Latest / Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman / Siddharth Ramakrishnan, PhD – The Neuroscience of Magic

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Siddharth Ramakrishnan, PhD – The Neuroscience of Magic · Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

0:04
Speaker 1: My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice.
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Speaker 1: I've always been fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science, and
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Speaker 1: the crossroads at which they meet. Join me now and
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Speaker 1: we will explore these topics and so much more with
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Speaker 1: fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to
0:28
Speaker 1: Destination Unlimited. What happens to your brain when you practice magic?
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Speaker 1: My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, Doctor Zidharth Ramakrishnan,
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Speaker 1: reveals how your mind is wired for intentions, spells, and dreams.
0:50
Speaker 1: Using straightforward language and full color brain maps. He translates
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Speaker 1: the complex science behind the brain circuitry and reveals how
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Speaker 1: practicing magic alters these circuits, literally rewiring the brain. In
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Speaker 1: his new book, The Neuroscience of Magic, How Your Brain
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Speaker 1: Is Wired for Intentions, spells, and Dreams, readers discover how
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Speaker 1: their minds are inherently built from magical thinking, and how
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Speaker 1: that wiring can be intentionally harnessed. Through dozens of practical exercises,
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Speaker 1: readers learn to amplify the power of their words, intentions,
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Speaker 1: and beliefs to manifest results. Doctor Ramakrishnan is a neuroscientist, artist,
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Speaker 1: and educator. He chairs the Neuroscience Department at the University
1:41
Speaker 1: of Puget Sound and is a recipient of the National
1:45
Speaker 1: Science Foundation Career Award. He is also offer of the
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Speaker 1: Neuroscience of Taro and creator of the Neurotarot Deck. His
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Speaker 1: website is Brainmistic dot com and he joins me this
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Speaker 1: week to share his new book and amazing work. Please
2:03
Speaker 1: join me in welcoming to Destination Unlimited, doctor said hearth
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Speaker 1: Rama Krishnan.
2:08
Speaker 2: Welcome Sidharth, thank you, thank you for the invite and
2:11
Speaker 2: I'm really excited to be joining you.
2:13
Speaker 1: Thank you. Please share with us your early path and
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Speaker 1: any experiences you had that opened you to the possibilities
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Speaker 1: of magic.
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Speaker 2: I grew up in India and I grew up in
2:27
Speaker 2: a family of surgeons. But at home we were constantly
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Speaker 2: casting horoscopes and using that divination of different kinds. But
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Speaker 2: aside from that, I also was a kind of a
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Speaker 2: kid who used to have premonitions of many of people dying,
2:47
Speaker 2: and to the point where around when I was six
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Speaker 2: or seven, my grandmother pulled me to the side and
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Speaker 2: kind of taught me a way to shut my psychic
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Speaker 2: abilities down, not because she was upset by it, but
3:00
Speaker 2: more because she realized how much it was debilitating my
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Speaker 2: own life almost And I always also used to connect
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Speaker 2: the dots between very different kinds of incidents, like, for example,
3:14
Speaker 2: I hit a kid in school, and then when I
3:19
Speaker 2: came back home, my aunt had passed, and I kind
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Speaker 2: of connected those things together. And that's a quintessential belief
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Speaker 2: in magic, that there's things that are not really logically connected,
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Speaker 2: you kind of form those connections. And it kind of
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Speaker 2: set the tone for me to believe in magic in
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Speaker 2: a certain way.
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Speaker 1: So this was something that was actually a tradition in
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Speaker 1: your family.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I don't think in at least growing
3:48
Speaker 2: up in a household where we would use divination as
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Speaker 2: a regular practice, even though we believed in science, it
3:59
Speaker 2: wasn't uncor And I also went to a school which
4:03
Speaker 2: was a looking back, which is a very different kind
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Speaker 2: of school because there was an Anglo Bathic school in
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Speaker 2: the sense that used to perform fire rituals every Saturday
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Speaker 2: and invoke the elements and chant chant and chant mantras
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Speaker 2: and hymns to pray to fire, a wind and water.
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Speaker 2: And so this is all part of almost a part
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Speaker 2: of what is it called us a moral education, but
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Speaker 2: a lot of it was spells and creating sacred spaces.
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Speaker 1: Wonderful. I think that's actually a wonderful way to grow up.
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Speaker 2: It is looking back. I mean when I was growing up,
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Speaker 2: I didn't think I thought everybody kind of experienced it.
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Speaker 2: But then now looking back, is when I realized that
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Speaker 2: it was a very special form of education because it
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Speaker 2: wasn't really organized religion in the sense, so there wasn't
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Speaker 2: a lot of issues about you have to believe this,
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Speaker 2: but rather a lot of exploring an inquiry based like
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Speaker 2: why what would happen when you invoke a fire? And
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Speaker 2: so there's a lot of questions about learning some tools
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Speaker 2: of rituals, but then using that as a point for
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Speaker 2: inquiry was something that was encouraged.
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Speaker 1: I think now your academic pursuits led to your studies
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Speaker 1: in neuroscience and biology. What were your thoughts as a
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Speaker 1: burgeoning scientist and educator about manifestations that were not regarded
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Speaker 1: by most in the field as scientific.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny is scientists on one level, we have
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Speaker 2: to remember that scientists are also human, and so even
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Speaker 2: though they practice the scientific method of exploring the world
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Speaker 2: as their main ethos, they also live lives and I
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Speaker 2: think behind the scenes. A lot of scientists also believe
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Speaker 2: in other things. For example, big discoveries are followed up
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Speaker 2: on hunches and you know, intuition, and so there is
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Speaker 2: something where scientists are saying, oh, I think there's something there,
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Speaker 2: let me explore it further. So for that they are
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Speaker 2: relying on unconscious pattern matching where and exploring the world
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Speaker 2: with that. And of course the way they're exploring it
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Speaker 2: is by using the scientific method and you know, doing
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Speaker 2: experiments to investigate it. But when you're talking about groundbreaking
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Speaker 2: discoveries that leap leap, like you know, regular movements, or
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Speaker 2: it probably needs a little bit of magic involved. And
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Speaker 2: I've also been in a multiple scientific labs where there
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Speaker 2: are these protocols where you'll be like, you know, you
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Speaker 2: almost say a prayer before you do an experiment in
6:58
Speaker 2: order for you the hope that it'll work, or you
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Speaker 2: work on a particular day like I used to work
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Speaker 2: in a lab where you had to work on Christmas
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Speaker 2: Day because that day was magical and everything would work
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Speaker 2: and all the experiments will give data. So maybe it's superstition,
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Speaker 2: but there's also you're trying to increase the chances of success.
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Speaker 2: So and I think that's also something that you know
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Speaker 2: you've been you're manifesting something that that's something that people do.
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Speaker 2: So yeah, scientists also practice that absolutely.
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Speaker 1: So you're a working neuroscientist who chairs your department at
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Speaker 1: the University of Puget Sound and holds a National Science
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Speaker 1: Foundation Career Award. What pulled a scientist like you into
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Speaker 1: the subject?
