Gene McCarthy try to take him on. Then on March 12, 1968, something completely unexpected happened. The largely unknown senator from Minnesota, whose grass roots campaign had been largely run by a group of underfunded student volunteers, made a truly significant showing in the New Hampshire primary, and it proved to be a shocking upset.  Lyndon Johnson, who had the powerful name recognition of the incumbent, was well-funded and well organized with a huge staff of seasoned supporters. But he won only 49.4 per cent of the vote. And incredibly, McCarthy won a remarkable 42.2 per cent, which really took everyone by surprise. Suddenly it became obvious that the anti-Johnson, anti-war sentiment in the country was far larger and deeper than anyone had calculated. Overnight, the equation had clearly changed and Johnson was not as firmly in the driver’s seat as he seemed to be. And as you can imagine, the outcome caught Senator Kennedy’s attention as well. Now, there have been several biographies about RFK written over the years and many of them have examined the evolution and inner growth that led him up to this time. He had traveled extensively throughout the entire country and his views on the makeup of the American culture had broadened deeply.  I remember watching some of his speeches and noticing that there did seem to be something different about him, like a deeper level of empathy and compassion was emerging, especially for the underdog. And he seemed to have let his hair grow longer as well, maybe to emphasize his youth. Not that he needed it - he was only forty-two years old, afterall. Anyway, it didn’t take him long to make up his mind.  And just four days after the outcome in New Hampshire, on March 16, 1968, in the same room where his brother had done it eight years earlier, Robert F. Kennedy announced his intention to run for president of the United States. Of course, his move was met with mixed reactions. Many people in the anti-war movement called him an opportunist, coming in only after McCarthy had courageously paved the way. But somehow, it seemed much bigger than that, like he was on a completely different level from the rest of the prospective field and was capable of producing the major change in the county that was so desperately needed.  “It is a time of difficult choices, a time of danger and opportunity,” he said. “It is a time for all of us to choose whether we will stand for what we believe in, or whether we will be silent. “I believe that we can build a country where every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to live up to his or her full potential. I believe that we can build a country where every person is judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And I believe that we can build a country where the pursuit of happiness is not just a dream, but a reality. “But in order to do that, we must first have the courage to change,” he continued.  “We must have the courage to stand up and speak out for what we believe in. We must have the courage to demand better from our leaders, and better from ourselves. “That is why I am here today. That is why I am running for President. Because I believe that we can do better. Because I believe that we must do better. And because I believe that together, we can build a country that is worthy of the ideals that we hold dear.” So that was it. Wherever you stood - like it or not, with him or against him, anti-war or pro-war, Bobby was in the race. The game was on. And suddenly everything had changed completely. This was an enormous development, as well as a major surprise to a large portion of the country. Suddenly, the idea of serious opposition to the war in Vietnam had reached an entirely new level, to the delight of the entire anti-war movement. Of course, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota wasn’t happy about it. He had personally approached Kennedy five months earlier, arguing for an anti-Johnson initiative and urging him to run, but Kennedy had squarely turned him down, saying he said he didn’t want to challenge Johnson at that point in time. A lot of other people in the anti-war movement were skeptical about Kennedy as well, feeling that he was an opportunist who only found the courage to run after McCarthy had bravely paved the way. But Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been standing firmly against the war for nearly a year, felt otherwise. He felt that RFK’s entrance into the field was a real help because it made the case against Johnson even stronger. As he stated, “I think both Mr. Kennedy and Mr. McCarthy represent the kind of competence, dedication and relevant thinking on the basic issues that confront us today, that they are the kind of men that present the alternative that I think we need.” But it really didn’t matter how you looked at it - the race for the presidency had suddenly and radically changed because Kennedy had now entered it.  Besides his enormous name recognition, on a deep level he also represented the JFK Camelot mythology to a large portion of the general public, and his announcement had an immediate impact on the entire country. He quickly began active campaigning, targeting the key primaries that were the closest on the schedule. And when it came to managing a presidential campaign, he was a true expert, for he had overseen every aspect of his brother’s incredibly successful race.    Over the next few weeks, things began to settle into the new political normal and then, toward the end of March, suddenly, President Johnson’s office requested airtime from the three TV networks. He wanted to make a major speech regarding the status of the war in Vietnam. His appearance was scheduled for Sunday night, March 31 and at 9:01pm, the president began to address the nation. He started by giving an extensive overview about the state of the war in Vietnam. He discussed troop levels and urged Hanoi to consider a recent US initiative for peace, after which he went on about the real chances for ending the war and praised the US determination to bring the situation to a successful conclusion. After going through these topics for over an hour, he began to discuss his actual role in the process, “I have concluded that I should not permit the Presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year,” he stated. “With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour of a day of my time to any personal partisan cause or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office - the Presidency of your country.” Then at that point, with no warning, he suddenly shocked the world.  “Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president,” he said. Then he quickly ended his speech. It was a major bombshell and absolutely nobody had seen it coming, not even the closest members of his cabinet or staff.  He had kept his decision completely private, but suddenly, here it was - Johnson was out and the presidential race was now wide-open. Almost everyone believed that it was RFK’s entrance into the field that did the trick, but years later, it came out that Johnson’s health had been seriously deteriorating and he didn’t think he was physically up to the callosal demands that would be facing him. He had pretty much made up his mind several months before the McCarthy/Kennedy phenomenon had even begun to emerge. But none of the reasons why he did it mattered. All that mattered was that he was stepping down, it seemed like a whole new era had begun, and suddenly, things seemed incredibly bright. With Bobby Kennedy, Gene Macarthy and several other key players emerging into the forefront, a true change of direction for the war, as well as for the entire country seemed imminent. Although I don’t remember a whole lot from that particular time, I do remember that night very well. The next day, our entire campus seemed elevated. Who knows? Maybe the summer of love and the sudden emergence of flower power had something to do with it. But it really didn’t matter. All we knew was it was it seemed like we were in the Wizard of Oz; black and white had turned into color and we weren’t in Kansas anymore. April had begun, spring was about to dawn, and there was no telling what the future might bring. It was a great feeling. Suddenly, this elevated mood seemed to light up the world. And although major challenges were still plentiful, a new sense of optimism had begun to set in and it was truly a magical time. But unfortunately, it didn’t last long, for only four nights later, on Thursday evening, April 4th at 6:05 pm in Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was brutally murdered.  Now, details traveled much more slowly in those days. Don’t forget, this was still a dozen years before the idea of 24-hour news coverage had even begun. I do remember hearing that Dr. King had been shot, but the next morning, the enormity of what was happening really got driven home. At my first class, the professor announced that school was immediately closing and th

As the last episode ended, we had begun to examine the speech that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had made as he publicly came out against the war in Vietnam. He talked about his lifelong commitment to non-violence, saying he had been compelled to speak against the war effort because the United States had become “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He went on to link the war to the nation’s economic injustices, arguing for a fundamental moral shift in the country's priorities. He called the festering US involvement in Vietnam, “some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war.” And he declared that “America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic destructive suction tube.” Indeed, he found that the amount of money that had been spent in producing such meaningless destruction, was simply obscene. Total expenditures had surpassed $252 billion by end of 1967, while over 25 million Americans were still living below the poverty line. And don’t forget, our troops weren’t a bunch of volunteers fighting for a cause that they considered to be worthy. Far from it. This war was being fought by draftees. The country was under a mass conscription order, and if you were a male between the ages of 18 ½ and 26 and you didn’t have a deferment, you were either going to fight or you were going to jail. On top of all these other issues, the number of black soldiers fighting in the war was out of proportion. You had nearly 80,000 black soldiers being forced to fight a war that was 8,500 miles away, while their families were largely treated as second class citizens back home. But given all this, on a larger level Dr. King still had a sense that a major change of some kind was beginning to take place in the world and he stood squarely behind it. But it was going to take a lot of sincere effort and prayer. As he said, “Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance.” “Somehow this madness must cease,” he continued. “We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. “I speak…for the poor of America… I speak as a citizen of the world… as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. Then he concluded, “I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.” Today, this is considered to be one the greatest speeches of his lofty career. But things were quite different back then, and to say that his decision about the war wasn’t well received would be quite an understatement. But Dr. King was well aware of the probable opposition he would face as he went into the church that day. The idea of standing against the war had presented quite a difficult conundrum for him because it meant standing against President Johnson, who had been an enormous ally of the Civil Rights movement during the course of his entire presidency. He had been a powerful force of positive change in the lives of black people throughout the country, and the idea of opposing him on the war was rife with significant difficulties. And indeed, it proved to be so. A large portion of the Civil Rights movement was shocked that King chose to oppose Johnson and the NAACP called the speech a “serious tactical mistake.” But the opposition in the mainstream press was far stronger than that.  