Love Does Not Know Death with Adam Rizvi, MD

On episode 230 of World Awakenings: The Fast Track to Enlightenment welcomes Dr. Adam Rizvi, who is a critical care physician and neuro-intensivist. His frontline work in America’s ICUs and decades of contemplative study converge in his new book “Love Does Not Know Death”, which is a luminous guide to meeting mortality without fear. Drawing on hundreds of bedside encounters and a clear, accessible integration of non‑dual principles from A Course in Miracles, he translates hard‑won insight into practical tools, especially the discipline of true forgiveness, that help patients, families, and clinicians face loss with courage, clarity, and compassion. Based in California, he leads hospital teams and teaches workshops on awakening and end‑of‑life care. In his book and his work, Adam invities in people devoted to transforming grief into peace and remembering love’s enduring presence.

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To find aout more about Dr. Adam Rizvi & his new book, just go to his website, https://lovedoesnotknowdeath.com/home#author

Check out Dr. Adam Rizvi's podcast, https://letterstothesky.com/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is World Awakenings, the Fast Track to Enlightenment with
your host, Carl Gruber. World Awakenings is a podcast dedicated
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(00:27):
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Speaker 4 (02:46):
Hey, thank you, my friends for joining us for another
exciting and deeply insightful episode of World Awakenings, a fast
Track to Enlightenment. I'm your host, Carl Gruber. Now, as always,
the modern spiritual guide of course in Miracles is our
main focus of the show, and today's guest is yet
another wonderful teacher and purveyor of the course. Now, before

(03:07):
we head off to meet him, please know that you
can always watch this show on YouTube, but now you
can also watch it on New Reality TV. Make sure
to check that out and also please remember to subscribe
to the show so that you never miss a single
awesome episode. All right, off we go into episode number

(03:28):
two thirty. Our guest is Adam Risby, who is a
critical care physician and neurointensivist whose frontline work in America's
ICEUS and decades of contemplative study converge in his new book,
Love does Not Know Death, which is a luminous guide
to meeting mortality without fear, drawing on hundreds of bedside

(03:50):
encounters and a clear, accessible integration of non dual principles
from a course in miracles. He translates hard won insight
into practical tools, and if you read his book you'll
definitely find that out, and especially the discipline of true
forgiveness that helps patients, families, and clinicians face loss with courage, clarity,

(04:11):
and compassion. Adam is based in California. He leads hospital teams,
teaches workshops on awakening and end of life Care and
co hosts the spirituality podcast Letters to the Sky, inviting
readers to be grounded loving community devoted to transforming grief
into peace and remembering loves, enduring presence, all of that stuff.

(04:34):
I love that, Adam. That is so awesome. Welcome to
World Awakenings.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Thank you, Carl. It's such a joy to be here. Well,
it is awesome.

Speaker 4 (04:42):
I think you're the very first medical physician I've had
on here. But I really let's just dive into this.
I mean, your perspective on what you do. You're a
critical care doctor who is present with many patients who
are facing the last moments in a human body. Does
that cause any anxiety or fear in you or do

(05:04):
you feel honored to be able to be present for
your patient and help guide them their peaceful, loving end.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yeah, it's interesting. Well, the thing is, I don't know
most of the times if it's going to be an
end of the body or a close call as you will,
where we brush death and then pull through. And when
a patient comes in through the door and they're in
our ICU, I just don't know what kind of day
it's going to be. I've seen the healthiest, healthiest people

(05:32):
come in and you know, in their thirties twenties and
not make it. And then I've seen ninety year olds
come in riddled with disease and multi organ failure and
pull through.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
So you never know, Yeah, wow, what an interesting business here.
And now here's the other thing. You're a student and
a practitioner of the non dualistic spiritual teachings of of
course in miracles. But you grew up in a pretty
unique household, right Your dad was a Muslim and your
mom was a Catholic. How did this shape your outlook

(06:04):
on spirituality and religion.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
I'm so glad you brought that up that that's actually
I think led to me finding of course in miracles
in a sense when when you have two opposing well
I shouldn't say opposing two belief systems simultaneously, it creates
a sort of cognitive dissonance. At least it did for

(06:27):
me when I was younger. In general, Judaeo Christian traditions
are more or less the same. There's the same bearded
white man up in the clouds who's sort of pointing
a wagging a finger at you when you when you
don't do the right thing. But I sort of grew
disillusioned with that and wanted a deeper path to spiritual growth,

(06:49):
and I dived into the Eastern non dual traditions, Advita
Vedanta in particular and Zokchen teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist literature,
and went down that path for quite some time, only
to find myself in the in a bookstore, as many

(07:10):
have found themselves, holding a big, heavy blue book in
my hand, and that the title just drew me and
I started to read A Course in Miracles. You know,
it wasn't until Gary Renard's disappearance of the universe that
I truly got what a Course in Miracles was teaching.

