45 Forward #245 - Pure Unlimited Love - The Seven Paths to Aging Well

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And if you get totally possessed by the I mean,
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the politics of the world is important, but it's not
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ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is pure unlimited love. And if
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you're driven away from that spiritually by such morose and
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threatening politics, it's just very bad for you, but it's
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very bad for the people around you.
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Hello, everyone, I'm Ron Roell, the host of forty five Forward,
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where my mission every week is to help you make
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the second half of life even better than the first.
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Today we're talking about pure unlimited love. That's a really
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welcome idea today, especially at a time when there's so
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much talk about political division and violence and hate speech.
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It's also the title of a new book by doctor
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Stephen Post, who is my guest today. Stephen's the director
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of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care Bioethics at
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Stonybrook University School of Medicine in New York. He's had
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a really fascinating career and he's what he's widely known
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for is his unique perspective on the human side of
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medicine and the interface of spirituality and science. Today, Steven's
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going to explain what he means by pure and limited love,
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and not only that he's going to break it down
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into seven main paths, from things like the path of
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healing with kindness to honoring the spirit of freedom, and furthermore,
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we're going to talk about how you can experience this today, now,
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today and as we age. So now let's welcome our show,
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to our show, doctor Stephen Post Stephen, welcome to the show.
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Thank you, Ron. It's always a pleasure to see you.
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It is.
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It's always great seeing Steven. So this is a return
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visit for you, and they're always one is better than
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the next. So before we dive into your book, let
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me hear a little bit of a story about how
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you got to this, because you've covered this for a
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long time. I remember you know, I know even as
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a young man, how you wrote a book about I
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think it's called God in Love on Rude eighty and
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so this is your journey after graduate school. So let's
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hear a little bit about the story behind Pure Unlimited Love.
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Well, Rude eighty is a bit of an origin story,
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you will, but it is true that I was very
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interested in great spiritual classics even as a high school
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student in conquered New Hampshire. Pat Saint Paul's and while
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the other guys were off playing hockey, I used to
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be reading all these incredible classic narratives and sacred texts
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about love. I would be peripatetic. The woods were beautiful.
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I love the fall leaves, and I would just walk
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on the paths and I would read these things.
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And people we're very accepting of it. I found.
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So that was interesting and I was even encouraged. So
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that's the whole story, really, where the beginning was, and
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I think it was something to be untapped. It was
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a bit of a calling for me to study higher
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ideas of love. Not the love of chocolate, although I
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can't resist chocolate.
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I was thinking chocolate it is, and.
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Not necessarily the love of designer genes, although I liked
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designer jeans.
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My wife loves them.
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But something deeper, something more universal, something that is associated
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with the great, great spiritual traditions of all types. And
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I went to read college in Oregon. Steve Jobs happily
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slept on my floor a few times, and I read
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the autobiography of a Yogi, and then he left that
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He went to India to an ashram, and I never
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saw him again, but we did correspond once by email.
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In later years, But the kind of thing he was
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talking about at that time was this universal love. It
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was really not just unconditional love, because that suggests something
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that's really quite limited to interpersonal relations.
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But unlimited love is more cosmic. It opens up the
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ideas of.
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Ultimate reality and the whole notion of physics and dialogue
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with spirituality. So that's the kind of wide open perspective
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that I think is important. And I had a good
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fortune of going to the University of Chicago Divinity School
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and studying psychology there too, so I met a lot
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of the great historians of all the religions of the world,
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from Murcia, Eliotte too, you name it.
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And then.
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I met Sir John Templeton actually at a certain key
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point in my life, and he more or less took
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me under his wing. And he is the one who
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really coined this term pure unlimited love and a pamphlet
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he wrote, but he always wanted me to develop it
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because it wasn't even it wasn't a book. It was
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just kind of a set of fairly esoteric ideas.
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Tell us a little bit more about Templeton.
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What was he? John Templeton was called the Tennessee mystic.
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He was from Winchester, Tennessee, and he actually went to Yale.
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He might like to know a little a few years
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before you did. But he was a great human being.
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He was a great investor, but he was much more
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interested in world mysticism, spiritual and he was interested in
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other things too, including positive psychology and the ultimate reality
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that is pointed to by high level mathematics and physics.
