Latest / Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman / Douglas Grunther – The Quantum and The Dream

Transcript

Douglas Grunther – The Quantum and The Dream · Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

0:04
Speaker 1: My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice.
0:09
Speaker 1: I've always been fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science and
0:15
Speaker 1: the crossroads at which they meet. Join me now and
0:18
Speaker 1: we will explore these topics and so much more with
0:22
Speaker 1: fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to
0:28
Speaker 1: destination unlimited. Welcome to the visionary world of the quantum
0:37
Speaker 1: and the Dream, a journey through three remarkable shifts in consciousness.
0:42
Speaker 1: For the first time in the history of evolution, three
0:45
Speaker 1: forms of intelligence are interacting here on earth, human intelligence,
0:51
Speaker 1: computer intelligence, and the most influential of all, nature's intelligence.
0:57
Speaker 1: My guest this week on Destination and Living, Douglas Grunther
1:01
Speaker 1: says a number of visionary thinkers, starting in the year
1:05
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred and crossing into this new millennium, reveal underlying
1:09
Speaker 1: connections between the human mind and the patterns of nature,
1:13
Speaker 1: pointing us towards a new renaissance. Douglas Grunther is the
1:17
Speaker 1: creator host of The Woodstock round Table, a rollicking and
1:21
Speaker 1: multi award winning radio talk show spiced with humor and
1:25
Speaker 1: informed by his love of philosophy, depth, psychology, and spiritual insight.
1:30
Speaker 1: He graduated from Columbia University, where he was a Rhodes
1:33
Speaker 1: Scholar finalist. He has been the featured speaker in front
1:37
Speaker 1: of national audiences and is a dreamwork facilitator certified by
1:41
Speaker 1: doctor Jeremy Taylor, co founder of the International Association for
1:45
Speaker 1: the Study of Dreams. His website is Douglasgrunther dot com
1:50
Speaker 1: and he joins me this week to share his new book,
1:52
Speaker 1: The Quantum and the Dream, Visionary Consciousness AI and the
1:58
Speaker 1: New Renaissance. Please join me in welcoming to Destination Unlimited,
2:04
Speaker 1: Douglas Grunther. Welcome, Doug.
2:06
Speaker 2: Oh, great to be with you, Victor. Thank you for the.
2:08
Speaker 1: Invitation and thank you for joining us today. Doug, please
2:12
Speaker 1: share with us your path and what birthed your interests
2:16
Speaker 1: in philosophy, depth, psychology and spiritual insight.
2:21
Speaker 2: Well, I have to say it started in college when
2:26
Speaker 2: I was the first sophomore year. I was able to actually,
2:29
Speaker 2: for the first time in my educational career, choose what
2:32
Speaker 2: courses I was going to take. And so they had
2:36
Speaker 2: a student handbook published every year where students evaluated every
2:41
Speaker 2: professor how interesting was the class? Was it more tests
2:47
Speaker 2: or papers? And I read through that really carefully, and
2:52
Speaker 2: the professor who came out to me most exciting was
2:56
Speaker 2: a philosophy professor. Now I didn't have any particular philosophy
3:00
Speaker 2: at the time, but I said, this guy sounds too
3:04
Speaker 2: good to be true. Well he was brilliant, Charles Frankel,
3:07
Speaker 2: and he totally opened my mind to thinking about big
3:12
Speaker 2: ideas and big questions that philosophy does at its best.
3:16
Speaker 2: And I started going to the college bookstores, which you know,
3:23
Speaker 2: thousands of books that I'd never even know really thought about,
3:27
Speaker 2: and would just browse and see if a book would
3:29
Speaker 2: attract me in some way. And the two thin books
3:35
Speaker 2: that attracted me the most I had the similar reaction to.
3:39
Speaker 2: And they couldn't have been more different on one level.
3:41
Speaker 2: One was the dow Chen, you know, the beautiful Taoist
3:45
Speaker 2: text from thousands of years ago, and the other was
3:48
Speaker 2: Marshall mccluhan's book The Medium Is the Message. And what
3:52
Speaker 2: happened was when I read the first page of each
3:56
Speaker 2: book while standing there in the bookstore. In both cases,
4:01
Speaker 2: I said, these may be the two most important books
4:03
Speaker 2: I ever read, and I have no idea what they're
4:06
Speaker 2: talking about. And that's an interesting reaction. And I now know,
4:12
Speaker 2: fifty years later, that's because the books were connecting with
4:15
Speaker 2: the right hemisphere of my brain, not the left, which
4:19
Speaker 2: is the part of our brain that is intuitive, empathic
4:24
Speaker 2: and can kind of Chris find a big picture out
4:30
Speaker 2: of a complex situation. And that got me thinking in
4:34
Speaker 2: a whole new way about what's important and what's exciting.
4:37
Speaker 2: And we can talk about some of the important distinctions
4:41
Speaker 2: between the left and right hemisphere of our brains, but
4:43
Speaker 2: for me, the right hemisphere is the ultimate playground of
4:48
Speaker 2: visionary ideas and exciting new visions.
4:54
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a quick question. For those who
4:55
Speaker 1: don't know what is depth psychology.
4:57
Speaker 2: H psychology is the exploration of the relationship between the
5:05
Speaker 2: conscious and the unconscious mind. And to this day, Victor
5:08
Speaker 2: I am both amused and frustrated by the fact that
5:14
Speaker 2: while there is excellent results one can get from what's
5:18
Speaker 2: called cognitive psychology, which is the mainstream psychology, which basically says,
5:23
Speaker 2: for having a problem, let's get you through the day,
5:26
Speaker 2: let's get you through the next week, and get you
5:29
Speaker 2: back on your feet. And that's very important, but the
5:34
Speaker 2: unconscious every psychologist are virtually everyone along with every philosopher
5:40
Speaker 2: and the historian would have to agree that the vast
5:44
Speaker 2: majority of what we think, what we perceive, what we perceive,
5:49
Speaker 2: what we act on, what we believe, come from the unconscious.
5:54
Speaker 2: I would say most would say it's ninety five of
5:58
Speaker 2: our thinking is from the unconscious. And yet I would
6:02
Speaker 2: ask any of your listeners go to a bookstore, go
6:04
Speaker 2: to the psychology section. You're going to find a lot
6:07
Speaker 2: of brilliant books there. Go into the index. Most of
6:11
Speaker 2: those books won't even mention the unconscious. And so to me,
6:16
Speaker 2: the analogy would be thinking you could understand the deep
6:21
Speaker 2: patterns of ocean, of the ocean by studying it by
6:26
Speaker 2: sitting on a beach and watching the waves that crash
6:28
Speaker 2: on the shore. Right, those waves that breached the surface
6:33
Speaker 2: were being caused by more powerful forces underneath the surface
6:37
Speaker 2: of the water that can't be seen from the beach.
6:40
Speaker 2: One has to dive down deeply to access it. And
6:45
Speaker 2: I'm saying that in the year nineteen hundred there was
6:48
Speaker 2: a synchronicity. We can talk about what that is which
6:50
Speaker 2: was calling on us even to this day to go
6:55
Speaker 2: underneath the surface of our thinking and explore the the
7:00
Speaker 2: dark but fascinating and most creative parts of our minds,
7:05
Speaker 2: which is the unconscious.
7:08
Speaker 1: You're also a certified dream work facilitator. What does this
7:12
Speaker 1: practice entail?