(07:32):
And I think many have had that experience, but for me,
it took the vast array of non dual traditions and
it simplified it into a very crystal clear spiritual psychology
with a built in mind training system, which we can
talk about, but I can't overemphasize the importance of a

(07:55):
clear thought system when you walk a dedicated spiritual path.
And for me, a Course in Miracles was able to
capture everything I had read up until that point in
other nondual traditions and put it in really clear language.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
Well, you know, I'm really glad you brought up Gary
Renard's very first book, The Disappearance of the Universe. So
years ago I went to my very first workshop with
Gary when he was in Cincinnati, and afterwards I went
to have him sign his book, and he and I
were talking. I said, you know, what was it like

(08:32):
when you first read the course in Miracles? And he goes,
he said, what the hell is this? I don't know
this about you know, and here is now one of
the greatest teachers in the world. So anybody who does
pick up a course in Miracles, which is much of
it's written, and I am bic pentameter, you know, which
is not necessarily the easiest read. If you pick up

(08:54):
a copy of Gary's book, I think you can see
it in the background here a Disappearance at the Universe.
It's a good primer to help you understand the Blue
Book a little bit more.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
It is. It is absolutely and I found myself after
reading Disappearance, wholeheartedly doing the workbook in the course. And
Gary's book has some very clear examples of how to
apply the teachings, and so having that in my toolbox
so to speak, I was able to go deeply into

(09:30):
the workbook, and it was actually I was almost halfway
through the workbook, actually less than one point thirty two
when my father passed away, which I talked about in
the book. But that was my first real tangible experience
of applying these teachings into a real world situation confronting death.

(09:51):
That became clear to me, Oh, this is powerful and
this is useful. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (09:58):
So, and you know your new book, Love Does Not
Know Death outlines your unique perspective on death and dying
as a young man and now, well, especially when you're
a young man, because you're of the household you were
in h Is this why you decided to become a
critical care doctor? All of his experiences when you were

(10:18):
young like that?

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, you know. To be honest, I credit being a
doctor to my dad. If I had my way, I
probably would have been a college professor in either philosophy
or comparative religion, which I told him I wanted to do.
He said absolutely not, or something to the effective over
my dead body. But he was a true dad, first

(10:42):
generation immigrant from Pakistan, and he wanted me to be successful, which,
of course, success can be difned defined in many ways.
But he really pushed me to be a doctor. I
rebelled a little bit. I spent a year as a
as a barista in a coffee shop. I just wanted
to find myself and I did, and I realized I
wanted to be a doctor. And and so I'm grateful

(11:05):
because being in the heart of medicine and diving deep
into into that world has helped me bridge hard science
and a materialistic worldview, which I would say is the
predominant scientific worldview, with a non dual perspective and a

(11:27):
spiritual perspective. Most of my career has been in my
inner world, the merging of the two.

Speaker 4 (11:35):
M Yeah, just to step back for a moment again
with your mom and dad. How the heck did a
Pakistani Muslim meet a Catholic girl and get married?

Speaker 3 (11:46):
This is a that's a great story. I love to
I love to share. My dad would love to share
this story too. He he moved from Pakistan to England
in the hopes of finding a better job so he
can pay for his family back in Pakistan. And I
think he ended up in Birmingham and was at a

(12:07):
crosswalk going to his job. I think he was in
a light bulb factory something to something like that. And
my mother was actually training to be a nun. Wow,
she was. She was deep in that in that world.
And she was handing out pamphlets inviting people to a gathering,

(12:27):
a spiritual gathering, and and my dad said he thought
she was cute, so so he went and they ended
up becoming friends. And needless to say, she decided not
to be a nun. And uh and the rest is history.

Speaker 4 (12:41):
They met on a street corner in Birmingham, England. Wow.
That is that is awesome.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
I love it.

Speaker 4 (12:47):
I just was really curious about that. Well, so you know,
I've been reading your book Love does Not Know Death,
and you have a beautiful quote from a course in
Miracles at the beginning of chapter three, which states, per
perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, then there
is not perfect love, but only perfect love exists. If

(13:08):
there is fear, it produces a state that does not exist.
There's also another line early in the course that says
nothing real can be threatened, nothing on reel exists. Herein
lies a peace of God. So with this in mind,
can you discuss fear and the role it plays.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
In our lives?

Speaker 4 (13:24):
And in dying.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Yeah, thanks so much. This is the critical and I
think it really speaks to the very beginning of the
spiritual path. If you recall the now very famous interaction
between Helen Shuckman and Bill Thattford and Bill's impassioned plea
to Helen of there must be another way, and Helen

(13:51):
saying yes. And for me, every one of us has
a moment in our life where that question comes up
in some way, shape or form. And sometimes it takes
a death for that question to come up. Sometimes it
takes the panic and the anxiety of facing one's own

(14:14):
fear or one's own death and the fear of death
or the death of a loved one to ask that question.
And so fear isn't necessarily a bad thing. Fear can
be the spark. Fear can be the moment in your
life where you realize, Okay, things are not going the

(14:36):
way I want. There's got to be another way. And
I would say that's sort of a theme throughout how
I work with my patients and their families. I gently
guide them to embrace the terror and the fear because
it will open up a doorway for them to dive into. Now,
what do we do with this fear, the question of

(14:59):
there's to be another way, and that creates an opening
and a receptivity for a different way of living life,
one where you're not walking on eggshells, You're not waiting
for the next shoe to drop, You're not waiting for
something terrible to happen. What's the famous quote from Winston Churchill.

