Neuroscientist (Dr. Tara Swart)_ Evidence We Can Communicate After Death_(M4A_128K)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If what you're saying is true, then I mean, this
is a revelation.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Yeah, And I couldn't speak about it until now that
it's possible to communicate with someone that's passed away. And
I'm saying it from the point of view of being
a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist, and it's taboo because we
are afraid that people will think we're going insane. I mean,
I've been part of teams that have blocked people up
and had them injected with stuff against their will because

(00:23):
of things they were saying. That's not that dissimilar to
things I've experienced. Because I wanted to find out as
much science as I could to try to back it up.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
And do you think you found the answer? Yeah? How sure?
Are you? One percent?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
And the things I found out are going to shock you.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
The floor is yours. Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
So I'm doctor Taras Hart. I'm a neuroscientist and a
medical doctor who specialized in psychiatry. And I lost my
beloved husband to leukemia almost four years ago, two days
before our fourth wedding anniversary, and that everything I believed
in had gone wrong. I was just totally lost and broken.
But then I started getting signs from my husband, and

(01:01):
in my desperation, I did consult a couple of mediums,
but not being impressed by them, I ended up thinking,
if it's possible to communicate with someone that's passed away,
and I am all about optimizing my brain, then I
should be able to do it myself. So I went
down a rabbit hole. And what I've uncovered in this
research is going to have a really beneficial effect on
a lot of people. Why because it means that we

(01:23):
are capable of so much more than what we think
the human mind is capable of.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
So listen, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going
to try and ask the questions and challenge you in
ways that I think the view and my challenge you, I.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Want you to ask me those questions.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
I see messages all the time in the comment section
that some of you didn't realize you didn't subscribe. So
if you could do me a favor in double check
if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be
tremendously appreciated. It's the simple, It's the free thing that
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the trajectory it's on, so please do double check if
you subscribed, And thank you so much because they're a

(01:59):
strange where you are. You're part of our history and
you're on this journey with us, and I appreciate you
for that. So yeah, thank you, doctor Tara Swart. Good
to see you again. You too, thank you for coming back.
You are our most viewed guest on the show of
all time. Our last conversation did just over twenty million

(02:22):
views and downloads, which is pretty staggering. But you're back
to talk about something entirely different this time, which is
this idea of science which kind of into twines with
all of your work on neuroscience that you've done throughout
your career. My first question to you is, what is
it that you think you know that the vast majority
of people don't quite understand, comprehend or have accepted yet.

(02:43):
And take me right back to the sort of first
principles of that thinking.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
I believe that we are capable of so much more
than what we think the human mind is capable of now.
And I believe that the brain actually filters down the
capability of the mind so that we can exist on
this material, your plane, and things that I found out
doing research for the signs is going to shock you.
The abilities that we have that we're not aware of

(03:09):
are way beyond what you might even imagine right.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Now in what departments and facets of my life.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Let's just start with something really simple. How many senses
do you think we have?

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Five? I can smell, I can touch, I can hear,
I can see? Is it five? Yeah? Five? Is it five?

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Have you heard of a sixth sense?

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Being able to see ghosts and stuff?

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Okay? So I think most people would agree that we
have five senses, and some people would say, isn't there
something like a sixth sense? And I don't think it's
agreed what that might be. So I actually did a
literature review of several pieces of research about how many
senses humans have, and we actually have thirty four as
we currently understand it.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Thirty four. And so what does this mean? Like, what
is the because you're making an assertion here, what is
the assertion that you're making and what does that mean
for the material sort of consequences of my life.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
I'm making a hypothesis based on both the analogy of
the observable universe and the fact that we have this
expanded suite of senses to challenge you to understand that
you are capable of much more than you think you are.
And you know, you're a really good case in point
for me because you love rationality and data and science,
and you don't really love intuition and the you know,

(04:28):
the unknown, the unseen. So you know, I think if
I can convince you of anything by the end of
this podcast, then the impact that could have on society,
I think is huge. I mean, the things I found
out are going to shock you.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
What do you mean by that? I.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
As you know, was a psychiatrist in the past, so
I'm able to diagnose people and say whether they have
a mental illness or not. In the past four years,
I've been keeping a secret and there were times in
that four years that I had to ask myself if
I was in clinical depression, if I was psychotic, if

(05:06):
I was manic, if the way that my consciousness was expanding.
I mean, Steve, I've been part of teams that have
locked people up and put you know, had them injected
with stuff against their will because of things they were saying.
That's not that dissimilar to things I've experienced in the
last four years.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
So I guess we better get into the secret. Because
I sat here with you almost two years ago now
and we had a fantastic conversation. But there was something
you didn't tell my audience when we had that conversation
that reached more than twenty million people. There was something
at that moment in time that you didn't tell me,
which was this secret you've been keeping. What is the secret, Tara?

Speaker 2 (05:51):
I lost my beloved husband to leukemia almost four years ago,
and I've written this book which mentions personal story. So
and I trust you. So I really wanted to come
back on the podcast and just explain a little bit
to people about what's been going on for me for

(06:12):
the last four years.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
So, your husband, Robin, you met him twenty sixteen and
he passed He passed away from.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Leukemia in twenty twenty one.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Twenty twenty one. Now, from twenty twenty one when he
passed away, what happened in your life? What was going
on in the world. If I was a fly on
the wall in your context, what would I have seen?

Speaker 2 (06:37):
He'd been given two weeks to live, but he actually
lived for three and a half weeks. And he died
two days before our fourth wedding anniversary. So I was
literally reading condolence cards on my fourth wedding anniversary. If
it wasn't for the people that have around me, who
became like a fortress, I don't think I would be
here today, you know. Never having had that experience before,

(06:59):
it was just so so devastating, and even though I'm
a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist, I just I just was
like totally lost and broken. And then I started seeing
robins in the garden every single time I went to
the window, both in Hampshire and London. I've never ever

(07:23):
seen so many robins in my life, like, not before
or since. I still see them sometimes, but I noticed it.
I thought, of course, that's what I want to see.
I have no idea what it means, if anything. And
then about six weeks after he passed away, I was

(07:43):
asleep and I heard a noise in the distance and
we had been burgled. Once I went to check it
wasn't the alarm in the garages, couldn't work out what
it was, thought maybe it was birds in the distance,
went back to sleep. It was about four am, and
then I got woken up a massive thump to my shoulder.
I wouldn't demonstrate it on you because it would be

(08:04):
too much for me to hit you that hard. It
wasn't like a tap. So I opened my eyes and
I could see next to my bed a very vague,
hazy version of Robin, as if he was pushing himself
through treacle to be seen. And I was just transfixed,

(08:24):
and I saw him become more and more clear. I
could see the outline of his hair and his face,
and then suddenly he just dissolved from the top down
and my eyes went like this, and I remember seeing
his shins and his feet, and I was like up
on my elbow watching and I just gasped out loud
in my desperation. I did consult a couple of mediums,

(08:46):
and again I had that dual conversation. I said to myself,
this is the kind of thing that crazy, desperate people do,
and within the same breath, It's okay for me to
be crazy and desperate. Right now. I've lost my best friend,
my life partner. Like everything I thought about how the
world worked has crashed around me, and I ended up,

(09:08):
I think, you know, being not being impressed by the
mediums and just at some point I can't even remember
when now thinking if it's possible to communicate with someone
that's passed away, and he was my husband and my
best friend, and I am all about optimizing my brain
and expanding my consciousness, then I should be able to

(09:29):
do it myself. That's that's the start of my journey
that I've written about in the science.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
And do you think you've found the answer? Yeah? How
sure are you? I mean, if if what you're saying
is true, then that's a pretty I mean, that's a revelation. Right.
So many people have lost lost people or have gone
through different types of loss in their life, and you're

(09:55):
telling me that through the work you've done over the
last couple of years and the research you've done, you
understand how to communicate with them in some capacity and
you're one hundred percent sure. So listen, here's what I'm
going to do. I'm going to I'm going to I'm
going to challenge you in ways that I think the
viewer might challenge you sat at home. So I'm going

(10:17):
to try and ask the questions that the viewer might
ask because there's you know, people, this idea is quite
a significant perspective shifting one. So my job in this conversation,
although these are sensitive matters of course, is just to
try and play Devil's advocate where I can.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
And I just I want to say that you know
you know me, and you know that you've asked me
to come back on the podcast several times and I've
come when I'm ready, So I want you to ask
me those questions.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, So where does this journey begin? Then? So this
you suffer this tragic loss in your life, you go
to the mediums, you're let down by them. Where does
this begin? Where does your research, your journey of discovery begin.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
It starts with this decision to, you know, try to
communicate with him myself. There's a realization at some point
that it's not a one way thing. That when people
pass away, they also have to learn So it's like
two people having to learn a language to speak to
each other, like two people who speak a different language

(11:19):
having to learn a language that they can both speak.
That's how it felt. Obviously, as a scientist, I then
wanted to find out as much science as I could
to try to back it up, which really comes down
to the science of whether the mind or the psyche
or the soul can exist separately from the body. And

(11:40):
I will say that way before I even started thinking
about this stuff, just the moment that he died, which
he died in front of me, once he'd actually passed away,
I remember really strong feeling of looking at his body
and just knowing that wasn't him and that the essence
of who he was I didn't know where it was,
but it was not there lying in that bed.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
And when did you realize that you were going to
start to collect research and do research on this idea
of being able to communicate in ways that most people
don't realize we can communicate through science. And also when
you talk about being able to communicate through these thirty
plus senses, is that just with the dead or is
that with each other? Like? Can I communicate through you know?

