Shawn Stevenson: Welcome to The Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert, Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. Listen, lately I've been thinking a lot about the very nature of consciousness, you know? This is something that I've been pondering here and there for many years, but as of late I've really been thinking a lot about it. Especially when you have that quiet time to think, alright? I know that a lot of times we don't have that kind of time these days, but when I'm driving, things like that, sometimes I'm not playing music, I'm not listening to a podcast, I'm just pondering different things. And you know, if our health and wellness is really a result of our picturing of our consciousness, what is more important than learning about that? And where is our consciousness actually located? That's something I was really thinking a lot about, and then I get a call from my publicist and she tells me about this new book, and this new author. And I was like, "Okay it sounds interesting, I've been thinking a lot about consciousness." And the book is largely based on our perception of consciousness, and kind of how this whole phenomenon works to the great degree that we can figure out. And I was like, "Wow, that's really interesting that I'm getting this message right now." And so I looked into it a little bit, and I asked- because I knew that I was going to be on the road, and I was coming to San Francisco for the Take Control tour, which we're here, we're doing a couple of shows, and I had a space open. And I asked, "Okay, so where does the author live though?" And guess where? San Francisco, just so happened. And so yeah, I got a little freaked out. I was like, "This is a little weird. What does this mean?" But how often do those things happen in your life? You know, when you think about somebody, and then they send you a message or they shoot you a text. Like before- like you have the thought about them, and then they hit you up. Right? And so many different strange things, phenomena, happy accidents take place in our lives that we kind of brush under the carpet. And so this is something I've been really interested in for many years, but I'm an analytical human being. Like I want to know the science, I want to know how this stuff works. But here's the truth, and this is something I think we all need to wrap our minds and our hearts around, is that we know very little. You know? Right now, even the universe itself is about 96% empty space. It's what we call 'dark matter,' you know? There's so little, and we don't know about it. We don't know what it is, what it means, and we're trying to figure it out. Even in the realm of nutrition, we know fractions of a percent about nutrition right now. And we can package it up and make it make sense, and the stuff that we do know we can apply obviously to good fortune or to protect us from things going tragically wrong. But at the end of the day, we're still trying to figure this stuff out. And The Model Health Show is really providing a model for all of us, and other people's models, other experts on what they're doing, and frameworks that they're providing to really help take our lives to another level. You know? So I'm really excited about this episode, I'm excited about this conversation to delve in and figure out what's up with consciousness? You know? And but before we do that, listen again, being on the road, traveling so much, there's expenses involved obviously, and so one of the ways that we look to save some money is buying our food. I know this sounds crazy. Now listen, hear me out, for many years I was- we'd go into the local mom and pop nutrition stores, Whole Foods, they're great. I think Whole Foods is great, but the nickname is Whole Paycheck. Alright? For a reason. And the parking lot though. I mean, I went to a parking lot here in San Francisco. They had a guy. They had like the parking lot director guy, like he's doing the whole- he's like doing the Marine fingers and trying to get people parked because their parking lot can be crazy. But at the end of the day, this is a big barrier for us, you know? One of the reasons that we use for not investing in our health is that it costs too much, you know? So when folks are interested in eating healthier food, because of not having government subsidies, because of not having access, we tend to put a premium- because it does in many cases cost more for companies to do the right thing, which is unfortunate. But we can't really fight the system unless we're doing something about it, and voting with our dollar, and so we want to invest in these companies that are doing the right thing. And what you'll see is these bigger brands are going to start to do more of the right things, which we're already seeing. And so with that said, how do we invest in our health without breaking our own bank? For me and what my family does is we buy a lot of our food from Thrive Market, and we do that because we're saving 25% to 50% off the retail price that you pay at a place like Whole Foods, which is great. You're going to save that money and be able to put that back in your pocket to invest that money how you want. Maybe it's personal development, maybe it's shoes, you know? Maybe you've got a fetish for Jordans, you know? Or Gucci, whatever it is for you, you know? But for you, you get to keep that money and invest it how you want, versus the other option which is haphazardly spending money, cashing out, making it rain at Whole Foods. Alright? So with that said, you get 25% to 50% off and they've got everything curated for you already, the very best companies. If you're interested in gluten-free, they have all the categories of best gluten-free products, Paleo, vegan, non-GMO, whatever it is that suits your fancy. Isn't that something just really nice to say? "Suits your fancy." I'll probably never say it again, but for all of us to have a company that's looking out for us, already curating the best companies that are doing things right speaks volumes. Alright? So head over, check them out. But here's the rub, alright? You get- bonus alert. Your first purchase by going to www.ThriveMarket.com/modelhealth - together as one word, modelhealth - you get an additional 25% off your first purchase. Alright? And you get free shipping. And you get a free thirty-day membership to Thrive Market, which you're going to love, and keep that membership because it's just going to keep saving you money. Alright? So head over, check them out, www.ThriveMarket.com/modelhealth. And now, let's get to the Apple Podcasts review of the week. ITunes Review: Another five-star review titled, 'Nutritious Food for Thought,' by 110Man. "As a breast cancer survivor, I know how important my style choices are to creating good health. I stumbled upon your podcast a few months ago, and your authentic personal connection to the content you present really touched me. You and your guests have inspired me to take better care of myself, and more importantly, given me the resources to accomplish this. My results go way beyond the measuring tape and scale. I feel more centered, peaceful, and confident about how to move forward in a positive direction for my body, mind, and soul. Thank you, Shawn, for the precious gifts you've given me." Shawn Stevenson: Awesome. Thank you so much for that review. It means everything. That is so powerful, and thank you so much for making me a part of your life. And everybody, if you've yet to do so, pop over to Apple Podcasts, leave a review. Alright? Leave a review for the show. If it's bringing value to your life, please head over and do that. Alright? Let other people know that you love and appreciate the show, it'd mean a lot. Or whatever app you might be using, or if you're watching this on YouTube, you're here in the studio with us, leave a comment. Alright? Let everybody know what's up, alright? I appreciate you so very much. And on that note, let's get to our special guest