(15:25):
Life is one damn thing after another, something to that effect.
And so instead of waiting for that next terrible thing
after another to happen, you realize, Okay, I can actually
change how I'm perceiving the world, and the scary things
that are happening, like this disease that I'm dealing with,

(15:45):
or the possibility of my loved one dying, can be
the beginning of the spiritual path. So challenge versus opportunity.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yeah, you know, I'm going to take this opportunity to
ask this. You know, I've read and you just said it,
and I've read many many times too that in order
to overcome your fear, you have to face it straight
on objectively, in order to overcome it. I'm not sure
I've ever really quite understand that. I've tried it, and

(16:16):
it seems to work. But I mean, well, don't you
think facing your fear straight on is going to make
even more fearful?

Speaker 3 (16:26):
There's this interesting dynamic that I think Ken Wapnik has
spoken to, which is the importance of looking and in
many ways, the ego and the thought system it creates.
This thought system of fear exists because we're unwilling to
look the guilt and the fear that's deep down and

(16:51):
the recesses of our psyche. If we aren't willing to look,
then the natural thing that happens is it gets projected outward.
And to prevent that process from happening, we have to
be willing to look within. And so I perhaps the

(17:13):
way of saying face your fear courageously, I think that's
that's great. It has a sort of a warrior energy
to it. But sometimes it doesn't need to be as
forceful as that. It can be as simple turning within
and having a gentle courage of looking, just looking looking
at that fear that's inside, the fear of Oh my god,

(17:35):
what's going to happen after mom dies?

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yea, who what.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Am I going to do? What's going to happen after
my wife dies? Or my my husband dies, who am
I going to be? That's that's terrifying. But if we
just take a breath and look inside, that's all that's required.
That's the courage to look. And when we look, we

(18:00):
realize that's it's not the end, and there is an
opening there.

Speaker 4 (18:06):
You know. It's so interesting just as I asked that
question and answer was placed in my head from source. Well, Carl,
if you can look straight ahead at your fear objectively,
it raises you above the battle ground and you can
look down without fear at it. Yeah, because of course
always talks about being above the battle ground where you

(18:27):
can be objective about it.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
That's right, Yeah, yeah, it's really that's a good point. Actually,
what you can be aware of, you realize you are not,
and that's just a that's basic psychology. What you were
conscious of, what you're aware of, you realize as an
object in your awareness and it's not who you are.
So it's a great it's a great way to sort

(18:50):
of step back and not get caught up in the
thing that you're afraid of.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
It's so funny because I quickly was given the answer
to my question. So yeah, well, another important aspect that
we should talk about fear is actually the opposite of love,
not hate.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
Right, yeah, yeah, those are the two major thought systems.
And for those, well, let me backtrack a little bit.
The book I intended to write for patients and their families,
many of whom have no spiritual background, no metaphysical understanding,
and maybe no exposure to thinks such as a course

(19:31):
in miracles. So for those out there with little exposure
to this world, we should just start by saying, there's
two basic thought systems in the mind, and one thought
system is a fear based thought system, which would have
you feel and believe that you're separate, you're alone, you're detached,

(19:53):
you're disconnected in a world that is cruel and unkind
and unfair. The other thought system is a thought system
of love, which would have you reframe everything and reperceive
everything such that you really feel that there is only

(20:14):
one and that you are loved and cared for, and
you're never alone, and you're always with those who love you,
and you love those who are around you. It's a
deep sense of interconnectedness and oneness. Those two thought systems
are mutually exclusive, and I think fundamentally this spiritual path

(20:36):
is the constant returning to a place where you choose
between the two.

Speaker 4 (20:42):
Yeah, we always have that choice, you know. The course
points out that fear is at the core of our egos.
Feelings of guilt were that we separated ourselves from source.
Now you point out in your book that Carl Jung
called the called this the collective on conscious. Can you
speak a bit more about that.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
Yeah, Actually, one of Ken Wapnick's latest books. I think
he never got a chance to finish it, if I
remember correctly, His intention was to highlight that in many ways.
Of course, in Miracles was a culmination of the philosophies
of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud famously outlining

(21:30):
denial and projection and that whole concept the world being
a projection of the tiny mat idea, the idea that
that something wrong happened, something terrible happened, and it's secretly
my fault, but I don't want to admit it, so
I'm going to place the blame outside of me. Combining
that with Carl Jung which you brought up, which states

(21:52):
that there is a collective unconscious is this flies in
the face of the materialist worldview, But actually what the
collective unconscious is is the idea that there's only one mind.
You Carl may feel like you're Karl's mind, and Adam
here thinks he's Adam's mind, but really there are expressions