(12:23):
Is there other ways that I can tap into these
senses that you discovered through your research that will help
me be more effective with the living too.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
I mean, I think it starts with yourself. So I
think the fact that if you're not even aware that
you've got thirty four senses, and you're obviously not consciously
tapping into something that you're not aware of and some
of them are non conscious senses anyway, things like the
pH of your blood, or like the balance of oxygen
and carbon dioxide in your blood, you're not going to
be conscious of those. You can't necessarily exert much control

(12:55):
over them, although obviously if you slow down your breathing
or you do a certain type of breath work could
have an impact on those things. The conclusion that I
came to so, like I said, I went to the brink.
A few times. I went to the brink. Let me
give you the first example. I realized that the first
anniversary was coming up on October twenty six, and around

(13:16):
you know, a couple of months before that, I was
doing the best that I had been doing so far.
But I was very aware this anniversary was coming, and
I wanted to prepare myself mentally. But from the fourth
of October, I suddenly like was in aches and pains
all over my body, which actually lasted for six or
seven weeks and was accompanied by me feeling so depressed

(13:39):
that I actually had to look in the mirror and
like go through the criteria for clinical depression and work
out if I was actually depressed or not. And I
didn't meet all the criteria, but it was in this
physical pain. I could not understand why I went for
a massage. It was so painful. I didn't go again
for a year. So eventually I looked through my diary

(14:00):
calendar on my phone and I looked back to October fourth,
which was the day that it started, and that was
the day that i'd taken him home to die. That
was the day I took him home from hospital. I
didn't remember that date, but clearly my body had and
the trauma was just re emerging as like physical pain.
And I only realized quite a lot later that I

(14:20):
had to do some somatic work to actually get rid
of the last bits of trauma. That talking therapy can't
actually get to sematic work, So body work, whether that's
massage or dance or art or craniosake or therapy, tychi,
you know, like anything physical. Because basically there's an area

(14:41):
in the brain it's actually inside so I can't really
show it to you on this but it's kind of
inside there. And that part of the rain is to
do with articulating speech, and it basically gets shut down
by trauma. So those sort of phrases like I'm speechless
or I'm dumbfounded or I have no words, indicates the
thing act that there may be residual trauma that's held

(15:02):
in your body that you can't actually articulate and get
out and solve through talking therapy, So it requires some
kind of physical therapy. So that was obviously to do
with my sense of pain, and it took me a
little while to kind of put together what that might
mean by really like tapping into why was my body
manifesting pain to sort of remind me of something or

(15:24):
show me something. But also in the first couple of
weeks after Robin's body Robin's body was taken away the
morning after he died, and it was just under two
weeks to all the cremation. In that time, I would
wake up in the morning and I would be absolutely
freezing cold, like shaking and shivering. And it was October,

(15:48):
it wasn't like mid winter. And I would last up
the heating. When someone else was in the house, I'd
realize it it was like a sauna. It was actually
a bit embarrassing and had to like, you know, turn
it down and open some windows. And Robin actually hated
being cold, and he would have been in the Morgue
in a refrigerated drawer that whole time. And again I
think it was my sense of temperature that was kind

(16:10):
of on the same wavelength as where I didn't consciously
think of where he was, but I was feeling freezing cold.
So it was looking back, it was things like that
that were coincidences absolutely. But then over time, and I'm
talking a couple of years, I could ask for specific
signs and get them. Sometimes at first it would take

(16:31):
a while, and then it became like it would happen
that day. I could ask a question in my head
and get an answer. I mentioned having, you know, sort
of again being at the brink of my sanity having
to question things. I was experiencing something called thought insertion,
which in psychiatry is one of the symptoms of schizophrenia.
It's when you have a thought in your head that
you know isn't yours. So I was experiencing that really vividly.

(16:56):
But can you imagine experiencing that and at the same
time being a psychiatrist that is saying, right, Tara, you
do realize you are having like a psychotic symptom. And
so in my research, one of the things I realized
that maybe you know, if you're going through grief and
you don't know the things that I know, you can't
articulate to yourself that grief in many ways is like psychosis.

(17:19):
It's changing the levels of neurotransmitters in your head, It's
changing the electric electric and chemical like signaling in your head.
I just have so much empathy for people that have
to go through that and don't have the wherewithal of
the resources that the I did.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Do you think one needs to cultivate their ability to
see signs? Do you think it's like going to the gym?

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Totally? Totally. It took me years, and like I said,
I believe it took him years as well. So yeah,
I say it's like learning a language. But you're right,
it's like going to the gym.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
And what does one need to do in that gym
to grow their sign muscle?

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Well, it always starts with believing, right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Do you think that's one of the big issues in
terms of being able to access these other dimensions or
dynamics is most people just don't believe in it. So
I would I'm not even sure if i'd say most people,
I'd say a lot of people don't believe in it all.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
They secretly do, but they're scared to talk about it.
So I think people ridicule them.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah, because I don't know my brain. My brain feels
like I need to have the scientific evidence of things
for me to accept them, because I think sometimes I
worry that if I don't have scientific rigor around my beliefs,
then I would I'm susceptible to believe anything. And I
believe it in a spaghetti monster at the bottom of
the garden, and I believe, you know, every religion in

(18:38):
the world and everything, and then I'm unanchored, and then
I blow around like a plastic bag in the wind,
and then I have no orientation. Yeah, so I think, Okay,
riga is the basis of my beliefs. I have to
have some sort of scientific evidence.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
I know you do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
It's not to say I'm not open minded, because I've
had my mind changed so many times in my life
that one would be dumb now to not be open
minded and to not listen.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
I agree with you about rigor. I completely agree with that.
My entire career has been based on that. But I
just you know, I was pushed up against a wall,
so I had to think differently. And I think the
question that I posed to myself is what if.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
You had to think differently?

Speaker 2 (19:17):
So the psychologist Carl Jung talks about when he talks
about the collective unconscious, he talks about those basically three
main things that all humans experience, which is birth, life,
and death. And so we have this common experience which
is actually part of our inherited gene and brain structure.

(19:38):
So everyone who's ever lived will experience those things. But
if we look at ancient wisdom for a start, we
are made of the carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and
nitrogen that came from the Big Bang, So we're all
made of the same thing. Our ancestors lived in the
cycle with nature. I think us actually having broken our
connection to nature is a huge part of why we're

(19:59):
so acted and unhappy. So if you think of the
life cycle of a salmon, for example, it you know,
it goes through its life cycle and eventually its bones
contribute to the phosphorus on the floor of the forest,
so it never really goes away. In many other ways,
our ancestors repeatedly saw the cycles of nature and therefore

(20:22):
always kind of knew that everything gets renewed and nothing
ever completely goes away. And I think that's a really
important thing to return to. I think, you know, when
we question things, which you're absolutely right to do, I
think we have to look at things that we didn't
think were true that we now know are true as
just ways of being open to the fact that things

(20:43):
in the future might become obvious or known that aren't
known now. I think that is an important place of
being open minded to sit at. And so, for example,
want to hear about slime mold.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
You tell me if that's something I want to hear about.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
So slime mold are single celled organisms like ameba, who
go about their daily life on their own very happily
as long as their basic needs are met. But if,
for example, they're facing potential starvation, they will come together
and form a slug because the slug can move towards

(21:24):
your vegetable patch, you know, a new food source, and
they can survive equally if they are If they are
facing potential extinction, they will come together and form a
sphoring body like a mushroom. So that's got a stork
and a fruiting body that can release fours that will

(21:46):
go into the atmosphere to all different places where these
new baby organisms can can grow and thrive. But if
you think about it, the single cells in the stork
are sacrificing themselves for the greater good because there's no
chance that they're going to get released into the atmosphere
as fot because they're in the stork. So some of

(22:07):
them actually cheat and climb up the stork to get
into the fruiting body and displace other cells from the
fruiting body. So things like that, and for example, the
micorhizal network, which is how mushrooms and my celium feed
the roots of trees. Even trees that have been felled
can be kept alive for centuries because the micorhizal network,

(22:30):
which is the connection between my celium and tree roots,
can bring water and sugar to that tree stump to
keep it alive. And trees and my celium don't even
only do it for the same species. They do it
because they're part of the entire forest and its symbiotic
relationship and they care about each other. Things like this

(22:51):
would have been like thought to be fantastical ten years ago.
You know, we're in la at the moment and I
saw the driverless car the first time. Now, when I
was growing up watching sci fi, I never thought i'd
see that in my life. So that's all I'm saying that,
And I'm saying it from the point of view of

(23:12):
being a cognitive scientist, and I'm talking about the nature
of consciousness. I'm not talking about other not asking you
to believe you know other parts of science, but based
on the fact that we don't know everything, We've learned
loads of things that we thought weren't true before. I
strongly believe there's a benefit to humanity of raising this

(23:32):
kind of question and having this conversation, which I ask
you why it's a taboo conversation. What you know? Why
shouldn't we be enlightened, Why shouldn't we feel better? Why
shouldn't we be more connected? Whatever we've been doing up
until now certainly hasn't been working.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
When was it that you made the decision that you
were going to write a book about this called the Science.
Was there a particular moment in this process where you
realize that you were going to dig deeper and that
then you were ultimately going to share this with the world.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
I wasn't intending to write a book at all, but
I'd got to the point where it had something that
I could share with people that I actually thought would
be useful.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
And at this point, you're communicating with Robin.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
On a daily basis, on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Give me some color to that. What does that mean?
Give me some examples if you can. Well.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Either will be the like I'll ask a question in
my mind and the answer will come in my mind,
but I know it's not my own thought, or I'll
just get a direct message from him in my mind
that I know isn't me. But mostly it's the signs.
So I've talked to you about the first anniversary and
how hard that was. By the time of the second anniversary,

(24:43):
I was actually in America and i'd been filming in
studio for a week, and then I was on the
road on the Navajo Nation, and that was due to
I was due to fly out of the Navajo Nation
on the second anniversary of Robin's passing, and by that
point I was feeling a bit like I'd completely burnt out,

(25:05):
and I had a choice about how to re emerge,
you know, whether that was going to be in a
good way or I wasn't going to be able to
make it, and I had this analogy of a phoenix
rising from the flames in my mind. So on that trip,
I said, Darling, send me the sign of a phoenix.
You said that to you to Robin in my head,

(25:28):
and I chose the phoenix because it's really unusual. So
it's not like if I said, you know, a dog,
I'm probably going to see a dog on the pavement
every day. But I chose something that is not an
easy thing to see. And I was actually in Oklahoma City,
where you know, you wouldn't expect necessarily to see like
something unusual every single day. Between my hotel and the studio,

(25:51):
I went through Chinatown and I passed a restaurant called
the Phoenix Garden with a big emblazoned like you know sign.
And on the way there, I had had an indirect
flight from Boston, and the flight leaving Boston was late,
so I missed my connection in Chicago, and I had
to spend a night in Chicago, and then I was
late for filming and stuff, and so when I was

(26:12):
leaving to go to la I was leaving on a Sunday,
and from the Monday onwards, I had a podcast every
single weekday in LA and so the team said to me,
we know that you cannot miss that flight. We are
not going to put you on an indirect flight. We
absolutely promise you direct flight to LA. So you'll find

(26:33):
from Monday onwards. We were in the middle of nowhere
for like a week and basically my flight wasn't booked
because we didn't know which airport we were going to
be at. We arrived on the eve of the anniversary
of Robin passing and my flight was booked that day
and it was from Flagstaff in the Navajo Nation to
LA flying on the day of his anniversary. No direct flights.

