Latest / Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman / Dr. Brad Stuart – Facing Death

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Dr. Brad Stuart – Facing Death · Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

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My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice. I've always been
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fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science, and the crossroads at which they
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meet. Join me now and we will explore these topics and so much more
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with fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to Destination Unlimited.
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What might a medical doctor experience that changes his perspective on curing versus healing?
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Truly listening to and hearing what his patients are asking and saying, and recognizing
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that in transition, we take with us what we truly are. My guest
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this week one Destination Unlimited. Doctor Brad Stewart, has treated and counseled terminally
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ill patience and served as a hospice medical director for twenty five years, even
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founding a national model of care for those with serious illnesses at home. However,
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what truly sets doctor Stewart apart is his ability to heal, a quality
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that radiates through his wisdom and service. His website is Bradstewart md dot com
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and he joins me this week to share his path and new book, Facing
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Death, Spirituality, Science and Surrender at the End of Life. Please join
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me in welcoming to destination unlimited. Doctor Brad Stewart, Welcome, Thank you,
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Victor. It's wonderful to be here. Doctor Stewart. Please share with
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our listeners your early path and what called you to medicine. Oh well,
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I was not one of those people who knew at five years old I wanted
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to be a doctor. In fact, I went through high school and most
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of college pretty unsure about what my path ought to be. And yet you
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know, I was distraught there for a while because I knew that there was
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a path, I just couldn't see it. I did research in college and
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for a year or two after in brain physiology. And in college, one
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of my professors said to me one day, as we were experimenting on hearing
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in amphibians. You know, tadpoles have underwater ears, and as they turned
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into frogs they have air hearing ears. It's a profound metamorphosis. And as
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I say in the book, as Carl Jung would say, you know,
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frogs are a major transformational symbol. And of course I was completely lost on
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me at the time. But Professor Bert one day just we stopped in the
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middle of our work for a break, and he said to me, he
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looked at me and said, you know, you should be a doctor.
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You love science, you're good with people, you're great with your hands.
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I looked back at him, I said, Bert, you are out of
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your mind. I had never thought of that. And I went on from
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there to another lab at University of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, where I also went
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to college, and worked in a lab there on brain imaging, very early
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brain imaging studies, and you know, I published a couple of papers there.
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The professor who ran the lab was world famous. He actually allowed me
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to put my name first on the paper. And that was what wound up
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getting me into medical school. I realized. A year or two after Professor
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Bert had suggested, you know, the physician idea, I finally realized,
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Hey, that's maybe I could do that. So I wound up getting into
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a really you know, top not medical school on the West Coast, which
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I won't name at the moment. If you read the book, you'll understand
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why, because I just found when I got there the first two years were
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like paradise if you're into science and you begin to study medicine. Your first
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two years or in the classroom, we had seven Nobel Prize winners come from
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all over the world to talk to us. It was like being in heaven.
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I had never learned so much so fast as in those first two years
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in medical training. The third year medical students go onto the wards in the
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hospital and begin learning how to take care of patients. And that was when
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the earthquake happened. I had a life changing event, which actually is chapter
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one in my book. I took care of a patient who was very,
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very ill and got into a little bit of a conflict with my professors about
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that person. You can read about it in the book. But you know,
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once that event happened and woke me up to how we treat and mistreat
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very ill people in our healthcare system, I resolved number one that I would
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write a book. It took me over forty five years to get around to
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doing that, because it takes a while for the dust to settle in a
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mind like mine. But it set me on track for my whole course through
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through healthcare, taking care of patients and working from inside to try to improve
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our healthcare system. And finally, after years and years writing this book,
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one thing that comes to mind in this discussion, I think we sort of
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touched upon an offline is the fact that listening is so important, especially in
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the relationship between the position and the patient. Would you address that, sure,
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you just said something that I think is one of the foundation stones of
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caring for people as opposed to or what really is the ideal form of taking
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care of patients. I learned very quickly when I went on the wards and
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began seeing people in the hospital, that there's only when a person is ill
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and suffering, which everyone is when they're seriously ill. And I don't just
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mean the pain and distress that comes from being sick and being hostilespitalized, particularly
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when you have an illness that's so severe that you may be facing the end
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of your life. It's one of the biggest, most stressful things that can
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happen to a human being. And I learned, I think, really quickly
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that although doctors are taught to diagnose the problem, come up with a treatment
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plan, administer it, and tell the patient what to do. Anybody who's
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been to a doctor has been through that process as a patient. I realized
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that you leave out a step when you don't teach doctors or anyone really that
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when you're face to face with someone who is suffering deeply, you have to
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listen deeply. And I came up with a kind of a not a monde,
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but a slogan I would say to myself and later when I taught other
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doctors and nurses and people in hospice, so you know, I would say
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this, it's like ask before you tell, And that means the best way
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to determine the way forward with someone who's deeply suffering, particularly when you don't
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have an answer for their problems, if you don't have a cure for their
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illness, if it becomes clear that they are not going to recover and be
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cured, there still is a way forward. There's always a way forward.