(22:14):
of only one underlying mind, and that mind is the
one dreamer. There's only one one mind dreaming this whole world.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
Yeah, yeah, great explanation on that. You know, I thought
maybe perhaps it might be good to point a couple
things out since there I'm sure there's people here that
don't even know anything about the course. Now. You mentioned
Helen Schuckman and Bill Bedford, who originally were the original
scribes of of Course in Miracles back in what's seventy five,

(22:45):
I think nineteen seventy five, and Ken Wapnik was right
there as a friend of theirs in Confident, and he
ended up being one of the greatest teachers in the
world of the Course of Miracles. He passed away a
number of years ago, but I just wanted to let
people know that in case they didn't know who they were.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Appreciate that, Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 4 (23:04):
Now it's I also think it's important that if you
can explain exactly what the term nondualism means, for those
who are not familiar with.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
It, yeah, this is good. Well, without going deep into religion, metaphysics,
and philosophy, nondualism simply states that what you think is
separation is just an illusion. There's only one, there's only

(23:34):
one of us here. Now you can take it further
and talk about pure nondualism, which the course does, and
that would go so far as to say that oneness,
which we could say source, we could say is God,
is the only reality there is. There is no world

(23:58):
of form and separation of billions of people on trillions
of planets in this universe, that all of that is
an illusion. Or another way that people say is it's
all a dream. It's all a dream, And that's extremely radical.
And I would say most people have not heard of

(24:21):
pure nondualism, or if they have, it's it's uncomfortable at
least it is initially, but I think if you really
dive into it, you realize it answers a lot of
questions like would why would a loving God create such
a painful world, a world of of such apparent evil?

Speaker 4 (24:42):
To me?

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Nondualism answers that question really clearly, and the answer is, well, God,
didn't you did? The mind that believes itself to be
separate is projecting a world that appears to be out there.

Speaker 4 (24:58):
And you know it's really and you know this well.
Quantum physicists have started speaking in non dualistic terms in
their scientific empirical empirical research and they say that exactly,
that in so many terms, that there is only one.
It's all a giant hologram of energy. And so really

(25:19):
the scientists are saying what the spiritual enlightened masters have
been saying for millennia.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
Yeah, it's starting to get there, and quantum physics, I
think is leading the way.

Speaker 4 (25:30):
Absolutely, It's so such an interesting realm. Now, what is
the biggest issue you encounter with patients who are on
their deathbed and they know that it's almost their time
to go?

Speaker 3 (25:44):
I would say, by far, the biggest struggle I see
with patients on their deathbed and with family members who
are by their side is the unwillingness to heal past hurts.

(26:04):
And if there's one thing that readers take away from
my book, and I hope, I hope, it's this that
if someone around you is dying or you are dying,
don't wait. Yeah, don't wait to heal past grievances, past hurts.

(26:26):
And for that matter, you don't have to be dying
to heal the past grievances. Really, it's life is so short.
I can't say that enough. I see the youngest people die,
people that you would never think would would be facing
the end of their life. You don't know, you truly
do not know when your time will come. So please

(26:49):
don't wait to forgive, don't wait to say I'm sorry,
don't wait to let another person go. And what I
what I tell families that are willing to listen, forgiveness
has nothing to do with the other person. Forgiveness is
a gift you give yourself when you There's this great

(27:12):
quote at the very end of the course, which is
I'm not gonna do it justice because I haven't memorized it,
but it's essentially the voice of the course is asking,
will you choose to be a savior of the world
or remain in hell and hold your brothers there? When
we judge someone, we are the ones staying in hell,

(27:34):
and we're holding this image of our brother in there
with us. But really we're just hurting ourselves. And so
when we are willing to forgive. It's it's a gift
you're giving yourself because you you are freeing yourself from
the burden of judgment. I would say that is the
single most important thing when when facing death, just be

(27:59):
willing will to let go.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
And I'm so glad you brought up forgiveness because the
course talks about true forgiveness in which is nothing like
the way the world practices forgiveness. You know, I mean,
the world says, you know, I forgive you, but still
there you know, in your mind you're up here and
there down here, and they really did something bad, but
you know, it's still sometimes that is a hard concept. Well,

(28:23):
you have to forgive as if it didn't really happen,
and that's a hard thing for some people to do.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yeah, it's extremely hard. That's probably the hardest thing there
is to do, is to make that transition from holding
a grudge to letting it go and releasing it. There
are so many different avenues internally that you can work
with yourself to get there to make that shift and transition.

(28:51):
One of them we just talked about, which is recognized
that when you forgive someone, it has nothing to do
with them you're not condoning their behavior. You're not condoned
what they did to you, or said or all that. Instead,
you're giving yourself the permission to be free from that pain.
That's one way to do it. Another way that I

(29:13):
have found helpful is to recognize that someone's behavior is
a product often of the traumas that they've gone through
in the past, all the unhealed hurts, their childhood, their experiences,
and they, just like us, are another ego mind that's
projecting the blame outside of themselves. And in many ways,

(29:37):
I've heard it said that the reflection of the oneness
of Heaven in this world is to see sameness everywhere.
And so what I do is I see someone who's
saying something mean about me, I say, oh, well, they're
just the same as me. I get angry sometimes I
judge other people. I blame others, So do they. We're

(29:59):
both the and in a similar way, we're also the
same in that we both have a voice in our
minds and in our hearts, a right minded voice that
tells us there's only love and there's no need to
judge or blame, A voice that brings us back to
that thought system of love, and in that sense we're

(30:20):
the same too. So that's a way to go about
forgiving is to see yourself as the same and recognize
that they're behaving that way just because of all the
terrible things that they've gone through.