and our topic of the day. Mark Gober is an author whose world view was turned upside down in late 2016 when he was exposed to world changing science. The science suggested that contrary to mainstream assumptions, consciousness is not produced by the brain. After researching extensively, he wrote, 'An End to Upside Down Thinking,' to introduce the general public to these cutting edge ideas, all in an effort to encourage a much needed global shift in scientific and existential thinking. Now this is a big reason that I decided to dive into the book and to have this conversation, is first of all the research was phenomenal, but also people who I highly respect like Dr. Larry Dossey and Dr. Dean Radin, people who I've been following and researching their work for many years, endorsed this book. And so Mark's book has been endorsed by well-known thinkers such as two-time Nobel Prize nominee, Dr. Ervin László, Harvard neurosurgeon and number one New York Times bestselling author, Eben Alexander, MD, Pixar founder, Loren Carpenter, New York Times bestselling author, Larry Dossey, and Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dr. Dean Radin. And many, many others, and again, really, really interesting. I kind of leaned into the discomfort on this and learning about it, but I'm fascinated and grateful to have you on the show today. Welcome, Mark. How are you doing? Mark Gober: Thanks for having me, Shawn. Shawn Stevenson: Let's dive in, let's talk about your superhero origin story, alright? Because this is kind of a big pivot to what your life would kind of look like, and what it was directed towards, to you getting to write a book like this. So how did this all happen? Mark Gober: If we had spoken two years ago, I wouldn't have known about many of the topics at all that I wrote about in my book. So I can start from the beginning, and I think this might be helpful to some of your listeners who have possibly a similar background to me. So I graduated from Princeton where I studied psychology, but originally I was studying economics, thought it was based too much on the assumption that people are rational agents. I said, "Okay, something's up there. We're not fully rational." So I was looking at other potential majors, thought about astrophysics because there was a great astrophysics department and I always had big questions about how the universe worked. I even met with the department head about potentially switching into that department, and I ultimately decided against it because I was on the tennis team at Princeton, Division I program, I was eventually the captain of the team, and I realized I couldn't do it. So I studied psychology, and I focused on behavioral economics and judgment decision making. So wrote my thesis on Daniel Kahneman's prospect theory. He's the author of, 'Thinking Fast and Slow,' on how biases impact our everyday decisions. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Mark Gober: In health and otherwise. Pivoted from there into investment banking. So wasn't really using my psychology background ostensibly. Shawn Stevenson: Right. Mark Gober: Starting in July of 2008. So this was right before the crisis hit. Shawn Stevenson: Oh wow. Mark Gober: I was at UBS, so one of the big investment banks. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Mark Gober: It was having problems on its own, and I was working around the clock. I was in the group that covered financial institutions, so my clients were the big insurance companies in banks. We were helping them with mergers and acquisitions and raising capital. I wasn't sleeping much at all. So any of the interests I had in college about existence, I didn't have time to do that at all. Eventually left in 2010 to join my current firm called Sherpa Technology Group. We do mergers and acquisitions, advisory, and strategic advisory for technology companies and innovative companies. That's what I do now, I'm based in Silicon Valley. That's my day job. So now to the book, because we're not talking about consciousness yet. It was two years ago when I first became exposed to these topics, and I'll say that before I got into these topics, I was very nihilistic in terms of my life outlook. I thought life had no meaning at all because if I can now explain why- I probably couldn't have explained it as well back then, but if you think that consciousness is produced by the brain- when I say 'consciousness,' I mean my awareness. I'm sitting here talking to you, Shawn. The I that is sitting here, that subjective inner experience, that's my consciousness. So if that's produced by my brain, what happens when my brain and my body shut off? Once it's dead, then the consciousness itself should also go away. So I took that very literally. Okay, that means my memories, everything is gone once I'm dead. So what is the meaning in life? I guess I could come up with meaning, but it's almost a rationalization. And I would kind of go back and forth in my mind about this, and I ultimately concluded that life didn't have meaning. So you probably didn't know this if you were talking to me, I was still a happy guy, but I think I had big questions about existence and I had a bleak outlook on life. I wasn't looking for these topics at all, and I heard some podcasts. Initially it was a podcast on a health radio show, and it was a woman who talked about being able to communicate with other realms. Very out there stuff that I had never heard of before. Didn't sound like she was trying to trick people, so I was a little confused. Like I didn't think she sounded delusional. I had studied in psychology in college, I knew what delusional people were like, she didn't sound like that. So I was interested enough to explore it a bit further, and at the end of the podcast, there was a discussion about her own podcast, this psychic woman. And so I said, "Okay, I'll listen to her podcast where she talks to other people who do these similar kinds of things." I would just put it on in the car, driving from San Francisco down to San Mateo where our office is based, and I would just listen to the episodes not thinking too much of it at first. And then it got to a point a few weeks in where I heard enough people describing a similar picture of reality that was totally counter to what I had thought was true, that I realized something was up. Because usually these people were all colluding, or there was some mass conspiracy, but I couldn't reason that was the case. And all the things they were talking about, they just didn't conform to what I had been taught. So what are some of the things they were talking about? They were talking about psychic ability, so the ability to telepathically communicate, or know the future before it happens. They talked about the idea that consciousness doesn't come from the brain at all, and that when our body dies, consciousness doesn't die. And even further, people were talking about the idea that consciousness actually precedes physical matter. That the physical world is a product of consciousness. This totally rocked my world. When I heard enough people say this, and this is another important part of it, I decided to explore myself. So I said, "Okay if these people can do things, let me try it out." So I just researched the best people that I could find, and they were able to do things that I couldn't explain. So the research was lining up with what I was seeing in my own experience, lined up with quantum physics, lined up with a lot of questions that were out there, and I realized that I had to re-think my whole life. So this was around Thanksgiving 2016, I went into the woods­- in the woods here. I basically drove back and forth for three days straight, didn't go home to see my family, because I just didn't know what to do. I didn't know who to talk to about these things, I didn't know how to think about my life, so it was a very disorienting and jarring experience, and I decided to research it further because I'm