7:14
Speaker 2: I was fortunate to get I got interested in my
7:18
Speaker 2: dreams the same way I got interested in mccluan and
7:21
Speaker 2: the Daho Ching. I was going through a very difficult
7:24
Speaker 2: time back in the mid nineteen eighties emotionally, and I
7:29
Speaker 2: went to a bookstore to try to find a book
7:31
Speaker 2: that would help me. And the book that almost jumped
7:35
Speaker 2: out at me, it seemed, was a book called dream
7:38
Speaker 2: Work by doctor Jeremy Taylor. And I read that book
7:42
Speaker 2: cover to cover and started using the principles in that
7:46
Speaker 2: book to start remembering more dreams not that hard to do,
7:52
Speaker 2: and then learning their language. And within a month the
7:56
Speaker 2: emotional issues were clearing up, and I realized again that
8:00
Speaker 2: the dreams, that part of our unconscious, in what we
8:03
Speaker 2: call the fated brainway state, has enormous information for us
8:08
Speaker 2: and can be a tremendous ally And so that got
8:10
Speaker 2: me started in a love of studying dreams. And then
8:15
Speaker 2: through some good fortune, I was able to take a
8:17
Speaker 2: two weekend workshop and dream work with doctor Montague Omen
8:22
Speaker 2: not a very well known name, the Victor. He had
8:24
Speaker 2: one of the coolest academic titles I've ever heard. Manty,
8:29
Speaker 2: as he liked to be called, was a professor emeritus
8:34
Speaker 2: of psychiatry and power psychology at Albert Einstein Medical College. Well, now,
8:41
Speaker 2: how's that for a title. And when I was able
8:44
Speaker 2: to talk my way into his two week seminar, which
8:47
Speaker 2: he did at his home at the age of ninety two,
8:51
Speaker 2: if we have time, I can tell you about the
8:52
Speaker 2: first dream we did as a group. It blew my
8:54
Speaker 2: mind and made me realize this is something I really
8:57
Speaker 2: want to pursue more. And then another fortunate synchronicity, Jeremy Taylor,
9:03
Speaker 2: the man whose book I mentioned, was flown into my
9:07
Speaker 2: area by somebody who lived near in the region who
9:09
Speaker 2: had a spiritual center, and it went so successfully that
9:13
Speaker 2: she flew Jeremy in four weekends a year. For ten years,
9:16
Speaker 2: I went to every weekend, and I have a radio
9:20
Speaker 2: show Sunday mornings. Jeremy started on those Sundays. He was
9:23
Speaker 2: here coming on the air with me, and for an
9:26
Speaker 2: hour we would take calls from listeners where they would
9:29
Speaker 2: give us a dream and we would give them insights
9:31
Speaker 2: into that dream. So that really got me fascinated and
9:35
Speaker 2: started and doing some dream work.
9:37
Speaker 1: Tell us about that dream you were starting to tell
9:39
Speaker 1: us about.
9:41
Speaker 2: I'm still smiling at this. So this is around two
9:45
Speaker 2: thousand and two, and a Montague Omen was a brilliant
9:52
Speaker 2: dream worker and he had a method of doing dream work.
9:56
Speaker 2: And there were fourteen of us, twelve of them. We're
10:00
Speaker 2: advanced psychologists, either with master's degree or PhDs. One was
10:07
Speaker 2: a budding pianist from Julliard and some guy from Woodstock
10:12
Speaker 2: right a talk show. Somehow got in there, and he
10:15
Speaker 2: teaches us the method, and then he asked for somebody
10:18
Speaker 2: to volunteer a dream. So a woman raises her hand,
10:22
Speaker 2: and here's the dream she gave to us. I'm lying
10:27
Speaker 2: on the ground under a tree. Some leaves have fallen.
10:31
Speaker 2: There's a stream nearby, so I'm waiting for the meat
10:35
Speaker 2: of the dream. And she says, that's it. Now I'm
10:38
Speaker 2: going to myself, why would somebody volunteer that dream? There's
10:42
Speaker 2: nothing to it. Well, without going into the details of
10:46
Speaker 2: how we work the dream, she now leaves the circle.
10:49
Speaker 2: We were seated in a circle on chairs, and we
10:53
Speaker 2: now each of us voluntarily took on the dream as
10:57
Speaker 2: if it was our own. Because in Montague and Jeremy's work.
11:01
Speaker 2: They agreed we would never say to the dreamer, I
11:06
Speaker 2: think your dream is about you and your mother. We
11:09
Speaker 2: would say, if this were my dream, this would be
11:12
Speaker 2: telling me something about me and my mother. Big difference, right, absolutely, so,
11:19
Speaker 2: so we all start taking on the dream. And I
11:22
Speaker 2: remember one of the psychologist said, if this is my dream,
11:25
Speaker 2: that tree reminds me of the tree in Eden and
11:31
Speaker 2: and Adam and Eve leaving the garden. Another one said, well,
11:36
Speaker 2: there's a stream nearby, and I know that often in dreams,
11:39
Speaker 2: water represents the emotions. And I remember I, since I
11:42
Speaker 2: love puns and I know dreams, loved the pun from
11:46
Speaker 2: working my dreams, I said, this was my dream. The
11:48
Speaker 2: leaves on the ground are what are calling to me.
11:51
Speaker 2: There's something about leaving. Okay, so we all do this.
11:56
Speaker 2: Now it's time for the dreamer to come back into
11:58
Speaker 2: the circle and she has an opportunity to either ask
12:02
Speaker 2: us questions or make comments on what we were saying.
12:07
Speaker 2: And her comment was, thank you for helping me make
12:10
Speaker 2: a life changing decision. I'm scratching my head. And she
12:16
Speaker 2: gets to tell us that the what's been going on
12:19
Speaker 2: with her is she was doing very extremely well as
12:23
Speaker 2: an executive in a corporation, but she hated business life.
12:27
Speaker 2: She always wanted to be an artist and she had talent,
12:30
Speaker 2: but her parents an extended family, had always convinced her that,
12:34
Speaker 2: you know, you can't really make a living as an
12:37
Speaker 2: artist and you should really do something more practical, and
12:41
Speaker 2: so she felt the pressure to stay in this well
12:44
Speaker 2: paying job, but she felt it was eating her soul,
12:46
Speaker 2: that she really wanted to be an artist. And she's
12:48
Speaker 2: listening to us talking about leaving the garden, the garden
12:52
Speaker 2: of Eden and you know, a new adventure and emotional
12:57
Speaker 2: water and then leaving something right and someone else that
13:00
Speaker 2: talked about the tree feeling like the family tree, and
13:05
Speaker 2: the dream was coming. She felt to tell her it's
13:08
Speaker 2: time to leave the pressure of the family to stay
13:11
Speaker 2: in a job and a career that was eating her solo.
13:14
Speaker 2: And that really blew my mind that any dream worked
13:19
Speaker 2: on by a group could elicit that deep message. And
13:26
Speaker 2: I can tell you from having run many dream groups victory.
13:29
Speaker 2: Most of my dream groups don't have experts in psychology participating.
13:34
Speaker 2: This works for anybody who's willing to explore the fascinating
13:40
Speaker 2: world of dreams and learn at a little bit more
13:42
Speaker 2: about how they work and how they speak to us.
13:45
Speaker 2: And again we now know from laboratory experiments that when
13:49
Speaker 2: we dream at night, the messages percolate first into the
13:55
Speaker 2: right hemisphere of the brain before they pass over to
13:58
Speaker 2: the left can go over. Why that's all very important,
14:02
Speaker 2: But that's kind of a I'm glad you asked me
14:04
Speaker 2: to talk about that first dream I ever worked in
14:07
Speaker 2: a dream group, because it still amazes me how powerful
14:11
Speaker 2: these dreams can be.
14:13
Speaker 1: It must have given her great relief.
14:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's another leaf, and I agree with you one
14:20
Speaker 2: hundred percent. It certainly did.
14:22
Speaker 1: You've also been a radio talk show host for more
14:25
Speaker 1: than forty years and creator and host of the Woodstock
14:29
Speaker 1: Roundtable Show. Where may we hear the show? And who
14:32
Speaker 1: are some of the guests you've featured?