Speaker 4 (30:31):
You know, in my own studies of illness and healing,
I understand that people who have some type of grudge
or or on forgiveness and it ends up being deep
in your unconscious, It actually creates energetic blocks within your body,
in your chakra system, which actually leads to physical maladies too.

(30:55):
And if you can forgive, you're actually releasing some of
those in you could see yourself heal.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Right, Yeah, there's a lot of spontaneous healing that happens
where physical maladies cancer, various heart disease just vanish overnight.
There's many, many cases of spontaneous remission. It's such a
common thing that it's well known in medical literature. Interestingly,

(31:21):
medical literature won't really acknowledge the underlying cause. But you
and I both know, just as you said, when we
really do healing work, we release all of that pent
up blocked I guess energy if you will. I can't
speak too much to what happens energetically with subtle anatomy.
I don't know that much about it, but I do

(31:43):
know that those sort of blockages will lead to disease,
and if you forgive, all of that gets released and healed.
You know.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
I'm a big fan of Lynn McTaggart in her book
A Power of Eight, in which she's done massive research
on when eight or more people come to the other
either live or virtually, and focus their healing intentions and
prayers and thoughts and energies on a person, place, or thing,
spontaneous healing does occur, and she's had documented healings. And

(32:14):
the interesting thing is the people who are intending the
healing actually get a rebound effect and they receive healings too.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yeah. Yeah, it's true. And I will add to that
by saying, it's common to think that healing really just
means that the body gets better, but I would argue
true healing, or deep deep healing, is healing of the mind.
Healing of the mind, I think is critical and primary

(32:46):
the body and what happens to it is sort of
a pleasant side effect or after effect. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:53):
Well, and two, you're a medical doctor. In the medical field,
many doctors simply practice. I'm curing the symptom and not
the source.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
That's right. It's unfortunate, but it's true. Yeah, and I
think it's sort of speaks to our modern Western The
medical philosophy these days sees the body as a complex
machine that can be manipulated and changed. Most treatments in

(33:25):
the modern Western world rely on pharmaceutical agents, which is
to say, drugs that will block a certain receptor or
provide a certain compound, or surgical solutions where we cut
open the body and we rearrange the body in some
way or take out a portion of the body without

(33:45):
any acknowledgment. That really, at least in a nondual framework,
the body is a symbol in the mind, and if
the mind is transformed, then the symbol itself will transform.

Speaker 4 (34:03):
I have a feeling that how you see in practice,
in your medical practice, you probably butt heads with some
of your traditional medical colleagues.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
I don't talk about it too much. I keep my
head down and I just I still practice medicine exactly
the same as all of my colleagues. If a patient
needs a specific medication for diabetes, for example, or insulin,
I don't say, hey, it's all in your mind, don't

(34:33):
you know. No, I still give them insulin. I still
coach them on eating healthy and cutting down carbs, and
you know, the classic good it's generally good advice to
eat healthy and to live a healthy lifestyle if they're
open to it, and some patients are. And you can
get a sense when you're talking to someone, they'll they'll

(34:56):
usually drop a seed unconsciously or consciously that they're open
to something more. And if I see that opening, then
I'll sort of walk right through and we'll talk a
little bit about the power of thoughts over your body,
the power of emotions of your body, and if they
are really open, then we'll start diving into some metaphysical

(35:16):
and spiritual stuff. But in general, I just play the
role of Adam the doctor in the hospital, and I
do my best to be loving with all my patients.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
Yeah, and of course we are talking to doctor Adam Risby,
a critical care doctor who has written an amazing book.
I'm still working my way through it. I haven't got
through the whole thing, but it's Love does Not Know Death,
which is amazing. Now, in this book, you give many
examples of your encounters and interactions with some of the

(35:49):
dying patients, and I would I've really found this one interesting.
Can you talk about this one patient named Claire that
changed your life?

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Yeah, Claire's such a powerful story. And after I experienced
her death and was present for her death, it changed
how I related with death quite a bit. First, I
should say Claire is a or. She was a twenty

(36:20):
something year old young woman, very very young. She had
a really really severe spinal condition called cayphosis. Her spine
was basically doubled over and her head would be pointed
to the ground because of her spine, and it was
sort of stuck in that position. Because of that, her

(36:41):
lungs were compressed and collapsed, and she was very prone
to developing pneumonia because she couldn't take deep breaths. So
she came in with a pneumonia, and she was one
of those patients. She'd been in the hospital multiple times before,
and I thought, Okay, great, we're going to take care
of her. We're going to start antibiotics and treat the

(37:01):
But she had a way about her, a very very loving,
peaceful way about her. She would always smile. It was
so amazing. Her oxygen levels were quite low and I
could see that she was struggling to breathe because of
the pneumonia. But even while struggling to breathe, she just
had this radiant smile. It just touched my heart and

(37:23):
I still remember it right now. Such a graceful woman. Unfortunately,
several days in her ICU stay, her heart stopped and
I heard the code blue alarm overhead, and code blue
basically means someone's heart has stopped. I didn't know it
was her at first, but when I rushed to the
room that they had called out, I realized it was Claire.