The editorial board of the New York Times said that King’s position was an oversimplification and that when it came to the Civil Rights Movement and the War in Vietnam, "linking these hard, complex problems will lead not to solutions but to deeper confusion." The Washington Post said that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."  And Life magazine said his speech had been “demagogic slander that sounded like a script from Radio Hanoi.” But Dr. King stood strong and began stepping up his antiwar efforts. As I mentioned earlier, there were three powerful events that happened in 1967 that would have a significant impact on the American involvement in Vietnam. Dr. King taking a stand against the war in April was the first. The second happened on June 20, 1967, when the controversial, yet enormously respected world-famous boxer, Muhammed Ali, was sentenced to five years in prison for draft evasion. And just to be sure that everyone understood where the government of the United States stood on the issue of the war, on the same day that Ali was convicted, Congress voted 337-29 to extend the draft for four more years.           Finally, on November 30 of that year.  Eugene McCarthy, the astute senator from Minnesota, formally announced that he would oppose Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic party’s nomination for president.           At the time, it seemed like a relatively minor event. McCarthy was basically unknown and even though Johnson’s popularity had begun to dip a bit at the time, it was common knowledge that he had a secure hold on the party and that there was no way he could be defeated for the nomination. McCarthy’s announcement seemed largely symbolic.           Now, let’s go back to January of 1968. But before we get into what began to unfold politically, let me give you a very quick overview of what I was doing at school, once I returned from winter break. The reason this will be so quick is because I was doing very little at the time, unless pledging a big fraternity and partying your brains out can be categorized as an accomplishment of any kind.  I wasn’t paying much attention to anything outside of the realm of my own little world and I barely paid attention there either. As far as the war was concerned, I rarely thought about it. I had a solid college deferment through to June of 1971 and the whole mess would certainly be over by then, so I had nothing to worry about. Other than that, I guess I had forgotten that I had come to college to learn anything, at least not scholastically. I was busy developing the attention span of a common house fly, along with the clarity and depth of a thin layer of mud. It’s not necessary for me to add any concrete details here. Just let your concept of absolute cluelessness fill in the blanks.           So, back to the political world. Shortly after his announcement, to everyone’s surprise, even though it was still relatively small, Senator McCarthy’s campaign began to gain some traction. It seems there was a little more anti-war sentiment in the country than most people had noticed. At one point, it became generally known that, along with a few other groups, McCarthy had privately tried to convince New York senator Robert F. Kennedy to run against Johnson in the primary. But RFK was quite hesitant about it. Although he was unquestionably opposed to him, he felt that Johnson was in a totally secure position and that opposing him would be a bad choice for both the party and the country, as well as for his own possible future plans.           It’s important at this point, to step back a little and take a look at RFK or “Bobby” as he was generally called, who was in a completely unique position in the country at the time. To start with, he was probably one of the first major figures in the United States to be routinely referred to by just his first name.  Whenever TV or news reporters mentioned “Bobby” everybody knew exactly who they were talking about. And that’s because, as many of you know, he had become a major figure in America ever since his older brother, John F. Kennedy, had been elected president in 1960. As his tenaciously brilliant campaign manager, Bobby had overseen every aspect of the successful win. And then, as Attorney General, he became the most trusted member of the cabinet. Indeed, someone once asked JFK if Bobby was his number two man in Washington and he said that not only was his number two, he was also his number three, four, and five as well. Then, during the horrible ordeal of the JFK assassination, Bobby was center stage with the family throughout the entire nightmare. In the months that followed, he rarely made appearances and when he did, the scars of agony and grief were deeply etched upon his face. But nine months after the assassination, something truly remarkable happened at the Democratic party’s national convention in Atlantic City on August 27, 1964. It was the final day of the proceedings and they were going to show a film commemorating the life and accomplishments of JFK. The auditorium was packed and the program was being carried live on all the TV networks. Bobby was scheduled to give a very brief introduction to the film, and after a few preliminaries, he was finally introduced. As soon as he walked onto the stage, the entire auditorium spontaneously erupted into a massive standing ovation. For the first few minutes, it was overwhelmingly powerful, but it quickly turned into something much more, as the crowd simply would not stop cheering. Even though he tried to speak several times, they wouldn’t let him and the standing ovation just went on and on. It seemed that a huge wave of emotion had been spontaneously released and was being showered upon him, as though the whole country was holding him tightly in a fond embrace. It had not been organized, there was no demonstration of any kind and no accompanying music. It was just Bobby standing in front of several thousand people who were expressing their deep admiration and affection for him and what he stood for, including those golden days of Camelot that had been brutally stolen from the country.  It went on like that for over twenty straight minutes and it was truly extraordinary. A few months later, RFK decided to return to publi