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But the major step in that way is for the physician or the clinician or
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the nurse, whoever it may be, to ask the right questions and then
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listen, and I mean listen deeply to what that person, not just that
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patient, but what that person in front of you is going through. And
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you know, I think most of the healing that happens with people who can't
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be cured, and that that turned out to be my work is discovering what
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that was and how to do it. That healing process begins and ends with
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asking and listening and not just with your ears, but you know, with
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your whole mind and heart and spirit. And when you when you do that
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kind of listening and that person who's who's suffering and often feels lost, understands
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that they are seen and heard, that's the first crucial step forward and healing.
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And I so that that's my take on listening. And I wish we
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I think now we're doing better about teaching that in medical training. But really
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you don't have to be a doctor to learn to be good at that.
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You know, I mentioned in the book. You know there's some great healers
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out there who have nothing to do with medicine. There's hairdressers and bartenders who
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were really good at it. And the ones who were good are the ones
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who practice listening. And that's what it's about. And your experience and wisdom
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has led you to understand the difference between curing and healing. How did that
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manifest for you? Well, you know, I start out in the book
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describing how I realized that the patients who mattered the most to me, and
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really what set me on track for my whole career was that the people who
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fascinated me the most, who attracted me the most and who I wanted to
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work with the most were the ones that I couldn't cure. And this was
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I didn't really really understand this deeply until i'd been in practice for about ten
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years doing internal medicine in my office across the street from the hospital, and
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I did a lot of work in the ICU and the emergency department, and
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you know, I cured a lot of people. But what I learned in
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my third year of medical school turned out to be really, really true,
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and that is that the whole goal of scientific medicine as we practice it today
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is curing disease. And you know, that's something that's really important to learn
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how to do. But it's very technical. You've got to have a huge
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knowledge base, a real knowledge of technique. You have to practice for years
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to get good at it. But you know, I can't even count how
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many people I pulled out of the fire in the middle of the night,
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in the er and in the hospital. You know, the curing is a
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science and an art, but uh, everyone, eventually, when you're in
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this business, runs up against people whom you cannot cure, and that that's
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a tough problem for a lot of physicians. You know, it's so difficult.
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It feels like failure when you do everything you can do and nothing works,
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or something works for a while and then it stops. Many oncologists,
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cancer cancer specialists endure this. You know, the chemo works and then it
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doesn't. So what do you do then? And you know the words that
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patients often here, which I personally think should never be uttered because they're actually
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a lie, is there's nothing else we can do. I hated that statement.
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I felt that it was something I should never say to anyone who was
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looking for some kind of answer and felt lost. So I've realized over time
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that healing can always take place even when there's no hope for cure, and
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maybe especially when there's no hope for cure. That's when healing is really important.
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As it turns out, and maybe we can talk about this a little
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later when we really get into the spiritual implications of all this. Healing is
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critical for everyone, not just people who were dealing with disease, but in
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the case of illness, say you break your arm or cut yourself bad or
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whatever, that wound needs to heal, and it will if under the right
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circumstances with good care and time. But the person who can't be cured can
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still undergo healing. And not only can they if you just provide the right
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conditions, it happens. It's a natural process. People are designed for healing,
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and I didn't really understand for a long time. It's ultimately a spiritual
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process. It's not just medical or physical or scientific, or even just emotional
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or psychological. It's a spiritual It's a spiritual process. It's not an event.
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It takes time and a certain kind of effort and work. But you
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know, healing and curing go hand in hand, but they're different. And
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I would love it if we would learn more in medicine about the importance of
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healing alongside. You know how critical our curing mission already is. And you
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share that this understanding led you to end of life care and hospice direction.