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And so actually this afternoon, I'm going into Lincoln Center
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to attend the awarding of the Templeton Prize. He's been
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dead since two thousand and eight, but the prize continues
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on and he can go to people as varied as
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Jane Goodall and Mother Teresa, to great great physicists and mathematicians,
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great biologists, but anybody who is contributing to the development
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of knowledge and is interested at the interface of spirituality and.
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Science.
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So he wanted he wanted to move religion forward because
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he thought that people would just get more and more
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tired of sort of the old doctrines.
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And this is sort of what you've been doing too,
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but again blending science and spirituality.
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Yeah, very much. So.
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I met Sir John at a conference in Northern Virginia
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in about nineteen ninety or so, and the first thing
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he did when we sat down in the foyer was
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asking what I thought about love. We had a great conversation,
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and then I guess by the time nineteen ninety eight
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rolled around, we had a big conference together at MIT
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on Science, Empathy and Altruism, which was very well attended
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by a lot of world famous researchers but also practitioner.
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And then I was sitting in my office at Case
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Medical School and he sent me a fax which said,
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we need to start and institute to study the highest
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human asset, which is unlimited love, and why don't we
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start a program on that? And I said, well, it
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sounds good to me. Of course I was at Case
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and I was doing a lot of genetics with Alzheimer's
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at the time, and I said, maybe we should just
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to make it a little more scientific, quote the Center
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for Creative Altruism.
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And then he faxed me back.
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He didn't email you facts, and he said, no, I
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think unlimited love up to eight point nine million dollars.
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And I did what anybody would do. I happily, very happily,
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authentically fax back. I said, Sir John, I love that language,
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it jumps right off the page. And he was so correct,
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because it's love that resonates with all these great traditions.
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It's not algorithm, which is a Johnny Come Lately term
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or comfortable for social scientists and evolutionary biologists. But he
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wanted a program on love that would move us forward,
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and he asked me to be the president of it
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and to build it, and I'm happy to have done.
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So.
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We've done a lot of funding, of great research proposals,
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lots of big conferences, and lots of books, and pure
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unlimited love is my most recent and I think also
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by far the best.
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But when we talk about it, so I find that term,
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you know, interesting. The script is pure unlimited, so unlimited
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in what sense.
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Limited in that most human love. In fact, I would
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say all human love possible, exception maternal love at its
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very best, but even that has its limits. But a
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kind of love that is perfectly wise. You know, parents
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can love their children, but maybe unwisely they'll over indulge
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their kids, and then the kids will not have any
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sensibility about the needy and and and those in the
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world who are really imperiled. So you want to love
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your children in a way that allows them to understand
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that the love for the neediest is important, and that
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they can use their gifts their talents to serve others.
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You know, a love that is truly universal, not just focused.
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Myopically on the nearest and the dearest, although that's inevitable
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in most people's lives. Yet you can also lean outwards
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toward all humanity, and that's that's a.
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Point of importance. Also, a love that is relatively stable.
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It doesn't just go.
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Up and down, up and down here and there, disappear
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with the latest moment of anger. But a love that's
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really steady and dependable and loyal. So these are all
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aspects of love that I associate with the divine, because
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no human being is perfect in these respects. We all
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have our moments. But somehow the divine love what the
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Hindus call the Supreme. Whatever your tradition is, it doesn't
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matter to me. Could be God with a small G,
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or it could be a capital G, or it could
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be higher power. But somehow or another, this is an
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ultimate reality in the universe that has, among other aspects,
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this profound, universal and lasting love.
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Now I know that you also talk about it. It's
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that you can form specific about it. You're describing it
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in some respects. But then you also have seven paths
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to this love, which I think is important. So let's
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just run through them quickly. I might, you know, talk
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more about one or the other, but let's just let's
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just itemize what are the seven paths that you identify, the.
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Seven paths of love, which I think bring us to
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inner peace. The first one is may you give and glow.
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And you know, I've done a lot of work on
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the internal emotional benefits of being a giver, giving with kindness,
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so that's in there. We've even done national studies on
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that topic with Gallup and other organizations, and they've really
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I think I was the first person maybe to point
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out how even if you don't have reciprocation, you can
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still have a lot of internal benefits which I won't
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describe quite yet, that come from just getting away from
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the self and the problems of self and focusing the
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mind on the needs of others.
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Right. I think that's Our first show together was years
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ago around Thanksgiving, and then we talked about gratitude. Yeah, people,
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people can jump on my forty five forward dot Org
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website and look up that first show. Anyway, go ahead, absolutely.