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Speaker 2: I started in neuroscience around two thousand and that's also
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Speaker 2: when I got my first deck of tarot cards. And
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Speaker 2: I've been doing divination for myself and for a few
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Speaker 2: friends since then. So and I've always been curious about
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Speaker 2: what allows us to kind of jump into those intuitive
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Speaker 2: leaps of faith. And then I was thinking also about
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Speaker 2: also about how, especially at home growing up, we used
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Speaker 2: to have a lot of rituals. As a Hindu, you
8:22
Speaker 2: grew up with a lot of rituals, but the rituals
8:26
Speaker 2: would happen in our home space. So one night we'll
8:30
Speaker 2: be eating food on the dining table, and the next
8:33
Speaker 2: day the whole thing would be cleared and there will
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Speaker 2: be an altar for a god, and the god would
8:39
Speaker 2: be a coconut which is now garlanded and has some
8:44
Speaker 2: tumeric and kunkumum on it and then we would pray
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Speaker 2: to it. And I've always wondered about how we reframe
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Speaker 2: our brains into considering something to be sacred or not sacred.
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Speaker 2: And as a newest scientists, that was just fascinating to
9:01
Speaker 2: me because it is that tool, the same tool will
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Speaker 2: be using to look at the world around us that
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Speaker 2: we're using to then think of objects around us as
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Speaker 2: being powerful or supernatural entities, and all of us say,
9:15
Speaker 2: the universe made me do it? And where does the
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Speaker 2: thought arise from? So as a neuroscientist, it's like if
9:21
Speaker 2: the brain is the instrument, it's like amazing to just
9:24
Speaker 2: explore that.
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Speaker 1: H We're going to be discussing your new book, The
9:28
Speaker 1: Neuroscience of Magic, but first let's discuss your previous book.
9:33
Speaker 1: You talked about Taro. The Neuroscience of Taro from imagery
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Speaker 1: to intuition to prediction, what happens inside the brain when
9:41
Speaker 1: you look at a tarot card.
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Speaker 2: So in that book I did I did not talk
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Speaker 2: about psychic abilities where people channel divination from say, extra
9:56
Speaker 2: sensory perception from outside, but rather I wanted to look
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Speaker 2: at what happens scientifically when you look at a tarot card.
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Speaker 2: Because if you look at it. It's an image and
10:08
Speaker 2: it's just a bunch of quigly lines, But somehow you're
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Speaker 2: able to look at it and form a narrative and
10:14
Speaker 2: then from there make those intuitive leaps from that narrative.
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Speaker 2: So that's kind of what the book dives into. So
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Speaker 2: how does your brain process an image and then from
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Speaker 2: there make connections and stories and metaphors from it. And
10:31
Speaker 2: then from there, once you have that story, you're then
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Speaker 2: using that to make an intuitive prediction, saying, oh, this
10:40
Speaker 2: is what you're experiencing or this is what you will
10:43
Speaker 2: be doing next. So where does that intuition come from?
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Speaker 2: And also in a lot of Tarot readings, this is
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Speaker 2: this part of it I really enjoy is there are
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Speaker 2: two people involved, the person who's doing the reading and
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Speaker 2: the other person who's asking the question. So that's a
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Speaker 2: whole piece of social cost network and we're using as humans,
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Speaker 2: we have social creatures and we've evolved to judge people
11:06
Speaker 2: all the time, and we're using that in that Taro reading.
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Speaker 2: So I dive into that a little bit. And also
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Speaker 2: there's a new field of neuroscience called neuro forecasting, where
11:17
Speaker 2: they're actually able to predict using people's brain scans events
11:25
Speaker 2: that will happen six months down the line or a
11:27
Speaker 2: year from now. So I kind of use that aspect
11:31
Speaker 2: of the predictive brain also to think about how we're
11:34
Speaker 2: using that in taro readings.
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Speaker 1: Can you give us an example that's the first time
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Speaker 1: I'm hearing of this. Can you give us an example
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Speaker 1: of that, please? Yeah.
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Speaker 2: So there's a group and Stanford. I forget exactly the name,
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Speaker 2: but the reference is there in the books. But they
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Speaker 2: are looking at so if they put an egy helmet
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Speaker 2: on people to record brain signals, it's electrons flograms, and
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Speaker 2: they will ask them, okay, which song is going to
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Speaker 2: be the most popular six months down the line. And
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Speaker 2: even if in their conscious answer they are going to
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Speaker 2: say song A is going to be the most popular,
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Speaker 2: if you look at their brain scans, it might actually
12:10
Speaker 2: be pointing towards song D or song C. And collectively,
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Speaker 2: if you take brain scans or say one hundred people, collectively,
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Speaker 2: their brains are all going to be pointing towards song C.
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Speaker 2: And then they went ahead and checked out six months
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Speaker 2: down the line, Yes, indeed song C was the most popular.
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Speaker 2: And so it's almost like we have these value judgment
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Speaker 2: areas in your brain and called the nucleus accumbents for
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Speaker 2: positive values. So things that are going to be exciting,
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Speaker 2: but it's you don't consciously know it. Unconsciously your brain
12:44
Speaker 2: is already saying, oh, that there's something really interesting about that.
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Speaker 2: So the nucleus accumbents is going to go spark into
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Speaker 2: a spark with activity. And for things that are you
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Speaker 2: won't avoid or like saying oh no, no, that that
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Speaker 2: thing is really not that product is not going to
12:58
Speaker 2: be great you're in, or is kind of going to
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Speaker 2: activate at that point. So kind of balancing these two,
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Speaker 2: your brain is predicting what's going to turn up or down.
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Speaker 1: I wonder if there are any groups out there who
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Speaker 1: are predicting the stock market six months.
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Speaker 2: Yes, they're definitely. Yeah, that's that's kind of that's what's funding,
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Speaker 2: funding funding a lot of this stuff.
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Speaker 1: Yes, wow, Wow, that's amazing. Please tell us about your
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Speaker 1: neuro tarot deck.
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Speaker 2: Uh, the new Tarto deck. I used to paint a
13:29
Speaker 2: lot when I was a kid, and I kind of
13:33
Speaker 2: as I went through my scientific career, I lost touch
13:36
Speaker 2: of it, and so I want to get back into
13:39
Speaker 2: that practice of daily rituals are painting, and I was
13:43
Speaker 2: wondering what concept I need I could work on and constanting.
13:47
Speaker 2: I was also working on Taro a lot. I was thinking, oh,
13:50
Speaker 2: let me, let me do a deck for this, and
13:53
Speaker 2: then I started finding out a lot of correspondences between
13:57
Speaker 2: the taro themes and you know science. So for example,
14:01
Speaker 2: the fool card, the first card in the tarot deck,
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Speaker 2: it talks a lot about the beginning of a journey
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Speaker 2: and so much potential and you can be anything, and
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Speaker 2: the naivety, and then I was thinking that corresponds to
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Speaker 2: almost like a newborn neuron, which has the potential to
14:20
Speaker 2: go anywhere and be any kind of neuron it wants
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Speaker 2: to be, and there's so much potential to it. So
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Speaker 2: the whole major Arkhana themes were inspired me to then
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Speaker 2: find the neuroscience correspondences to them, and so then I
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Speaker 2: hand drew all of them and wrote the neuro and
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Speaker 2: the tarot meaning for each card and you can use
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Speaker 2: it as a neuroscience deck or a tarot deck, and yeah,
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Speaker 2: it's it's a lot of.