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Yes, it did. After I was in practice for about ten years.
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I remember one case vividly because it was a turning point. I was probably
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four four o'clock in the morning. I had, you know, rushed to
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the hospital to care for a woman who had been a patient of mine for
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several years. She had very brittle diabetes, which means her blood sugar was
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very tough to control. She did a decent job at it, but she
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wasn't really good at controlling her diet or her weight. So one night,
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you know, there any but he was familiar with type one diabetes, insulin
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dependent diabetes, is familiar with keto acidosis, which is the disaster that can
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happen when your blood sugar rises to the point where it's really out of control
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and your whole body chemistry shifts into a place that if you don't head that
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off, you know you will die. So I had pulled her back from
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the jaws of death several times in the past, and I had done it
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again this particular night. I probably saw her starting ten or eleven in the
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evening, and by four am things were more under control. She was in
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the ICU, and you know, she was stable and more comfortable. She
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wasn't really conscious yet, but she was going to be there, and I
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felt that it was fine at that point to leave her in the care of
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the folks in the ICU and go home and get a couple hours of sleep
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before I had to come back and make hospital rounds. At six point thirty
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in the morning. But as I sat there, it occurred to me,
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and this was in the er, before we even had her up in the
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in the unit, I thought, I have been through this process with this
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woman at least four or maybe five. It is probably the fifth time.
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And when she goes home, everyone knows, she knows, her family knows.
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I know what's going to happen. She's going to be back, and
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there's nothing I can do about that except once again, you know, cure
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her keto acidotic crisis and pull her back into life again for a little longer.
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But you know, it really struck me full force that, you know,
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curing is something that it's difficult to learn how to be really good at
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curing disease, but once you get it down, you know you can do
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it for the rest of your life. And most physicians do, you know,
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a lot of my colleagues follow that same path of curing everyone they possibly
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can for the rest of their career. But I realized that night, I
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can't keep doing this. There's something about this process of facing death and holding
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it off that isn't enough. And I had lots of other patients, and
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I tell their stories in part one of the book, Who I couldn't.
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I couldn't prevent their death. There was no way to keep them from dying.
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And yet I felt it was really important not to give up on them,
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so I continued working with them, and it became so obvious after a
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while that those were the people I really wanted to keep working with. You
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know, the the the process of helping someone understand that the end of their
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life is approaching and it's inevitable and we can no longer hold it off forever,
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and what do we do about it together as as a team? How
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what's the How's the best way to do that? And it turns out the
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team isn't just a doctor and the patient. Once I got involved with hospice
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and worked with the teams of nurses, social workers, you know, critical
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team team work together, then I really realized that, boy, that's the
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way she we should be doing it throughout healthcare, but in particular with people
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who are facing death. You know, there's a team approach like hospice and
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palliative care. Employee is is really the best way to do it? And
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this led to your founding of a national model of care to assist people with
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serious illness at home. Please tell us about that. Well, I you
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know, I once I got involved as a hospice medical director in the small
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town that I still live near, that little hospice merged with a lot larger
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program, and I wound up getting kicked upstairs a few times until I was
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heading you know, I was the senior medical director for all of the home
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based, home health and hospice services throughout the largest health system in northern California,
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covering you know, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, through Sonoma County
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almost well up to the California northern border with Oregon, and you know,
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the whole northern half of the state was the footprint of this health system.
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On any one day or night, you know, one of us medical directors
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would be on call for something like seven hundred hospice patients at once, and
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we had to care for all of them by phone at a distance. So,
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you know, I had done that for a year or two, and
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it became really clear that hospice at that time, this was years ago,
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was really focused on cancer because cancer is easier to predict. Once a person
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has cancer and they don't respond too well to chemo anymore, you know,
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they're heading for the end of life, and so hospice was created to deal
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at first with cancer, but I'm an internest I deal with all illnesses.
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And so the United States Healthcare Financing Administration, which now is named CMS Center
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for Medicare and Medical Aid Services, told the National Hospice Organization, and I
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was part of it. I was a member doctor member. The government basically
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said to the National Hospice Organization, Look, there are a lot of diseases
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out there besides cancer, and we would like to make sure that they all
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get the same kind of care that cancer patients now get. So you come
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up with a set of guidelines for who's eligible for hospice with say, heart
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failure, COPD, kidney failure, all the other medical diseases that aren't cancer.