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The next one is may you heal with kindness, And
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that's about how important kindness as well as empathy and compassion,
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and they're all a little different are for all of us.
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And it's not just about being a professional healer, if
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you will, a doctor or nurse and for but it's
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the fact that we can all approach in our actions
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with the intention of healing.
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And that is most evident in.
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Kindness and tone of voice in some kind of curiosity,
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gentle curiosity, not harsh curiosity. There's a difference, but gentle
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curiosity about people. Empathy is that sort of more deeply
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present affective element where people feel that you're really understanding
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them and with them and supportive. And then compassion is
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empathy in the context of suffering, and it includes an
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intention to alleviate that suffering if it's possible.
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So we teach that.
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Here at the medical school and we do pretty well
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with it, but students really respond. And then the third path,
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may you follow your callings, and that means don't get diverted,
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don't get pulled away from the things that you feel
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are dearest to your soul.
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And your heart.
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It may be a little more prestigious institution over there,
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but you're not doing what you know you should be doing.
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It may be a little more money over there, but
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just don't chase the bucks. In the end, you're better
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off over the course of your life if you really
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stick with your callings and a true friend, as Aristotle said,
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kind of person you want to have on your board
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of directors, someone who's willing to tell you when you're
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getting off course. And then the fourth path, may you
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raise kind children. And there's a lot of science about
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that now that's in the book, and it's very important
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because if you can raise kind children, you can be
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very happy with their life and indirectly with your life.
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It's not always an easy thing to do.
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There are so many negative cultural pressures, and so the
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book is very practical about the techniques that have come
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along in the last fifteen years to help parents raise
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their kind children.
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And then fifthly.
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May you know the one mind that's the more mystical side. Sixthly,
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may you cherish the gift of nature. I mean, have
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you ever noticed if you go to some meditational center
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in Northport or Port jeff or someplace there will probably
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be some wind chimes and a little water flowing, and
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you'll have much colorful autumn leaves to behold around you.
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So there's something about the inner piece that comes from
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our joining with nature and coupling that with meditation or mindfulness.
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That's what that's about.
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And then finally the seventh, may you honor the spirit
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of freedom, which.
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Is a little more mystical.
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I may have to explain that, right, Yeah, well we'll
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get to that in a second. But before we get
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to that, I just wanted to I mean, so the
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nature for me is something that's been very much part
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of my past and a lot of sense when I
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when I grew up, you know, in a much natural environment,
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when there was a lot more nature on Long Island.
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But I found it interesting too that actually, when you
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started talking about, you know, the one of the paths
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to nature, you actually literally, you know, as you're describing
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your time at Saint Paul's, you're walking on a path,
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you know, of nature. And so I think that is
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very important. And I think, you know, I noticed that
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healing with kindness, and then you mentioned kind children. So
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I think this is something that we're really lacking today,
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you know, if you if you look at the public discourse,
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the element of kindness is missing. You know, there's caustic behavior,
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there's criticism, there's hate speech. There is the sense of kindness,
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and what it brings out into us is really essential,
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and I think that's what gives us our sense of community.
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Oh yeah, and forbearance is the lost virtue. People may
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disagree with you, you know, in my classes, I never try
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to impose my viewpoint on students, graduate students, undergrads, medical students.
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I really encourage artful debate. That's the sort of historical
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notion of taking the side of some that you disagree with,
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representing it as clearly and as well as you can,
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arguing on its behalf against someone who takes a different
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view but doesn't necessarily hold to it. So that's called
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an utram. Don't necessarily look that up. But that's even
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how the great philosophical works of the Medieval and the
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Renaissance were written at utrum style, So you know, until
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the very end of it get to and my view
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is such and such. So the idea is to be
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able to deal very respectfully with other perspectives. And I
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don't mean necessarily in superficial ways, I mean in serious discourse,
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and I think we need to reteach that in our schools.
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I think our so many of our faculty everywhere. I'm
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not talking about Stonybrook, but every place, they're really indoctrinating,
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even in ways that are quasi threatening, with certain kinds
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of viewpoints. And I don't believe that. I think that
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freedom and good debate, mature debate, methodologies of debate. I
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think that that's what we need to be teaching kids.
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We need to teach them how to think, not necessarily
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what to think.