(37:45):
And at that point the train had left the station.
All hands on deck. We had respiratory therapists working on
getting a breathing tube down her throat. The nurses were
pushing medications, and because of the way of her her
chest was angled downward, we had to do chest compressions,
sort of one handed from the bottom up. It was

(38:08):
very challenging to do. We got her heart back briefly,
but then after another round she flatlined again. And there's
something that happens, especially with younger patients, when someone young
comes to ice you as a physician, you really want

(38:29):
them to pull through because there's so much more life
to live, you know. I think it's a natural feeling
of try to keep the young ones alive. If a
ninety eight year old comes in with pneumonia and passes away,
yes we all grieve for a life that's lost, but
it's almost like, you know, they've lived a full life
and it doesn't carry as much heaviness. But losing someone

(38:52):
in their twenties, there's a certain There was a fear
that came in my heart. I was like, oh no,
I don't want to lose her, you know, And little
a guilt that came up in that moment of did
I do something wrong as a physician? Like did I
miss something? Did I did I do the wrong antibiotics?
Did I push the wrong medications? Like what could I

(39:12):
have done differently? And so my mind immediately went to
self blame and guilt, and I think that's actually quite
common for a lot of physicians. And I could see
her eyes in my mind's eye. I just I could
see that smile in her face, and I just felt

(39:32):
like she was saying, it's okay. I was meant to go.
I'm meant to go right now. And that quieted me
down a little bit, and I asked for a moment
of silence when it was time, and I called it.
I pronounced the time of death, and we were quiet there,
and I thanked her and I was grateful. I walked
out of the room. I called her mother, which is

(39:55):
a really tough thing to have to do, and told
her mom that that she had passed away. And her
mom was so gracious with me and said, thank you,
thank you for caring for her, and she I think
she had a sense that her daughter would die young,
so she was very grateful. I got up and I
started walking to my office. And at that point I
have I had a habit of writing down in a journal,

(40:19):
which I lovingly call my death journal, all the lives
and stories of people that I've been blessed to be
at the best side of who passed away. And I
wanted to write down and really do Claire honor and
write her life as I recalled it, and those last
moments of her death, just to honor her and pray

(40:40):
for her, which I do. As I was walking down
the hallway to my office, out of a corner of
my eye, I saw a little shimmer and I sort
of turn around, and I have never seen this before
and I have never seen it since, but I see
this faint outline of a really tall, beautiful, real woman,

(41:03):
taller than me even almost seven foot, very very tall,
and translucent and transparent. And I looked at her face
and it was it was clear, the same smile, the
same loving eyes. And she didn't say anything, but the
intuition I got in my mind was she was saying,

(41:23):
thank you for seeing me as I am, thank you
for seeing me in my perfection and my wholeness. And
I had prior too, I had been doing my forgiveness
work and seeing past the bent, crippled body, but really
seeing her as her, as the light that she was,

(41:44):
And here she was saying thank you for seeing me,
and so it was it was almost as if she
was acknowledging that and sharing her gratitude. And that touched
me very deeply, and within seconds she vanished. I was
a very moving experience for me, and it taught me
the importance of seeing someone not as they appear to be,

(42:07):
but for who they really are. That light, that infinite expanse,
that light that's one with Source and one with God,
each of us is that.

Speaker 4 (42:18):
Yeah, that is an absolutely beautiful story. So you actually
saw her. She returned to her true, divine, holy self,
and she made an appearance to you to let you
know it.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
Well, and that's only one of your experiences. So if
you read his book Love does Not Know Death, you're
going to find out some more there. Now, another thing
I'd really like to talk about is, of course, in
Miracles talks about the call for love, What is it
and how does it play out in each of our lives.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
One of the things I love about, of Course in
Miracles is it simplifies a lot of the things we
do as humans. And sometimes people will attack, and we
talked about some of the underlying reasons for that. There's
an inner hurt that they're projecting outward, and other times

(43:13):
they're nice and everything in between. The whole gamut and
spectrum of human behavior. That all that behavior can be
boiled down into two general expressions. One is that either
we are calling out for love, and that could be
any form of attack, because if you look at that attack,

(43:36):
what's really happening is someone's saying, I'm scared, I'm lonely,
i feel like I've done something wrong, I'm afraid. Please
love me. It's a call for love. If you really
look deep down at the heart of every attack, it
might not seem that way, and it takes a lot
of skill to train your mind to go through the
appearance of attack to the call for love. It's either