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And if you don't come up with those guidelines, we will. And
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so I heard that, and I stepped up and said, look, you
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know, I'm willing to lead a team of other clinicians across the country and
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see if we can come up with new guidelines, which we did and publish
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them in nineteen ninety five and they're still in use today really around the world
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for determining or helping to determine who might be a candidate for hospice care.
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And what that means is who might not survive the illness that they have.
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When are you sick enough that you really ought to start dealing with the fact
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that you may not survive forever. So those guidelines got published and I was
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hoping that would really improve the hospice situation because doctors were very reluctant to send
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patients to hospice. You know, it's hospice to many doctors means okay,
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I got to give up and stop trying to cure and you know, give
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up on my patient. So I thought, well, maybe there's a way
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to come up with a new kind of program that will take people in who
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aren't really hospice grade ill yet and care for them at home and keep them
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out of the hospital, and maybe more of them would get into hospice.
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And it might be good for Medicare because if they don't have to go back
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to the hospital, if they don't want to, we can enable them to
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make that choice. It might even save a few dollars for Medicare, and
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Medicare is really into that. So Obamacare, the law was passed in twenty
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ten. The law created the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Congress appropriated
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a billion dollars for year one Healthcare Innovation Awards to finance new programs and study
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them to see if they might improve quality of care and save Medicare dollars.
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And we applied for one of those and we got our health system. My
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team won a thirteen million dollar grant from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation
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to take our programs, spread it across the entire system, study it scientifically,
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which we did. It took years, but it was a hit.
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We succeeded in measurably improving quality of care for very sick people. A lot
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of them did choose to stay home and not go back to the hospital if
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they could avoid it. We cared for them at home instead, and Medicare
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loved it. The program went national. I wound up leaving the health system
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to help other systems around the country learn to do this same kind of care.
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And you know, it really worked. I wound up doing a lot
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of traveling back and forth from California, where I live now, to Washington,
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DC to work with Congress and Medicare to develop new financing for this kind
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of care, and really it really was gratifying because we've really helped improve the
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healthcare system from the inside out, which that had been my ambition since my
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alarming uh you know, uh discoveries in medical school. So that that uh
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that uh research and funding and finance, the financing creation uh uh you know,
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Congress is still grappling with how to pay for this kind of care and
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get it to work and make it so that it can't be scammed for profit
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and all that. That that's an ongoing battle. But I I got finished
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with with that. I felt we had done as much as we could.
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And after that was when I decided to write this book because I thought it
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was really as I look back on everything that had happened since I went to
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medical school in the seventies, I just was curious as to what drew me.
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What what is so important not just to me, but to the to
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everyone about the end of life? What what is it that makes this phase
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of life so critical, so difficult to face so in the closet and yet
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so you know, if you sit with people who are at home going through
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the end of life with their loved ones, their families and their friends,
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you discover really quick how important and profound those experiences can be. People people
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just overflow with gratitude when they're cared for properly and get to go through this
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experience in a way that's filled with love and caring as opposed to just treatment.
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And so that that's how the whole process unfolded. And looking back,
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you know, I'm really happy to have participated at this point, I think
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it's time for all of us to look more deeply at what really underlies the
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process of coming into this world at birth, living a life, and leaving
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at the end. What is it about that process that we have right could
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improve on, And what are some of the things we haven't even really started
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looking at yet that could help us understand it even better. And we're going
28:26
to touch upon some of those in the next segment. My guest is doctor
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Brad Stewart, his book Facing Death, Spirituality, Science and Surrender at the
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End of Life. Doctor Stewart, please tell our listeners with and get your
28:37
books and find out more about you. Okay, the easiest way to get
28:44
a hold of the book is to go to Amazon, click on books and
28:51
just key in Stuart st u Art. My last name Facing Death and it
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should pop right up. It's available in kindle, paperback and hardbound, and
29:06
you know, it's on Barnes and Nobles and many, you know, all
29:10
the other websites as well, and bookstores can order it. I with the
29:18
publisher and I went through a lot to make it so you can now go
29:21
into any bookstore and if it's not on the shelf, you can ask them
29:25
to look it up and order it. They'll they'll be able to look it
29:27
up right away, and and that'd be great because it's spreading the word is
29:33
good. And your website, sir, my website is Brad Stewart MD dot
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com, b R A D S t U A R T M D dot
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com. And there's just a little bit on there about the book and about
29:48
me, and I'll be expanding the material on there in the future and we'll
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be back with more after these words. On the own Times Radio Network,
29:56
The Cutting Edge of Conscious Radio. Ome Times Radio IOMFM. Ome Times Magazine
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is one of the leading online content providers of positivity, wellness and personal empowerment.