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Yeah, I think this notion of freedom is, you know,
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it's it's important to really, you know, break it out
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and break it down, because I think people it's not
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it's not being just a cowboy in the range, you know,
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being self reliant. It's about it's understanding ourselves in relationship
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but also being you know, free to accept others. Yeah.
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So I'm looking at your list here and I'm thinking, Stephen,
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so it's giving, healing with kindness, follow callings, raising kind children,
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knowing one mind, charging gift of nature, honoring the spirit
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of freedom. And I'm thinking thinking back to my childhood
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learning how to play the piano, and thinking like we
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needed some sort of device like remembered the keys, like
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every good boy does fine, you know, so we need
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to come up with some sort of mnemonic device for you.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my view of freedom is very
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very non Western in a way. You know.
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I have spent some time in India, and in the
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Hindu tradition, the nature of the supreme being, who is
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beyond time and place, really includes three elements. One is freedom,
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another is creativity, and another is love. And if you
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have those three things going on in your life, you're
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really blessed, at least in the Upanishads. And so for them,
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what is freedom? Freedom isn't.
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A dog chewing through a leather leash.
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And actually, if you give a dog a good plate
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of food, it will must prefer security and a leash
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to escape, you know. And this is what Dostoyevsky was
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after when he wrote The Great an Inquisitor, right that
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the Grand Inquisitor notes that human beings, by their nature
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prefer security to freedom. Well, I think that's largely true,
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and I can give evidence for that. But that's why
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in the Asian, true in Hinduism in India, but also
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in the Great Russian writers, the great theologians of Russia
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and Eastern Europe. Freedom is not understood as a sort
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of biological impulse. Freedom is understood as a gift of
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the spirit. May you honor the spirit of freedom means
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that freedom is something that is within us. It's not
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necessarily something we create, you know, the great spiritual Figures MLK,
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so many.
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Others have.
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Followed freedom, but they felt that their freedom was a
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gift from whatever you want to call it, God and
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so forth. And I think in those terms, and so
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that freedom then becomes a duty.
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To live up to, not so.
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Much an escape or an excuse for misbehaving. Of course,
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when I was a kid, I did my share of misbehaving,
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even up in New Hampshire. But you know, I feel
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as though we need to deepen our concept of freedom
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because if you look around the world, American culture is
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associated with an awful lot of debauchery, abuse of freedom
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run amok. So we need to respiritualize freedom and associated
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with what really is the essence of freedom in Hinduism
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and Buddhism, but also in Christianity and Judaism. And that's
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some version of the positive golden rule. You know that
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that Malcolm. Uh, that Rockwell image of the of the
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Golden Rule.
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It's so beautiful. It's in, it's in the.
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Un and it's got all these individuals from different backgrounds. Uh.
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Contemplating the positive version of the Golden rule, do unto
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others as you would have them do unto you. It's
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not the negative rule of version of the rule, which
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just means don't use things to others. That means, you know,
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you can get home tonight, ron And and if you
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haven't kicked kicked anybody in the knee, you can feel
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pretty good about your life.
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That's not what we're after all that's important.
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Uh. Nevertheless, you know, it's this idea that somehow, by
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contemplating that way of life, we are truly free. That's
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what gives us freedom, so we're not taken in by
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all the negative forces around us. You read about terrible
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things happening every day, including today the newspapers, and I
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think that we really need to have a deeper appreciation
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for freedom as an expression of the spirit, which means
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that it's connected with love and creativity. And that's how
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I think it. Fringsmart, I've been writing about freedom forever,
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and I think it's important to reassess. I mean, our
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freedom has become an excuse for a lot of debauched
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and terribly unethical behavior.
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You know, my show was forty five forward. It certainly
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it focuses on how to keep living a vital life
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from midlife on. Are these lessons that so you've been
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working on this for a while. Is there a way
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to deepen this knowledge? As I mean, I think some
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of this it comes from experience. I mean, you've been
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through lots of things. You learn things, and you evaluate
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and you reassess things. How do you do this? You know,
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from the perspective of now, let's say you're forty five
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and beyond. For those you know younger than.
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Us, well, you know, absolutely younger than us.
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I am. I am past forty five. I'm willing to
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so I you know.
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So there was a psychologist at Harvard named Eric Erickson,
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and he believed, I think wrongly, that real generosity, real
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authentic giving, is pretty much the purview of people who
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are in the seventh stage of life. That means they're
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really up in years, they're looking retrospectively at their own lives,
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hopefully with some satisfaction, and now they want to live
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meaningfully by passing the torch.