like, "Okay I have to re-think all of reality." And as I was doing that, I was telling different friends about it. People who were sort of like me, come from an either athletic or business finance background, and they were saying, "Well I've never heard of this research you're talking about." And we'll probably get into this, but this is research from the US government, from Princeton, which I didn't even know was going on when I was there. Shawn Stevenson: Right, yeah that's amazing. Mark Gober: Some high caliber people were doing this research, and friends were telling me that it was starting to have an impact on how they looked at life. Just being exposed to the questions was enough for them to start thinking about things. This was a year into my research, last July, July 2017, I was like, "Okay something's going on. I'm really interested in this stuff, it's getting through to people. Why don't I try to write something?" And prior to this, I had no intention of writing a book or of being public in any way. So Fourth of July weekend, it was a four-day weekend last year. I channeled my inner investment banker and said, I'm not leaving my apartment. I'd wake up at 7:00 AM and write until 1:00 AM. Books everywhere, did it four days in a row, and I came out of that weekend with more than half the book done, and then finished it over the next few weekends. So I come out of July 2017 with a draft of this book, and I knew it was going to have an impact on people, so I really wanted to get it out there, but I was ready to just like publish it. But I got two scientists to look at it, and they said, "Look, you should really get this to a mainstream audience because it's written for a general- a mainstream person." And I said, "Well how do you do that?" And then everyone said, "Well you need to get a literary agent." So this was a few weeks after I wrote the book, two different people talked to me about synchronicities, mentioned Bill Gladstone, who I had never heard of. But Bill, he represented the original 'For Dummies' series, 'DOS For Dummies.' He represents Eckhart Tolle and some very prominent authors in the space. So I said, "Okay, that sounds interesting." I sent him a cold email, query letter for Bill Gladstone. I think the subject line was, "Manuscript on the Next Scientific Revolution." And I sent him- Shawn Stevenson: Ballsy, I like that. Mark Gober: I sent him sample chapters and a proposal, and he got back to me the same day and he said, "Here's an agreement. This idea resonates." Shawn Stevenson: Wow. Mark Gober: So all of a sudden, I've got an agent who I think can really help, and he's very philosophically aligned. He's been a huge part of this process, so I give him a lot of credit for it. So that's the story behind it, and now the book comes out October 9th. Shawn Stevenson: Awesome, man. And I'm super happy for you in going through this process. And by the way, book deals, this doesn't usually happen like this, by the way. Which you know this now, but at the time you're just like, "Okay, you just get a literary agent." No, a lot of these folks are not even trying to talk to you, you know? But that just speaks volumes about the quality and content of what you wrote, because as you mentioned, there's research from Princeton, there's research from the US government that it's just like when you start to look at this data, it just starts to change your paradigm. And I can see why you have to learn kind of to live again in the way that you're thinking and your perception. And by the way, really quickly, you mentioned something, and folks asking those different questions, and that's what it's really about, and that's why I wanted to have you on because I want us to question everything. I want us to have the audacity to ask questions, and not to just accept assumptions that oftentimes are actually not correct, or if anything they have big gaps in them, you know? Mark Gober: Yeah, totally. And that's the way I wrote the book. Hopefully it's just to expose people to the evidence, and people can take that evidence however they want. It's just a matter of knowing that these things exist, and then reconciling it with some world view. What happened to me was after looking at this enough, and talking to the scientists which I've done, I have my own podcast coming out where I interview people like Dean Radin, Larry Dossey, Nobel Prize winner Brian Josephson who's into this stuff. You hear enough of it, and I had to chip my world view. Shawn Stevenson: Awesome. Mark Gober: So I'm hoping this podcast exposes people to new things. Shawn Stevenson: So with that said, let's kind of dive in and look at some of the science, and just the fundamental premise about what our science is based on is something called materialism. And so let's talk about the big issue just right out of the gate with materialism. Mark Gober: Yeah, so materialism is the basic thinking that underlies most of modern thought, especially in the West. And the idea is this, that 13.8 billion years ago, there was a Big Bang, and it filled the universe with matter, and when I say 'matter,' I mean like atoms. Physical stuff. When you have enough physical stuff in a big universe, you're bound to get interactions between those atoms. We call that chemistry. When you have enough random chemical interactions, you're bound to end up with a self-replicating molecule. After enough random- you're bound to get that, like DNA. And DNA, as we know, is very critical to the evolution of human beings, and human beings evolved to have brains, and from the brain, consciousness pops out. So materialism says we start with matter, we end up with consciousness. This is the big kicker that I didn't know was a kicker at the time. We have no idea how that chain of events happens, especially the step of the brain creating consciousness. We don't know how that could happen. Science Magazine has called this question the number two question remaining in all of science. The way they put it is, "What is the biological basis of consciousness?" So what does that mean in layman's terms? If I ask listeners right now to touch your arm, easy to do. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Mark Gober: Touch your leg, easy. Touch your head. Now touch your mind. Where is it, right? So this is framing the question how is it that a physical body that you can touch, you just proved it, how does it produce this non-physical consciousness or mind or awareness that we can't touch? That's the big question. We don't know what the biological basis for consciousness is. So that's what my book explores. Number one, and I think perhaps most importantly, exposes to people that this is a question, and a huge question, that affects our existence. I mean, think about how many advances we have in science. Sending people to the moon, genetically modifying biological organisms, building smartphones, but we still don't know how a brain can produce our mind. In other words, we don't know where our own mind comes from. So this is the big question that I look at. What I argue in my book- Shawn Stevenson: Oh, before you do that, I think a good exercise too, because I think a big thing is because our eyes are sitting in our heads, and we're taking in this data through our eyes and also our ears and these other strong senses, we tend to think that we live up here. But what would happen if we move our eyes down, right? Mark Gober: That's a great point. We might have a different perspective on where our perceptions are coming from. What if our eyes were at our knees, and our ears? I talk about this a bit in chapter two of my book. That's part of the reason we're anchored to thinking that the brain produces consciousness. There's another reason, which is that we know there are strong correlations between brain activity and the nature of conscious experience. So let's say someone gets into a car accident, and that person hurts the part of her brain responsible for vision, and she has