(26:56):
I had to fly through Phoenix, Arizona on the day
of his anniversary.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
You've probably had of that old analogy of when you
buy a car, you end up seeing the car ever
are on the road, Like I buy a new car
and then I go overwhere and it seems like everybody's
got my car. Because of do they call it confirmation
bias and science and psychology where once you've got something
in your head, you're more likely to see that thing.
I think they've done studies on this where if you
are exposed to something or you're told to think about something,

(27:21):
then you'll see it more in the world. How do
you separate what you're saying from that proven psychological phenomenon.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
I don't. I say, use it to your advantage.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
But how do you know that wasn't what was happening
in your life? Because if you thought about the word phoenix,
and then over the course of a couple of days,
you're looking at everything, but you're only going to register
the things that are emotionally resonant. You know, I might
have seen phoenix a lot of time over the last seven.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Days and it means nothing to you.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, I didn't register it.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Again, I would say the number of times this has happened,
the sort of like how narrow I make the criteria?
So you know, sometimes I say I need to see
a button or a symbol of a button, or the
word button, but it's got to happen three times by
eleven pm tomorrow. And one of my friends says that,

(28:11):
you know, we share something, which is if you see
a pair of lions and we send each other pictures
of it. But she says it has to be if
you went out of your way and you walked a
different way and then you saw them. If it's like
you know, the normal way that you go, or somewhere
that you know that they exist, that doesn't count. It
has to be if you went out of your way.
So I had a previous thing with Robin, which was

(28:32):
about the figure of eight or in the infinity symbol,
and there's a story in the book of how that
was cropping up for me when I actually met him.
But there was a day recently where I had some
space that I had three spaced out meetings in the day,
so I thought I'll take the opportunity to walk for
an hour between them all, and for the last meeting
of the day, I ended up walking past uh which

(28:56):
is a university college hospital where he was having treatment.
And that had been a really traumatic time for me
when he was in hospital there, and I will have
to say I kind of avoided that area since then.
I'll tell you about a particular story that was really
traumatizing for me. So on this walk to where I

(29:18):
was going for the evening for a book launch event,
I ended up walking past the hospital and I actually
said in my head, like why would you make that
happen to me? Like why do I have to walk
past that building? I never want to see that building
again in my life. And again I said, you have
to send me a sign. And by the time I
got to Euston Station. So you know, you can people

(29:40):
who don't know can google this. It's not very far.
There was an elastic band in the figure of H
signing on the pavement, and that means something to me.
So the thing about this confirmation bias thing is it's
dependent on the reticular activating system, which is the system
of your brain that filter us out what's not crucial

(30:01):
to your survival and filters in what it wants you
to notice. And so actually one of the things I've
written about in the book is the art of noticing,
because really we live in this world where the life
is passing you by a one hundred miles per hour.
You're not noticing things that could actually be crucial to

(30:23):
you thriving rather than you just surviving. And in this
model called shared trait vulnerability, which falls under the field
of research called neurosthetics. So basically, creativity is a positive
personality trait, right, but there is a high correlation between
creativity and psychopathology, which is mental illness, particularly depression, schizophrenia,

(30:48):
and alcoholism, and there are quite a few high profile
examples of creative people who had mental illness. It's like
Alexander McQueen, Kirk Cobain, Vango. So what that shows is
that there's an area of overlap of three particular ways
of thinking that are underpinned by neurology. That are the

(31:12):
reasons that people with mental illness are so creative, and
they are basically hyper connectivity. So that's two things. That's
joining the dots in the material world of things that
aren't obvious to other people, but it's also hyper connectivity
inside the brain. So if you think about all these lobes.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
So heavy, If.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
You think about all these lobes, the more lobes that
are firing at the same time. And there's also a
cortex that's known as the association cortex, so that one
you know, these lobes can be firing, but they're not
necessarily connecting up with each other. The more interconnected all
this firing is in the brain, the more the brain
opens up to new ideas, so that underpins creativity. And

(31:59):
also the usually really involves the visual cortex, which is
in the occipital lobes, and that's why sometimes people, whether
it's through psychedelics or you know, sort of sort of
altered states of consciousness through creativity, can see things that
they didn't see before. There's also something called novelty salience,
which is noticing new things or just noticing things of

(32:21):
importance that you would otherwise have filtered out. And there's
something called attenuated latent inhibition or low latent inhibition, which
is to do with that filter, and it means that
the filter allows more things in than it normally does.
So you can see we've got hyper connection, we've got
noticing more things, and we've got the filter like loosening

(32:43):
and allowing more things in. Now, if you've got a
high IQ, high working memory, and you've got cognitive flexibility,
which you can think, you know, out of the box,
that's a really good thing. If you've got a low IQ,
you've got deficits in your working memory, and you've got
what's called perseveration, which is you just go over the

(33:03):
same thought process over and over again. That can lead
to you having a psychological crisis. So I took that
model and thought, if grief is like psychosis and I'm
currently in a very vulnerable state, is creativity a conduit
for me to get not only back to the state
that I was in before, but into a state of
expanded awareness where I can loosen the filter as I choose,

(33:27):
as I choose fit, I can notice things that I
would have passed by before, and I can think differently
about how my mind works, how the world works, possibly
what happens after someone passes away. And then I went
and looked into near death experiences and terminal lucidity and
dark retreats. Like I said, I went down a rabbit.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Hole, and what did you find in that rabbit hole?

Speaker 2 (33:51):
At the border of life and death? Usually within one
to twenty four hours of death, someone who has whose
brain hasn't been functioning, who can't remember the names of
their own children, suddenly becomes completely lucid and says, Stephen Darling,
come over here, let me, you know, let's have a
nice like mother son chat. And then that gives a

(34:14):
lot of people hope. But usually that means it's an
hour or twenty three hours till the person's going to die.
We can't explain that. How can a brain that's irreversibly
damaged suddenly function completely normally? There is no explanation for
that with the near death experiences. I was particularly compelled
by three stories. Doctor Mary Neil, an orthopedic surgeon. She's

(34:37):
in that Netflix documentary Surviving Death. She was submerged underwater
for fifteen or twenty minutes. She should never have been
able to be resuscitated. She describes her whole journey of
going to another realm, seeing you know, a being of light,
being told that her life isn't over. She has to
turn back and return to the physical world, even though

(34:58):
she could see her bloated body and her friends trying
to reach her to resuscitate her, and they couldn't. Dr
Eban Alexander, who wrote Proof of Heaven, he is a doctor.
He was an atheist. He was in a coma with
bacterial meningitis and was pronounced clinically dead and then basically
came back and said that he saw heaven and he

(35:19):
now believes in a god that is benign, that cares
about the future of humanity. So for me as a doctor,
hearing these stories from other doctors was really really convincing.
And then there's one story that doctor Bruce Grayson told me.
He's a professor of psychiatry at University of Virginia who
has done fifty years of research into near death experiences,

(35:41):
and he told me the story of a patient in
ICU who kept going into cardiac arrest and he had
a primary nurse who was a young twenty year old
nurse and they had a really close bond, and one
weekend she was she had time off for the weekend,
and he had a different nurse looking after him, and

(36:02):
he went into cardiac orest and he had a near
death experience. And in that near death experience, he saw
his primary nurse. She said to him, your life isn't over.
You have to go back and get better, and please
tell my parents, I'm sorry about the red MG. So
he wakes up in ICU. He's got this replacement nurse
looking after him, and he says, the strangest thing just happened.

(36:27):
I had this experience of being in this other world.
I saw my primary nurse and she said I had
to come back, and she also said, tell my parents
sorry about the red MG. So the temporary nurse starts
burst into tears. Roun's out of the room. He has
no idea why. Someone comes in and says, what's just happened?

(36:48):
He explains, and they tell him that his primary nurse
was given a red MG for her twenty first birthday,
took it out for a test run, crashed it into
a tree and died. Now he didn't know she was dead,
but he saw her on the other side, and she
told him to come back.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
And the guy that told you the story was who
relevant to the patient who said that?