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Speaker 1: Fun and where can people get that deck right now?
14:47
Speaker 1: And also your book.
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Speaker 2: So my website is Brain Mystic B R A I
14:53
Speaker 2: N M. Y S t I Z Brain mystic dot com.
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Speaker 2: You can purchase the Tarot Decks over there, and there
15:01
Speaker 2: are also links to get the book either from Amazon
15:04
Speaker 2: or level In directly or bookshop on my website.
15:09
Speaker 1: Congratulations on your new upcoming book, The Neuroscience of Magic.
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Speaker 1: Your central claim is that our brains are wired for
15:17
Speaker 1: magical thinking. First, how do you define magical thinking?
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Speaker 2: Magical thinking is when you connect almost two disparate events
15:32
Speaker 2: together which may not have any logical explanation behind them,
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Speaker 2: but then you connect them together in order to think, oh,
15:40
Speaker 2: this AA cost B. Even though in the scientific world,
15:45
Speaker 2: or in any regular world there's a logical world, there
15:47
Speaker 2: could be no connection between A and B. And that's
15:50
Speaker 2: kind of what magical thinking is. And we yeah, that's
15:55
Speaker 2: kind of what magical thinking is.
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Speaker 1: What does that mean neurologically, not metaphorically, but in terms
16:02
Speaker 1: of the actual circuitry of the brain.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so we all have this ability to think magically.
16:10
Speaker 2: So if you look back on when you're a child,
16:14
Speaker 2: those kinds of connections between things that don't logically seem possible,
16:22
Speaker 2: it just seems much more appropriate when you're when you're
16:26
Speaker 2: when you're a kid, And uh, and that's why we
16:30
Speaker 2: we you know, kids, they might say, or like I,
16:32
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, I used to I had
16:35
Speaker 2: pet ladybirds, and I used to when they died, I
16:39
Speaker 2: buried them in the sand, and I used to eat
16:41
Speaker 2: some of the sand, saying that, Oh, that's going to
16:43
Speaker 2: help them with their afterlife. And what what they What
16:48
Speaker 2: scientists have found is that kids from a very young
16:52
Speaker 2: age tend to have formed those connections between fine connections
16:56
Speaker 2: across things that are not really connected, but then also
17:01
Speaker 2: tend to believe in things like, oh, if I say
17:05
Speaker 2: I'm talking to the dead, they'll be like, oh, okay,
17:08
Speaker 2: that's possible. The possibility just seems so endless. And over time,
17:12
Speaker 2: our social upbringing and the fact that we live in
17:16
Speaker 2: a society and we need to live by the norms
17:18
Speaker 2: of society, we kind of tone that those connections down,
17:23
Speaker 2: and so our disbelief center is kind of kind of
17:28
Speaker 2: crank up. So there's a part of the brain called
17:30
Speaker 2: the antio singular cortex. So if you want to think
17:33
Speaker 2: about it, if you place the palm of your hand
17:36
Speaker 2: along the curvature of your skull and gently sync it
17:40
Speaker 2: down a little bit towards the middle of your brain.
17:43
Speaker 2: That would be your anti singular cortex, and that is
17:47
Speaker 2: your the center that kind of wants you to connect
17:52
Speaker 2: things logically and in order to produce the integrate information
17:56
Speaker 2: to produce a belief of some kind. So you can
18:00
Speaker 2: have to suspend that center a little bit in order
18:03
Speaker 2: for you to allow you to believe in things that
18:07
Speaker 2: could be magical. The other part of the area that
18:10
Speaker 2: really gets activated is called the temporal parietal junction. That
18:15
Speaker 2: one is if you put your hands along the tips
18:17
Speaker 2: of your ears and slightly go up a little bit,
18:21
Speaker 2: that area right above your temples, that is the temporal
18:24
Speaker 2: paratle junction. It connects. It's the junction between your temporal
18:30
Speaker 2: or memory centers and your parietal or your space centers.
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Speaker 2: And you use this to attribute agency to people around you.
18:40
Speaker 2: So the fact that I'm talking to you right now,
18:42
Speaker 2: it means that I'm I know that you have You're
18:45
Speaker 2: capable of thoughts, you're capable of actions. So this is
18:48
Speaker 2: called your theory of mind. The fact that I can
18:50
Speaker 2: attribute thoughts and actions to other people. And we use
18:54
Speaker 2: the same area of the brain to attribute agency to
18:59
Speaker 2: the universe, to fire, to gods, to the supernatural. So
19:04
Speaker 2: the fact that we are humans of social creatures and
19:06
Speaker 2: have the social ability to attribute agency to other people
19:11
Speaker 2: is also the same thing we're using to attribute agency
19:15
Speaker 2: to the supernatural. So those are two main elements that
19:17
Speaker 2: I would say are really important and magical thinking.
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Speaker 1: You know, it's really interesting. When I was a child,
19:23
Speaker 1: I used to come up with things and my parents
19:26
Speaker 1: would tell me I had an over active imagination, and
19:30
Speaker 1: then some of these things would manifest, and I've experienced
19:33
Speaker 1: that throughout my life. In nineteen seventy five, I was
19:36
Speaker 1: in the United States Air Force. I was stationed in Korea,
19:39
Speaker 1: and I would write back and forth with my mother
19:41
Speaker 1: in New York every month, and I had no indication
19:44
Speaker 1: that anything was wrong. And then one morning I got
19:47
Speaker 1: the message in my head, Mom needs to hear from you.
19:50
Speaker 1: There's something wrong. And whenever I heard that voice, I
19:53
Speaker 1: would always respond in kind, and I called back to
19:56
Speaker 1: New York. And in those days, we had extension telephones
20:00
Speaker 1: extension telephones, and my mother and my sister answered the
20:03
Speaker 1: phone simultaneously, and I said, Mom, is there anything wrong?
20:09
Speaker 1: And my sister goes, oh, my god, how did he
20:11
Speaker 1: find out? And it turns out she was scheduled for
20:14
Speaker 1: major surgery the next day, and the voice told me
20:17
Speaker 1: to tell her the operation would be a complete success,
20:20
Speaker 1: she'd have a rapid recovery, everything would be just fine.
20:23
Speaker 1: She needed to hear those words, and that's exactly what transpired.
20:27
Speaker 2: Wow, that's that's really amazing.
20:30
Speaker 1: And I'm grateful for it. I don't I've never you know,
20:31
Speaker 1: I've had these things throughout my life. I don't put
20:33
Speaker 1: myself out as a psychic or anything of that nature,
20:36
Speaker 1: but I do. I'm grateful for that ability to pick
20:38
Speaker 1: up on that information.