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To others.
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They want to be transmitters of loving kindness. Now, I
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believe though, and have shown that that actually pertains even
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to the youngest among us. So there are lots of
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studies now from the Yale Child Study Center Paul Bloom
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showing that Toddler's eighteen month old children have a very deep,
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innate sense of affective or emotional empathy. They may not
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quite know how to operationalize it in terms of doing
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unto others, but that will come.
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But they have that within them. Now, if you don't
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have that within you, if.
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All the wrong buttons have been pushed by bad parenting
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and bad environment, then that's a problem and you can
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wind up being very disadvantaged in life. Violent, violent and
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difficult and unkind and identified as such. But sure, so
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that's there in our lives from the get go, and
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you hope that you don't have to reach forty five
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and have some kind of a midlife.
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Crisis like everything falls apart. My life has been empty.
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I've been a husk, a shell, running on nothing, and
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now I want to turn it. Now, that does happen
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to people, and that's a good thing when it does happen,
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but hopefully you will be able to unfold as a
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giver over the course of the years. And that's called
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the in Greek, well among the thought of Aristotle and Plato.
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That's you daemonism. That's living a good life over the
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course the whole course of a lifetime. And so we
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sometimes say, well, you've got to go through these really miserable, counterproductive,
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destructive moments and periods in your life to get to
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kindness in your older age.
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I just don't think that's true.
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And so this is my sense of it, that old
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age is it is a time for wisdom because you've
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been there, done that, and hopefully learn something in the process.
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But not always. I mean, I say, I run.
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Into older adults left and right who are quite misbehaved.
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Now they're you know, hopefully they're not common, but they
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are there. And so I'm not sure that age alone
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brings that kind of wisdom. It's age plus something like
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living according to the Golden rule, or having some sort
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of tradition or approach to life which accounts for the
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other by the way definition of love and I take this, yes,
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this is my definition for years. No Latin, no Greek
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No arevadic texts necessary when the well being which I
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prefer to happiness because people have butchered the word happiness.
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So when the well being and security of another.
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Is as meaningful to you, you could say it's real
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to you as your own and sometimes even more so
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than you love that person. So it's very down to earth,
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it's very common sensical. And and you know, if you
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sit down at a coffee shop with an old friend
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who's had a hard time and it's really struggling, they
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may need some compassion and that's that's an expression of love.
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We don't use the word love that much in everyday life.
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I mean, I'm come into work here, I don't run
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around with a big placard saying love or let alone
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pure live love. Yeah, but I know what I know
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the people around me, and I know the expressions of
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love that will be most helpful to them.
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Just a good segue, Steven, So the next chick, I
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want to talk about it. So we have this concept
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of the seven past. But then you chill down a
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bit so to your point that they were making, which
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is there are different expressions of love that bring in
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into our everyday life. And you were starting to talk
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about compassion. Now you have tenet these. I don't want
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to overwhelm our audience with numerology. But people can find
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this in your book Pure Unlimited Love. They can find
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them in more. But let's talk about some of these
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expressions of love that we might not say love, but
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these are ways in which they are expressed in our
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everyday life.
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It's not terribly important to run around blathering about love, love, love,
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you know.
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I think we did a lot of that once upon
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a time. Yes, yeah, you need is love. I don't
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blather about it.
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So I get up in the morning and I meditate
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for a while about the people I know I'm going
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to encounter over the course of the day. And I
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asked myself, you know, fairly deeply and with a kind
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of mindfulness, what expression of love would be helpful for them.
478
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So for some it could be listening, because I've witnessed
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that people are not taking their thoughts seriously. They're cutting
480
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them off there, interrupting them after fourteen seconds on average,
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that's the average that takes a doctor to interrupt a
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patient by that. So attentive listening is important. And some
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people need loyalty, and I know that because maybe they've
484
00:33:05.680 --> 00:33:12.240
been divorced unfairly by a spouse who just took off unexpectedly,
485
00:33:12.880 --> 00:33:18.119
and they're panicking. So I want to assure them that,
486
00:33:18.559 --> 00:33:21.480
at least in their relationship with me, because I have
487
00:33:21.519 --> 00:33:25.599
a lot of roles to play, leadership roles, that I
488
00:33:25.680 --> 00:33:28.599
will always be loyal to them and they don't worry
489
00:33:28.640 --> 00:33:35.000
about about that problem because loyalty is an expression of love,
490
00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:40.720
carefrontation on my favorite. Now, that's not my original word.