Speaker 2 (37:13):
Dr Bruce Grayson. He has done fifty years of research
on near death experiences. He's got over five thousand recorded
cases of patients of his own that he's looked after
that have had near death experiences. And he also shared
with me with me the numbers of cases that other
people have on databasis, So you know, we're looking at

(37:34):
over ten thousand cases globally recorded at the moment.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
What is it that you believe based on those near
death experiences like the red MG story and based on
this phenomenon of terminal lucidity.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
So Professor Alexander Blathiani, who wrote Threshold about terminal lucidity,
put it really nicely when he said, maybe at the
border of life and death, we see some thing that
is true all along, but we don't, for whatever reason,
see it or acknowledge it. Whilst we're alive and well,
which is that the mind and body can operate independently

(38:12):
of each other.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
It is quite it is quite shocking. There's this case
from two thousand and nine, an eighty two year old
woman with Alzheimer's disease who was nonverbal and non responsive
and had no apparent recognition of her surroundings or families
for years, and then one day before her death, she
suddenly sat up in hospital, looked around and recognized her
daughter by name, spoke clearly, reminisced about the past, thanked

(38:35):
her family for caring for her. Her speech was coherent,
her memory was intact, and her personality recognizable as though
she had never been ill. She fell asleep that evening
and died peacefully during the night. And what do you
think is happening there? What do you think is happening there?

Speaker 2 (38:53):
It's possibly, you know, partially explained by a surge of neurochemicals,
but it's not explained by how can those neurochemicals act
if the physical neurons and synapses are damaged. There is
no explanation. The only explanation is that the mind is
not emergent from material matter. It's not that the mind,

(39:14):
the thoughts, the emotions, the psyche cannot be solely emerging
from physical matter. That's the only explanation from what we
understand so far.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
And so what is it that you now believe? You
believe that our souls and our bodies are two separate things?
And where does our soul live if it's not living
inside of me? So where is Robin?

Speaker 2 (39:37):
So I believe that you know, whether you want to
call it the universe, consciousness, collective consciousness, god head, cosmic soup,
I don't the word for it isn't important. There's somewhere
that that energy goes and it still exists in some form.
And if you believe in reincarnation, then you may believe

(39:59):
that it then enters another body as a vessel and
you know, has a different life, but it doesn't go away.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
How do you know?

Speaker 2 (40:13):
I'm going to say something that I know you're not
going to like, But I know because I feel it personally.
I feel it from I feel it like with the
person that I've been closest to in my entire life,
who I know would never leave me if they didn't
absolutely have to. But I can back that up to
the extent of I can say you can't prove that

(40:34):
this isn't true. I can back that up with everything
that I put in the book. And I'm not the
only one. Dr David Eagleman at Stanford says, you know,
this idea of the brain being like radio and receiving
signals from outside, we can't prove it, but we categorically
cannot say it's not true. Professor Donald Hoffman suggests that
space time is not the basis of how the universe works,

(40:56):
suggests that consciousness is the basis of how the universe works.
We can't prove that's not true. And I find that
really exciting. I mean, as a scientist, you're supposed to
challenge this data squo. You're supposed to be curious. You can't,
as a scientist, believe that everything we know now is
all there is. There's no point to being a scientist
if that's what you believe.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
I asked you this question about the gym earlier on
about is it kind of like training in the gym?
Are there things you think people could do to heighten
their ability to speak to loved ones that might have passed,
or to heighten their ability to tap into science.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
So I go through this in the book, and I
chose the order quite carefully, so I talk about neuroesthetics,
which is noticing beauty basically, if not actually engaging in
the arts. There's a lot of evidence for engaging in
the arts in terms of increasing your novelty salience, which
is noticing new things, which is part of the journey

(41:49):
of opening up that filter. And then there's a whole
chapter on nature, because I think a lot of signs
come from nature, like butterflies, robins, sort of you know,
spiral formations, cloud formations, So noticing nature more can help you,
you know, also to receive these signs. And then community

(42:11):
is a huge part of it, because you know, if
I had this conversation with you and you totally shut
me down and said it's not provable, this is ridiculous,
I'm not airing this episode, that would have a very
different effect on me to you even being open to
like asking me challenging questions that I welcome, but also
engaging in this conversation and sort of you know, maybe

(42:32):
feels a little bit like maybe questioning you know, some
things that you might do differently. So those are three
very important parts of like sort of part two of
the book, Part one is more about what are signs?
What are you missing? You know, have you been receiving
signs already.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
One of the things that I when I was going
through my sort of transition from like being religious to
being agnostic, I'd say, because I wouldn't call myself an atheist,
is I was watching all these atheist minds debate and
talk and stuff, and one of the things one of
them said is that if coincidence didn't happen in our lives,
then that would be a miracle. Like statistically, mathematically, if
at sometimes you don't think of Dave and then the

(43:10):
phone rings in its Dave, that would actually be more
mathematically improbable than it happening. Sometimes if you think about,
you know, if you had this on like a distribution
cover or something, it is likely mathematically that really unlikely
things will happen sometimes, Right, So I've always had that
in my head as a way to sort of rationalize coincidence.

(43:32):
So when coincidence happens, I think, well, probabilistically, really unlikely
things have to happen, and if they never happen, then
that's a miracle. Okay, does that make sense? Yeah, it
makes sense, Like mathematically, you'd say, like, likely things happen often.
Unlikely things happen less often. Yeah, extremely unlikely things happen
way less often. Yeah, that's like the nature of like maths. Right,

(43:55):
So when extremely unlikely things happen, I say, actually, that
makes sense because probabilistically those things happen in frequently. They're
not happening every single day, Like right now I'm thinking
of I can name ten people I guarantee want to
get to my phone. None of those ten people have
text me. But if I do that every day, one day,
I'm going to say, hey, Steve checking in, which makes
sense because of the laws.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
Yeah, but I don't want you to do that. I
want you to just like be open to naturally thinking
of someone and seeing if that does happen, or you know,
kind of or asking for a sign and seeing if
it comes into your life. That's that's all I'm asking, Like,
what you know, just try it. It's not going to
hurt you. And I'm not just saying that to you,
I'm saying it to everyone.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
And how do you think that would benefit me?

Speaker 2 (44:41):
I think it makes you believe in something bigger than yourself. Yeah,
And why is that so important because I think a
life where all you're trying to do is get through
and meet your needs is life can be better than that.
I think a life where you feel more connected to yourself,
to others, to something greater gives you purpose. There's a

(45:05):
lot of research that shows that having a purpose that
transcends just yourself is actually really healthy and important.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
And what is that for you? Now, that transcendent layer
in your life? How do you define it? Is it
a religion? Is it something else?

Speaker 2 (45:18):
It's definitely not religion. I guess it's spirituality and you know,
a form which will mean different things to different people.
It's definitely about caring for humanity.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Is it a God a creator? For me?

Speaker 2 (45:33):
No, but eighty five percent of people globally believe in
religion under God, so it's important. I think for me,
it's about giving like a voice of relevance and helping
people to feel seen and heard, because I think that's
very lacking. And you know, I'm in the enormously privileged

(45:55):
position that you have given me of being able to
do that, and I want to use that in a
really positive way.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
How does this overlap with or sit alongside what people
call intuition, because you talk about that as well in
the book.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yeah, and there's so much that there's still like so
much else that I want to say, just keep going.
So intuition is I mean, intuition is what it is.
It's accessing in a wisdom, right. But I've included it
as a really important part of the book because I
believe that it's a way to receive and interpret your signs.
But I just want to go back to something I

(46:31):
said earlier, which is about how trauma can be stored
in your body, and you know, to some extent it
can't be retrieved through talking therapy because there aren't words
for it, because it's actually embedded into the tissues of
your body. There's a really exciting new hypothesis for how
that might work, called the serotonin hypothesis. So previously, I

(46:54):
think it would make sense that if you know, for example,
when when Robin was in hospital, like sit in a
very hunched over position, and my fists would be clenched
because I felt like I was fighting for his life
all the time, and if I relaxed for a millisecond,
he could die. So it makes sense to me that
that those postural issues would show up for me later

(47:16):
and you know, in terms of like pay aches and pains,
and you know, perhaps sort of well not perhaps my
as my pilates and yoga teachers keep telling me like
issues with you know, certain parts of my spine and stuff.
But the serotonin hypothesis is very exciting as a neuroscientist
because a lot of people have heard of Bessel Vanderkok's
work and the book The Body Keeps the Score, and

(47:38):
it makes sense kind of intuitively that the body does
keep the score. And like I've said, there's an amount
of trauma that you can't express, you can't articulate verbally.
So we believe, we understand that there are imprints of
that in the body, but we've never really understood how
that works. And we you know, I've talked before, I

(48:00):
think with you about intuition through a process called Hebbian learning,
which is neurons that fire together wire together gets pushed
deeper and deeper into neurons from the outer cortex, the
limbic system, the brainstem into gut neurons. And that's why
intuition is called gut instinct. And we understand that through
stress postures, you could have bracing patterns in your muscles

(48:22):
for the trauma that you've experienced. Fascia is the connective
tissue that holds your entire body together, all your organs,
all your muscles. And until fairly recently, fascia was thought
of as a vestigial organ. It was cut away in
surgery without thinking of any that it would have any
effect on the rest of your body. Now it's understood

(48:43):
more to actually be an organ of its own, and
an important one. And this serotonin hypothesis goes some way
to explain how the level of constriction of capillaries and
the amount of nutrients that's released to skin, fashion muscle
is a mechanism for how trauma is held in the body.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
And with that in mind, what do we do to
get rid of that trauma held in the body?

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Physical activities so dancing, singing, drumming, humming, chanting, massage, yoga,
craniosacral therapy. And you'll notice that the ones I started
with are you know, very related to ancient wisdom, so
our ancestors knew this. For example, in ancient Greek, ancient

(49:33):
Greek burials, they would wail and beat their chests, so
they were getting rid of grief by like screaming, but
also by beating their muscles and letting like trauma exit
their body.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
I'm very well aware that there's probably a lot of
people who have sent this conversation to a friend who
is struggling right now, and that that friend, who has
lost a loved one potentially a husband, potentially a wife, potentially,
you know, God forbid, a child or a grandparent or something,
is listening to this because they are in search of

(50:04):
answers for their own healing. You've been there, you may
still be there in some degree. If you were to
advise them on their own healing journey, what advice would
you give them?