14:34
Speaker 2: Well? Radio Woodstock is a licensed FM radio station, which
14:37
Speaker 2: when I got into radio in nineteen eighty was the
14:39
Speaker 2: only way you could be on radio. Now, of course,
14:43
Speaker 2: thanks to the world wide web, shows like yours, you know,
14:47
Speaker 2: we have thousands of thousands of podcasts that are you know,
14:51
Speaker 2: have as many if not more listeners and certain radio shows,
14:55
Speaker 2: but you know, I've been on the Woodstock radio station.
14:58
Speaker 2: I helped start it back in nineteen. The talk show
15:01
Speaker 2: is called The Witchtock Roundtable. It's a weekly show and
15:05
Speaker 2: like you, Victor, were two peas in a pod to
15:07
Speaker 2: go back to the leaf and tree stuff. I thought
15:12
Speaker 2: I was getting a radio because that was going to
15:13
Speaker 2: be my only career. It's been a favorite part of
15:17
Speaker 2: my career. But what I really realized is I wanted
15:21
Speaker 2: a talk show so I could learn more. And so
15:26
Speaker 2: to me having a talk show on a station, which
15:28
Speaker 2: gives me the freedom to run it anyway I choose.
15:32
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm running a college where I get
15:36
Speaker 2: to choose the professors and what courses I take. So
15:40
Speaker 2: we've had a lot of fun because one of my
15:45
Speaker 2: philosophies is that as serious as life is, and we
15:49
Speaker 2: certainly are living in a very complex, chaotic and anxiety
15:53
Speaker 2: ridden time, one of the things that make us human
15:58
Speaker 2: is our ability to laugh. And so on my show,
16:03
Speaker 2: I love getting serious and as deep into the human
16:05
Speaker 2: psyche as we can, but never forget to have a
16:09
Speaker 2: good time and have a few laughs.
16:10
Speaker 1: Absolutely. It's interesting that in the introduction to your new book,
16:15
Speaker 1: The Quantum and the Dream, there's a quote from Robert
16:19
Speaker 1: Thurman referring to you as radio Bodhisatpa. Did he mean
16:23
Speaker 1: that you will do your shows until all of humanity
16:26
Speaker 1: has reached enlightenment? Is that what you're saying.
16:28
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want that pressure, you know. Bob Thurman is
16:33
Speaker 2: a force of nature. Robert Thurman is a world renowned
16:37
Speaker 2: Buddhist teacher. He was the first westerner or gained by
16:40
Speaker 2: the Dalai Lama. Is a personal friend and consultant to
16:44
Speaker 2: his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and grew up and lives
16:47
Speaker 2: in Woodstock. And so one of my previous producers knew
16:52
Speaker 2: him tangentially and somehow convince him to come on my
16:55
Speaker 2: show and we hit it off. And so for the
16:57
Speaker 2: past twenty years he's been coming on a couple times
17:01
Speaker 2: a year, and he's always been my last guest of
17:03
Speaker 2: the year. And he's written a lot of beautiful books.
17:08
Speaker 2: Gives tall I mean, you can go to YouTube. He's
17:10
Speaker 2: all over the place. I call him the Battling Buddhist
17:12
Speaker 2: because he's the farthest thing from a Buddhist age one
17:17
Speaker 2: would imagine.
17:18
Speaker 3: Uh.
17:18
Speaker 2: He's tall, muscular, has a loud, powerful voice, so shocking
17:23
Speaker 2: wave of hair. He's always gesticulating, you know, his arms
17:28
Speaker 2: around and passion, and he's very loud and bombastic in
17:33
Speaker 2: many ways, and it's wonderful because it makes his teachings,
17:39
Speaker 2: his talks, very exciting. And it was very kind of
17:42
Speaker 2: him to say that. I was kind of blown away
17:45
Speaker 2: when he did. But I don't take it literally, Victor,
17:49
Speaker 2: because I'm tired. I'm exhausted enough as it is doing
17:52
Speaker 2: what I'm doing.
17:54
Speaker 1: I had the pleasure of interviewing him a couple of
17:56
Speaker 1: years ago, and I know exactly what you're talking about.
17:58
Speaker 1: So yeah, So what inspired your new book, The Quantum
18:03
Speaker 1: and the Dream, Visionary Consciousness, AI and the New Renaissance.
18:09
Speaker 2: Well, it would not be unfair to say that this
18:12
Speaker 2: book has taken me close to sixty years to write
18:16
Speaker 2: about fifty five because I mentioned this before the incident
18:20
Speaker 2: of being turned down by the dow Ching the Great
18:24
Speaker 2: ancient Chinese Book of Wisdom, and Marshall mccluan, whose nickname
18:29
Speaker 2: was the Oracle of Electronic Age the Medium is the Message.
18:33
Speaker 2: Around that time, I also got blown away by the
18:35
Speaker 2: movie two thousand and one of Space Odyssey, and I've
18:39
Speaker 2: been wanting to write about all three of those things
18:41
Speaker 2: for a long time. I've talked about them on the
18:43
Speaker 2: radio and in my life talks, but I really wanted
18:46
Speaker 2: to set it down on paper. But what really really
18:51
Speaker 2: instigated this because my subtitle is Visionary Consciousness, AI and
18:57
Speaker 2: the New Renaissance. Well, I love Worldwide Web from its
19:01
Speaker 2: very inception, I know and still don't know very much
19:04
Speaker 2: about computers. And i'd given talks at a salon up
19:08
Speaker 2: here in the Witchstock area, and the gentleman who put
19:11
Speaker 2: those together, by the name of Ed Rosenfield, had been
19:14
Speaker 2: writing an AI newsletter since the eighties, and he scheduled
19:19
Speaker 2: a talk at the salon about updating us. This is
19:22
Speaker 2: around twenty eighteen, updating us on the world of AI.
19:27
Speaker 2: And I said, it's about time I learned more about this.
19:30
Speaker 2: And I was expecting kind of a nerdy technical talk
19:33
Speaker 2: that I would need toothpicks to keep my eyes pride
19:36
Speaker 2: open to stay attentive to. But in fact he made
19:41
Speaker 2: it very down to earth, an interesting and while I
19:44
Speaker 2: couldn't tell you.
19:45
Speaker 3: Any detail about what Ed talked about, I just left
19:51
Speaker 3: there saying this is you can't understand We can't understand.
19:58
Speaker 2: The age we're in if we don't have some understanding
20:01
Speaker 2: of how AI is influencing the human mind. And so
20:06
Speaker 2: that's when I started giving more talks about the relationship
20:10
Speaker 2: between AI and the human mind, and eventually my book
20:14
Speaker 2: The Quantum and the Dream.
20:16
Speaker 1: Before we close out this segment, tell us a little
20:18
Speaker 1: bit more about the influence that Marshall McLuhan had on
20:22
Speaker 1: you and why his thoughts are still important today.
20:25
Speaker 2: Well, you know, he was a trickster as well as
20:28
Speaker 2: a brilliant guy. For folk people that don't remember him,
20:32
Speaker 2: Marshall mclue was an obscure literary professor when he started
20:37
Speaker 2: writing books that got a lot of attention about how
20:42
Speaker 2: modern media rewire the human brain and get us to
20:48
Speaker 2: think and see the world in new and expansive ways.
20:51
Speaker 2: No one else had really done that. And when I
20:55
Speaker 2: read his book The Medium Is the Message, I did
20:57
Speaker 2: not understand most of it, other it was important, and
21:02
Speaker 2: so I started listening to his talks, and ever since then,
21:05
Speaker 2: for the past fifty years, every couple of months, i'll
21:09
Speaker 2: YouTube one of his talks, I'll reread parts of his book.