vision problems afterwards. We can say, "Oh, well obviously the brain is causing her conscious experience because we affect the brain, and her conscious experience is affected proportionally." The problem with that reasoning is we can't know just because two things are related that one causes the other. In statistics it's said correlation does not imply causation. It's equally possible that there's another explanation. So if we think about- before we get to the explanation, the problem with that reasoning, and I talk about this in my book from Dr. Bernardo Castro. Imagine you have a large fire, you'll have lots of firefighters that show up, and you have an even larger fire, and more firefighters show up. Strong correlation between the number of firefighters and the size of the fire. Do we conclude that the firefighters caused the fire just because they're both occurring at the same time? So that just shows the potential error. I'm not saying it proves anything, but we just have to be mindful. We know there's a correlation between the brain and consciousness. Does the brain produce it? So that's- there are reasons that we think that the brain could produce consciousness, but the problem is we have no idea how it could ever happen. Shawn Stevenson: Exactly. And so this leads us to another perspective on it, and this is that it's actually inverted, and it's not that matter is creating consciousness, it's actually the opposite. Can you talk about that? Mark Gober: Sure. So this is the upside down thinking that I'm referring to in the title of the book, which is that okay, well we don't know where consciousness comes from, we've established that. I don't think that's even a controversial statement. It's one of the big questions in science. What if consciousness doesn't come from the brain at all? What if it doesn't come from physical matter at all? What if consciousness almost precedes the physical universe and biological organisms? What if matter is created by consciousness itself, and the body is basically a vehicle for experiencing consciousness? And this is the alternative explanation for thinking about the correlation between the brain and consciousness is the brain- let's say the brain is like a filtering mechanism or an antenna receiver. We would see the same issues in someone that harms his or her brain. They would have a disrupted conscious experience because the vehicle of experience has been affected, but it doesn't mean that the brain is producing it. So if we use the TV set analogy, which is not a precise analogy, but I think it could help. If you think about damaging an antenna on a TV set, the show that you're watching, all of a sudden it's a really scratchy show. It's muffled. But we don't conclude just because the show isn't coming up right that the TV set is what produced the signal. The signal actually exists outside of the TV set and the antenna is picking it up. So I argue that the brain is more like a filtering mechanism or an antenna type process that is a lens through which consciousness is having an experience. So in terms of identity, this is a reversal of, "I'm a body that has a consciousness," to, "No, I'm a consciousness that's experiencing a physical world through a body." And that's part of the reason I had such a freak-out when I learned about this, because it's a reversal of our own basic identity. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. So what brought you to the belief? Which first of all, a lot of things in our current paradigm with science, they're just not accurate. You know? If we're basing materialism and this idea of consciousness through materialism of a huge unknown, right? And everything is preceding off of that. We don't know how consciousness comes from matter, but yet all of our sciences are approaching it like that. That's terrible. It's a foundational screw-up. And so, but what led you to believe the difference? What led you to having the strong association that consciousness is actually creating matter? Mark Gober: I would say it comes from a variety of phenomena that point in that direction. So these things are difficult to prove, if not impossible to formally prove, but we can look at evidence and say that it points us in a direction that's more likely to be true than another. And I'm always open to new evidence because I can be swayed in other ways, too. But it's really the amount of evidence. And so what kind of evidence? First if we look at physics. So most of our day-to-day life is based on Newtonian physics. You drop an apple, it falls to the ground. Gravity makes sense. Newtonian physics has been really successful in predicting how things work in the universe, but we know that it's only an approximation. And there are a lot of things that are approximation. Our vision, for example. We can only see a small percentage of the electromagnetic spectrum, right? There's a huge- infrared light, x-rays, we can't see them, we know they exist. So our perceptions are already limited. Relating that to physics, there's a whole branch of physics called quantum mechanics, or quantum physics, that really provides a more accurate world view than the Newtonian approximation. So when you say, "Okay well this is the physics that's been proven since the early 1900s, it's well-established that this is real, and it doesn't conform to our common sense like Newtonian physics does." That's part of what points us in that direction, and there's a phenomenon in physics that addresses consciousness explicitly. The formal term is the collapse of the wave function in the double slit laser experiment. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Mark Gober: The layman's version of that is the act of observing is affecting the physical world around us. So if we think about that, that means consciousness potentially is playing a role in the physical world. So it doesn't prove that consciousness creates matter, and the studies don't necessarily prove that either, but what they teach us is that maybe consciousness is involved. And we already know that this Newtonian view of common sense reality isn't working, because I wouldn't think that consciousness, or the mind, or an observer could affect reality. If I use my common sense, I would think that, "Well the table is there whether or not I'm looking at it." And what we see in this experiment is that a particle behaves like a wave, which is meaning it's probably a percentage possibility that it's here, potentially here, and when you observe it, it becomes a particle. It becomes located in one place. That's not common sense, but that's what our physics tells us. So when we're thinking about, "Okay, what led me to this?" I think physics is a place to start. It doesn't prove anything, but I think it's a good framework. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, and the Observer Effect is what you're referring to, is well-known in science and physics. It's just one of those things that's very, very difficult, if not impossible to try to explain. But we do know that human awareness does affect the world around us. There's an experiment of Vladimir Poponin, this phantom DNA experiment. Do you know about this one? Mark Gober: I'm not familiar with it. Shawn Stevenson: So what he did was he took- they had a vacuum, which when you are doing experiments with the vacuum, basically we're taking out all of the particulate matter. There should be nothing in the vacuum. And so- except biophotons, these little packets of light that you can't really get rid of. They're everywhere. It's kind of the stuff that existence is made of. And so what they did was they inserted some human DNA into the vacuum, because they were interested to see how would these photons potentially respond to the DNA being there? And what happened was all of these photons that were just randomly scattered throughout the vacuum began to conform itself to the human DNA. And so they were like, "Wow, this is really interesting." Here's where it gets really weird. They take the human DNA out, and you just assume that these photons are just going to go back to their random organization, or lack of organization, but that's not what happened. They stayed conformed as if the human DNA was still there. The human DNA made a somewhat semi-permanent impression upon the stuff that makes up our reality. And so when I came across this study, and then I did some other research, I was just like, "How do more people not know this, that we are actually affecting the very stuff that our reality is made of?" And we think we're so isolated, we often think that we're weak, we often think that we're not capable, but it's just not so. And I'm very- that's why I'm excited to talk to you, to help to redirect our attention to know that we do affect the world around us, and we are powerful. Mark Gober: Right, and when we think about health, how are we affecting our bodies with our mind? How does our mindset affect our health? So nutrition is obviously important, but the baseline mentality underlying the person is critical too. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, absolutely. Mark Gober: So big implications there. Shawn Stevenson: You know, I would like to talk to you about- there's so much fascinating stuff in your book, but one of the things I want to start off with- because memories, right? We think that our memories- and we know certain parts of the brain are associated with our memories for sure, but these parts of the brain can be damaged or even removed, and yet people- and animals in a specific study you shared in your book, shuffling animal brains. Alright? Can you talk a little bit about that? Mark Gober: Yeah so there's a book called 'Shuffle Brain' by a scientist who was a materialist himself, and was looking at what would happen if you basically chopped up brains and put them back into elementary animals. Could they still exhibit feeding behavior where they're looking for food? And this scientist, Paul Pietsch, was looking to disprove the idea that the animal would still exhibit anything normal when you put the brain back in. And what happened was he found in salamanders that even when you chopped up the brains, put them back in, and did all kinds of things, put a tadpole brain inside, at least part of it, the animals were still able to function, which goes against this materialist idea that there's a- that the brain is producing consciousness. This gets to another idea that I talk about in the book, which is that in a number of cases, we find reduced brain functioning, or damaged brains, and heightened conscious experience. We don't see that necessarily with the little animals, although it's still remarkable. We wouldn't expect that if the brain produced consciousness they would be able to do anything. But we have other cases where the brain- like savants, autistic savants, or anyone who has incredible mathematical abilities. Rain Man is a movie that talks about a savant named Kim Peek. This is a real phenomenon that we've accepted, and these are people with highly impaired brains, and yet extraordinary mathematical abilities, or ability to remember encyclopedias and recite them, and read books. In one case was a savant can read books with- two different books with different eyes. I mean remarkable things with a damaged brain. So these are all examples of- and there's another case called terminal lucidity, and this is reported in individuals who are nearing death, often they have Alzheimer's disease, they've been out of it for most of their life for many years leading up to their soon-to-be death, and all of a sudden they snap out of it. And there's a little girl I reference in my book, she says, "It was like talking to Rip Van Winkle," and then she goes and she passes away. So what's happening? We have a damaged brain again, and some kind of conscious experience. That would conform with the idea that the brain's like a filtering mechanism, and that there's some broader reality. When we damage the filter, we sort of unlock it, and that's what psychedelics may do as well by reducing brain activity, and that's what some of the studies show. People have this enriched experience, which again conforms to the idea that maybe the brain is actually limiting what we experience, and there's a broader reality out there, and that damaging the brain in certain ways can somehow unlock it. Shawn Stevenson: Very, very interesting stuff. And by the way, so in those animal studies, it's not just the fact that they still had kind of an innate drive to eat, but their routine is what was so fascinating. They still did things a certain way that that animal was conditioned to do, or that it was doing already. Mark Gober: Right. Shawn Stevenson: And that's just nuts. Mark Gober: And this blew the scientist away. He said he had to start his intellectual life all over again because it totally- it totally messed up his materialist world view. Shawn Stevenson: I want to talk about time because this is another thing that really fascinates me, but it's something that we engage with constantly. Obviously like we're existing in this concept of time, and today more than ever we've got so much stuff going on, so people are like, "Time management." Right? Trying to do time management. But we can't manage time, it's just happening, you know? But we can manage ourselves within this construct of time, and even there's- if we even look at some of this quantum phenomenon. First actually, let's take a step back. Mark Gober: Okay. Shawn Stevenson: Let's talk about Einstein, and him calling spooky action at a distance. Is that what he called it? Mark Gober: Yeah. Shawn Stevenson: Let's talk about that. Mark Gober: Okay, so this is another phenomenon that we accept as being real. This is accepted in the physics community, but it makes no sense according to our everyday perceptions. So entanglement is the idea that two physical particles that are physically distant from one another, they mirror each other instantaneously. So basically if you affect one particle, you instantaneously affect the other one, meaning that there's no time gap. The reason Einstein called this spooky is that he thought the speed of light was the fastest anything could travel. And that's really, really fast, but it's not instantaneous. What this implies, and physicists are struggling to figure out what it actually means, one could construe this as an invisible connection, meaning that there's some kind of interconnectedness at the level of physics that's been proven that is going on that we don't see. So Einstein disliked this so much that he tried to disprove it, and he ended up actually proving its reality when he went back and did studies, and so entanglement is something that is shown to be real. As this relates to consciousness potentially, and I'm sure we'll get here, is the notion that there is an interconnectedness potentially at the level of consciousness that we are actually interconnected in ways that we can't see with our eyes. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. That's just weird, but also again, super fascinating stuff, and to see the research. And when somebody's smart, we call them an Einstein, right? And for him to have trouble with this, you know? Just like this was outside of the realm of being a physicist. And what's so really cool about your book, is you have some of the top physicists in the world who you're gathering their data, and also they're talking about this stuff, and just really investigating, having the audacity to question the nature of our reality. And so I want to talk- again, I want to talk about time, and the reason I want to talk about this is that this is where I start to feel that discomfort, right? But then again, it's just like I've had instances in my life where this has happened but I've never talked about it, you know? And with that said, so let's talk about this concept of precognition, and specifically we've got studies- well-done studies on people being able to sense- let's talk about the skin first. And you talked about that specifically. Mark Gober: Yeah, so these are studies where a typical psychological experiment is reversed in time, and what I mean by that, is we know from psychology - and I remember this from studying psychology - if you present someone with a picture, let's say it's an erotic image or something violent that we know will arouse the body, the body reacts. So the skin, it's called the galvanic skin response. They've got a response there, their pupils could dilate, you might get a response in your brain, the heart might react. We know that happens after. So the picture is shown and then we measure it. What's done in these studies is the body is measured before the picture is shown, before it's shown, and no one knows what picture will be shown because it's randomly generated by a computer. So the experiment of running the test doesn't know if it's going to be like a peaceful landscape, a mountain or a lake, something that wouldn't create some kind of bodily reaction, or if it will be some arousing picture. And what's found in these studies using statistics, and this is where there's lots of controversy, is that the body seems to respond seconds before the image is shown, and no one knows ostensibly what kind of image will be shown because it's randomly produced. So that suggests to some that the body is somehow anticipating the future, or knowing the future before anyone could know that it happens. It's like consciousness is reaching forward in time somehow, and it's happening at a very subtle level. We're having to measure these subtle things that only you can really get in a lab, and you'd have to use statistics. I've actually done one of these studies at the Institute of Noetic Sciences with Dr. Dean Radin, and he studies- this is known as pre-sentiment, where the body is sensing something. It's kind of a subset of precognition, and there was a pupil dilation thing, and different pictures are showing up, and your pupils are being measured before the picture comes up. So what does this mean about time if the future can be known before we actually know the future? And this is one of the ideas that I talk about in my book, and some other people talk about, which is the idea that consciousness not only creates matter and sort of precedes it, but it exists beyond space and time. Shawn Stevenson: Baking your noodle. So with that said, we've got the skin test, but also the heart. And was this from HeartMath? Mark Gober: Yes. Yes, so the heart response- so not just the skin, the heart responds before an image is shown. So what does that say about the heart and its role in consciousness potentially? Or just in our lives and our intuition? Like I said, pupils dilate. There are brain responses that happen before the image is shown. So there are different parts of the body that seem to be responding, and these studies have been done by many different scientists, and when you aggregate the data in a meta-analysis, it's called- you end up with a statistical effect that is small but highly statistically significant, and this is what we see in many places. And to me it actually makes sense that it would be small, because if we were precognitive all the time, then I would know the future 100% and be 100% accurate. But I'm not, so maybe there's a subtle sort of thing where I get an intuition and don't even realize it. There's an example I talk about in the book of looking at flight occupancy rates before 9/11. Fewer people on flights that day than on a normal day. Shawn Stevenson: Significantly fewer. Mark Gober: Significantly fewer. So is that an example of precognition where people subtly say, "Oh well I just don't feel like taking this flight today." Or who knows, but it could be at a subtle level. Shawn Stevenson: That is super fascinating stuff, and I've been following and looking at research from HeartMath Institute for many years, and that's where I first became aware of- and this is- I believe it's a magnetoencephalograph that they use to measure the human heart, and this kind of bioelectrical field that's produced that's actually larger than the brain. And so it's called a tube torus, and so this extends from the human body that they can see with this particular equipment, this kind of radiation that's coming from our bodies. Now we know that there's radiation coming off of us, but we can't see it. This is well-known throughout science, but the degree that the heart is expanded out, potentially even eight feet from our bodies, and that energy, that radiation is interacting with other people's radiation, and then we have this idea or faulty belief that we can't really feel other people, or like know other people, know something about them. You know, like it's just it just doesn't feel right being around this person, or this person really makes me feel good. It feels good to be around this person. It's not just the chemical feeling, there's an interaction going on. And with that said, I want to talk about more of this interaction with humanity because it's so fascinating how we're all connected, and I think this is one of the things that's really going to help to up-level us as a species, and we're going to do that right after this quick break. So sit tight, we'll be right back. Alright we're back and we're talking with the author of 'An End to Upside Down Thinking,' Mark Gober, and this is super fascinating stuff. And before the break I mentioned we're going to talk a little bit more about our connection as humans, and I want to talk first before we get to that. Stanford Research Institute Project Stargate. Alright? CIA studies on psychic activity. Like the CIA. When I started reading this stuff, and looking at these documents that you have, and going back and going to the site, I'm like, "Is this a TV movie?" You know, this is like I'm watching The Gifted, you know it's a mutant show like X-Men or whatever, and I feel like I'm in a movie now because it's like how do people not know about this? This is- some of this stuff is actually based on real facts, you know? So let's talk a little bit about that, and how you came across that information. Mark Gober: So the Stanford Research Institute is where studies on a phenomenon called 'remote viewing' were conducted, and they were conducted by the US government basically for psychic spying. So remote viewing is the ability to perceive something at a distance. That means I'm sitting here in San Francisco, and I'm able to see what's in a random location in Africa and draw what's there. There are certain people that are very talented at this, and have worked with the US government for national security purposes. And this is known that there was a program like this, there's been a debate about whether these things have been proven or not. But when you look at the data and the people that are behind it, I think it's pretty compelling. Chapter four of my book, all about the evidence for remote viewing. Jessica Utts- Dr. Jessica Utts who was the 2016 President of the American Statistics Association. She was asked by Congress and the CIA to look at this phenomenon of remote viewing, and determine whether or not it's real using statistics and looking at the studies that have been done. And she says very explicitly- anyone can download her report. She says that using the standards that we use in any other area of science; psychic phenomena have been well-established. And she basically says we should stop arguing over whether these things are real, and just spend our time figuring out how they could be real and how we can use them. So that's one example. President Jimmy Carter, he confirmed that remote viewers were used to find a downed plane in Africa that they couldn't find. So there are many examples of this when you look into it. You have laser physicists at Stanford that were doing it. At Princeton University, they looked at this