Speaker 2 (50:24):
The first thing would be to not repress or deny
how they're feeling and you know, really feel the emotions
that have to come along with grief. I've you know,
I had amazing talking therapy which definitely helped me a lot.
So if people have access to that professionally, then great.

(50:44):
If not, then you know, if you've got close friends
that you can talk to, then talking it out does help.
But I've really learned that there's a limit to how
much that helps, and that some sort of physical therapy
is really helpful. As part of it. Those would be
the basics. I would say time and nature has been

(51:04):
so healing for me. Some form of creative outlet, whether
it's making or beholding, so you don't have to be
good at art. If you draw you a picture of
how you're feeling emotionally or a sketch of your loved one,
it doesn't have to be good. You get benefits from
doing that. It's an out creative outlet for your grief.
That's probably the second level. And you know, the third

(51:25):
level to me is if you've got any inclination to
receive signs or just be open to you know, a
white feather landing at your doorstep, or a bird coming
to visit you, or something that means something to you,
then that can bring a lot of comfort and guidance
and joy.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
And you also assert that things like being in nature,
creativity heading into our intuition increase the probability of us
receiving these signs.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Well, receiving and being able to interpret in a way
that's meaningful for you.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
Gut instance, in the book, you talk about how strengthening
one's gut health can have an impact on gut instinct.
Explain that to me.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
So the body is basically the physical foundation for you know,
all of your senses to be able to flourish, to
your high mental faculties to be able to flourish, and
ultimately for you know, whatever spiritual experience you have of
life to be able to be at its fullest and
best as well. So taking care of the physical foundations

(52:34):
is really important. And you know, we could talk about
all the usual things like sleep and diet and exercise, mindfulness,
stress management, but I want to really focus strongly on
the gut brain acxis because a lot of new research
has come up since I wrote the source. So it's actually,

(52:55):
you know, we know a lot about this bidirectional communication
between the brain and the gut. Is actually a three
way system, which is the brain, the gut itself, the
gut neurons, and the gut microbiome, which is trillions of
bacteria and fungi, and you know, organisms that are basically
determining the health of our entire system because they're connected

(53:17):
to our immune system, to our skin, to our oral microbiome,
and the brain. So the way that you the most
direct access you have to your brain is through your gut.
The gut is the most direct way that you can
influence your brain, and you can do that through exercise. Obviously,

(53:38):
diet supplementation even like meditation and art and music therapy
have a beneficial effect on your gut microbiome as well,
which has a knock on effect on the neurons and
the brain, and they communicate with each other many ways,
mostly through the vagus nerve.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
What's the vagus nerve?

Speaker 2 (53:58):
The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve, so it comes
from your skull. It's Latin for wandering because it's the
longest nerve that goes through your body. So it goes
there's two the right and the left, and they go
all the way from your cranium. Your cranium is the
bone around your brain, so inside that down your neck,
they go through your diaphragm and to your intestine.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
I'll put a photo up on screen for a ready
wants to see where their vagus nerve is.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
Also other nerves, so the nerves that innovate the gut organs,
they're called afferent intestinal nerves. They're also involved in this communication.
Then there's hormones and there's cytokine messages, which are chemical
messages that aren't hormonal. Your immune system actually also produces neurotransmitters,
and there are immune cells in your brain as well.

(54:46):
So those are all the ways that we know currently
that the brain and the gut communicate with each other.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
And so what does this mean in terms of my
gut health in ways to influence my brain? Does it
mean that I need to be really big on my probiotics,
my probiotics to make sure my guts intact And if
I do that, then my intuition will be sharper.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
So that's true, but I always like people to understand
what's behind that, not just mindlessly take probiotics and probiotics.
So what we're trying to do is reduce inflammation throughout
the system. And so basically, because the brain is a
small organ in our entire system, but it uses up

(55:28):
at least twenty percent of our energy, so it's very
vulnerable to what we call oxidative stress or free radicals.
So every time there's any turnover of cells in our
brain or our body, basically as we live the wear
and tear of daily life, we release free radicals, which

(55:48):
are molecules that can damage cells, particularly nerve cells. And
because the brain has such high turnover of energy, it's
particularly vulnerable to free radical attack. So reducing inflammation and
putting things that are neuroprotective around it, like certain vitamins
and minerals is really important. And the hippocampus part of

(56:12):
the brain, which it has high cell turnover because it's
to do with memory, laying down memories, and obviously well
into adulthood we're still doing that, that's also very vulnerable
to free radical damage, and that's why we can get
memory and cognitive impairments and dementias as we get older.
So the modern Western diet causes something called dysbiosis, which

(56:32):
is that your gut isn't in a good state, and
that creates a cascade of inflammation and releases molecules, some
of which can cross the blood brain barrier and therefore
cause inflammation in the brain. So we want to minimize
that as much as possible and put in as many
protective and beneficial factors as possible. If we're doing that,

(56:54):
the systems in what we call homeostasis, which is good balance.
It's kind of starting to take care of it. It's
got all the nutrients that it needs, it's hydrated, it's oxygenated.
That's when you've got extra resources to do the higher
mental functions. And up until today, pretty much I've described

(57:14):
those as being able to solve complex problems, being able
to think flexibly, creatively override your biases. But now I'm
proposing that there's more than that that we can do.
There's accessing levels of intuition that we didn't know we
had very much through the same mechanism of how I

(57:35):
described trauma being stored in the body, hidden wisdom is
also stored in the body. It's not just in your brain.
And therefore the same therapies like beholding and making art, humming, drumming, storytelling, dancing, yoga,
just movement can help us to access that intuition that

(57:58):
isn't just in our brain and our mind mind, and
take us to a next level of intuition that's not
just cerebral, it's it's physical.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
I've just invested millions into this and become a co
owner of the company. It's a company called ketone Iq,
and the story is quite interesting. I start talking about
ketosis on this podcast and the fact that I'm very
low carb, very very low sugar, and my body produces
keytones which have made me incredibly focused, have improved my endurance,
have improved my mood, and have made me more capable

(58:29):
of doing what I do here. And because I was
talking about it on the podcast, a couple of weeks later,
these showed up on my desk in my HQ in London,
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(58:51):
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(59:13):
my own can sponsor my podcast. Use the word dark retreats,
I've never heard that phrase before.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
So dark retreats come from a Tibetan religion or philosophy,
but it's seen throughout the ancient civilizations. So the ancient
Greeks and Romans used to bury people actually for days,
and then they would come out and be like the
seers and the mystics of that community. But there's most

(59:40):
research available in dark retreats because it's still happening today.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
What is it dark retreat?

Speaker 2 (59:46):
A dark retreat is have you heard of silent retreats?
Silent meditation?

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, my girlfriend went on one.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Yeah, so that's the kind of thing she would do.
So basically you can go away for a few days
to a few weeks and you're just in silence and
you're meditating and doing breath work. Most of the time
dark retreat you are in like pitch black for I mean,
you can go and do it for a few hours
or a weekend, but it's meant to be in sevens
so seven to forty nine days. The monks do forty

(01:00:12):
nine days. If, as you know a person who's interested spiritually,
you wanted to do it quite seriously, you would go
for seven days and you would be in a room
or a cave that's got double walls, so it's completely dark.
And the reason for doing this is that not all
of us can have a near death experience, right, So

(01:00:35):
this is a way of emulate it's the closest way
of emulating that for anyone like you or R to
get access to the benefits of a near death experience,
which I've outlined them all in the book. So in
a dark retreat, at first you sleep a lot because
it's dark. You're releasing a lot of melotonin from your
pineal gland, so you fall asleep in darkness. You awake

(01:00:58):
in darkness, and basically that kind of makes you feel
more sleepy, so you sleep a lot. After a couple
of days, you start to see like pulsations of light.
It might be like little shooting stars or kind of
just like little sparks here and there. And then eventually

(01:01:19):
it feels like the walls are dimly a light. So
in complete darkness you start to see light. Obviously there's
an element of like hallucinating at this point, and so
after three, four, five days you will actually start to

(01:01:39):
see animals real or sort of fantastical. And eventually people
see like deities or beings like people do in near
death experiences. And when people come out of these retreats,
they experience many of the same benefits, like you know,
a real sort of like joy for life, less fear

(01:02:03):
of death, more compassion for other people, less fear of failing,
so you know, taking more healthy risks. So it's a
way basically of emulating a near death experience.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
And it therefore convinces you that there's more than you
can see in your day to day life, and therefore
that expands your mind in a way that's beneficial.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
Yeah, it's another example of an altered state of consciousness.
So you can also get altered states of consciousness through
conscious connected or holotropic breath work and through the use
of psychedelic plants as well.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
How do we know that it's not just a changing
of our neurological state or the chemicals in our brain
that are causing us to interpret things differently with our senses,
because you know, we've all I said, we all many
of us have experienced having some kind of stimulant or
psychedelic or some compound in a rave or at a
festival that's made us see the world differently for a moment.