20:40
Speaker 2: As a scientist, I believe this is this kind of
20:44
Speaker 2: access to information is available for us, but we don't
20:47
Speaker 2: know how yet. We don't yet know how or where
20:51
Speaker 2: this comes from. And the problem I think is we
20:54
Speaker 2: don't have the tools to measure or or measure some
20:59
Speaker 2: of these things. And I don't think the question of
21:02
Speaker 2: things that these events for episodes don't happens because we
21:06
Speaker 2: just don't have physically the tools to actually measure how
21:08
Speaker 2: how these things are happening.
21:10
Speaker 1: You know, It's funny. I've been reading a lot about entanglement,
21:12
Speaker 1: about quantum entanglement, and wondering if perhaps someone thinking something, uh,
21:19
Speaker 1: and the thought is energy and that the energy is transferred.
21:22
Speaker 1: That that's how that takes place.
21:25
Speaker 2: That's probably how it's happening. And if you consider if
21:28
Speaker 2: you go along the quantum theory, and if you consider
21:30
Speaker 2: all of us as being waveforms, but except when we
21:34
Speaker 2: have physical bodies, we're just more condensed wave forms, then
21:39
Speaker 2: that's part of that too. They in in Indian yoga theory,
21:44
Speaker 2: there's a there's a whole concept of five different planes
21:48
Speaker 2: of consciousness, and that we are mainly living in the
21:51
Speaker 2: physical plane and in the mental plane, but beyond that
21:56
Speaker 2: is the is the so that's called the and then
22:00
Speaker 2: beyond the physical and mental planes is the plane of
22:04
Speaker 2: universal consciousness, where you can tap into energies and thoughts
22:08
Speaker 2: and ideas which are kind of flowing along in the
22:13
Speaker 2: stream above the mental plane. And a lot of meditative
22:18
Speaker 2: techniques and practices and mantras and hymns are supposed to
22:22
Speaker 2: help us transcend into that universal plane in order to
22:25
Speaker 2: get access to those information. So a lot of Yogi
22:30
Speaker 2: theory is kind of trying to tap into that.
22:33
Speaker 1: My guest is doctor sidhart Rabmakrishnan. We're talking about his
22:37
Speaker 1: new book The Neuroscience of Magic, How your brain is
22:41
Speaker 1: wired for Intentions, spells and dreams. Sid Darth, please share
22:45
Speaker 1: with our listeners where they can get your books and
22:47
Speaker 1: find that all about you.
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Speaker 2: Thank you. My website is brain myistic dot com, b
22:54
Speaker 2: R A I N M, Y S T I C
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Speaker 2: dot com and you can find about my books and
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Speaker 2: my taro deck on that website. And you can reach
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Speaker 2: me on Instagram at sidbits siddbs and I'll be happy
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Speaker 2: to chat with you on that if you have more
23:13
Speaker 2: questions about that.
23:15
Speaker 1: And we'll be back with more after these words. On
23:17
Speaker 1: the own Times Radio.
23:19
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Speaker 1: Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week, doctor Sidharth
23:56
Speaker 1: Brahma Krishna. We're talking about his new book, The Neuroscience
24:00
Speaker 1: of Magic, How Your Brain Is Wired for intentions, spells,
24:05
Speaker 1: and dreams. So DA you argue that practicing magic literally
24:10
Speaker 1: rewires the brain, please walk us through what neuroplasticity is
24:16
Speaker 1: really doing when someone repeats an intention or casts a
24:20
Speaker 1: spell over time.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, with with intentions, you you really need to assess
24:28
Speaker 2: the value of the intention, and especially when you're trying
24:31
Speaker 2: to manifest something, how much does it matter to you?
24:35
Speaker 2: And I think that that's one thing that the brain
24:37
Speaker 2: is really looking forward to, and that's a two way
24:40
Speaker 2: street between the brain and the body. When you are
24:44
Speaker 2: when you add when you're you know, you tell something,
24:47
Speaker 2: oh I'm really I really want this car, or I
24:50
Speaker 2: really want this thing to happen, you are activating part
24:54
Speaker 2: of your value centers. So that's going to be releasing dopamine,
24:58
Speaker 2: which is going to make you excited about about it,
25:00
Speaker 2: but it's also going to alter say if your heart
25:04
Speaker 2: gets to relieve, her heart beat is increased, to get
25:08
Speaker 2: excited about, oh how am I going to feel when
25:10
Speaker 2: I get this particular car, and then that is then
25:14
Speaker 2: going to talk back to the brain and saying, you know, oh,
25:18
Speaker 2: my heart breed beat is increasing, So this thing is
25:21
Speaker 2: going to value much more to me and that's going
25:24
Speaker 2: to help you make the action for it. So it's
25:27
Speaker 2: almost like trying to tell your brain that something matters
25:31
Speaker 2: so much for you that you're actually going to take
25:34
Speaker 2: action for it, so you start planning those actions. So
25:38
Speaker 2: this is before you press the button to buy the car.
25:40
Speaker 2: It's like all the other stuff that's going to happen
25:43
Speaker 2: before then, before that's happening. And so that's one aspect
25:47
Speaker 2: of things. The other aspect is, especially when we are
25:50
Speaker 2: saying drawing sigils or creating sacred boundaries or even doing
25:58
Speaker 2: spell work, we are if we start creating a ritual
26:05
Speaker 2: around it where we are using physical movements to say,
26:09
Speaker 2: either make make the boundary again and again two or
26:14
Speaker 2: three times. Or if you're drawing a particular piece of
26:18
Speaker 2: sigil and you're using your hands to do that elaborate drawing,
26:24
Speaker 2: and when you're again using those motor areas of your brain,
26:29
Speaker 2: you are telling your value centers and belief centers that
26:35
Speaker 2: this something and this is something that's important even though
26:38
Speaker 2: there's no logical explanation to it. So when you start
26:43
Speaker 2: doing that, your brain says, oh, you know what, I'm
26:46
Speaker 2: going to pay attention to this because it's actually something
26:51
Speaker 2: that I am working on. This movement of my hands
26:55
Speaker 2: is something that I'm actually devoting time to and there
27:00
Speaker 2: for there must be something important about it, some important
27:03
Speaker 2: about the thought behind it, and so I'm going to
27:06
Speaker 2: pay more attention to it and devote more energy towards
27:10
Speaker 2: that particular thing. So these are two examples of how
27:15
Speaker 2: the brain is rewiring as we're practicing those intention settings
27:19
Speaker 2: or sigil making and things like that, which is literally
27:24
Speaker 2: changing your circuits as we are going along magical processes.
27:28
Speaker 1: Taking it into the physical realm. Over the last twenty
27:31
Speaker 1: years or so, there's been this thing about what they
27:34
Speaker 1: call the secret or manifestation, creating an intention and then
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Speaker 1: actually manifesting it in the physical world. Is that what
27:42
Speaker 1: we're talking about.