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A philanthropic organization, their net proceeds are finaled to support worldwide charity initiatives
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via Humanity Healing International. Through their commitment to creating community and providing conscious content,
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they aspire to uplift humanity on a global scale. Home Times Co creating
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a more conscious lifestyle. Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week is
30:32
Brad Stewart his book. My guest this week is doctor Brad Stewart, his
30:36
book Facing Death, Spirituality, Science and Surrender at the End of Life.
30:42
Doctor Stewart, your book encourages readers to expand their comfort zones around the end
30:48
of life. What advice can you offer to those who may be grappling with
30:51
this at this time? Well, you know, the first step in grappling
30:57
with, say, you know, a really difficult diagnosis or what some people
31:03
might call bad news, is to deal with the practical first. You know,
31:12
for anyone who's wrestling with the fact that they they have an illness where
31:21
you know, the symptoms are getting worse and the treatment doesn't seem to be
31:25
helping, the first thing to realize is your doctor may be reluctant to level
31:32
with you about how ill you are. I hate to put it so bluntly,
31:37
but many doctors are terrible at admitting even to themselves that people may not
31:45
recover, So this has been studied. I mean, doctors, when they're
31:52
surveyed will admit that they don't want to tell their patients that they may die.
31:56
They're very reluctant to do that, and they the doctors often rely on
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the patients to open up the discussion and say, well, doc, you
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know, how am I doing? Really? Can you just tell me the
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truth? And patients, if you survey them, they'll say, well,
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I expect my doctor to tell me when I'm not doing well. I've you
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know. It's it's a very forbidding thing for someone who's ill and weak to
32:23
confront their doctor and say, look, I don't think i'm doing very well.
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Can you can you tell me the truth? It's that's a that's a
32:30
hard job, but that's what you have to do. So I think that's
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step one. Have someone who can advocate for you if you don't feel good
32:39
about about asking those tough questions yourself. But often physicians are relieved when patients
32:51
make it clear that they really want to hear, you know the truth.
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It still may not be easy to get the truth, you know, in
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plain English, but keep trying. So that's number one. Number two,
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people don't think of hospice soon enough, and doctors, as I mentioned before,
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might be reluctant to say even if the patient brings it up. I
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can't tell you how many times I've had colleagues and friends who are physicians,
33:23
who you know, people will say, well, how about hospice, and
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the doctor will say no, no, no, no, no, you're
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not ready for that yet, which translates in English to I've got a lot
33:35
more things I want to try. I'm not sure they're going to work,
33:37
but you know, don't don't start telling me that you want to hear about
33:43
hospice when I have more treatments that I would like to apply, you know,
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and it's bring it up early. And if you bring it up early
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and you get a no answer, bring it up again. If you feel
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as though your course is such that you know you could use some help at
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home. You might have pain that and other symptoms that need to be controlled
34:08
a little better. Doctors are notoriously poor at treating pain, and the opioid
34:14
epidemic has made it much worse. It's very hard to get a hold of
34:19
the right kind of pain medication and the right quantities, particularly in cancer.
34:24
But you know even heart failure. Studies show us that pain is more of
34:32
a problem in heart failure than it sometimes is in cancer. So pain,
34:37
shortness of breath, nausea, any other symptoms that are really troubling you,
34:44
hospice can kind of help, and you need to make a decision that you're
34:51
really ready to confront the end of life issues before hospice can get in there.
34:58
But once they do, most people will find that they're really really relieved
35:02
and that things go really well once once hospice is in there. The only
35:08
problem is hospice often comes in so late because of the reluctance to face the
35:15
issue on the part of both patients and physicians, that hospice needs to get
35:21
involved earlier than is often the case. So that those would be my major
35:27
practical suggestions. And what would you offer to family members with loved ones on
35:34
home hospice. Well, that's the thing. The thing about hospice that I
35:42
think is really distinctive and really helpful is the again, the healing aspect.