(01:03:00):
And science would say that's just the neurochemicals in our
brain doing different things which are changing our perception. They
wouldn't say necessarily that it's a different realm or a
different dimension.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
Yeah, and I think you're right. I think it is that.
So as a neuropharmacologist, I know understand as much as
the research says about the it's mostly like I said,
in the body, in the brain with psychedelics, it's mostly
five HT or serotonin two A receptors. And there's a
level of hyperconnectivity within the brain, particularly as I said,

(01:03:34):
in the visual cortex here, which allows people to see
things that they don't normally see. And I think the
way to apply that in your life is that it's
a glimpse into what's possible. Once you've experienced that. It
could either be that you find other natural ways of

(01:03:55):
experiencing that. So there's a paper I can forward to
you that shows that certain forms of conscious connected breath
work produce the same effect as a moderate dose of
silas ibin, which is magic. Mussis yes, And this research
came out after silas ibin was banned and practitioners thought, well,
what are other ways that we can help people to

(01:04:15):
achieve these altered states of consciousness? And personally I believe
that you know, having like a completely like awe inspiring
experience in nature or for me like the ballet, particularly
when I've been so lucky sometimes to sit in the
wings and you just completely feel like you're part of it.
I mean, I've literally had a spiritual experience sitting in

(01:04:38):
the wings watching actually was one of my friends, the
principal dancer dancing just so overwhelming. It's completely an altered
state of consciousness. So there are there are other ways
of accessing that, but I think it depends like why
you want to and what it means to you. But
at minimum, these sorts of things that I'm talking about

(01:04:59):
are ways of understanding that there's more to life than
what we know, and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
How does that meaningfully change, like the concept of what
happiness is and contentment is in like living a good
life is.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
So what I think is really interesting is that we
don't actually have to experience certain things ourselves. So there's
a lot of research that shows that students from various
different areas of expertise who simply learn about near death
experiences actually get some of the same benefits, and that
these can last for over a year later. So understanding

(01:05:38):
that when someone sees that there's something greater than us
when someone sees the interconnectedness of everything, when someone understands
how small some of their problems are, and the greater
you know, picture of things helps people to be more compassionate,
more grateful, kinder to others, less materialists. Stick is really

(01:06:02):
interesting and I think anything that we can do to
help us, you know, free us from some of those
chains that I think hold us down in the material world,
particularly in the Western world, is it's healthy for us physically, mentally, emotionally.
But it also brings in this element of spirituality that

(01:06:22):
I think is just so lacking in the world at
the moment and could be so helpful because if we
look back at the way that our ancestors use their
senses and their intuition to interpret the land, like a
cloud formation could mean that rain's coming, but it could
also mean that your ancestors were talking to you, just
seems like such a beautiful way to live. And when

(01:06:44):
we lived, you know, in Paleolithic times, we didn't have
spare resources for having fun, but we adorned ourselves, We danced,
we told stories, we made you know, cave art. So
I think that just really reminds us that those that
are often seen as luxuries or frivolous, they're not at all.

(01:07:04):
They're fundamentally important.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Believing in these things itself is good for us? Is
that what you believe? If you believe that believing in
something transcendent, whether it's spiritual or religious, is actually just
good for us, So that's reason enough to believe it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
It's reason enough to believe it. But I think it
will naturally change what you do once you believe it.
You're not going to live in the same way if
you believe some fundamentally different things.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
And the ways in which it changes what you believe
are beneficial to you. So are you saying that that
is reason enough to believe it? Like to want to
believe it?

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
I think it's reason enough to try it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
Yeah. I mean sometimes it causes people through human history
to do awful things, right, to kill themselves, to strap
bombs to themselves, and do horrific things because they believe
in something transcendent. It can also lead to like destructive behavior.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
I mean, I don't think there's any evidence from near
death experiences that that's the case. I think I know
what you're referring to is something that's you know, more
fundamentally like religious and.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
Because I was watching that, I've been watching Jack told
me to watch this caption bin laden documentary. So I
was watching it last night, and these people flew themselves
into buildings because they believe in you know, they were
obviously radicalized in various ways, but they believed in going
to a after life that would be better than this one,
and that they were sacrificing themselves for the greater good.

(01:08:37):
So it's just I guess it's a side point that
just but the belief in transcendence itself in some regard
isn't necessarily always going to guarantee our behaviors on this
planet are productive.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
Yeah, And I was going to say, like, perhaps it's
something more dogmatic, but I think you're absolutely right to
raise that point. And I'm not trying to sit here
and say I found like the perfect solution and everyone
should do this and it's all good, Like that's just
I know that's not true. I'm not trying to say
that at all. I think we should absolutely be questioning
everything that I'm saying, and I will keep questioning the
way that I'm living my life and keep trying to

(01:09:10):
learn and grow.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
I guess the point is just the belief in something transcendent.
Does that make our lives necessarily a beout it? I
guess the answer is I can, it can.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
I'm really obsessed at the moment actually with this idea
of purpose and meaning because obviously we're living in a
society that's more and more individualistic and independence is kind
of vogue, and because of a variety of things that
have happened over the last fifty sixty seven years, we
have more independence. Women particularly have a lot more independence,
which I think everyone is very most people are very

(01:09:39):
supportive of. We have more choice than ever before, and
with choice comes independence. So I can choose now when
I have a family, and maybe I couldn't choose before.
And with choice and with freedom, I think some of
our more short term hedonistic desires and temptations take hold,
and we end up sacrifice seeing the tribe and shared

(01:10:01):
responsibility and dependence and a lot of our meaning came
from like those things. So I feel to some degree
that when we think about how we ladder up from
like me to like my family, to my city, to
my nation, and then maybe to my God, those layers
have fallen away, and now for many of us it's
just me, and that's causing a crisis of meaning and

(01:10:23):
purpose in life because we're kind of unanchored. What's your
perspective on this, and do you think it's true that
we're more unanchored than we've ever been, And how do
you think we get back to that if we can
relate to feeling a little bit lost and un anchored
and the sort of prevalence in my view of people
having more and more mid life crises and turning to

(01:10:43):
religion or spirituality or something.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
Yeah, well I actually called this in March twenty twenty
and it's on record because I was on a podcast
and I said, I foresee a huge mental health crisis,
but we could choose for it to be a spiritual
and so then obviously, you know the rest of the
pandemic happened, and then there was sort of a return

(01:11:06):
to society, which I think people found really hard mentally
as well. And at the same time, there was the
cost of living crisis, the wealth gap, a new war,
the crime rates. You know, certainly in London, like just
for my life experience, they had you know, significantly grown
for reasons that we're all contributors to. But you know,

(01:11:28):
it changes how safe you feel in society. And I'm
a big fan of technology, obviously, I'm a scientist, But
it is ironic that we seem to be more disconnected
than ever when in one way, we're more connected than
we've ever been before. And you know, I've said this before,

(01:11:48):
but I'll say it again. I think the way out
of that is a return to ancient wisdom, to true connection,
which I believe can coexist with being technologically connected and advanced.
But yeah, I just think we've lost what it means
to be human, which means, you know, really being in
touch with yourself and being part of a community and

(01:12:12):
caring about something more than just your own life and
your immediate you know, in a circle.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
And what is true connection in your definition of the word,
because I guess there's false connection if there's true connection.
So what's true connection and what is false connection?

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
We'll just go over you know what I've said before,
because it's about connection to yourself, to others, and you know,
sort of the world or something greater, and you know,
it's about something that's deep and not transactional. It's about
something that's meaningful, it's about something that's altruistic. I think
it's about contributing that day.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
When you walk past the hospital, what did you experience?

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
It triggers me seeing that building, and I just you know,
I had obviously looked on Google Maps, but not really
realized that I would walk past it. And if I
had realized, I would have walked a different way. And
I remember just thinking it's unfair that I had to
see this building. Was unnecessary, unnecessarily a trigger for me,

(01:13:15):
and obviously saying to Robin, you need to send me
a sign. But there's a reason for that, which is,
you know, I mean, I went to that hospital every
day for a month for his first day, and I
think about three weeks for the second one. But he
had two admissions to Ice you, and one of them
i'd been, you know, to visit him for the day.

(01:13:39):
He'd been bedridden for quite a few weeks by then.
And I came home, I was just sort of de escalating,
and you know, sitting on the sofa and getting ready
for the evening, and then suddenly I saw the emergency
line was calling, and I could hear them saying his
heart rate went up to two hundred. Like Ice you

(01:13:59):
were here. Now you know, we did a crash call
and they just like talking, talking, talking, and I suddenly
just said, should I come back to the hospital and
she said yes in a tone of voice that was
like you need to get here as quickly as possible.
Got in the uber. It's a thirty minute uber ride
from my house, and messaged my best friend and said

(01:14:23):
that I've got to rush back to the hospital. He
was on the fifteenth floor, so I was like waiting
for the lift. Got up there, saw the matron coming
to unlock the door, and I just said, is he
in his room? And she said, yes, he's in his room,
but she her face looked like not good. Ran round
and saw all the machinery from ICU in the corridor

(01:14:43):
with like a hundred wires coming out of the room.
Ran into the room and just saw Robin sat up
in bed, huge smile when he saw me, and he
just said to me, when I thought this was the end,
I just kept thinking, please let me see her face
one more time. And you know, after that he did

(01:15:07):
get a bit better. But then well, in that first admission,
eventually I said to him, you know you've got to
start sitting out well. The doctor said, you've got to
sit out of bed. And the therapist had come around.
He said, I don't want therapy. I've got you, so
like I took the therapy, the reflexology lady came around.
He pretended he was asleep, and eventually I said, darling,

(01:15:29):
you've got to play the game. I cannot do this
by myself, and you can't just keep lying in bed.
You've got to sit up. So he got helped into
the chair. And that day, when I went to say
goodbye to him, I hugged him like face to face,
and I didn't quite realize that the whole time I'd
been kissing him from the side of the bed because
he'd been in bed, And when we hugged face to face,

(01:15:50):
I just burst into tears. And I had never shown
him anything but a smiling face the whole time. And
I left, and I just got this barrage of text
messages saying I'm not spending one more night away from you.
I'm wasting away in this hospital when I could be
with you. When you come in tomorrow. We're going to
tell the doctors I'm leaving. So I thought, okay, came

(01:16:12):
in the next day. It's ward round, and I was
pretty much like part of the wardround like the consultant
would say everything and then say is that okay, Tara
kind of thing, and he said, I want to I'm
leaving today. I want to be at home with my
wife tonight. And she was very clever. She looked at
me and said, what do you think, Tara, because she
knew I'd never put him in danger. But also, I'm