27:42
Speaker 2: Here in a way? In a way, but I would
27:48
Speaker 2: probably say before we manifestation can be something where people say, oh,
27:54
Speaker 2: you know, think about it and poor. But then what
27:57
Speaker 2: I would suggest is when you are setting those intentions
28:00
Speaker 2: to embody it a little bit more feel it in
28:04
Speaker 2: your body as to how you will react when something happens,
28:10
Speaker 2: and that way the brain is going to then understand
28:14
Speaker 2: what the emotion would be. So one thing I found
28:18
Speaker 2: in my research is that For a long time, neuroscientists
28:21
Speaker 2: thought that the brain is telling the body what an
28:24
Speaker 2: emotion is. So the idea is if I feel happy,
28:28
Speaker 2: I'm going to feel light hearted, and my stomach and
28:32
Speaker 2: everything is going to be ease and ease and love
28:36
Speaker 2: great in my body. But now scientists have found it
28:39
Speaker 2: it's going to be the other way around. Is when
28:41
Speaker 2: your body is your body is feeling things physiologically, which
28:46
Speaker 2: the brain then labels as feeling happy or sad or
28:50
Speaker 2: anxious and so on. So if you physically embody how
28:54
Speaker 2: you will feel when you have success or when you
28:57
Speaker 2: have a particular thing in your hand, and then the
29:00
Speaker 2: brain is going to understand, hey, you know what, if
29:03
Speaker 2: this happens my I'm going to have butterflies in my
29:07
Speaker 2: stomach and my heart is going to be raising, which
29:10
Speaker 2: means that I'm going to be in this feeling of excitement.
29:14
Speaker 2: So you need to kind of help to break your
29:17
Speaker 2: brain to understand how your body will be behaving. So
29:21
Speaker 2: that is one thing I think is is people don't
29:24
Speaker 2: kind of get into that zone of physical manifestation of
29:30
Speaker 2: how they would be in a particular area. The other
29:34
Speaker 2: thing is we need to also remove some of the
29:41
Speaker 2: uh disbelief. So one thing is if I say, oh,
29:44
Speaker 2: I really want a car, and then I say and
29:47
Speaker 2: then the next minute, if I start thinking about something else,
29:51
Speaker 2: then the brain is not going to play pay as
29:53
Speaker 2: much important because they're going to say it's gonna It's
29:55
Speaker 2: always prioritizing what is what is the next task? What
29:59
Speaker 2: am I supposed to do? So if you start off
30:02
Speaker 2: on one thing and then move off into a different tangent,
30:06
Speaker 2: then I think you lose focus a little bit. And
30:09
Speaker 2: for that, I think is where we need to kind
30:12
Speaker 2: of put it into maybe a ritual or put it
30:15
Speaker 2: into maybe a much more focused way of looking at
30:19
Speaker 2: a particular intention so that the brain again adds value
30:23
Speaker 2: to it. So I think it's well and good for
30:27
Speaker 2: you to say I'm going to be great and that's
30:30
Speaker 2: what I have the power of. But then sometimes we
30:33
Speaker 2: forget that we need to actually take action in order
30:36
Speaker 2: for us to manifest some of these goals.
30:38
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And the other thing I actually teach you a
30:41
Speaker 1: little bit about this. One of the things that I
30:43
Speaker 1: teach my students is you have to have that immediate
30:45
Speaker 1: sense of gratitude as if the thing has already transpired
30:49
Speaker 1: for you.
30:49
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing I've learned through this
30:53
Speaker 2: process of research is self affirmation, which is part of
30:58
Speaker 2: a lot of manifestations, is does not work for everybody.
31:04
Speaker 2: And there's a whole branch of therapy that's involved in
31:08
Speaker 2: talking about how self affirmation might not work for everyone,
31:11
Speaker 2: and they need to resort to a different means called
31:15
Speaker 2: cognitive diffusion, where they have to refer to themselves maybe
31:19
Speaker 2: in third person or second person, or write notes to
31:23
Speaker 2: the divine universe saying I'm putting this out there and
31:30
Speaker 2: I want to get it, as opposed to saying I
31:32
Speaker 2: will succeed or I will do this. That might not
31:35
Speaker 2: work for them. They might have to resort to different strategies.
31:38
Speaker 1: Absolutely, the neuroscience of magic includes full color brain maps throughout.
31:46
Speaker 1: Why was it important to show the brain visually rather
31:49
Speaker 1: than describe it. What does a witch or a mystic
31:52
Speaker 1: see in those maps that they might not otherwise grasp?
31:56
Speaker 2: This is a great question for me. First of all,
32:01
Speaker 2: I think that neuroscience is mainly taught in academic institutions,
32:10
Speaker 2: but we all have brains, and I think that it's
32:13
Speaker 2: such a wonderful instrument and we all have it, and
32:16
Speaker 2: it's great for us to understand it. So one reason
32:19
Speaker 2: I have this is to kind of break down that barriers.
32:22
Speaker 2: That's kind of been the goal of my whole life,
32:24
Speaker 2: I think so far as an educator, as talk people
32:28
Speaker 2: person talking in public forums, I really think that it's
32:34
Speaker 2: great for us to understand why we do what we
32:37
Speaker 2: do and why we think the way we think. So
32:39
Speaker 2: that's one thing. The other thing is, there are a
32:41
Speaker 2: lot of people who think I cannot be intuitive, or
32:45
Speaker 2: I cannot manifest, or I cannot you know, use my
32:50
Speaker 2: own powers of dreams or this why why is this
32:54
Speaker 2: spell work so difficult for me? And I think for
32:57
Speaker 2: those people, if they are able to to maybe process
33:01
Speaker 2: the different steps by which our brain is working through
33:04
Speaker 2: these things, maybe they'll be able to find where the
33:09
Speaker 2: barrier is and try and tackle that a little bit.
33:13
Speaker 2: So that's the other reason why I think that maybe visualizing, hey,
33:17
Speaker 2: maybe I'm not using myself centers here as much, or
33:22
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to those kinds of labeling them. Providing
33:27
Speaker 2: a labeling it a label to it might demystify the
33:30
Speaker 2: process a little bit in order for them to work
33:34
Speaker 2: through their barriers and become better at their own intuitive
33:38
Speaker 2: and manifesting abilities.
33:41
Speaker 1: The subtitle of the Neuroscience of Magic includes three things intentions, spells,
33:50
Speaker 1: and dreams. Walk us through how each one shows up
33:53
Speaker 1: differently in the brain.
33:56
Speaker 2: So in some ways this is kind of jump through
34:00
Speaker 2: different stages of magic. For any any kind of magic,
34:04
Speaker 2: you need to set an intention that I'm working towards
34:09
Speaker 2: this particular thing, and so having that goal is really important.
34:16
Speaker 2: And part of that goal is future thinking, the idea
34:20
Speaker 2: of the ability to project oneself out into saying I
34:26
Speaker 2: will be on a beach in Greece in five years,
34:28
Speaker 2: you know, or setting that kind of intention. So using
34:31
Speaker 2: your default mode network a lot in that and trying
34:34
Speaker 2: to kind of put yourself out there and say, write
34:38
Speaker 2: the screenplay for how your life will be five years
34:41
Speaker 2: from now. So we all have the ability to do this,
34:44
Speaker 2: and this network is the kind of sense of self
34:49
Speaker 2: where this is the part of the brain that quietens
34:51
Speaker 2: down when you're meditating because you're trying to remove your
34:55
Speaker 2: ego from the whole process. But this part of the
34:59
Speaker 2: brain exists you can plan for the future and also
35:01
Speaker 2: think about the past, so that is really involved in
35:04
Speaker 2: the whole intentions that imposts circuit and then I move
35:08
Speaker 2: into you know, how to ground yourself. And one of
35:12
Speaker 2: the tools of setting intentions is creating spells and rituals.