phenomenon. Again, I didn't even know this when I was there. Dr. Robert Jahn, who was the former Dean of Engineering at Princeton had a nearly thirty-year lab called the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab where he showed that remove viewing is real. There are documents that the CIA has released within the last few years that were from the period during which these studies were run, and they say very explicitly remove viewing is a real phenomenon. Implications are revolutionary, and they show the scientific counsel that looked at it, and I show these documents in my book of just taking what I downloaded from the CIA's website. I mean even people that I've talked to who are familiar with these concepts- so for example, I just gave a talk in Italy at the Science and Nonduality Conference, and I showed some of those documents that you're referring to of the CIA basically saying remote viewing is real explicitly. And I saw people's faces- and these are people who have been studying this stuff for years, and some of the people in the room came up to me afterwards and said, "How did you find those documents? I didn't realize there was that much evidence for it." So that's just one piece of evidence. To me, I look at that like, "How do I reconcile what's said there? Did the CIA mess up? Is there some kind of conspiracy or are they talking about a real phenomenon?" And when we see that Princeton was doing this, and other researchers have been doing this. Stephan A. Schwartz has been using remote viewing. He's a researcher in this area to find archeological sites in Egypt, for example. Because remote viewing, believe it or not, can be done in the past, present, and future, meaning that people can perceive something not only at a physical distance but also at a distance in time. So they can see what was there in the past and what will be there in the future, and sometimes this has been confirmed. And again, Dr. Jessica Utts talks about this precognitive remote viewing as being a real thing. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, Jessica Utts was definitely a trigger point for me to really like, "Oh wow, this is-" When we're looking at the statistics, and for this to not be something that's actually confirmed, I mean we're talking about billions and billions of percent probability that this is actually something that's real, and people are doing. It's very much minority report for me, you know? It's still like super weird and freaky, but at the same time, I just want to point people back to our experience of reality right now, which is our minds as human beings are very expansive, you know? Even now as you're listening, as folks are listening, you can zoom out and take a meta perspective, and see yourself sitting, or standing, or working out, or whatever you're doing right now. You can see yourself, and you could zoom out and think about the household that you might live in and see your parents, or your kids and what they're doing, they're at daycare. You can have all of these visions that are being created by this very expansive mind. You can see into the future, you can start to look at potential things happening. You can see in the past, and the stories, and you can actually reframe them. You can change those things, and it does have a physical effect, right? When you start to do this stuff, and with that said, knowing that this can even go a step further to be something that's going on simultaneously, people being able to see things from a distance, I think it's super fascinating but it's just something- again, it needs more research. And with Jessica Utts kind of pointing to like, "We've got the statistical data that this is real, let's put some more energy and attention into figuring out how it's working, and if we can make sure that we're doing this for our benefit and not like taking down humanity with some kind of weird spy movie situation." Mark Gober: Right, we can use it to enhance our own abilities to make the world better, to make our lives better. But another point I should add here is that just like in sports, you have Michael Jordan who's an amazing basketball player, and then you have an everyday person who can dribble a basketball. It seems to be similarly situated with psychic abilities like remote viewing where people- there are some superstars that the government seems to have hired who can do these things that are crazy to me and you. I've never remote viewed anything before, but apparently- Shawn Stevenson: I've got a remote control. Mark Gober: Right. Shawn Stevenson: You know what I'm saying? Change the station, drive a car. But yeah, remote viewing? No. Mark Gober: That's the closest I've gotten, too. But it seems like it's distributed in a way that some people are really good. So it's hard for the normal person who hasn't done these things before to conceptualize it, but if the brain is like a filter of consciousness, then some people are better able to unlock that filter, just like in anything else they're more skilled, then it's conceivable at least that some people could have extraordinary abilities, whereas other people aren't quite as good at it. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. And so folks listening, you know I'm a very analytical person, very science minded, so if this bumps up against and makes you feel a little uncomfortable like it did for me as well, just do your own research. Like have the audacity to suspend disbelief, and just look into the data, because it's really, really fascinating, and it's also a little bit troubling because we have limits on our thinking of what's possible. Like we can make freakin'- like we can make Incredible Hulk, right? Something shows up on the screen based on all of these different things that are technologies that you can't even see, you know? It would seem like magic if it was even 100 years ago to our ancestors, but today we accept it as just, "Oh this is normal." You know, we've got all of these different waves, like we're surrounded right now. We're surrounded by all these different radio frequencies. We just need something- a receptor to pick it up. It's always there, always present. So again, just again, if this is something that might bump up against those beliefs, have the courage to just take a look into it, because I think it's really fascinating. And so I want to shift gears now and talk about mind-to-mind communication. For me, I saw- this was a while back, maybe about ten years ago. But Princeton University study, they found that the human brain itself syncs up when other people are in communication, and they just have a basic rapport. Our brain waves start to sync up and it starts to make me think about this potential like hive mind, or like how humans can kind of collaborate and be on the same page. And this is a phenomenon that's known, it's very well-known, but this is taking it a little bit further, so let's talk about that. Mark Gober: Yeah, so relating this back to the physics we talked about earlier. Dr. Dean Radin has a theory, it's called- he has a book also called, 'Entangled Minds.' So it's using this idea of entanglement- quantum entanglement which is proven and using- applying it to the mind meaning that we're connected in some way. So when we think about phenomena like mind-to-mind communication, some would call that telepathy, it might make sense in that context. So what are some of the studies done on that? I had never heard of these before I looked into it. There's a study called the Ganzfeld Experiment, and this has been replicated by dozens of experimenters over many decades, and Dean Radin in his most recent book 'Real Magic,' he talks about categories of psychic or psy-phenomena that are six sigma statistically, meaning that the odds of they're just happening by chance are more than a billion to one. And this is one of those phenomena, remove viewing is another one, really good statistics. This telepathy experiment is another one. So