(01:16:33):
standing in front of the man that I love, and
I'm either going to tell him that I don't trust him,
I don't trust his decision making the person who always
always had my back, or I'm going to have to
show him that I have his back just like he
always had mine. And I said to her, I understand

(01:16:55):
why you wouldn't be in favor of this, but I
think I can manage it. And within two days he
was discharged from hospital. Yeah, off, IV's still on oxygen.
We still had to go in to have like the
bone marrow tests and get blood transfusions and platelets and things,

(01:17:19):
but he slowly started to recover. It was a slow recovery,
so normally within a week you would get the second
round of treatment. He wasn't strong enough for that. But
we got to the point where she actually said that
we could go to Hampshire, and then he stopped using
the walking stick, he stopped using the oxygen. We came
back to London for the second round of treatment. She said,

(01:17:39):
I could not have imagined you would bring him back
in as good as status he's in. But the second
round of treatment was totally brutal and it didn't work.
So he was in hospital again for a few weeks,
and then, like I said, on October fourth, I took
him home. Even then, the female consultant said to me,

(01:18:03):
the last time you took him to Hampshire, he got
so much better. If anything changes, bring him back to London.
And the male consultant gave me two syringes of bone
marry stimulating drugs and said, you cannot use this without
our permission, but if anything changes, inject him with this
and bring him back to London. So I still had

(01:18:23):
like a glimmer of hope, which I shouldn't really have had.
And like I said, he lived for three and a
half weeks instead of two. Yeah, and like right towards
the end, because he was in a hospital bed on
an air mattress, he said, like maybe you could like

(01:18:45):
come and lie on the bed with me, and when
you couldn't move, he couldn't raise a glass of water
to his lips or anything, but he somehow like moved
his arm. So I always used to sleep like on
his chest. And then after a few seconds he said,
I'm just really claustrophobic. And you know, I'd like had
to put the rails up to stay in the bed
because it was so small. I was going to fall out,
and I said, it's okay, darling. And I think that

(01:19:08):
I think that was his way of saying goodbye to me,
because he died two days after that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:17):
What's on your mind?

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
It's like very sad. I don't want him to get forgotten.
I've dedicated like my book to him. But I also know,

(01:19:45):
because we've had this conversation that there's something there's something
there's that there's still like something that I have to
do in this life, which was the reason that I
had to stay. So yeah, I think there's like a

(01:20:08):
purpose to fulfill that Robin wants me to. So that's
what I'm going to do.

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
How do you think about falling in love again? Because
I played out the horrific thought myself and my own
life of losing my partner, and how difficult it would
it appears to be from this vantage point to fall
in love again and meet people and to think about
those things again, like how how do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (01:20:36):
So I actually experienced unconditional love, which I didn't believe in.
So the first time Robin said to me, I love
you unconditionally because I had some baggage from a previous relationship,
I said, don't say that, because I don't think that exists.
And he never said it again, but every day for

(01:20:59):
the rest of us, if he showed me that it
was true. So at some point I just knew it
was true. I would say, you know, obviously people say
things like he would want you to be happy, and
you know, I was still wearing my wedding rings for
over two years, and you know, even some of his
friends said, you don't need to wear them anymore, but
I said I want to, and I wore them for

(01:21:19):
as you know, as long as I still needed to.
I I'm open to receiving love, but I'm not going
to go and look for it. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:21:33):
Why.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
I don't know. I mean, it's not really my style anyway,
but I think I've been so lucky with what I've
had that I don't I don't I'd be okay if
I didn't like have something like that again, And obviously
I'm too young to like not want to have that again.

(01:22:02):
But I also feel quite vulnerable, so I'll just like
see how things go.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
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if I told you I'd been through what you've been through,
and I asked you the question, should I go and

(01:24:19):
look for love again? What advice would you give to
me if I'd lost my partner and I was four
years now away from that? Really? Yeah, well, what advice
would you give me about love?

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
I think it's very personal. I think, you know, if
you want to be in a relationship, that's absolutely fine.
If you're not sure, that's fine too. I think there's
different levels of how long it would take people. I
do know that when you know, the majority of voices
were around me were sort of saying like, it's okay

(01:24:52):
for you to do that again. That one of my
friends who's engaged to someone who was a widower, he
said to me at the time, I'm telling you right
now two years is not it's not long enough. And
that felt like a relief. So obviously it's almost another
two years now. I you know, I think I believe
that if love is meant meant for me, then it

(01:25:13):
will come to me. So I'm not I'm not. I'm
just calm about it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):
How are you different? Like? What are the very material
or like very obvious ways that you're a different person
on the other side of this, What would your friends
say if I said, how is tire different?

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
Well, I think they would say that I'm a lot
more like fragile and vulnerable because they're like very, very
protective of me. Still, I know they would. I know
what they would say because some of them have said it.
And I didn't really like to hear this at first,
but they said you were going to be able to
help so many people.

Speaker 1 (01:25:52):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
The first time someone said that, I was like, I've
been a doctor, I've been a coach. I you know,
my whole like personality is about helping people. I didn't
need my husband to suffer horrifically and die so that
I can help people. But now I do actually feel
that I can and I want to And.

Speaker 1 (01:26:09):
What do you want to help them with? And who
do you want to help? People that are grieving.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
Not just people that are grieving. I think, you know,
people are struggling and suffering in different ways, and people
really really want to feel seen, And I think that's
like an important place where I would love to do something.

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):
I think I've got more and more curious about the
idea that I might be wrong about subjective reality and
how I see things. And so I wondered if if
there's a clearer definition of the subjective reality that you see,
Like do do you think we are these spirits that
inhabit are? And then like why is there is there
reason why I've come into this body? Is there some

(01:26:53):
bigger camic purpose as to why I've I live? This
ultimate question of like what is the meaning of life
in the worldview that you have? Like what is the point?
What is the point? Why did I need to live?

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
I don't know if I can answer that. I'm I'm
just going to say, like what's coming to my mind?
Which is so like you and I might never have
met in our lives, right, and for some reason we did,
and we had never met before I did the podcast

(01:27:28):
with you last time, But people cannot stop talking about
like the level of chemistry as if we'd known each
other our whole lives, and I've always said I felt
like I was talking to my little brother. And then
that episode goes on to have like the number of
views that it does. I don't believe that that's random
or a coincidence. I think and there's a reason for that.

(01:27:50):
And for me, in a way, you were the worst
person for me to come and tell this story to
you for the first time, because you were the most
skeptical person of all the podcast hosts that I can
think of that I'm going to go on. So there's
obviously some importance to that. I can't explain it. I
didn't come here with all the answers. I'm just lucky

(01:28:11):
enough to be someone with credible qualifications that's had a
you know, an experience that most people don't talk about
that I can open up for people. That's I would say,
like all that it is, but I want to add
something else that I'm feeling as relevant as well, which
is because of my friendship group and the kind of

(01:28:31):
conversations that we have. I wasn't allowed by my publisher
to include personal stories from my friends. I had to
saw stories from people I had either never met or
only met once, or were friends of friends So every
personal story that you read in the Signs, which has
the person's real name and it is written by them

(01:28:52):
and gifted to me for this book, are people that
I don't know, and they're all saying the same thing.
They see, you know, light disturbances when they think of
their lost loved one, or they get unmistakable signs or
Robin's visit them. Yeah, I haven't made that stuff Hart like.

(01:29:13):
There's something to it. I don't know exactly what it is.
I hope I find out before I die, but maybe
I'll only find out after I die.

Speaker 1 (01:29:20):
I don't know, And is there any meaning to all
this stuff? It's kind of going back to the question
I aske second, because you said you think we met
for a reason, and one could hazard a number of
reasons as to why that was. Maybe it was because
you're going to go on and to help so many
people and reach so many people with an important message, whatever,
But I don't know. This is my curiosity trying to
reach a conclusion, which is for why, like why are

(01:29:44):
humans here? Why doesn't my dog Pablo have or does
he have the same capabilities of seeing signs and communicating
with Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:29:52):
He's got more capabilities than you in many respects.

Speaker 1 (01:29:55):
I mean you talk about that in the book, right,
you talk about pets and animals.

Speaker 2 (01:29:58):
Yeah, okay, talk about that a little bit. So dogs
and cats can smell certain diseases, and they can smell
imminent death. So there's something called hyperosmia, which is in humans.
It's the ability to smell more than the normal range.
So there's a very famous nurse called Joy I think

(01:30:19):
it's Milner, who smelt her husband's Parkinson's disease years before
he was diagnosed, and her ability to smell that disease
has caused a new swab test to be created that
takes chemicals from the skin of people to predict if
they're going to get Parkinson's disease. So there are some
outliers in humans that have you know, they're called super smellers.

(01:30:40):
For example. We're not all capable of that, but some
people are blind. People rewire the visual cortex of the
brain and the occipital lobes here for echolocation. Humans aren't
built for echolocation, bats and dolphins are, but people who
are blind can use up the unused call visual cortex

(01:31:02):
to learn how to recognize how close objects are. To
them by how long it takes sound to bounce back
from surfaces. So basically, animals have senses that we don't have.
Some very rare people can have some of those senses
that animals have that most humans don't. We're also capable

(01:31:22):
of rewiring some of our neurons for senses that replace
ones that we don't have. And I'm just going to
bring us full circle, you know, kind of where we
started with, can you suspend your disbelief by understanding that
there are lots of things that we can't prove at
the moment, But you know, we sort of sciences on

(01:31:44):
the quest to push boundaries, which is that Russell Foster
suggested not that the only cells on our retinas are
not just rods and cones, which are for vision, but
there is a different type of cell that senses the
passing of time through the light dark cycle, and you
know that's how we create our circadian rhythms. He was

(01:32:06):
ridiculed by scientists who said, we've been studying the eye
for one hundred and fifty years, and you think there's
a new type of cell that we've missed out in
all that time, and you've found it, and sure enough,
now there are identified cells called melanops and cells which
blind rodents can still keep to the circadian rhythm because

(01:32:28):
they can sense the changing light and dark cycle. But
if you put opaque contact lenses on them, they drift
off the circadian rhythm. So I'm not going to be
able to give you an answer at the end of
this podcast. But maybe that's the beauty of everything that
we're not at the end of knowing everything that we
need to know. But there's a lot of really interesting,

(01:32:50):
big question marks.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
Do you think we'll ever figure out these answers? Do
you think science will ever get there? Do you think
they'll come in down when we make discoveries that prove
that many of the things that you write about in
the Signs are in fact true, like scientifically justifiable, repeatable.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
Yeah, I think so, but I don't think we'll be
here at that point.