35:51
Hospice employees, social workers, therapists, physical therapists, other people who are
35:59
not only good at helping you feel better physically, but at helping you to
36:04
deal with the hundreds of issues that come up when you're caring for someone that
36:12
you love who's ill and getting more ill and is facing the end of life.
36:20
There are many, many issues to untangle, and I think hospice people
36:23
are experienced and trained in doing that. I have a bias, and I'll
36:29
freely admit it's a bias toward not for profit hospice. There's a big controversy
36:37
now in hospice because there are for profit companies and even venture capital financed companies
36:46
now doing a lot of hospice. And that's been studied too, and you
36:52
know, sometimes the array of services that you receive aren't as wide and deep
37:00
in for profit hospice as they are in not for profit hospice. So do
37:04
a little homework, you know, talk to folks in your community that are
37:08
familiar with hospice. Call up a few hospices and you know the ones that
37:14
have been doing this for a while, some of the larger ones, many
37:17
of them are county based. You know, do your research and most people
37:23
will find that caring for loved ones is a whole lot less of a burden
37:30
when a good hospice is involved than trying to do it on your own or
37:36
just with your doctor. Doctors and hospice can work together, and when it
37:42
goes well that most people find that it's a godsend. So facing death gives
37:49
the insights that you just shared, but it also delves into timeless spiritual wisdom.
37:55
Could you provide examples of what mystics and visionaries have conveyed with thousands of
38:00
years and how it resonates with contemporary readers. Sure, you know this is
38:07
something that I didn't think about consciously much while I was working day in and
38:15
day out with patients and hospices and reforming healthcare and all that. It's only
38:20
when I look back that I realized what I was doing all that time.
38:25
You know, when I first began sitting with and exploring with people who couldn't
38:36
be cured, I would spend I would set aside when I was in my
38:42
medical office. I'd put aside forty five minute appointments at the end of the
38:45
day to talk with people who had problems that we couldn't solve, real dilemmas.
38:51
And often I would spend that time telling people that they weren't going to
38:57
survive. You know, I would have to deliver them as that they were
39:00
going to die and we needed to face it together. And I learned that
39:07
if you read the book, you'll read some of those stories. I learned
39:09
how to ask questions. Instead of trying to tell people what was going on,
39:15
ask questions so that they could come to the realization themselves as to what
39:22
was going on. I just helped them see what they already knew. And
39:28
that's actually a spiritual truth is I didn't understand when I was doing this and
39:36
exploring it for years that I went to a certain place when I did that
39:42
work with people. You know, again the stories in the book. But
39:46
I would go home after a deep, deep conversation where I had to give
39:52
somebody the news that they were going to die and there really wasn't anything we
39:55
could do to stop it. And at the end of the conversation, they
39:59
would turn to me and say thank you so much. They would thank me
40:04
for telling them they were going to die, that there is a way to
40:07
do this that is healing instead of, you know, leaving people afraid.
40:15
And and after I looked at it, and actually after I wrote about it,
40:21
it wasn't until I wrote about it that I was able to sort of
40:23
formulate what it was. The place I went to when I did that was
40:31
the very same place that I was looking at or looking for in the other
40:37
person. And it's a it's a it's a very very basic elemental place in
40:45
every person where your consciousness actually comes from, it, where it originates from,
40:53
and when when you learn and it takes practice. I've finally understood,
41:00
after years of looking at it, that you can get to that very same
41:06
place in meditation. Psychedelics, which we may talk a little more about,
41:12
can help you there. You can get beyond yourself. In the book,
41:19
I talk a lot about the distinction between who you really are, which I
41:24
call the I am just the basic awareness in yourself, not awareness of anything,
41:32
just where you are aware. If you close your eyes and just watch
41:38
your breath until you have no more thoughts in your mind, and then let
41:45
go and relax. Behind that, you'll find a place where all you are
41:52
is aware. That place is within and underneath yourself, because you, yourself
41:59
is who you think you are. You walk around all day interacting with people
42:02
and doing your job and dealing with your kids and your dog, and you're
42:07
working out of yourself. But the real you is deeper than that, and
42:15
you can access that place. And I only learned that after delivering babies and
42:21
watching them open their eyes and look into mine, and there it is.