(43:59):
a call for love or an expression of love. Someone
will hug you, or it'll be a simple smile at
the cashier register, or you know a loved one will
we'll give you a phone call after a long time.
These are expressions of love, and the great thing is
the appropriate response to both is love. If someone expresses love,

(44:23):
you love them back. If someone calls for love, you
love them. Now, I will say one thing, and this
is really important. If someone's attacking you or they're doing
something wrong, and I've experienced this a lot in the hospital. Yes,
it's a call for love. But sometimes returning love doesn't
mean you hug them or you tell them that you

(44:45):
love them. Sometimes it means you take action to prevent
further harm. Sometimes that expression of love is you say, hey,
I appreciate what you're saying, but the way you're doing
it is not appropriate. Or this this thing that you're
doing it can hurt people. It can harm people, and
you should know that or sometimes means you go and

(45:06):
tell someone if they're not listening, you tell someone about
their behavior, and you take action. But I should say
all action should come from a place of recognizing that
it's a call for love, recognizing that that attack is
a call for love, and so your natural response comes
from a place of love, as opposed to I'm going

(45:28):
to get him back? How dare they say that to me?
And then you're just coming from a place of fear yourself.

Speaker 4 (45:34):
You know, in R three D egoic world, which is
the main consciousness, most people would think that's a really
foreign concept. Wait, he punched me or she called me
a bit, and that's a.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Call for love?

Speaker 4 (45:51):
Are you kidding me? But if you can retrain your mind,
you know, in right mindedness of what we're talking about,
the principal incibles of nondualism from of course in miracles.
Yes you can do that.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
Yeah, and that's the key, the key of nondualism. I know,
it's sort of a some people can get caught up
with the term non nonduality or nondualism, but really what
it's saying is you and the other person are one
and if you attack them, who are you attacking if

(46:26):
not yourself, and what would be the natural thing to
do to yourself is to love yourself. That would change
the world. If we really really saw that the other
person that's attacking us was an aspect of ourselves, it
would change the dynamics of most relationships.

Speaker 4 (46:48):
Yeah. Yeah, you know, we turn off the nightly news
and you say, well, okay, that war over there was
a call for love. But really what we're talking about
it is true. It is the truth.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
Yeah, it's really hard. That's why I would say it's
this sort of spirituality is not for the faint of heart.

Speaker 4 (47:07):
Whereas Gary Renard always says, it's a radical concept, it
really is compared to what the world knows. Ye. So,
since you're a medical doctor. One thing that it seems
to me that many people complain about the course attitude
and handling many doctors have, or some people call it
lack of a bedside manner. What advice do you have

(47:30):
to your fellow of physicians.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
That's a great question. I love that two things that
come to mind. First, always sit down when you can.
If your patient's in a bed, which most of the
time they are in the hospital, or they're in a chair,
sitting down, tells them through nonverbal language, tells them I'm
sitting down and I'm going to spend time with you.

(47:55):
I'm not in a rush. You are the only thing
that matters to me right now. That's number one. And
it gets you at eye level, so you're not hovering
over them. There's no implied power dynamic. It's you and them,
two human beings sitting with each other. And the second
thing I would say is don't talk so much, allow

(48:16):
a little silence or a lot of silence. Let the
patient tell you what's really wrong with them. I'll give
you an example. I had a patient who just yesterday actually,
who came in. She was complaining that both her legs
were really heavy, and she had numbness in her left
hand and a headache. Now I was doing I practiced

(48:36):
as a neurologist as well, and I know that those
symptoms don't necessarily match up to a particular area in
the body. And so I was initially suspicious, Okay, maybe
there's something else going on here. But we did the
MRI scan of her brain. There was no stroke, there
was no We took a look at her spine, I
took a look at her nerves. All of it was normal.
So I sat down with her and I said, tell

(48:58):
me what happened, and so she told me the story
of when she noticed her legs were acting funny and
her fingers, and I told asked her what else is
going on, tell me about your life, tell me what's happening.
And then she started crying and she said, my daughter
is seventeen. She's leaving home. I'm going to be alone.
She's going off and doing her own thing. And it

(49:20):
was so distressing for her because her and her daughter
were so close, and she feels like her daughter was
abandoning her. And she cried and she cried, she cried,
and she's like, I just didn't know what to do,
and I just feel like I wanted my daughter to
be with me, and in a way, this was her

(49:42):
call for love. She didn't want her daughter to leave,
so she unconsciously put herself in the hospital so her
daughter had to stay and be with her. And in
the end I got her to I just listened. I listened.
I did very little talking, and then she herself shared,

(50:03):
I think I'm just afraid, but it's time for me
to let my daughter go. And I don't need. I
don't need to hold on to her. And that's what
the visit was about. Her hospital stay was to recognize
the need that she needed to let her daughter go
and that she could still love her daughter, and her
daughter still would love her, and nothing would change in

(50:25):
their relationship. And that's what she got.

Speaker 4 (50:28):
It'll be interesting to see if her physical problems go
away now.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
They did. Actually, they had already gone away by the
time we were talking. In the conversation, she said her
legs got improved and her numbness had disappeared.