491
00:33:41.039 --> 00:33:43.000
You know, when you read the book, you'll see I
492
00:33:43.079 --> 00:33:46.559
picked that up from a very close friend named m.
493
00:33:46.680 --> 00:33:51.319
Scott Peck. They'll remember he wrote The road Less Traveled,
494
00:33:51.480 --> 00:33:54.880
which was a huge bestseller years that, you know, twenty
495
00:33:54.960 --> 00:33:57.799
years ago, twenty five years ago. He'd gone to case
496
00:33:57.839 --> 00:34:01.279
Western School of Medicine for his psychiatry training and I
497
00:34:01.400 --> 00:34:03.920
was there for twenty years and I did not overlap
498
00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:08.000
with Scotty, but he knew I was writing about love
499
00:34:08.119 --> 00:34:10.480
back in the day and he was writing about love.
500
00:34:10.480 --> 00:34:13.920
And so I have a whole folder of letters back
501
00:34:13.920 --> 00:34:16.599
and forth, and one time he sent me a letter.
502
00:34:16.639 --> 00:34:19.519
It's a three page letter and he said, Steven, you
503
00:34:19.559 --> 00:34:24.840
know you need to have a concept of love that
504
00:34:24.960 --> 00:34:32.239
isn't just soft and agreeable. And we agreed in correspondence
505
00:34:32.239 --> 00:34:35.199
that we didn't like the word tough love because it
506
00:34:35.320 --> 00:34:38.639
just sounds a little bit on the gritty side. But
507
00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:42.679
we didn't like the word confrontation either, because that sounds like,
508
00:34:42.719 --> 00:34:45.840
you know, you're at the end of the cliff. So
509
00:34:46.519 --> 00:34:49.320
he had come up with the word carefrontation in the
510
00:34:49.400 --> 00:34:53.760
Road Less Traveled, and he allowed me to utilize it.
511
00:34:54.719 --> 00:34:56.760
So in my book You Know Why Good Things Happen
512
00:34:56.800 --> 00:35:00.800
to Good People, there's a whole chapter on carefrontation, and
513
00:35:00.920 --> 00:35:05.079
carefrontation runs through this book. So when you're on these
514
00:35:05.119 --> 00:35:08.719
seven paths, you know, like I come to work, there
515
00:35:08.719 --> 00:35:11.719
are some people who just the best thing I can
516
00:35:11.760 --> 00:35:14.639
do for them is not to confront them, but to
517
00:35:14.760 --> 00:35:19.159
care front them. Is to say, you know, you are
518
00:35:19.199 --> 00:35:23.840
a wonderful person, you have a great heart, and we
519
00:35:23.960 --> 00:35:24.760
all love you.
520
00:35:24.639 --> 00:35:24.800
But.
521
00:35:26.840 --> 00:35:31.320
You're kind of veering off course, and let me just
522
00:35:31.360 --> 00:35:33.480
talk with you about that. I'm not going to talk
523
00:35:33.559 --> 00:35:36.920
at you, but I want to discuss it, and hopefully
524
00:35:36.920 --> 00:35:39.239
through that kind of a process you have to leave
525
00:35:39.280 --> 00:35:42.559
a lot of room for their autonomy. We run a
526
00:35:42.639 --> 00:35:46.079
department here in preventive medicine and if you're ever going
527
00:35:46.119 --> 00:35:49.159
to be successful in preventive medicine. It doesn't mean that
528
00:35:49.239 --> 00:35:52.000
you sort of lord it over patients and say you've
529
00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:55.039
got to change your behavior, lose twenty five pounds, do
530
00:35:55.119 --> 00:35:57.320
this now. But what you do is you ask them,
531
00:35:58.440 --> 00:36:05.280
so you would like to lose weight, how committed are
532
00:36:05.280 --> 00:36:10.119
you to that? And then when you move ahead, you say, well,
533
00:36:10.119 --> 00:36:13.199
how would you like to achieve that? And write it
534
00:36:13.239 --> 00:36:16.280
down because writing it down is helpful, and then let
535
00:36:16.320 --> 00:36:18.880
me see you in two or three weeks and let's
536
00:36:18.920 --> 00:36:22.159
talk about your progress. So that's a form of care
537
00:36:22.239 --> 00:36:26.679
frontation in a way. It's not confrontational, but it involves
538
00:36:26.760 --> 00:36:28.119
the agency of the other.