35:18
Speaker 2: So it might not be enough for you to just
35:21
Speaker 2: say I want to do this. It actually might work
35:24
Speaker 2: better if you add more permanency to it by putting
35:30
Speaker 2: into words, by creating a spell for it. And again,
35:33
Speaker 2: spells and rituals and these kinds of tools are there
35:37
Speaker 2: for your brain to add value to your intention, to
35:40
Speaker 2: make it more exciting, to make it more powerful, to
35:43
Speaker 2: make it more actionable on some levels. So, and especially
35:49
Speaker 2: with words, I find it really fascinating because there's so
35:52
Speaker 2: much power not only over ourselves, but also when we
35:55
Speaker 2: use words on other people, how that really affects the person.
36:01
Speaker 2: And so of course we're using our linguistic centers, and
36:06
Speaker 2: so those parts of the brains are very different in
36:08
Speaker 2: terms of having spells. And then finally I come to dreams,
36:14
Speaker 2: which is a lot more about creating those visions, especially
36:18
Speaker 2: when you're thinking about clairvoyants or lucid dreams and things
36:21
Speaker 2: like that. We are using kind of a transtranscending our
36:26
Speaker 2: time space continuum on some level, and it's really amazing
36:30
Speaker 2: that we have this ability because we have areas in
36:34
Speaker 2: your brain, in your parietal lobes. If you're wedding headphones,
36:38
Speaker 2: the headphone right where that's it's it's your parietal lobe,
36:41
Speaker 2: and right where it slopes off the base of your
36:43
Speaker 2: skull on top and comes towards your ears, that becomes
36:46
Speaker 2: your temporal lobe. So that is your space time continuum area.
36:50
Speaker 2: So when you're thinking about traveling on a dessert and
36:55
Speaker 2: a camel, even though you've never seen a camel or
36:58
Speaker 2: never seen a dessert, you might still be able to
37:00
Speaker 2: picture it and think about it, think about it. So
37:03
Speaker 2: kind of the dreams kind of involved that kind of
37:06
Speaker 2: transferring your whole self into this space and time that
37:13
Speaker 2: doesn't exist in the physical plane. And so we're using
37:16
Speaker 2: some really cool parts of the brain for doing that.
37:20
Speaker 2: And you use that in intentions because you really need
37:23
Speaker 2: a future cast or put yourself for other people in
37:28
Speaker 2: these other situations in order to kind of figure out
37:31
Speaker 2: what you want to happen.
37:33
Speaker 1: What is the single most surprising finding from neuroscience that
37:38
Speaker 1: changed your understanding of magical practice.
37:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a really cool article from a while
37:47
Speaker 2: ago called the God's Helmet. They did this experiment on people.
37:55
Speaker 2: They started this experiment where people who are having some
37:58
Speaker 2: seizures in the temp epileptic seizures, they used to dampen
38:04
Speaker 2: them by putting a helmet on them and and zapping
38:09
Speaker 2: a part of the brain in the temporal lobe. So
38:11
Speaker 2: if you if you put your hands on your temples
38:15
Speaker 2: and kind of slide it all the way back towards
38:17
Speaker 2: the tips of your ears, so that's kind of your
38:19
Speaker 2: temporal lobe, if you want to think about it that way.
38:21
Speaker 2: So they kind of zapped that area and they found
38:24
Speaker 2: that when they did that, people would they would help
38:28
Speaker 2: cure the epilepsy, but they would also have mystical experiences
38:32
Speaker 2: and things that spiritual experiences. And this evidence is not new,
38:38
Speaker 2: It's been there for a while. And and I think
38:40
Speaker 2: one of the authors of the study actually went went
38:43
Speaker 2: ahead and created a Shiva's helmet, and and I was
38:48
Speaker 2: just fascinated by the whole thing. That they didn't call
38:53
Speaker 2: it magical experiences, but that's what it was. And how
38:58
Speaker 2: a lot of really extraordinary stuff is hidden behind scientific
39:03
Speaker 2: jargon is something that I'm as really surprised about.
39:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, how may we use our brains to make intuitive
39:11
Speaker 1: decisions and gain transformational insight.
39:16
Speaker 2: So to explain that, I need to kind of tease
39:20
Speaker 2: apart what intuition and insight are. Intuition is when your
39:24
Speaker 2: brain is unconsciously processing a lot of patterns around us
39:31
Speaker 2: and then using that to make leaps of faith judgments.
39:36
Speaker 2: It's you have the power of intuition because we need
39:42
Speaker 2: to make quick decisions sometimes which cannot You cannot wait
39:47
Speaker 2: for logical, step by step processing for it. So if
39:51
Speaker 2: you if you see a lion, you need to immediately know, okay,
39:55
Speaker 2: am I going to run no climate tree? Or you
39:57
Speaker 2: can't sit and think, oh if I do do this,
40:01
Speaker 2: the lione will attack me, or if I do that,
40:03
Speaker 2: something else is going to happen. If you start thinking that,
40:05
Speaker 2: you'll die. So we have the power of intuitive processing
40:08
Speaker 2: in order for us to quickly decide what is the
40:11
Speaker 2: best thing to do at this moment in time. And
40:17
Speaker 2: for this the brain is using a lot of unconscious
40:20
Speaker 2: information and spitting out okay, based on past experiences, based
40:27
Speaker 2: on the current state, this is the best thing for
40:30
Speaker 2: us to do right now. And we're using this part
40:33
Speaker 2: of the brain called the cordate nucleus, which is the
40:34
Speaker 2: intuition integrator to do that insight is something that comes
40:39
Speaker 2: later and where we are going back and dwelling on Okay,
40:46
Speaker 2: I did that intuitive decision before? Why did I do that?
40:50
Speaker 2: What led me? What patterns did I notice in order
40:53
Speaker 2: for me to come to that particular conclusion? And sometimes
40:57
Speaker 2: you can sit and work through that and you get
41:00
Speaker 2: that incremental insight almost and sometimes you just devote, take
41:05
Speaker 2: a shower, and it just hits you from Oh, that's
41:08
Speaker 2: what happened, and that's why I chose this as a
41:12
Speaker 2: way to go instead of that one. And that in
41:15
Speaker 2: Buddhism is called abisamaya, where it just hits you like
41:18
Speaker 2: a lightning bowl from nowhere, and that's the transformative insight.
41:22
Speaker 4: That's the.
41:24
Speaker 2: Problem is we don't exercise that part of the brain
41:26
Speaker 2: enough or often enough, so we really need to reflect
41:30
Speaker 2: on choices that we make in order for us to
41:33
Speaker 2: get more inside. And the better the more you do that,
41:38
Speaker 2: the more you train yourself to do that, you get
41:40
Speaker 2: better and better at your incution, so the next time
41:42
Speaker 2: you're faced with similar situations, you will be much better
41:45
Speaker 2: at doing the right choice.