We ended the last episode with a quick look at the groundbreaking Beatles album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the powerful effect it had on popular music and on Western Culture in general. For many reasons, the album, which was released on May 26, 1967, seemed to elevate the mass consciousness of a significant segment of society to a new and higher level. And then a month later, on June 25, 1967, the old Fab Four took things up another notch.   On the first internationally broadcast television program to be beamed simultaneously around the world by satellite, the Beatles introduced their classic masterpiece, “All You Need is Love,” which became an instant anthem for those amazing days. They had invited a bunch of guests to be on stage with them as they performed the song, including the Rolling Stones, the Who and many others. It turned out to be an incredible celebration and along with the music and the expanding tenor of the times, a new form of appearance had come into the world as well. It was the hippy look and it quickly became known as the uniform of the counter culture. It’s hard to describe because of its individualized, free and unencumbered, styleless style. But one popular phrase of the times sums it up - you just “let it all hang out.” And the Beatles, along with everyone else who joined them on the stage, all wore it well. Now, there was nothing subtle about what was going on. They were clearly making a statement and the entire Western world reacted. Shortly thereafter, the remarkable summer of love got under way, with its happenings, be-ins and other mass gatherings, boldly celebrating the emergence of this newly liberated way of being. The concept of Flower Power had been born and spread like wildfire, verifying the old adage that, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”           Now, I haven’t mentioned anything about what I was doing personally back then, but it was a pretty incredible year for me as well.  As a senior, I was elected president of our high school, (which was a relatively big deal for its time and place), I had also met and fallen in love with my high school sweetheart, Sally, and we had our own magnificent, teenaged summer of love. And to top it off, the basketball team that my father had founded only a few years earlier, the Philadelphia 76ers, won the NBA Championship. By the way, that high school romance of ours is still in full swing. We went on to get married, had a wonderful daughter, and as Sonny and Cher sang long ago, “the beat goes on.”  However, for the purposes of this podcast narrative, what’s important here is that from my little perspective, everything seemed right with the world. Finally, the endless summer came to an end and I soon departed to Washington, DC and entered American University. One of the very first things that happened to me there presents an accurate picture of both the nature of the times and of my personal state of mind. I was living in a dorm and on one of the first nights, we had a meeting of the residents of our floor. There were about sixty of us and it went on for over an hour. Towards the end, the floor supervisor summed up the dorm rules and then added, “So when it comes to alcohol, as long as you’re not too drunk, you’re going to be okay. If you are too drunk though, you’re going have to go before the disciplinary committee. Okay, so I guess you’re asking – “What is the definition of being too drunk?” he asked with a smirk. “Well, if you get on the elevator and you’re too drunk to remember what floor you live on, or if you’re too drunk to remember what your room number is, or if you’re so drunk that you pass out in the hall before you even make it to your room - then you’re too drunk. If you’re less drunk than that, you’ll be fine.” Everyone had a good laugh, like hey, we didn’t know college was going to be this much fun. But then, his entire demeanor changed and, sounding like a tough cop on the beat, in a curt, strict tone, he said, “Of course, if you’re caught smoking marijuana, you’re immediately expelled. We have no tolerance for that here.” There was dead silence in the room and I thought to myself, “Who the hell is going to come to college and smoke marijuana?” It seemed like the most absurd idea in the world. “Why would anybody do that?” The mixture of college and marijuana seemed completely incongruous. As you might deduct, at eighteen and a half years old, to coin an old phrase, I was as straight as they came. I had never smoked anything at all and had never had an alcoholic drink of any kind in my entire life. And that was fine with me. I had other plans. I was enrolled in the School of Government and Public Administration and following graduation; I would go to law school and then join my brother in the law firm my father had founded. Anyway, it turned out to be a terrific opening semester for me. I went home for winter break to enjoy some sorely missed, extended time with Sally, and as the year came to an end, the only bad thing that I have to say about 1967 is that it turned into 1968. So, here we go. But this takes us into some rather dark territory and intestinal fortitude becomes an absolute must. By now, you probably know that the first place to start talking about this year is with the ever-deepening quagmire of Vietnam.  