42:27
And I've seen it time after time with people who are dying, as they
42:30
shed everything that they are and everything that they own and everyone they know falls
42:37
away, and at the last period before you die, you're back in that
42:44
same place. You are who you really are, and you only have to
42:47
see that a few times before you begin to understand that who we really are
42:54
is both very very simple and the most profound thing there is. And I
43:01
think it is what mystics have been talking about for thousands of years, and
43:07
it's why people have been using psilocybin in sacred rights for thousands of years.
43:16
Because there's a level. There's a portal at both ends of life, a
43:22
doorway that we enter through to come here and that we leave through when we
43:29
go. And I'm not going to begin to guess what's on the other side
43:32
of that portal, although I think some near death experience reports may give some
43:37
hints about that. But the truth is so simple you already know it.
43:45
Who you really are is what underlies your entire life. And if I were
43:52
religious. I really am not a religious person, but I'd say when you
43:57
find that space, it's where godly, it's where all creation comes from,
44:02
and you can experience it. And if you're like me, when you're in
44:07
that place and you look back at yourself, you'll say, oh, my
44:12
gosh, I got a lot of work to do on myself, because that's
44:15
that's a whole, whole different deal. My guest is doctor Brad Stewart,
44:20
his book Facing Death, Spirituality, Science and Surrender at the End of Life.
44:25
We'll be back with more after these words on the Old Times Radio Network.
44:30
Humanity Healing International is a small nonprofit with a big dream. Since two
44:37
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My passion is sifting through information, research and innovations from new thought teachers,
45:42
speakers, and researchers, pushing back the boundaries of what we know about life,
45:46
energy, metaphysics, and the universe. I love shifting perceptions about who
45:52
we are, why we're here, and how quickly impossible becomes normal when we
45:57
open our minds, expand our awareness, and accept that the only limits that
46:00
exist are those we place upon ourselves. So, if you're the kind of
46:05
forward thinking, eager investigator of what lies beyond the current reality that most perceive,
46:10
why not make a date to come play with me in the Field of
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Possibilities at four pm Pacific time seven pm Eastern Time every Thursday, and together
46:20
we can discover what's really going on. Back on Destination Unlimited, my guest
46:27
this week is doctor Brad Stewart. His book Facing Death, Spirituality, Science
46:32
and Surrender at the End of Life. Doctor Stewart, how does your book
46:37
explore the coming revolution in our understanding of reality and what significance does it hold
46:43
for readers in today's world. Oh? Well, I think science the way
46:53
we still look at it is materialistic. I mean it's complete materialistic. You
47:01
know, physicists, all scientists, I think, except pretty completely that reality
47:12
is what we can see and touch, what we can perceive with our five
47:16
senses and the instruments that that extend them. That's what's real. And there
47:23
really isn't anything else beyond that, or you know, outside that that we
47:30
can consider real. And you know, here's here's where I think psychedelic research
47:37
and the brain science that's happening around psychedelics and near death experiences, which are
47:44
now called by the by the researchers, recalled experiences of death are ED or
47:51
or reds. Near death experiences covers a broad spectrum of things that people report.