21:14
Speaker 2: How amazing was Marshall mcclu and he was the most
21:17
Speaker 2: sought after visionary in the nineteen sixties and the early
21:21
Speaker 2: part of the nineteen seventies, during that whole revolutionary cultural transformation,
21:25
Speaker 2: he was the most sought after speaker, and he was
21:30
Speaker 2: kind of like a zen master in that he liked
21:33
Speaker 2: he had a sense of humor, and if he felt
21:35
Speaker 2: the interviewer was using too much ego or whatever, he
21:39
Speaker 2: would just he would just throw spitballs out him, you know,
21:42
Speaker 2: little jokes. And he loved jokes and humor and satire.
21:49
Speaker 2: And in fact, anyone who watches Annie Hall the Woody
21:52
Speaker 2: Allen movie, there's a c where Woody Allen actually goes
21:58
Speaker 2: off camera and drags Marshall McLuhan onto the screen to
22:02
Speaker 2: tell a professor on a movie line that he doesn't
22:05
Speaker 2: know what he's talking about. And Marshall mcclum was mentioned
22:09
Speaker 2: every week on a show called laugh And during the
22:12
Speaker 2: late nineteen sixties of the most popular comedy show of
22:16
Speaker 2: that era. That's how he transcended culture and the idea.
22:21
Speaker 2: And what he basically was teaching us is that he said,
22:26
Speaker 2: you can't understand the nineteen sixties revolution cultural revolution without
22:29
Speaker 2: understanding how TV affects the human mind. And he anticipated
22:34
Speaker 2: the arrival of the personal computer. He died in nineteen
22:37
Speaker 2: eighty the first year we saw personal computers, and a
22:41
Speaker 2: lot of the folks like Steve Jobs, who were tinkering
22:44
Speaker 2: with computers in their garages in the seventies were consulting
22:48
Speaker 2: with mccluan because he seemed to have a better take
22:51
Speaker 2: on where Meaty was taking us than anybody else. And
22:54
Speaker 2: to this day I feel that he is speaking to
22:58
Speaker 2: us in ways, and then as a contemporary people can't
23:01
Speaker 2: even get to.
23:03
Speaker 1: I remember Artie Johnson on laughing saying, Hey, Marshall McLuhan,
23:08
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Remember that every week?
23:11
Speaker 2: Every week? How many intellectuals have that happened to them? Right?
23:16
Speaker 2: And that's how people they didn't understand him other than
23:20
Speaker 2: they knew he was important. And so I had the
23:22
Speaker 2: good fortune Victor, I know we're coming to an end
23:24
Speaker 2: of a segment, and as a radio guy, I know
23:26
Speaker 2: time rules us, you know, mcclu and I had the
23:29
Speaker 2: good fortune to start a project in the nineteen nineties
23:33
Speaker 2: and I saw an article in Rolling Stone and it
23:36
Speaker 2: was a quote by a gentleman who is one of
23:40
Speaker 2: the key executives of the Marshall mccluhan Center. This is
23:43
Speaker 2: well after Marshall had died, and I called him up
23:45
Speaker 2: and for the next year. Every Friday he would call
23:48
Speaker 2: me up to get away from his family and talk
23:51
Speaker 2: to me about mcclu and he was mccluan's last PhD
23:54
Speaker 2: student and personal assistant, so I had that advantage because
23:58
Speaker 2: mccluan's not easy to understand, and you know, I was
24:02
Speaker 2: able to get some of those insights into my book,
24:04
Speaker 2: which made me feel good.
24:06
Speaker 1: My guest is Douglas Grunther, his brand new book, The
24:10
Speaker 1: Quantum and the Dream, Visionary Consciousness AI and the New Renaissance. Doug,
24:15
Speaker 1: please share with our listeners where they can get your book,
24:17
Speaker 1: your website and find out more about all the wonderful
24:20
Speaker 1: work that you do well.
24:21
Speaker 2: I appreciate that the book can be bought on Amazon
24:25
Speaker 2: or it can be ordered at any bookstore, and they
24:29
Speaker 2: can also go to my website Douglasgrunther dot com, which
24:33
Speaker 2: right now is basically a landing page for the book,
24:36
Speaker 2: explains the book a bit, give some insights into the book,
24:40
Speaker 2: and there's a way there to click and order it.
24:44
Speaker 2: So it's Douglas Grunter dot com or Amazon or any
24:47
Speaker 2: bookstore can order it. Can order it for any of
24:50
Speaker 2: your listeners, and appreciate the opportunity to mention.
24:52
Speaker 1: That and can they listen to your radio show well
24:57
Speaker 1: if they have.
24:57
Speaker 2: A good strong seat built. Yes, We're on Sunday Mornings
25:02
Speaker 2: live from seven to nine am, which is a time
25:05
Speaker 2: I never would wake up myself, but fortunately enough people
25:09
Speaker 2: do to keep me going. On the radio radio Witchstock,
25:12
Speaker 2: which can be heard over any computer at radiowitchtock dot com.
25:17
Speaker 2: You live in Queens, it's just out of our radio range.
25:20
Speaker 2: It's one hundred point one FM radiowitchstock dot com. It
25:25
Speaker 2: can be accessed and heard over the web.
25:29
Speaker 1: And we'll be back with more of Doug after these
25:31
Speaker 1: words on the Own Times Radio network.
25:34
Speaker 4: The best of the holistic, spiritual and conscious world ome
25:39
Speaker 4: Times Radio i own FM. Ome Times Magazine is one
25:43
Speaker 4: of the leading online content providers of positivity, wellness and
25:47
Speaker 4: personal empowerment. A philanthropic organization, their net proceeds are finaled
25:52
Speaker 4: to support worldwide charity initiatives via Humanity Healing International. Through
25:57
Speaker 4: their commitment to creating community and providing conscious content, they
26:00
Speaker 4: aspire to uplift humanity on a global scale. Home Times
26:05
Speaker 4: co creating a more conscious lifestyle.
26:08
Speaker 1: Back on Destination Unlimited, my guest this week as Douglas
26:12
Speaker 1: Grunter his book The Quantum and the Dream, Visionary Consciousness,
26:17
Speaker 1: AI and the New Renaissance. Your book makes references to
26:23
Speaker 1: the phenomenon called synchronicity, which Carl Jung defined as meaningful
26:28
Speaker 1: coincidences without causal connection. Please give us some interesting examples.
26:35
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, I gotta get goosebumps about this. We've
26:37
Speaker 2: all had experiences with this, Victor. The sort of simpler
26:41
Speaker 2: common synchronicity would be, you're thinking of someone you hadn't
26:46
Speaker 2: talked in a long time, and the next day they
26:48
Speaker 2: call you or email you. Did we cause that to happen?
26:52
Speaker 2: I don't think so, But it feels too meaningful to
26:55
Speaker 2: be just a coincidence. And Carl Jung the Great, probably
27:00
Speaker 2: the most influential psychologist of the twentieth century, coined the
27:04
Speaker 2: word synchronicity. He also his more poetic description was a
27:08
Speaker 2: falling together in time. And the reason he got so
27:13
Speaker 2: fascinated is because of an experience he wrote about in
27:16
Speaker 2: his autobiography And if I could repeat it, it's you know,
27:21
Speaker 2: it's an amazing synchronicity. He was considered the most successful
27:28
Speaker 2: psychologist in Europe. This is now during the nineteen twenties,
27:33
Speaker 2: thirties and forties. He had learned at the side of Freud,
27:37
Speaker 2: but broken with Freud to expand the notion of the unconscious.
27:42
Speaker 2: And he had this one client who he could not help.