41:47
Speaker 1: My guest doctor start Ramakrishnan his new book, The Neuroscience
41:52
Speaker 1: of Magic, How your Brain is wired for intentions, spells,
41:56
Speaker 1: and dreams. We'll be back with more after these words
41:59
Speaker 1: on the Own Time Times Radio Network.
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Speaker 1: Back on Destination Unlimited, My guest this week, doctor sittarth Rama, Krishnan.
43:07
Speaker 1: We're talking about his new book, The Neuroscience of Magic,
43:11
Speaker 1: How your brain is wired for intentions, spells, and dreams, Sitharth,
43:16
Speaker 1: Is there neuroscience involved in mind reading?
43:22
Speaker 2: How could they not be right? Yes, I would say definitely.
43:26
Speaker 2: I don't know if we have enough evidence to say
43:29
Speaker 2: what exactly is going on. But one thing is if
43:34
Speaker 2: I'm talking to you right now, and I am if
43:39
Speaker 2: we are face to face, more than if I'm just
43:42
Speaker 2: listening to you. But even if I'm just listening to you,
43:45
Speaker 2: I am immediately trying to assess your tone of voice,
43:52
Speaker 2: how you look, body language in order to understand what
43:57
Speaker 2: your situation is right now. And then the next thing
44:00
Speaker 2: that happens is I am mirroring your emotions in my brain.
44:07
Speaker 2: So this is what is called as effective empathy. Where
44:11
Speaker 2: if I see someone slouched, I might slouch myself, or
44:15
Speaker 2: at least in the picture in my head, i'm slouching
44:17
Speaker 2: as well. If I see someone frown, I'm doing the
44:20
Speaker 2: same thing. So I'm mirroring someone's emotions. So the first
44:23
Speaker 2: thing is you're perceiving it, and then you're mirroring it.
44:26
Speaker 2: And then the next one is where you're mentalizing someone.
44:30
Speaker 2: And this concept is really fascinating because we're really creating
44:34
Speaker 2: a small goal of the other individual in our heads,
44:38
Speaker 2: and we are creating on this goalm based on everything
44:42
Speaker 2: you've perceived so far. We are placing aspirations and desires
44:48
Speaker 2: and intentions. The idea being that if you see someone happy,
44:53
Speaker 2: you're thinking about what is making them happy right now?
44:57
Speaker 2: How are they going to behave because you're happy, we
45:01
Speaker 2: as social creatures need to constantly understand what the person
45:05
Speaker 2: is going to do next in order for us to
45:08
Speaker 2: move forward or experience the world without without harming ourselves.
45:11
Speaker 2: So it's almost like a survival mechanism we've developed. And
45:15
Speaker 2: but this mentalizing bit is also going to help us
45:17
Speaker 2: understand what people's motivations are and how what they what
45:22
Speaker 2: their behaviors are going to be. So we're literally judging
45:25
Speaker 2: people all the time, even though we don't like to
45:27
Speaker 2: say that. And I think that all feeds into this
45:31
Speaker 2: process of mind reading, if you want to call it that.
45:36
Speaker 1: Where do we feel emotions and how may we navigate
45:40
Speaker 1: connections between brain and body in those decisions.
45:44
Speaker 2: Definitely, I am a very cerebral person and for a
45:47
Speaker 2: long time I was not very connected with my body.
45:50
Speaker 2: But the more I'm thinking about it, I'm realizing that
45:54
Speaker 2: we feel emotions more in our body, and then the
45:58
Speaker 2: brain then labels it as I'm feeling anxious, so I'm
46:01
Speaker 2: feeling sad and so on. So the pathway for it
46:05
Speaker 2: is when we experience something, the information goes into our
46:09
Speaker 2: heads from our sensory systems, and then it immediately transfers
46:14
Speaker 2: over to your hypothalamus, which is so if I took
46:17
Speaker 2: a pencil and shoved it up my nose, don't do
46:20
Speaker 2: it at home. You kind of go into your petuitary
46:23
Speaker 2: and then your hypothalamus, and your hypothalamus is your master
46:27
Speaker 2: regulator of hormonal systems. So the hypothalamus is almost immediately
46:32
Speaker 2: going to use the sensory information to trigger changes in
46:36
Speaker 2: your body hormonal flushes of like say adrenaline or epinephrine,
46:44
Speaker 2: and then then your body is going to react to
46:47
Speaker 2: that based on what is happening. And so if you
46:51
Speaker 2: see something frightening, your pupils might dilate and your heart
46:55
Speaker 2: will beat faster, and your lung capacity is going to
46:58
Speaker 2: maybe become you might start breathing more heavily. So all
47:02
Speaker 2: this is happening like immediately without you consciously thinking about it.
47:07
Speaker 2: It's not like you're saying your brain is saying, oh,
47:10
Speaker 2: I'm feeling frightened, so I need to increase my heart rate.
47:13
Speaker 2: It's all like happening autonomically, and then once your body
47:20
Speaker 2: acts in a certain way, your brain then gets the
47:24
Speaker 2: information and then it says, you know what, I've experienced
47:27
Speaker 2: this in the past, and so this means I'm scared
47:31
Speaker 2: or I'm feeling anxious, and you're then labeling it and
47:35
Speaker 2: then verbalizing it. So it takes a while before you
47:38
Speaker 2: can actually verbalize it. And if there's a disconnect between
47:42
Speaker 2: those two systems where your brain is saying something and
47:45
Speaker 2: your body is saying something else, then you're in big trouble.
47:48
Speaker 2: That's when you get into a lot of mental health difficulties.
47:52
Speaker 1: Where does the expression I have a gut feeling about
47:55
Speaker 1: something come from?
47:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you look at it, a lot of
47:59
Speaker 2: metaphors you are to do the body. You know, I'm
48:04
Speaker 2: feeling butterflies in my stomach, or I feel I feel
48:09
Speaker 2: a gut punch, and things like that. So that's literally
48:13
Speaker 2: the gut feeling is coming from your gut, your stomach
48:16
Speaker 2: clenching or unclenching the chemicals in your stomach, literally seeing
48:19
Speaker 2: more acid or less acid, and all of this is
48:22
Speaker 2: part of this whole sensory system that's called inter reception.
48:26
Speaker 2: And the idea is we talk a lot about perception,
48:29
Speaker 2: perceptual senses of sight, sound, smell, and so on, but
48:33
Speaker 2: what we don't he talk about as much is how
48:37
Speaker 2: your body has sensors everywhere inside your heartbeat, your stomach
48:43
Speaker 2: mechanism sensors, your chemical sensor, hormone sensors, so your body
48:47
Speaker 2: is chock full of sensors in every part and those
48:51
Speaker 2: are all sent into your brain in a part called
48:53
Speaker 2: the insular, which is deep in your brain, and a
48:56
Speaker 2: lot of consciousness scientists think that that might be the
48:59
Speaker 2: seat of consciousness. The idea being that if you can
49:03
Speaker 2: quieten down the insula, you transcend your body almost because
49:08
Speaker 2: you're kind of becoming unaware of your body, and so
49:11
Speaker 2: we're using that introceptive senses constantly. In a way, it's
49:17
Speaker 2: good that it's unconscious, because if you're always conscious about it,
49:20
Speaker 2: you'd probably go crazy if you know every single thing
49:23
Speaker 2: that's happening inside. But if right now I paused and said, okay,
49:28
Speaker 2: for the next two weeks, note down your heartbeat, and
49:33
Speaker 2: right now you might not be able to be consciously
49:35
Speaker 2: aware of it. But after two weeks, if you started
49:38
Speaker 2: doing this the routine every day, you'll be pretty accurate
49:42
Speaker 2: in predicting how fast your heart is beating.