47:59
Reds are, you know, connected directly with experiences that people have who
48:06
have serious illness, cardiac arrest, and that's it. That's what reds are
48:12
we're seeing many more reports now from people who die and are resuscitated because we
48:19
have much better critical care and resuscitation science than we once did. So all
48:25
of the stories that people tell on say psilocybin and LSD experiences, and in
48:31
that research, we're now finding pretty conclusively that people, say with incurable cancer,
48:39
who are suffering from horrible fear and dread of death, who undergo psilocybin
48:46
therapy where that there's the right kind of support along with enough of a dose
48:52
of psilocybin to dissolve yourself. This is the self we were talking about a
48:59
little earlier, the you that you think you are, that relates to the
49:02
world that's dissolved with psychedelics. Eighty percent or so of people who undergo that
49:10
therapy lose their fear of death and their dread. Why because once they lose
49:16
their self, they see what's beyond. And you know, you have the
49:22
choice of regarding what psilocybinin LSD accomplish as delusional or maybe it indicates something that's
49:35
real beyond what we see out of our self, out of our eyes or
49:39
physical eyes. And the same with near death experiences. If I have a
49:44
story in the book that I think is perfect to illustrate this. A woman
49:49
whose heart was stopped for brain surgery. She had no brain function at all,
49:54
and I describe what she went through after that until she can came back
50:00
into her body when she was resuscitated at the end of surgery. Stories are
50:05
remarkably similar, whether it's psychedelics or near death experiences, and that is there
50:10
is definitely reality beyond what we can see and feel with our senses. And
50:19
not only that, anybody who experiences either psychedelics done right in the right kind
50:27
of therapeutic setting, or you know, almost all, not all, but
50:31
almost all people who have this kind of near death experiences and come back to
50:37
tell us about it all say the same thing, that what they experience is
50:43
more real than what we feel and see here in our bodies, with our
50:50
minds and with our senses. And I have a story in the book about
50:52
a patient of mine who was also happened to be a friend who was dying
50:58
of cancer and had to see and experienced the same thing and stayed there in
51:02
what she called the knowledge place for quite a while before she died. Science
51:08
is going to have to accept that its own evidence is starting to show that
51:15
scientific assumptions about materialism aren't enough. We don't know yet what the limits are
51:23
of our real perception. And I think psychedelic studies that show that areas of
51:31
the brain are changed on psychedelics studies of meditation where brain imaging show that experienced
51:43
meditators have certain areas of the brain actually turned down, not accentuated. You
51:51
don't expand consciousness by accelerating your brain activity. You expand awareness, as it
51:57
turns out, by turning down your brain activity and certain key networks that have
52:04
to do with mediating your sense of self and your sense of consciousness. You
52:12
turn those centers down and your awareness expands. They're turned down somewhat with meditation.
52:20
There turning those centers. The center i'm referring to, the main one
52:24
is called the default mode network. It's where you go when you're not consumed
52:30
with some kind of focused on a task, when when you're daydreaming or that
52:35
center turns on and you have idle thoughts. When you turn that center off,
52:43
that's what expands awareness. And when you turn your brain completely off,
52:49
that's when you have these near death experiences. So I think what science is
52:52
going to have to come to grips with is that the brain doesn't produce consciousness.
53:00
Consciousness is not a material phenomenon that's created by our physical brains. It
53:07
couldn't be, really, because you turn the brain down and consciousness expands.
53:12
That doesn't make sense. So we have to begin to look at and I
53:16
think some quantum physicists are beginning to wonder whether material reality, matter and energy
53:25
that we can see and measure isn't what reality actually is consciousness. You know,
53:34
the universe is conscious. You can call it God if you want.
53:39
There are any number of different names for it, but those all come out
53:43
of our minds. The experience of touching into the reality that's more real than
53:51
our physical reality is something that you won't forget if you go through it.
53:57
Anyone who's experienced psilocybin or will attest to that, assuming they were in a
54:04
good environment where they were able to really And I tell my own story about
54:08
that in the book about what I experienced. You know, that's pointing us
54:14
in a direction that shows that ultimate reality, what is ultimate and eternal,
54:21
those things science still has trouble with. What's ultimate, what's eternal? Well,
54:27
the ultimate and the eternal are real they're more real than what we and
54:31
ourselves think is real. And so for us everyday people. I think inspecting
54:39
who you are, who you really are, underlying who you think you are,
54:45
pays off because you're going to go out of this life at the end
54:51
of it as who you really are because everything else will be pulled away.
54:55
You'll let go because dying will do it for you. You'll let go of
55:00
everything that's not the real you. You came in with that, you go
55:04
out with that, and why not do a little prep work ahead of time.
55:09
You can either find out who you are now or you can wait and
55:14
let dying do it for you when it's not really under your control. So
55:17
that my advice would be find out who you really are, you know,
55:22
as soon as it's convenient for you. Absolutely the wisdom and compassion of doctor
55:27
Brad Stewart his book Facing Death, Spirituality, Science and Surrender at the End
55:32
of Life. One more time, please share with our listeners that can get
55:36
your books and find out more about you. Okay, it's Facing Death.
55:42
Look under Stuart Stuart on Amazon or any other site, and my website where
55:47
you can also access it is Brad Stewart Stuart, MD dot com. Doctor
55:54
Stewart, thank you so much for joining us and sharing this really exciting and
56:00
and and also compassionate work that you do. Thank you, Victor, I
56:04
really appreciate the opportunity and thank you for joining us on Destination Unlimited. I'm
56:09
Victor the Voice Firman. Have a wonderful week. M m mmmmm