27:48
Speaker 2: She was a wealthy, aristocratic woman and she would come
27:51
Speaker 2: every week to her sessions. They were getting nowhere, and
27:57
Speaker 2: he was about to say to her at the next set,
28:01
Speaker 2: you know, we've tried hard, it's not working. I suggest
28:03
Speaker 2: you try something else. And at that last session, she
28:09
Speaker 2: was telling him about a dream she had where she
28:13
Speaker 2: was in ancient Egypt and somebody presented her with a
28:19
Speaker 2: beautiful jewel in the shape of a scarab beetle. In
28:24
Speaker 2: ancient Egypt, the scareb beetle was considered a sign of
28:29
Speaker 2: good fortune. And as she's relating this dream, young here's
28:34
Speaker 2: a tapping sound on his office window. He goes over
28:38
Speaker 2: and there was an insect banging against the window, and
28:42
Speaker 2: he saw it was a beetle. That is the closest
28:48
Speaker 2: in Europe that looks like a scarab beetle. So he
28:51
Speaker 2: opened the window and was able to grab onto it.
28:53
Speaker 2: He walked over to the woman, opened his hand and said, madam,
28:57
Speaker 2: there's your scarab Beetle so freaked her out that she
29:02
Speaker 2: loosened up and started talking about the real issues she
29:05
Speaker 2: had wanted to come there for, and they ended up
29:07
Speaker 2: having very successful therapy. And it was that event that
29:11
Speaker 2: Jung wrote about that got him so fascinated that as
29:15
Speaker 2: I loved finding out about and writing in my book.
29:19
Speaker 2: He spent over two decades in a regular conversation both
29:26
Speaker 2: in letters in person with Wolfgang Paulie, who had received
29:31
Speaker 2: a Nobel Prize in physics for quantum theory. Nominated for
29:36
Speaker 2: his Nobel Prize by Albert Einstein doesn't look bad on
29:39
Speaker 2: your resume, and Paullie, a scientist, was freaked out by
29:45
Speaker 2: his dreams and sought Carl Jung out for that. Carl
29:49
Speaker 2: Young was fascinated by quantum theory because it seemed to
29:52
Speaker 2: resonate with how the unconscious works. So they would get
29:56
Speaker 2: together and they were both convinced that there was a
29:59
Speaker 2: bridge or gateway between the unconscious mind and the quantum realm.
30:07
Speaker 2: And my book traces these two parallel paths beginning in
30:10
Speaker 2: the year nineteen hundred right up to the present day
30:14
Speaker 2: as a really interesting way to take a deeper look
30:16
Speaker 2: at what might be going on.
30:19
Speaker 1: And we'll discuss more about quantum theory in a minute.
30:22
Speaker 1: I just want to share with you something that my
30:24
Speaker 1: life has been blessed with so many synchronicities. I can't
30:27
Speaker 1: even count them. One of these days i'll put them
30:30
Speaker 1: into a book. But in nineteen seventy five, I was
30:32
Speaker 1: in the Air Force. I was stationed in Soul, Korea,
30:35
Speaker 1: six thousand miles away from New York, and one morning
30:38
Speaker 1: I woke up and I heard in my head, Mom
30:41
Speaker 1: needs to hear from you. She's got an issue. She
30:43
Speaker 1: needs to hear from you. So I called. I always
30:46
Speaker 1: listened to that voice when I would hear that voice,
30:48
Speaker 1: And in those days we had extension telephones, and my
30:51
Speaker 1: mother and sister back in New York picked up the
30:53
Speaker 1: phone simultaneously, and I said, Mom, is there anything wrong?
30:57
Speaker 1: And my sister says, oh my god, how did he
30:59
Speaker 1: find out? It turned out she was scheduled for major
31:02
Speaker 1: surgery the next day, and the voice told me to
31:04
Speaker 1: tell her she'd have a complete, successful surgery, very rapid healing,
31:09
Speaker 1: complete healing, everything would be fine. She needed to hear
31:12
Speaker 1: that from me now, six thousand miles away, without any warning,
31:15
Speaker 1: I hadn't had a conversation with her in a couple
31:17
Speaker 1: of months at that point, Again, this is wonderful gift
31:21
Speaker 1: that if we are I believe it's something that we're
31:24
Speaker 1: all able to access and it's just a question of listening.
31:28
Speaker 2: It's a fabulous story, and there are books out that
31:33
Speaker 2: do nothing but compile incidences like this. No one I
31:39
Speaker 2: know truly understands it, but for me, when the most
31:45
Speaker 2: influential psychologist of the twentieth century is in constant conversation
31:49
Speaker 2: with one of the most brilliant quantum minds of the
31:51
Speaker 2: twentieth century and they're convinced that these synchronicities, these psychic
31:57
Speaker 2: experiences are showing us that there are deep connections we
32:03
Speaker 2: can tap into. You know, when you have a psychologist
32:07
Speaker 2: and a scientists agree, it doesn't mean they're right, but
32:10
Speaker 2: it certainly means there's enough there for us to pay
32:12
Speaker 2: attention and see if we can't follow up in some way.
32:17
Speaker 2: That's a fabulous story. And glad your mother turned out.
32:21
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. So let's talk more about quantum theory
32:24
Speaker 1: for listeners not familiar with it. Please explain it in
32:27
Speaker 1: layman terms if possible, and give some examples.
32:31
Speaker 2: Well, the only way I can do it is in
32:32
Speaker 2: layman's terms, because I'm not a scientist, and I make
32:34
Speaker 2: that clear in my book. But as anybody who reads
32:38
Speaker 2: a brilliant book like The Two Physics by fritzro Of Coppra,
32:43
Speaker 2: or The Dancing Ghoule A Masters or many others will
32:45
Speaker 2: find out that the brilliant scientists, the physicists who first
32:51
Speaker 2: discovered quantum theory, four of them, including the aforementioned Wolfgang Pauli,
32:56
Speaker 2: was interested in dreams. Neils Boor has considered the father
33:00
Speaker 2: of quantum theory, was fascinated by the Dowa Cheng and
33:03
Speaker 2: ancient Eastern spiritual wisdom. Werner Heisenberg, who was the author
33:08
Speaker 2: of the uncertainty principle, was a serious meditator. These are
33:14
Speaker 2: not coincidences, okay, because there's an amazing affinity between what
33:21
Speaker 2: they were discovering at the quantum level, which I'll get into,
33:24
Speaker 2: and what spiritual explorers have been discovering for millennia in
33:30
Speaker 2: Buddhist texts, Hindu texts, Cabalistic texts, gnostic texts, Sufi texts, etc.
33:37
Speaker 2: And what they discovered and they proved it, and quantum
33:41
Speaker 2: theory is the most successful scientific theory of all time.
33:44
Speaker 2: It's the reason, Victor, that you and I can talk
33:46
Speaker 2: right now over a world wide web, because it's based
33:51
Speaker 2: on quantum physics. Richard Feiman, who a more contemporary scientist
33:57
Speaker 2: from in the eighties and nineties who got a no
34:00
Speaker 2: Well Prize and quantum physics, famously said, anyone who says
34:03
Speaker 2: they understand quantum physics doesn't okay, and he was a
34:09
Speaker 2: Nobel Prize winning physicist. But when you look at what
34:13
Speaker 2: happened at what they called the Solid Way conferences in
34:16
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties, where Albert Einstein and Nils Bohr and
34:19
Speaker 2: Werner Heisenberg and these brilliant scientists would gather once a
34:22
Speaker 2: year to talk about their latest discoveries and what they
34:25
Speaker 2: might mean, you discover that they were as interested in
34:29
Speaker 2: the philosophical, empathic, and spiritual implications of quantum theory as
34:36
Speaker 2: they were the actual mathematics and the hard science of it.