Speaker 1 (01:33:18):
I'm always just fascinated because you know so much about
neuroscience and the connection of not just neuroscience but spirituality
and then also human psychology in general. The thing I'm
always fascinated about with you is that you're able to
tell me things that I didn't know, Like you said
to me last time about looking into someone's left eye
and the fact that sweat leaks through the skin and

(01:33:39):
that mental cycle sync up, and these are all things
that are like really actionable that have helped me to
look at life differently. But also now, I don't think
i've looked in someone's right eye in the last two years,
especially when they're like annoyed or something. So is there
anything else like that that you've become curious about or
discovered or talked about since we last saw each other
that might be pertterns.

Speaker 2 (01:34:00):
I think we've discussed it, which is like noticing beauty
that's been a real game changer for me. That's like
gratitude to the next level.

Speaker 1 (01:34:07):
And that's an active practice of going through life looking
for something beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:34:11):
Well it was, but then it becomes a habit. Yeah, okay,
and it's producing oxytocin, just like gratitude practice does. So
obviously it's kind of self rewarding, so then you naturally
want to do it more and more. But I notice
I point it out to people more as well now,
which is that I'm obviously trying to like create a
bit of a like crowd effect, not consciously, but I
just can't help myself, like if I see something really pretty,

(01:34:33):
then I'll say, oh, like, you know, did you see that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:37):
Certain people do that often, they do seem to be
the happiest people. My girlfriend does that all the time.
She should like like stop the car because there's a
flower that we need to go spend forty five seconds
looking out across the other side of the road, and
to a lot of people, it's just a flower, and
we've kind of almost become used to, Yeah, seeing howers.

Speaker 2 (01:34:54):
Well, that's habituation. Yeah, So even if you walk past
like an amazing tree or an amazing building every day,
eventually you'll just not notice it because you're habituated to it.
So saliency is, you know, keeping yourself primed, like what
I call the art of noticing.

Speaker 1 (01:35:10):
And where are you right now in terms of your
journey of grief?

Speaker 2 (01:35:15):
I mean, much better? It's the first thing I need
to say, because obviously it's been a long and dark time.
I know that I know I'm not there yet because
there is a part of me that is like afraid
to let my light really shine.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
Explain that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
I think I sort of touched on it before that
if I feel like if I you know, if I
like throw myself back into my career now because I've
had quite a few years out and it becomes really
successful that there's a level of guilt associated with that,
but you know, at least I'm aware of that. I've
had a few conversations with close friends about it. I

(01:35:59):
have quite a timeline ahead of me because of publication
and book promo and then like you know, next things
that we might do. So I think I just need
to keep working on that as things unfold. I know
it's wrong, but it's how I feel at the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:36:19):
We meet up again in ten years time. Obviously we're
going to see each other before then, but so we
get together in ten years time, and this next season
of your life has been a great success. What happened.

Speaker 2 (01:36:29):
Wow, I got over myself and I put myself out
there and like really, Sean, and it actually did really
help loads of people.

Speaker 1 (01:36:42):
Look at the smile on your face as you say.

Speaker 2 (01:36:43):
That, Yeah, I really want to say thank you to
you as well for everything.

Speaker 1 (01:36:53):
The feeling is mutual, you know, it really is. You
were transformative for this show, and everywhere I go still
today people come up to me and tell me about
how that conversation helped them, it inspired them in some way,
but also help them understand, as you said earlier in
this conversation, that all that we know isn't all that
there is to know. Yeah, and just that you know,

(01:37:14):
I've tried to play a bit of a skeptic throughout
this conversation. I am naturally skeptical. But the other thing
that's that from being a podcast, the other thing that
happens to you is you become more open minded. It's
almost this paradox if you think you're going to learn more,
but actually, through the conversations I've had, I've realized that
there's so much that I don't know. And actually that's
forced me more into an agnostic position than I was before.

(01:37:36):
And what I mean by that is it's forced me
into a state where I can't fall into the trap
of thinking I know things.

Speaker 2 (01:37:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
So this is also why I find it hard to
commit to any belief, like a religious belief or atheism,
because there's I continually see it over and over again,
and someone will say something to me and I'll be skeptical,
and then I'll reflect, and then I'll look at the
research or the science or whatever, and I'll change my mind,
and if you change your mind that many times, you
realize that your mind should probably not be fixed to

(01:38:04):
any position.

Speaker 2 (01:38:05):
I love that. I'm so proud of you for hearing that.
That's like an incredible thing for people to hear.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
But it's true, and I hope that of my audience.
You know, I've sat with my team while ago and
I was saying, you know, what DOAC stands for? It
stands for divers y, I get it, but it also
stands for people that have that are dreamers, that are
open minded, which is the o that are in search
of increasing their awareness and that could be in any
definition that you want to describe, but whether it's the
awareness of health, psychology, who they are. And this see

(01:38:33):
is about connection. So that's really like hearing your stories
makes me feel like me too. I feel that too.
I'm struggling in that way too. So that's the framework
that I think about the show. And that's also why
I try and remain open minded to all things that
I hear and let people speak. I've never actually said
that before, but there it is, guys, and that's why

(01:38:54):
I'm so compelled by this conversation today. Of course, like
I'm skeptical, like I think skepticism is healthy. Yeah, but
I'm also open minded, and that means that I'm willing
to take what you've said to me today and to
investigate it and run the experiments in my own life.
And if I am open minded, maybe I'll receive some
evidence for myself. Yeah, so thank you, Thank you for

(01:39:15):
doing what you're doing. And also, you know, as you
said earlier, it's much easier and safer in life just
to sit in a box of the known, like you're
not going to get any arrows. But it's when people
through history are dead to say that maybe the Earth
revolves around the Sun, or that maybe the Earth isn't flat.
They've taken the arrows. But that's pushed us forward as

(01:39:36):
a society into a better way of being. So I
always applaud those that have the guts to ask questions,
you know. So I hope that's the audience that I've cultivated.
I hope they're not too narrow minded or too fixed,
but I'm sure they will debate and share their anecdotes

(01:39:57):
in the comment section. Actually really looking to I'm really
looking forward to reading the comments section on this particular
conversation because I know what it's going to be full
of stories and anecdotes and experiences, which I think is
going to be really enriching. But I do ask everybody
in the comments section to be open minded and empathetic
and kind actively, which means replying to people and being

(01:40:20):
kind because you know, grief, no matter what your opinion
is on it is a very delicate thing and we're
all trying to find ways to be more happier and
more connected and to deal with the reality of our experience.
We have a closing traditional on this podcast where the
last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not

(01:40:41):
knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left
for you is what is the best thing that someone
has done for you?

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):
You sure you don't make these things up?

Speaker 1 (01:40:58):
What it says everyone wants to read. It's what it
says in the book.

Speaker 2 (01:41:02):
It's got to be Robin showing me that unconditional love
really does exist.

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
Tara, thank you your new book, The Signs Beautiful Book.
By the way, thank you Beautiful book, The New Science
of How to Trust Your Instincts, will be out in September,
So if you're listening to this in September, then it's
out and I'll link it below for anyone that wants
to have a read of this book. The really truly

(01:41:32):
unique thing about you is that you blend all of
these different perspectives into your own perspective and your own
writing and your own research. And so in reading this book,
it pulls everybody in. It pulls in, I think, the skeptics,
it pulls in the believers, and it pulls them all
into the same room to confront a new possible answer
to the nature of reality that might just serve to

(01:41:54):
help so many of us. So I highly recommend everybody
gives it a read, because if you're someone that likes
to expand your mind and think beyond the known, then
this is the book, and this is the moment in
time because of all the reasons you've said about loneliness
and individualism and all these things that people need to
read books like this. So I highly I'm so excited
for it to be in the world, and I'm so
excited to hear what everybody, everybody thinks and how they

(01:42:14):
receive it. So thank you for writing such a wonderful book,
and thank you for coming back, and thank you again
for many years ago now blessing our show in a
profound way that pulled in a huge new audience, which
has set us on an incredible journey. So yeah, thank you, Tara,
Thank you. This has always blown my mind a little bit.
Fifty three percent of you that listened to this show
regularly haven't yet subscribed to this show. So could I

(01:42:38):
ask you for a favor? If you like the show
and you like what we do here, and you want
to support us, the free, simple way that you can
do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And
my commitment to you is if you do that, then
I'll do everything in my power, me and my team
to make sure that this show is better for you.
Every single week, we'll listen to your feedback, we'll find
the guests that you want me to speak to, and
we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.

(01:42:58):
Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to
your I'm inviting ten thousand of you to come even
deeper into the dire of a CEO. Welcome to my
inner circle. This is a brand new private community that
I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible
things that happen that you are never shown. We have
the briefs that are on MyPad when I'm recording the conversation.
We have clips we've never released, we have behind the

(01:43:19):
scenes conversations with the guests, and also the episodes that
we've never ever released, and so much more. In the Circle,
you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us
what you want this show to be, who you want
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inviting the first ten thousand people that join before it closes.

(01:43:40):
So if you want to join our private, close community,
head to the link in the description below or go
to DOAC circle dot com. I will speak to you there.