Although I hadn’t been particularly aware of it, besides everything else that had happened in 1967, it was also the year that a small, but significant portion of the American public had begun to question our involvement in that war. Through it all, Lyndon Johnson kept reassuring the country that even though the financial and human costs had been high, our effort in Vietnam was proving to be more than justified and things continued to go quite well for us over there. However, his rosy picture darkened considerably when something called the Tet Offensive broke out at the end of January of 1968. Without warning, the North Vietnamese launched a massive, well-coordinated attack throughout the entire country, including the South’s capital city of Saigon.    As the brutal fight continued to rage on, it became an enormous blow to US public opinion in two significant ways. First, it showed that the optimistic spin that had been put on the war was deeply flawed. And secondly, it prompted something revolutionary in TV news. Due to enhanced technology, all of the networks began to cover the war in graphic detail, and kept it in the lead position of their major broadcasts.    This constant exposure brought the bloodshed home in a way that had never been seen before. Horrible images, filled with violent battle scenes brought the war into the living rooms of the American public on a nightly basis, which was deeply disturbing to the entire country. Suddenly, Lydon Johnson began to seem like a major liar and his approval ratings, which had always been robust, began to tank. At its peak, his approval rating had been 74% with only a 15% disapproval. By the end of February 1968, primarily due to his mishandling of Vietnam, his approval rating had sunk to a dismal 41% with a seriously significant disapproval of 48%. On a personal side note, I used to take the train to Philadelphia on a fairly regular basis to visit Sally, who was still in high school. I would travel to and from Union Station in Washington DC and I began noticing something eerie. On every trip. I would walk by a restricted area where there would be about 20 – 30 rather small, flag draped metal boxes with a military official standing nearby. Soon, I became aware that these were coffins carrying the bodies of US soldiers coming back from Vietnam, and the human toll of it all began to dawn on me. I soon realized that these weren’t just some metal boxes in the hallway of a train station. No. In a very short time, each one of them would become the sad focus of deep mourning, as the family and friends of the fallen would try to make sense of their dear young ones taken far before their time. All of this death! And what was it that what we were we fighting for again?  At this point, to set the stage for what was about to come, it’s important to look back to 1967 once again, at three events that were to have an impact on the anti-war movement. The first one took place on April 4, 1967, when something truly extraordinary happened. After months of agonizing deliberations, and in a move that was incredibly controversial for the time, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. firmly and unequivocally announced his staunch opposition to the war. In order to understand the significance of this, let’s remember that there have been very few people in American history who can match his moral and ethical standing. Of course, he is mainly remembered for his groundbreaking actions in the realm of Civil Rights, but as lofty as those accomplishments were, they are only a small part of who he really was. For in essence, he had always considered himself to be primarily a preacher who had dedicated himself to doing God’s work. And as such, he stood for peace, equality, and dignity for all people, everywhere, not just for those aligned with the American point of view.   In a major address before a packed house at the Riverside Church in New York City, Dr. King meticulously outlined his reasons for taking his anti-war stance. He then began to address the issue of non-violence. Throughout his life, King had been deeply influenced by the work of Mahatma Gandhi and had espoused the path of non-violence in everything he did, especially in the inner cities of America. And because of that, he now couldn’t justify the hypocrisy of not opposing this massive war effort.  “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government,” he said. With those deeply striking and incredibly powerful words, let’s let this

In the last episode, I briefly described my grandfather, who was a lifelong mystic, and his reactions to the dream I’d had about my father and his ring, which was followed by its mysterious disappearance. I also mentioned another unusual incident concerning the ring that took place about twenty years later, when a friend told me about a vivid dream he’d had where my father had given him a message for me, saying that I should “remember the ring.” Now this wasn’t a childhood friend, he knew nothing about my father, and had no idea if this message was going to mean anything to me at all.  As you can imagine, the fact that it had come through a completely objective third party and had happened a full twenty years after the original incident made quite an impact on me. So, that completes this part of the narrative. In summary, even though my life had been turned upside down by the sudden death of my father, which had been accompanied by two inexplicable events that had defied all logic, I put it all behind me, or so I thought. I continued with my eleventh-grade life, which basically meant that I returned to my everyday state of constant activity.           Now, as I’ve mentioned a few times earlier, this podcast narrative focuses on the massive evolution of consciousness that began in the early1960s, as experienced through my own individual lens, which brings us now to the middle of 1966. On a larger level, at this time two huge influences were beginning to shake American society to its core – First, the enormous evolution of the Beatles and their profound impact on popular culture, and second, the war in Vietnam.           With the Beatles, as we mentioned in the last episode, at the end of 1965, they had come out with their revolutionary album, Rubber Soul, which George Harrison said was the first music they made when they were all regularly smoking marijuana. It had enormous appeal and was having a major effect on all of popular music.           