49:45
Speaker 1: What may performing spiritual and magical rituals do in terms
49:50
Speaker 1: of rewiring the brain.
49:53
Speaker 2: Spiritual rituals there are different ways, So if you think
49:57
Speaker 2: about it in terms of a lot of literature is
50:03
Speaker 2: out there on the anthropological value of spiritual rituals. They
50:09
Speaker 2: say that when you're involved in spiritual practice, especially in
50:12
Speaker 2: a community, it creates a lot of social bonding. People
50:18
Speaker 2: tend to like a lot. For example, there was a
50:22
Speaker 2: big study on people walking on coals of coals of fire,
50:29
Speaker 2: like the fire walking rituals, and how when even the
50:33
Speaker 2: people performing it and the people who were around the
50:37
Speaker 2: ritual were all experiencing a certain kind of euphoria almost together.
50:43
Speaker 2: So a lot of spiritual practices might actually help with
50:47
Speaker 2: social bonding. And even altruism is kind of what they
50:51
Speaker 2: allude it towards, and so in that way, spiritual rituals
50:57
Speaker 2: can give you a sense of community and sense of
51:01
Speaker 2: feeling finding finding a place in your world on some level,
51:05
Speaker 2: and I think magical practices can help you with finding
51:13
Speaker 2: out of the box solutions because on some level we
51:17
Speaker 2: are again trying to connect dots or find connections between
51:23
Speaker 2: things that have no logical explanation between them. So I
51:28
Speaker 2: think it we indulged in magical practices that might help
51:33
Speaker 2: us become more creative and think of solutions which are
51:38
Speaker 2: outside the ordinary, which frankly, in this current world, I
51:43
Speaker 2: would probably say we need a lot.
51:45
Speaker 1: Of absolutely and what about setting up rituals and alters
51:49
Speaker 1: on sacred space? What does that do creating that sacred space?
51:53
Speaker 2: So creating sacred spaces is definitely, first of all, it's
51:57
Speaker 2: reframing your brain the idea that this particular area is
52:02
Speaker 2: going to be important for something, and we do that,
52:07
Speaker 2: you know, regularly. Like even when they say, oh, you
52:10
Speaker 2: know you develop a regular writing practice, one of the
52:14
Speaker 2: first things they say is create a space where when
52:17
Speaker 2: you go in, that space is going to be for writing.
52:21
Speaker 2: So it's more for a creative practice, but in a way,
52:24
Speaker 2: it is creating a kind of allowing your brain to say,
52:28
Speaker 2: when I'm in this area, I'm going to be writing.
52:31
Speaker 2: So in that way, when you're saying creating a sacred space,
52:34
Speaker 2: it's kind of allowing the brain to think that in
52:37
Speaker 2: this particular location, I'm going to act to be more spiritual,
52:42
Speaker 2: or be more magical, or bring in the divinity into
52:46
Speaker 2: this particular location. So that's one way we are reframing
52:51
Speaker 2: what our location we're in into creating that space, and
52:56
Speaker 2: that then adds value to what were you're doing, right,
52:58
Speaker 2: because that's one of the main things is how important
53:01
Speaker 2: your brain is constantly thinking, Okay, why am I doing this?
53:04
Speaker 2: This is really important to me? And when you say that, yes,
53:08
Speaker 2: this is actually sacred, this is important, this is much
53:10
Speaker 2: more than just a whim for me, the brain is
53:14
Speaker 2: then adding more intent behind making that work.
53:19
Speaker 1: Is that comparable to what someone experiences when they go
53:22
Speaker 1: into their selective house of worship.
53:24
Speaker 2: Mmm, that's a really good question, isn't it. I think
53:29
Speaker 2: there we are also using faith. Faith it also comes
53:36
Speaker 2: into the picture, and the idea of collective faith is
53:40
Speaker 2: also something that's there where we're also dependent on the
53:43
Speaker 2: belief systems of others, which we can almost palpably sense.
53:49
Speaker 2: So when we go into collective areas of how worship,
53:52
Speaker 2: I think that that also is there where we are
53:56
Speaker 2: not only experiencing our own faith, but also the faith
53:59
Speaker 2: of others. But yeah, but they've also they've actually weirdly
54:03
Speaker 2: found that the areas of the brain that have religious
54:08
Speaker 2: belief systems and belief in spirituality are actually not the same. Uh,
54:15
Speaker 2: just that the locations of what were where they were
54:18
Speaker 2: looking at were actually slightly different. And the idea of
54:22
Speaker 2: I think when when they talk about religious systems, they
54:26
Speaker 2: were talking more about fear fear based stuff was popping up,
54:31
Speaker 2: whereas in spiritual practices the fear fear based stuff was
54:34
Speaker 2: not popping up as much.
54:36
Speaker 1: So what would you like your readers to take away
54:39
Speaker 1: from the neuroscience of magic.
54:41
Speaker 2: I would like to take them to take away the
54:44
Speaker 2: idea of if they had shut down some of their
54:51
Speaker 2: magical experiences from their childhood, that they can actually go
54:55
Speaker 2: back to some of that. And also that everybody can,
55:03
Speaker 2: given the right tools, practice some of these tools and
55:07
Speaker 2: techniques and get better at them. You don't need to
55:10
Speaker 2: have special abilities in order for you to start working
55:15
Speaker 2: on some of these. So I do wanted to make
55:19
Speaker 2: access made them to think of this as accessible for them,
55:22
Speaker 2: given that they have the brain circuits that allow them
55:26
Speaker 2: to be magical allow them to create intention and spells
55:30
Speaker 2: and rituals.
55:32
Speaker 1: My guest doctor said Hearthramer Krushn on his brand new
55:35
Speaker 1: book The Neuroscience of Magic, How your Brain is Wired
55:38
Speaker 1: for intentions, spells and dreams. Please share one more time
55:42
Speaker 1: with our listeners within get all of your wonderful books
55:44
Speaker 1: and find out more about you and your amazing work.
55:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for this conversation. My website is brain
55:50
Speaker 2: mystic dot com. That's b R A I N M
55:53
Speaker 2: Y S t I C dot com and my Instagram
55:57
Speaker 2: is sidwits SI D D b I T S. You
55:59
Speaker 2: can find my Nerotato deck and links to my books
56:03
Speaker 2: on my website.
56:05
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us and sharing all
56:07
Speaker 1: of this amazing information.
56:09
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you so much for this wonderful conversation.
56:12
Speaker 1: And thank you for joining us on Destination Unlimited. I'm
56:15
Speaker 1: Victor the Voice Firman. Have a wonderful week