Speaker 4 (50:44):
Well, the author of the awesome book Love Does Not
Know Death, doctor Adam Risbe, So, your book actually contains
some practical steps and how to incorporate these principles of
love and forgiveness? Right, How does a reader how should
they use those?

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Well, most chapters, at the end of the chapter, I
have some practical exercise that they can apply. I think
one of my most favorite ones, which I'll credit to
Gary Renard who inspired me to think of this, is
a simplified way of practicing the forgiveness, the non dual

(51:25):
forgiveness practice. And it's basically three steps. If you if
you get upset or something upsets you, any situation in
your life or someone someone is bothering you and your
mind is running off on a tangent on what they
did wrong and why they should be punished, or how
you need to show them and tell them off. First

(51:48):
step is to stop, stop the train of thought. Tell yourself, no,
I'm not going to go down that path. I've done
it so many times. I've gone down that path before,
like in King Lear, which ken Wapnigoffen would quote that
way madness lies. You already know what that path leads

(52:10):
you to. You know where it goes. It goes to
pain and suffering and more blame and more judgment. So
recognize that no, you're not going to go down that
path anymore. Just stop. Stop is the first step. The
second step is switch. Switch the teacher you're listening to.
You have a teacher of the wrong mind, your ego
that's telling you other people are to blame or someone

(52:32):
is to blame and something wrong has happened and it
needs to be addressed somehow. Okay, that's your ego. The
right mind is saying no, everything is okay. Everything is
a call for love. It's the thought system of love
that it that it guides you towards, so you switch,
you decide to switch teachers. And the third step is

(52:54):
to see, to see like your inner guide would see,
to see truth, to see love in all situations. And
then to see sameness. I remember we sort of talked
about that in this world, the reflection of the oneness
of God, the ononness of Source, is to see sameness.
So see as your inner guide would see, see as

(53:14):
love would see. So the three steps are stop, switch,
and see.

Speaker 4 (53:19):
Just beautiful stuff. So well, we're gonna wind up here
in a minute or two. But you know, one of
one of my favorite books and one of the most
popular books ever, The Seven Principles of Highly Successful People
by doctor Stephen Covey. I always loved it. He said,
begin with the end in mind. Begin with the end

(53:42):
in mind. And what a beautiful way off. People can
take these lessons on dying and go to that next
phase in their life without being afraid or you know,
in fear.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
That's right, yeah, yeah, begin with the end in mind.
Don't wait for a dying process to occur, don't wait
for your for your death to appear on the horizon.
Do it now, don't wait, do it now. Imagine as
one of the exercises that out for Imagine that you're
you're on your deathbed. Imagine it is your time to die.

(54:16):
Are there any regrets? Are there any grievances you're still holding?
If so, do the forgiveness work and let them go,
And remember, forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.

Speaker 4 (54:26):
Wow, and what you just said is a gift too.
Adam you you have your own podcast called Letters to
This Guy.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
Why that name, I don't recall it was. The podcast
has been around for a while. My good friend and I, Stephen.
Stephen is a Buddhist in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and
him and I quickly recognized we both share uh a
spiritual path that applies nondual principles, and so we committed

(54:57):
to creating a podcast as an as an honoring to
the divine, our way of offering gratitude to the divine.
It's sort of like writing letters to the sky, you know.
Each podcast episode is a letter that we offer to
the sky. That's sort of the meaning of the podcast.
But if anyone's interested in seeing how nondual principles show

(55:19):
up in other traditions, that's what the podcast is about.
We talk about our personal ways of applying nondual principles,
but we also showcase them in other traditions like Buddhism, Sufiism,
Mystical Christianity, Islam, as well as Hinduism many others.

Speaker 4 (55:38):
Wow, very important stuff.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
That is cool.

Speaker 4 (55:41):
So you have a website, it's just your name, right,
Adamriisbee dot com.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
That's under I'm still working on that, but I would
recommend people go to Love Do is Not nodeath dot
com Okay.

Speaker 4 (55:51):
And put that in the show notes.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Yeah, that's perfect, and to sign up for the newsletter.
I do essays and posts on substack as well. My
substack is Adventures and Kindness.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
Okay, And of course make sure to grab a copy
of his awesome book Love Does Not Know Depth.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
That is oh.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
Gary Renard wrote the forward for that book too.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
He did, he did. Thank you, Gary, If you're listening,
I really appreciate you.

Speaker 4 (56:20):
All right, Thank you Adam for being on World Awakenings.
This has been amazing.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
I love it. Thank you, sir, Thank you for having me, Carl.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
This has been another episode of World Awakenings The Fast
Track to Enlightenment with host Carl Gruber, a certified law
of Attraction life coach. We welcome you to tune in
to each and every episode of World Awakening Things as
we open your mind, your heart, and your eyes to
the fact that the world's population is now more than

(57:07):
ever awakening to the truth of all things spiritual, metaphysical
and enlightening, and just how much they play an all
important role in our moment to moment daily life. Much
love and light to you, my friend, and thank you
for tuning into World Awakenings.