By the way, their old friend Bob Dylan was breaking some new ground of his own. In March of 1966, he brought out a radical new song that caught everyone’s attention. Its free-wheeling, raucous sound was far more in the style of a New Orleans Dixieland band than of rock and roll. And in the wild chorus, with his background musicians singing along in high hysterics, he kept repeating the signature line, “Everybody must get stoned.” The song was over four and a half minutes long and got a ton of airplay on almost every pop radio station.  So, on a daily basis, with a clever twist of words and a message that was unmistakable, millions of music fans would listen to Dylan constantly urge them to try marijuana. It was quite an advertisement.           A few months later, the Beatles took it all one step further when they released their groundbreaking album, Revolver. Again, according to George Harrison, while Rubber Soul was the first album they made under the influence of marijuana, Revolver was the first one they made under the regular influence of LSD.           The easiest way to describe this remarkable collection of songs is that it was incredibly trippy. One song, “Love to You” followed the form of a classic Indian raga, complete with sitar and tablas. Nothing like it had ever been heard in the west before. Another major breakthrough was the soul-stirring “Eleanor Rigby,” which brought an entirely new level of depth to the Beatles repertoire. All the other songs on the album became instant classics as well, but one track, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” deserves some special attention because it was specifically designed to boost the evolution of consciousness.           Apparently, John Lennon had been influenced by a book called, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner. The book claimed that under the influence of LSD, it was possible to shed the limiting nature of constant ego identification and emerge into a higher, more enlightened level of awareness. And it gave step by step instructions on how to do it.           Supposedly, after Lennon bought the book, he took LSD and followed the instructions to a tee. Soon after that, he wrote the song, with the psychedelic nature of the music combined with the mind-expanding lyrics. He said he wanted to sound like the Dalai Lama chanting on top of a mountain, as he enlightened the public to the message of possible God realization that underlies the LSD experience. “Turn off your mind relax and float downstream,” he sang.  “It is not dying, it is not dying. Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void. It is shining, it is shining. That you may see the meaning of within. It is being, it is being. That love is all and love is everyone. It is knowing, it is knowing…” Some years later, George Harrison offered an interesting perspective on the song as well as on their evolving perspective at the time. “From birth to death all we ever do is think: we have one thought, we have another thought, another thought, another thought,” he said.  “Even when you are asleep you are having dreams, so there is never a time from birth to death when the mind isn’t always active with thoughts. But you can turn off your mind. “The whole point is that…the self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being. All the rest that comes about in the outward manifestation of the physical world. . . is just clutter.” Then he concluded, “The true nature of each soul is pure consciousness. So, the song is really about transcending, and about the quality of the transcendent.” Of course, this understanding about the higher nature of our consciousness was extremely advanced for its time. And whether the public understood it or not, the message was still pouring out to millions of people on a daily basis, subtly or not so subtly affecting their consciousness. The innovative album caught on in a flash and the influence of psychedelic music began to grow significantly. Over the next few months, the Grateful Dead, the Byrds, the Jefferson Airplane, the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Traffic, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors all gained enormous popularity, along with many, many other groups. A new idea of a higher, more evolved state of being was clearly being born in the culture. And speaking of the culture, in a larger context, something called the “counter culture” was beginning to emerge, which not only challenged the mainstream norms and values, but also advocated for social change. Embracing ideals of peace, love, and unity, it was all vibrant, inspiring, alive, and unmistakably - young. But at the same time, another enormous, yet rather sinister influence was in the early stages of taking over the consciousness of the country as well. As you probably know, it was the ever-broadening tragedy of the war in Vietnam.  Even though no one seemed to be paying much attention to it, like an undiagnosed cancer, it just kept metastasizing. President Lyndon Johnson continued to insist that the constant build-up of US troops was the right thing to do because at all costs, we had to prevent communism from taking over the Pacific Rim. And the costs were getting pretty serious.  