34:41
Speaker 2: That quantum theory works is obvious. It's the most successful
34:47
Speaker 2: scientific theory of all time. But the mysteries of what
34:53
Speaker 2: it's implying is something that we wrestle with the same
34:57
Speaker 2: way that the ancient mystics did. The three key principles
35:02
Speaker 2: of quantum theory. The first is called wave particle duality,
35:07
Speaker 2: and it's almost like a zen Coan because it turns
35:11
Speaker 2: out that light, which was Einstein's main focus light, it
35:18
Speaker 2: was assumed it consists of waves. This was proved by
35:22
Speaker 2: Maxwell in the nineteenth century, and yet when Max Plank
35:25
Speaker 2: was working on an advanced light bulb, he discovered, to
35:29
Speaker 2: his dismay, that under certain conditions, light appears as particles. Now,
35:34
Speaker 2: particles and waves are totally different entities. Particles have very
35:39
Speaker 2: clear definitions and beginning and endpoints we can define an
35:44
Speaker 2: individual particle. A wave is a force that just spreads out,
35:50
Speaker 2: and quantum theorists were trying to figure out, how could
35:54
Speaker 2: it possibly be that sometimes wave appears to us as
35:58
Speaker 2: particles and other times it waves. It makes no sense,
36:02
Speaker 2: but that's of it. One of the ways that nature
36:06
Speaker 2: works that light and electrons that make up electricity can
36:12
Speaker 2: sometimes be particles, sometimes waves, and they seem to change
36:16
Speaker 2: when observed. Okay. The other is the uncertainty principle, which
36:21
Speaker 2: states basically that if one measures the speed of a
36:26
Speaker 2: quantum edity, one can't know its position. If one checks
36:29
Speaker 2: out its position, it can't know its speed, So there's
36:33
Speaker 2: no such thing as certainty in this world. And the
36:36
Speaker 2: third one, to me, is the most interesting, and I
36:41
Speaker 2: could wait to write about it. And it's called entanglement.
36:46
Speaker 2: Now in normal language, in normal life situations, entanglement is
36:51
Speaker 2: a negative, but at the quantum theory it's awesome, because
36:57
Speaker 2: the implication of quantum theory was they didn't have the
37:00
Speaker 2: tools and the technology to really prove or disprove it.
37:04
Speaker 2: In the nineteen thirties, the implication of quantum theory was
37:09
Speaker 2: that at the quantum level of reality, there's no such
37:12
Speaker 2: thing as separation. There's no such thing as locality. It's
37:17
Speaker 2: non local, meaning there's no such thing as here or there.
37:23
Speaker 2: Everything in the universe is a connected matrix or web.
37:30
Speaker 2: At Einstein, the brilliant Einstein, who I championed for his
37:35
Speaker 2: use of the right hemisphere and his incredible thought experiments,
37:38
Speaker 2: couldn't accept this, and he spent the last twenty years
37:43
Speaker 2: of his life trying to disprove it. Ten years after
37:46
Speaker 2: Einstein died, it was proven theoretically, and in the nineteen
37:50
Speaker 2: eighties it was proven in a laboratory that entanglement is real,
37:56
Speaker 2: and this gives some credence to the great spiritual wisdom traditions,
38:04
Speaker 2: which state that the Buddha said, you know, if you
38:08
Speaker 2: get underneath the ego, you discover that everything is connected.
38:11
Speaker 2: There's no such thing as a self. Different wisdom traditions
38:14
Speaker 2: have different ways of expressing it, and it certainly doesn't
38:20
Speaker 2: feel or seem that way at our normal level of
38:23
Speaker 2: what we call reality right our everyday life. But what
38:27
Speaker 2: we call reality is just simply our limited version of reality.
38:34
Speaker 2: And scientists and philosophers would agree that the quantum theory
38:38
Speaker 2: gets deeper into reality, and at the quantum level everything
38:43
Speaker 2: is entangled. And isn't it interesting that here in the
38:46
Speaker 2: twenty first century, you and I are talking over a
38:50
Speaker 2: worldwide web which entangles over five and a half billion
38:55
Speaker 2: brands around the world and growing.
38:58
Speaker 1: And even before the World Wide Web, back in nineteen
39:01
Speaker 1: seventy five, when I was in Soul, Korea and my
39:04
Speaker 1: mother was six thousand miles away, I knew that I
39:06
Speaker 1: had to call her because something was wrong locality.
39:09
Speaker 2: So we could say that that synchronicity or or psychic
39:14
Speaker 2: illumination or calling from your unconscious right is part of
39:21
Speaker 2: quantum entanglement. We haven't been able to prove that, but
39:25
Speaker 2: the implications are there. And certainly what I show in
39:28
Speaker 2: my book, and I'm glad that people have found it
39:30
Speaker 2: entertaining as well as thought provoking, is that in the
39:35
Speaker 2: year nineteen hundred I proposed that a huge important synchronicity
39:41
Speaker 2: happened which has not been written about before, at the
39:45
Speaker 2: very beginning of that year. And we could say, Victor
39:48
Speaker 2: with some certainty, that the year nineteen hundred was the
39:50
Speaker 2: first year of the Modern Age, the shift from the
39:52
Speaker 2: Victorian Age to the Modern age. Well, isn't it interesting
39:56
Speaker 2: that at the very beginning of that first year of
39:59
Speaker 2: the Modern Age, Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams,
40:05
Speaker 2: which is one of the most twenty influential books of
40:07
Speaker 2: the twentieth century on just about any list you look at.
40:10
Speaker 2: It changed music, it changed art, It helped stimulate the
40:15
Speaker 2: whole serialistic movement, the twelve Ton music movement, inspired Carl
40:21
Speaker 2: Jung to discover the collective unconscious at the very beginning
40:25
Speaker 2: when Freud publishes that book. At the very end of
40:27
Speaker 2: that same year, Max Planck, who didn't know who Freud was,
40:31
Speaker 2: Freud didn't know who Plank was, discovers the mysterious quantum
40:35
Speaker 2: level of reality, and it was so mysterious that he
40:38
Speaker 2: didn't want to. He wouldn't publish a paper on the
40:40
Speaker 2: mysterious party, only published the fact that he was able
40:44
Speaker 2: to create a more efficient light bulb, which was his job.
40:48
Speaker 2: He was freaked out by the fact that quantum theory
40:51
Speaker 2: seemed to be a paradox. It was Albert Einstein who
40:55
Speaker 2: developed the first quantum theory of light because Einstein, like
40:59
Speaker 2: a great Zen, loved paradox. It was a way to
41:03
Speaker 2: play with reality. And that gets back to what you
41:05
Speaker 2: and I agree on. You have to be playful to
41:08
Speaker 2: understand deeper levels of reality.
41:11
Speaker 1: My guest is Douglas Grunther his book The Quantum and
41:15
Speaker 1: the Dream, Visionary Consciousness, AI, and the New Renaissance. We'll
41:19
Speaker 1: be back with more after these words on the Own
41:22
Speaker 1: Times Radio network.
41:24
Speaker 5: Humanity Healing International is a small nonprofit with a big dream.
41:29
Speaker 5: Since two thousand and seven, HHI has been working tirelessly
41:33
Speaker 5: to bring help to communities with little or no oh.
41:37
Speaker 5: Our projects are not broad mandates, nor are they overnight solutions,
41:42
Speaker 5: but they bring the reassurance then no one is alone
41:45
Speaker 5: and that someone cares to learn more. Please visit Humanityhealing
41:50
Speaker 5: dot Org. Humanity Healing is where your Heart.
41:53
Speaker 1: Is back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week Douglas
41:58
Speaker 1: Grunther his book The Quantum and the Dream, Visionary Consciousness,
42:03
Speaker 1: AI and the New Renaissance. Let me ask you. Your
42:08
Speaker 1: book is based on three shifts in consciousness. The first
42:11
Speaker 1: is the shift from left hemisphere of her brain to
42:14
Speaker 1: the right hemisphere. How are these two hemispheres different? And
42:18
Speaker 1: why is it particularly important to know? There is a
42:21
Speaker 1: no this here in the twenty first century.