this is- I mean something that maybe all of us can relate to when we get to it. But let's just imagine that I'm sitting in a room in what's called a Ganzfeld state, where I'm given headphones playing relaxing music, I'm put into a super relaxed state, almost meditative. You're in another room, and the experimenters give you a picture, and they say, "Hey Shawn, I know this sounds crazy, but I want you to mentally send what you're looking at to Mark while he's in this relaxed state in the other room." So you're sitting there 'sending' this image to me mentally, telepathically, and then I come out of my relaxed state, and I'm given four pictures to choose from. And you'd expect if there were no effect at all that I would guess, or whoever is in my seat would guess correctly one out of four times. Shawn Stevenson: Right. Mark Gober: 25%. What's found over many, many studies is that it's closer to 32%. So when you run the statistics on this, it's a massively statistically significant effect, and because it's been done so many times, there's something going on. But when I think about it, it makes sense because I'm not 100% telepathic, and these are normal people who do these studies. These are not people who the government's testing who are superstar Michael Jordan psychics. These are everyday people. It makes sense because sometimes let's say I think of somebody and then they call. You referenced that earlier. But it's a subtle thing. So it's like with the 32% versus 25%, it's like a little bit of information's getting through sometimes, and that conforms with my everyday experience of I'm not 100% telepathic, but sometimes I have these instances where it's like, "Was that random or did I know something before it happened?" Shawn Stevenson: Nuts. I'm thinking about when I was leaving the studio the other day, the piano player for the band Journey walked in, and he was there to record something. And I was just like, "Oh, that's really interesting." And of course that song, "Don't stop believing." And I was like, "Oh that's pretty dope." It's the super classic, just that vibe. And so we left there, and we went to play miniature golf, it was on my birthday. And you know, they're playing all this random stuff, and then that song comes on, right? And it was just like the probability of them playing this song of all the different songs in the universe, in the world, just kind of freaked me out. And then again, where did it happen the next time? I went to a speaking event, I spoke at an event the following day, I walk in, that song is playing at that exact moment when I'm just coming in the back. Like they're not playing it for me to come on stage, I walk in the building, and I'm just like, "What are the odds?" Right? What are the odds? It's like something put me in the space for those synchronistic events to take place, right? And so all of these little interesting things take place, but also us being connected as humans, and for us to be aware of this, that who are the people that you are allowing to have impressions upon you? Because that can potentially have an impact on your life. And what is the energy and the perceptions that you're putting out to the world? Because you are affecting the people around you as well. So this is super fascinating stuff, there's so much that I want to talk with you about. But I want to wrap things up a little bit here and just encourage people to check out your book. So your book, you titled it, 'An End to Upside Down Thinking.' Why'd you give it that title? Mark Gober: It relates to this idea of materialism, which starts with physical matter and says that consciousness through our brain comes out the other side. And what I'm arguing is that that's upside down. That consciousness is first, and you'll see in the preface of my book, I have triangles that start- these are from Dean Radin actually, and I've adapted from his design where matter is on the bottom, and at the top of the triangle you get consciousness. What I'm saying is that consciousness is on the bottom. Shawn Stevenson: Interesting. Very, very powerful stuff. So if you could, could you let everybody know where they can connect with you online and where they can find your book? Mark Gober: My book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and where books are sold. Shawn Stevenson: Awesome. And so if you're getting this when this episode first comes out, it might be on pre-order, but get it. It's going to be hot. This is a paradigm shifting life-changing book that is really, really written very well, and it speaks to the science mind in all of us so we can start to make a little bit of sense of this. And so just thank you so much for all the awesome work you put into the book. And final question I've got for you; what is the model that you're here to set for other people with the way you live your life personally? Mark Gober: Great question. So I'm really not trying to tell people how to think or how to live their lives, but I'm trying to take a very honest approach to data, and to look at things objectively, because like I learned in behavioral economics in college, that we can have biases that steer us in a certain direction if we're not careful. So I like to look at things very objectively. I would say from the scientific lens, that's one way I'm looking at things that people might resonate with. Another is kind of a totally new world view for me, which is this notion that consciousness is the basis of all reality beyond space and time, and furthermore that it's entangled so that we're part of the same consciousness and actually connected on a more fundamental level. So I think I always used to treat people well, that was an important part of my life, but this is suggesting that at the core level we're connected and really the same. So I think that has had a change and an effect on how I look at other people and just the world around me. Shawn Stevenson: Awesome. Yeah, you do have this energy that you're giving off of you care, you're a good person, and just thank you so much for being you, and for stepping into the discomfort, and writing this book. Mark, you're awesome. Thank you. Mark Gober: Thanks, Shawn. Appreciate it. Shawn Stevenson: Everybody, thank you so much for tuning into the show today. I hope you got a lot of value out of this. Again, have the audacity to ask questions, alright? Question everything. Questions are really one of the big governors or directives for our minds, right? Our minds are really operating on the questions that we ask. Constantly this is going on all the time, and you can ask questions that empower you, or you can ask questions that disempower you. You know? "Why is this happening to me?" "Why don't they like me?" "What's going on with my weight and my health?" "Why is this not working?" Instead of asking, "What is it that I need to learn from this situation?" "How is this here in my life to help me to grow?" And then digging into the deeper questions, you know? "Why am I here?" And kind of get into the nature of reality and the meaning of life. These are all interesting questions to ask, and scholars have been pondering this for centuries. But we're still all trying to figure this out, and the good news is that we're in this together, and we get to help and lift each other up, and I'm very excited about that. So you know, from my experience and the song that was following me at the miniature golf and at the speaking event, "Don't stop believing," alright? Ultimately that's what it's all about. Alright? So we've got some incredible guests and incredible episodes coming up for you, so be ready. Alright? Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to www.TheModelHealthShow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes, you can find transcriptions, videos for each episode, and if you've got a comment you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much. And take care, I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.