In 1964, we spent $53.4 billion on the effort in Vietnam. In 1965, we spent another $54.5 billion and in 1966, it escalated to 66.4 billion. That’s a total of $174.4 billion. Not that anyone looked at it this way, but in those three years, instead of being used for warfare, that amount of money could have abundantly fed well over a billion people. And the human costs were building as well. The US troops which had numbered 23,300 in 1964, grew to 184,300 in 1965, then onto 385,300 by the end of 1966. And with that, the truly horrible number - how many people actually died there – kept swelling. In 1964, 216 US soldiers died. It grew to 1,928 in 1965, then onto 6,350 in 1966. Now that’s just US troops. When it comes to how many of the North and South Vietnamese people died, no one really knows for sure, but an estimate of 10-1 is used as a conservative approximation. So here are the basically revolting numbers related to those three years of war - $174.43 billion just plain wasted on destruction, with a total of over 96,000 human beings needlessly killed. Even so, at that point, there still was very little opposition to the war and President Johnson stood resolute and strong. Afterall, he wasn’t about to let the Pacific Rim go communist. And on a side note, he was damned if he was going to be the first US President to ever lose a war. So that brings us to 1967, which would go down in history as a truly magical year. Many volumes have been written about it and there’s not a whole lot to say that hasn’t already been said. On the grim side, the US involvement in Vietnam got much worse, to nobody’s surprise. We went up another 100,000 troops to a deployment of a staggering 485,600 soldiers. And US deaths went up an additional five thousand to 11,363. That’s 17,713 families who buried their young sons and daughters who had died trying to protect the Pacific Rim from going communist. Not that any of us even knew what that concept meant. So. the dark side had gotten darker.  But incredibly, the light side was about to get much lighter. On May 26, 1967, the Beatles released what was probably the most monumental album of their entire career, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. This major phenomenon, turned the pop world completely upside down. The album was filled with references to transcendent states of consciousness that were being now being experienced by millions of baby boomers around the world.  It featured the most psychedelic song anyone had ever heard yet, called “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The music was absolutely hypnotic and the mind-altering lyrics broke radical new ground on many levels. The initials of the title happened to be LSD, but according to John Lennon, that was just a coincidence. However h

As the last episode ended, I had given a quick overview of my grandfather, who was a lifelong Orthodox Jew, but was also a mystic with his own set of metaphysical understandings, especially about what was happening in modern times. Among his teachings, he used to tell us was that there are always highly evolved people living on Earth, who are here to help bring about the Divine Plan for the evolution of humanity. In the ancient tradition, such a person was called a Kal-El, which means “vessel of God.” As a brief note about that term - when I first started reading Superman comics at about age eight, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Superman’s real name on his home planet of Krypton was Kal-El. I never gave it much thought and figured it must have been some kind of coincidence until several years later, when I learned that Superman had been created by two Jewish guys, Jerry Seigle and Joe Shuster. I guess they thought of him as a vessel of God doing good, so naming him Kal-El was no coincidence. Also, when it comes to comic books, surprisingly, my first introduction to the idea that human beings could evolve into a higher level of consciousness came from reading about it in a comic book. I was around twelve and I still remember the moment when the concept first hit me.    After years of being devoted to Superman and Batman, I had gotten introduced to a new company called Marvel Comics and its highly innovative, new characters began to expand the horizons of my imagination. It still featured action stories, but they dropped in some extra tidbits. Like in one episode of the Fantastic Four, there was an alien named “The Watcher,” from an advanced race of beings, who had become friends with Reed Richards, the leader of the Fantastic Four. One day, Richards wanders into The Watcher’s laboratory when he isn’t there and picks up a baton-like device. Suddenly he’s rooted to the ground, can’t move and his head begins to morph into a much larger size. The Watcher suddenly bursts in, grabs the baton out of Richards’s hands and brings him back to normal. Once Richards is fully restored, The Watcher explains that the device he was holding was a “consciousness enhancer.” In those few seconds, it had moved him forward a thousand years and he had actually become a highly evolved human being of the far distant future. As a fellow scientist, he asks Richards what the experience had been like. Richards says he couldn’t retain the details, but he could remember that he had become fully merged with the creative power of the cosmos and the inherent joy of being in that heightened state of awareness was indescribable.  The only thing I can say about being exposed to that idea is that it completely blew my mind. It was several years before that expression became popular, but that cosmic comic book really did it to me. If it was possible for human consciousness to evolve to a significantly higher level, as an extrapolation, I began to wonder if it were possible for me to do it. And could I do it in this lifetime? A certain ideal seemed to take root deep inside my mind, almost like a trophy had been placed on some distant shelf in time to remind me to take up the quest to approach this noble goal at some later point in my life.   