42:25
Speaker 2: Well, now I know, thanks primarily to the work of
42:27
Speaker 2: a brilliant contemporary visionary doctor, Ian McGilchrist and his book
42:33
Speaker 2: The Master and His Emissary, The Divided Brain and the
42:36
Speaker 2: Making of the Western World. Man Ian, who I got
42:40
Speaker 2: a chance to interview, has a fabulous background. He was
42:45
Speaker 2: a literary professor at Oxford and he got so frustrated
42:48
Speaker 2: by the way his colleagues were teaching literature as if
42:50
Speaker 2: it was something to be analyzed, you know, like a science,
42:54
Speaker 2: that he resigned and attended medical school at the age
42:58
Speaker 2: of thirty, became a psychi interest, got interested in neurology,
43:04
Speaker 2: was able to get a funding to go to Johns
43:10
Speaker 2: Hopkins and study the brain for years and then spend
43:14
Speaker 2: ten years writing this book about primarily the distinction between
43:18
Speaker 2: the left and right hemispheres of the human brain, and
43:22
Speaker 2: he has over seventeen hundred footnotes. Is a very well
43:24
Speaker 2: researched book, and what he shows is that most of
43:28
Speaker 2: what we thought we knew about the left and right
43:30
Speaker 2: hemisphere are wrong. Every living organism brain is divided into
43:35
Speaker 2: a left and right hemisphere. There are other parts as well,
43:39
Speaker 2: but one has a who's curious would want to ask
43:43
Speaker 2: why would nature an evolution give all living organisms a
43:48
Speaker 2: left and right hemisphere of the brain that are clearly divided.
43:55
Speaker 2: And he figured it all out, and we did a
43:58
Speaker 2: lot of research, and it turns out the misunderstanding is
44:03
Speaker 2: that the left hemisphere of our brain is rational and
44:06
Speaker 2: verbal and the right hemisphere is creative. No, both can
44:10
Speaker 2: be creative, both can be rational, but they look at
44:13
Speaker 2: the world through a totally different lens. Now Ian didn't
44:20
Speaker 2: have to prove to us. We know when you hear
44:21
Speaker 2: the differences that Western culture for hundreds of years has
44:26
Speaker 2: given more precedents to the left hemisphere. That's the part
44:31
Speaker 2: of our brain that sees the world as a series
44:34
Speaker 2: of objects to be manipulated, and that was crucial to
44:38
Speaker 2: our caveman ancestors, who didn't have weapons greater than stones
44:42
Speaker 2: and sticks, and there were predators faster and stronger than
44:47
Speaker 2: they were, so they had to be on guard all
44:49
Speaker 2: the time and really focus on finding seeds and nuts
44:52
Speaker 2: and fruits because they didn't even know about gardening and
44:55
Speaker 2: agriculture back then. And it's the left hemisphere that science
45:01
Speaker 2: uses to do laboratory experiments and come up with technical innovations,
45:06
Speaker 2: all of which has improved all of our lives. But
45:09
Speaker 2: the left hemisphere of our brain, Victor cannot see the
45:12
Speaker 2: forest for the trees. It's very tuned into specific details.
45:16
Speaker 2: It doesn't see the big picture. And that's the reason
45:20
Speaker 2: that while fossil fuel technology has given us amazing comforts,
45:25
Speaker 2: right and protections in modern life, it's now destroying the
45:29
Speaker 2: very ecosphere that keeps us and other living creatures alive.
45:33
Speaker 2: We missed the big picture. The right hemisphere of our
45:36
Speaker 2: brain is physically larger than the left. It's more intricately
45:42
Speaker 2: wired than the left. That should be a clue, and
45:45
Speaker 2: it's the part of our brain that sees the world
45:48
Speaker 2: as one big, unified picture. And so it understands the world,
45:54
Speaker 2: not like a watchmaker taking it apart and putting it together,
45:58
Speaker 2: but by using intuition, by using empathy, by using emotional resonance,
46:05
Speaker 2: by tuning us in the way your mind did when
46:08
Speaker 2: you got that message from your mother six thousand miles away.
46:12
Speaker 2: This is the right hemisphere of the brain because it
46:15
Speaker 2: doesn't have to try to explain and analyze why that happened.
46:18
Speaker 2: The left hemisphere wouldn't have accepted it because it doesn't
46:22
Speaker 2: make sense rationally. We need both hemispheres. But the point
46:28
Speaker 2: I'm making in my book is computers are already better
46:33
Speaker 2: than us at left hemisphere thinking, which is to retrieve
46:37
Speaker 2: information and analyze it. That's what we needed to do
46:41
Speaker 2: for thousands of years. But computers are already better at it.
46:46
Speaker 2: We're needed for the right hemisphere, which the computers can't imitate.
46:50
Speaker 2: Because computers, as brilliant as they are, their intelligence is mechanized.
46:57
Speaker 2: Human intelligence is embodied series of emotions, and this right
47:02
Speaker 2: hemisphere of the brain. And so if we get it right,
47:07
Speaker 2: we will stop competing with AI and start collaborating with
47:11
Speaker 2: it by using its left hemisphere proclivities with our right
47:14
Speaker 2: hemisphere and so that distincsion between left and right hemisphere
47:18
Speaker 2: is crucial. And if I can give kind of a
47:19
Speaker 2: fun example of it, why did Albert Einstein become the
47:25
Speaker 2: first person to discover relativity which no one else came
47:28
Speaker 2: close to understanding. As his well known victor, Einstein was
47:33
Speaker 2: not a great student. He was a right hemisphere thinking,
47:36
Speaker 2: and most academics is left hemisphere oriented. Here's how you
47:40
Speaker 2: do things. Do it the way we tell you, and
47:43
Speaker 2: we'll give you a good grade. Einstein was a rebel,
47:47
Speaker 2: so he couldn't get a job in academia, so he
47:50
Speaker 2: took a job in a patent office. It made enough
47:53
Speaker 2: money to support his family and gave him a lot
47:55
Speaker 2: of time to do what he called thought experiments. We know, oh,
48:00
Speaker 2: this is like a creative visualization in the right hemisphere
48:03
Speaker 2: of the brain. And his most famous was he chased
48:07
Speaker 2: a light beam. He said, I wonder what it would
48:09
Speaker 2: be like to chase a light beam, since he was
48:11
Speaker 2: fascinated by light and the quantum paradox of light could
48:15
Speaker 2: be a particle at sometimes in a wave at others,
48:19
Speaker 2: so he wanted to play with that, and he created
48:23
Speaker 2: a thought experiment where he imagined chasing a light beam,
48:25
Speaker 2: and in his imagined vision, when he caught up to
48:29
Speaker 2: the light beam, time stopped. So he went, hmm, maybe
48:34
Speaker 2: that's his brain telling him that light is the fastest
48:37
Speaker 2: thing in the universe. He is also quoted as saying,
48:41
Speaker 2: and I have the quote in my book and the
48:42
Speaker 2: reference to where he said it. My entire career is
48:46
Speaker 2: based on a dream I had when I was eleven
48:49
Speaker 2: years old. This is Einstein, and the dream is very short.
48:54
Speaker 2: He was eleven years old. He dreams he's sledding down
48:56
Speaker 2: a hill and he's getting more. It's a super sled,
48:59
Speaker 2: He's getting faster and faster, and as he starts going
49:02
Speaker 2: ridiculously fast, suddenly the sky explodes into all kinds of
49:07
Speaker 2: fabulous colors. Well, his eleven year old brain didn't understand
49:11
Speaker 2: what that meant, but he intuitively understood that that was important,
49:15
Speaker 2: and so he combined the intuitive response to that dream.