Anyway, let’s get back to my grandfather and his belief that the modern technologies, including television, were being used by God to expand human awareness and that there are always Kal-El’s or vessels of God on earth, helping to further his work. Remember that Zayde, my grandfather, was the absolute spiritual head of our extended family and one day, to my sheer delight, he decided that the TV character, the Lone Ranger, was in reality, a Kal-El. This basically changed the workings of our family because now, whenever the Lone Ranger was on TV, my grandfather had to stop everything and sit and watch the entire episode. Whatever was happening around him, lunch or dinner, party or celebration – it didn’t matter. He had to stop and watch the show. Now, this was a terrific development for me because the Lone Ranger was my favorite TV program, and if it had something to do with God, it was all the better. Because in my book, watching the show was a million times better than sitting in Hebrew school for an hour and a half. Zayde would watch each episode with total focus, and after it ended, he would give a short teaching on the moral of the story. Here’s one shining example that is still enshrined in my memory. An hourlong origin special about how it all began was being shown, and we watched it together. As it started, the Texas Rangers were ambushed and left for dead by the bad guys. Tonto, the Ranger’s future Indian companion, comes upon the scene, realizes that one of the Rangers is still alive, and nurses him back to health. Since he’s the sole survivor, Tonto calls him the Lone Ranger. A few weeks later, they find a big white stallion lying near a bush bleeding to death, apparently gored by a bull. The Ranger and Tonto spend weeks caring for it.  Once it fully recovers, they tie a rope around its neck and lead it into an open pasture. “Your horse was killed, and now Great Spirit has given you a new horse,” Tonto says, appreciating the synchronistic workings of the universe. “He’s not my horse yet, Tonto,” the Ranger replies. As they stand in the field, the horse feels its strength returning, and with its nose twitching, senses the call of the wild. The Ranger pats it on the head and slowly removes the rope. Then suddenly, he gives it a sharp slap on the rear. The horse bolts forward and breaks into a mighty gallop, charging full speed to the top of a hill.  It rears back on its hind legs, neighing in triumph, standing tall against the sky. But when it comes back down on all four legs, a change comes over it. It tilts its head to one side, and then, as though sensing a call beyond the wild, it trots back over to the Lone Ranger and just stands there next to him.  “There, there, Big Fella,” the Ranger murmurs to him, gently stroking its muzzle. Then he turns to Tonto, and in a clam voice, filled with  absolute certainty says, “Now he’s my horse.”   The show went to commercial and Zayde turned to me, his face glowing like he had been staring at a burning bush. “You see?” he asked me. “It’s all about free will. God will never force you. He’s just waiting for you to choose to be with him. You can do it whenever you want, but it’s really up to you. God’s in no rush. He has all the time in the world. And more.”  Then, as always, he quoted some Hebrew or Yiddish phrase that I didn’t understand. “You know what that means?” he asked me. I never did. “It’s simple. ‘In the dark, you’re blind. But in the light, you can see. So, stand in the light and open your eyes.’” Then he touched the middle of my forehead with his index finger. “There’s a lightbulb in there. But it’s up to you to screw it in and turn it on. Understand, Davy?” So, that’s a brief introduction to this deeply esoteric man. Now let me tell you what happened when I told him about the incident with my dream and the disappearance of the ring. As you may recall from the last episode, I had experienced a vivid dream with my father. At the end of it, I gave him back his ring and it dissolved into white light. Then, the following morning, after my first period gym class, I was shocked to find that the ring had mysteriously disappeared out of my wallet, which I had securely locked in my locker. A few days later, during my regular weekly visit to him, I told my grandfather what had happened and he was completely transfixed. Every detail seemed to tell him something special. The fact that it took place in the lobby of the synagogue, the fact my father seemed younger and had a healthy-looking tan, the fact that he chuckled when I told him that he died and said that it wasn’t real, that it was just a trick…all these things amazed and delighted him. Then, when I got to the part where the ring had dissolved into a white light which filled the room and that I felt a happy presence in the light, he got quite still and didn’t move for a few moments. I didn’t quite know what to make of it, so I went right into telling him how the ring disappeared out of my locker the next morning. After I finished, he seemed deeply moved. “So, understand, Davy, that you were shown a lot here, especially at such a young age,” he said. “All that you need to grasp at this point is that this life is much more than it seems to be. Try to keep that idea in the back of your mind as you grow, because take it from me, it will always be true. Now matter how much you know, there will always more to learn. That’s just the way it works. As a path to infinity, it’s an infinite path, and it’s always more wonderful than you can ever understand, especially at your age. So, just keep opening up to it.” He broke into a warm smile and said, “It gives you a lot to think about and there are a lot of maybes here for you to consider. The ring turned into light in the dream, then it disappeared the next day in real life. Maybe that means there’s a deep connection between the two realms,” he said. “Much more than most people know.” “Also, Dad said there’s no death, that its just a trick God does to get people to think about him. So maybe you should give this whole thing a lot more thought. I’m sure that you will, over the years.” “And you said that you both stood there, holding the ring and it felt like a bridge between you,” he continued. “Maybe he’s telling you that the bridge is real, that it’s still there and that you’re still connected, even beyond death. Maybe you’ll always be.” “And you know what else? The ring turned into light and you felt yourself get pulled into it. What was that like?” he asked me. “It was incredible,” I said. “It had a presence that was filled with comfort and joy and I don’t think I’ve ever been that happy.” “Exactly,” he agreed. “Maybe, that light took you into Shamayim (hea