49:21
Speaker 2: Where as he sped closer and closer to the speed
49:24
Speaker 2: of light, light refracted to his creative experiment, where he
49:29
Speaker 2: chased the light beam in his mind, and time stopped
49:32
Speaker 2: with his limited view of mathematics and came up with
49:35
Speaker 2: equals MC squared before anyone else did. Now. I'm not
49:39
Speaker 2: saying that if we access the right hemisphere of our
49:41
Speaker 2: brain we're going to be Einstein's, but we're going to
49:44
Speaker 2: start having more experiences like you had six thousand miles
49:47
Speaker 2: away from your mom, like I've had dozens of times
49:51
Speaker 2: with synchronicities in my life. In fact, there was a synchronicity.
49:54
Speaker 2: Is the reason you and I are talking right now. Absolutely,
49:58
Speaker 2: the shift from the left hemisphere the right for the
50:00
Speaker 2: brain is absolutely crucial if we're going to make it
50:03
Speaker 2: to a new renaissance. And I described the right hemisphere
50:07
Speaker 2: of the brain as the ultimate playground of visionary insight
50:11
Speaker 2: and new ideas.
50:13
Speaker 1: What would you like readers to take away from the
50:15
Speaker 1: Quantum and the Dream?
50:18
Speaker 2: I think the most fascinating thing I discovered, an important
50:21
Speaker 2: thing was and a lot of it goes to the
50:25
Speaker 2: credit of Lynn Margulis, who's not as well known as
50:27
Speaker 2: she should be. She had a great nickname, the Angry
50:32
Speaker 2: Earth Mother. She loved that, as she said, I love men,
50:35
Speaker 2: but I don't take crap from any of them. She
50:38
Speaker 2: was She got her PhD in biology during the sixties
50:41
Speaker 2: when it was a man's world, and her theory was
50:46
Speaker 2: ridiculed until she proved it. What she proved is that mitochondria,
50:52
Speaker 2: these these minuscule bacteria and viruses, which by the way,
50:58
Speaker 2: is what we're mostly composed of. For millions of years,
51:02
Speaker 2: ancient bacteria and viruses and microbes figured out, took millions
51:12
Speaker 2: of years how to collaborate. Now, if you look at
51:17
Speaker 2: the surface of any bacterial world, you see what you
51:21
Speaker 2: see in the jungles of animals and in the human
51:24
Speaker 2: world of constant warfare. Right we've been at war since
51:27
Speaker 2: we've been around. You'll see microbes attacking one another, eating
51:32
Speaker 2: one another, defending their territory against others. But under the surface,
51:37
Speaker 2: lenmar Goulis's intuition proved out that over millions of years,
51:43
Speaker 2: microbes learned that if they collaborate, they both profit. And
51:51
Speaker 2: it happened because one microbe ate another one, But the
51:54
Speaker 2: microbe didn't die. It stayed alive, and that organism was
51:59
Speaker 2: able to use use its abilities. That of the microbeit
52:02
Speaker 2: swallowed with its own and so they didn't have brains.
52:05
Speaker 2: They weren't thinking this through. It's through a process called
52:08
Speaker 2: self organization, which is part of nature's intelligence. But she
52:12
Speaker 2: proved that at the bacterial level of life, evolution keeps
52:19
Speaker 2: pulling entities towards more complex, novel forms of collaboration, and
52:26
Speaker 2: that's just as true as human evolution. Yes, we're constantly
52:31
Speaker 2: at war with each other. We're still not as empathic
52:34
Speaker 2: and loving to each other as we ought to be.
52:37
Speaker 2: But the fact is that you've all Noah Harari, the
52:40
Speaker 2: most popular historian on the planet who wrote Sapiens, what
52:45
Speaker 2: does his book show? The reason we're the most powerful
52:50
Speaker 2: animals on the planet is not because we're the fastest.
52:53
Speaker 2: We wouldn't do well against a dog, a cat, or
52:55
Speaker 2: a cheetah. We're not the strongest, We're not even the
53:01
Speaker 2: most industrious. Ants are much more industrious than we are.
53:05
Speaker 2: But we ri showed can collaborate beyond our family nature.
53:12
Speaker 2: We can collaborate with each other, and that's the gift
53:16
Speaker 2: that nature's intelligence gives to us. Now, it often doesn't
53:19
Speaker 2: look like we're collaborating. But as I point out in
53:22
Speaker 2: my book The Italian Renaissance, that magnificent hundreds of years
53:30
Speaker 2: of not just great art, but the invention of science
53:33
Speaker 2: with Galileo and the creation of the humanist philosophy, which
53:39
Speaker 2: for the first time in a thousand years, celebrated the
53:42
Speaker 2: individual human mind, which was basically squashed during the entire
53:46
Speaker 2: Middle Dark Ages. That renaissance happened at a time when
53:51
Speaker 2: less than one percent of citizens were literate, when the
53:55
Speaker 2: fastest form of communication written communication was handscribing a manuscript. Okay,
54:04
Speaker 2: they created a renaissance, and it was during the Black
54:06
Speaker 2: Plague on its way to killing a third of Europe,
54:08
Speaker 2: and they didn't know the cause. If they could create
54:11
Speaker 2: a figure out a way to collaborate under those conditions
54:15
Speaker 2: in the fourteenth and sixteenth century, I think we have
54:18
Speaker 2: a pretty good chance in the age of the World
54:20
Speaker 2: Wide Web, which I celebrate in the book despite all
54:24
Speaker 2: of its consequences and frustrations. If we can't with the
54:29
Speaker 2: amount of literacy in the world, and with billions of people,
54:32
Speaker 2: including visionaries, people like you who are fascinated by synchronicities
54:39
Speaker 2: and resonances at a deep level, are communicating all the
54:42
Speaker 2: time under the noise of the twenty four to seven
54:45
Speaker 2: news cycle, just like the microbes who learned to collaborate
54:49
Speaker 2: under all the fighting and fights to the death and
54:52
Speaker 2: fighting for territory. And so I point out in my
54:55
Speaker 2: book visionaries who are doing this work under the twenty
55:00
Speaker 2: four to seven news cycle as we're speaking and are
55:03
Speaker 2: finding new and complex ways for human beings to collaborate.
55:08
Speaker 2: And it doesn't always look that way, because in many
55:11
Speaker 2: ways we're in a dark age, similar to the conditions
55:14
Speaker 2: that brought about the Italian Renaissance with the Black Plague.
55:17
Speaker 2: We now have what we politely call global warming, which
55:21
Speaker 2: is already wreaking havoc. But I feel, and I give
55:24
Speaker 2: evidence that we are being pointed by evolution towards the
55:27
Speaker 2: New Renaissance, and conversations like you're creating here, Victor are
55:33
Speaker 2: the reason I feel we're going to be able to
55:35
Speaker 2: get there.
55:36
Speaker 1: My guest, Douglas Grunther his book The Quantum and the Dream. Doug,
55:40
Speaker 1: one more time, please share with listeners where they can
55:42
Speaker 1: get your book and find out more about you and
55:44
Speaker 1: your wonderful work.
55:45
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate the opportunity of The book is called
55:47
Speaker 2: The Quantum and the Dream Visionary Consciousness AI and the
55:50
Speaker 2: New Renaissance. I was published October first. It's available on
55:54
Speaker 2: Amazon or can be ordered at any bookstore, and also
55:58
Speaker 2: on my website Douglas grunt th Com, which explo explores
56:03
Speaker 2: and explains a little bit more about the book. It's
56:06
Speaker 2: been a thrill to write it. It's give me a
56:10
Speaker 2: chance to talk to people like you, Victor, and I
56:13
Speaker 2: hope our paths cross in the future.
56:16
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Doug, thank you so much for joining us and
56:18
Speaker 1: sharing this wonderful message. Thank you for the invitation, and
56:22
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us on Destination Unlimited. I'm Victor
56:25
Speaker 1: the Voice ferman have a wonderful week.