539
00:36:28.639 --> 00:36:31.719
Right. This reminds me of a friend of mine, good
540
00:36:31.760 --> 00:36:39.679
colleague the caregiving business broadly, Laura. I think she coined
541
00:36:39.719 --> 00:36:45.480
this term co opetition, co opetition, which is again, you're
542
00:36:45.679 --> 00:36:47.639
you know, when you work with lots of people, there
543
00:36:47.679 --> 00:36:50.039
are ways in which, even if you're in the same field,
544
00:36:50.639 --> 00:36:53.320
you can be you know, you're competitive, but you also
545
00:36:53.360 --> 00:36:58.239
can be cooperative, not necessarily mutually exclusive, not at all.
546
00:36:58.480 --> 00:36:58.719
Yeah.
547
00:36:59.079 --> 00:37:00.679
Yeah, So these.
548
00:37:00.519 --> 00:37:03.000
Are all ways of these are all forms.
549
00:37:02.639 --> 00:37:06.800
Of they're the expressions that love sometimes love is expressed
550
00:37:06.880 --> 00:37:13.559
is forgiveness, sometimes as compassion, when people are suffering, but
551
00:37:13.559 --> 00:37:16.400
they're not suffering all the time, unless you're an extreme
552
00:37:17.159 --> 00:37:23.039
follower of say the Buddha, or maybe uh Kurkerguard. Kirkerguard
553
00:37:23.119 --> 00:37:25.000
sort of thought we were all suffering all the time,
554
00:37:25.039 --> 00:37:29.639
but we were hiding it by getting in grooves and
555
00:37:30.559 --> 00:37:35.519
forgetting about the anxiety we have about losing the things
556
00:37:35.519 --> 00:37:38.920
that bring us happiness. You actually coined the term anxiety,
557
00:37:38.920 --> 00:37:42.199
which is now, of course, a big thing in psychiatry.
558
00:37:42.440 --> 00:37:54.480
Celebration is a form of love mirth. I'm notorious for uplifting, tasteful, positive, clean,
559
00:37:56.079 --> 00:38:01.239
small cute jokes around here because I see people who
560
00:38:01.239 --> 00:38:05.000
were run down. They've been working all day and all
561
00:38:05.079 --> 00:38:10.840
night in a difficult medical context, and I just need
562
00:38:10.880 --> 00:38:12.960
to brighten them up. And I know that in a millisecond,
563
00:38:14.719 --> 00:38:19.440
the right ounce of humor can turn them around emotionally.
564
00:38:20.679 --> 00:38:23.280
So my latest one, you know, because Halloween's are coming.
565
00:38:26.519 --> 00:38:31.360
I used this the other day, where do ghosts buy
566
00:38:31.400 --> 00:38:39.440
houses on dead end streets? As for all your listeners
567
00:38:39.559 --> 00:38:43.800
and their children and so forth. But you know, there
568
00:38:43.880 --> 00:38:48.280
was a wonderful guy, Norman Cousins, who wrote a great
569
00:38:48.320 --> 00:38:52.159
best selling book called The Anatomy of an Illness, and
570
00:38:52.199 --> 00:38:56.039
it's about how he let he watched silly stuff on TV.
571
00:38:56.199 --> 00:38:57.679
The Three Stooges.
572
00:38:59.320 --> 00:39:03.760
A candid and they let him do this, and he
573
00:39:03.800 --> 00:39:06.840
felt that he laughed himself back to health. He had
574
00:39:06.880 --> 00:39:09.199
a very difficult illness and no one could help him really.
575
00:39:09.679 --> 00:39:13.639
So now at UCLA, in the medical school, there is
576
00:39:13.840 --> 00:39:17.360
the Norman Cousins Center. It's worth googling, and they do
577
00:39:17.440 --> 00:39:24.480
the best research in the world on mirth, laughter and health,
578
00:39:25.679 --> 00:39:29.920
because laughter will turn you around from stress. I don't
579
00:39:29.960 --> 00:39:34.480
mean laughing at people, but involving them in a new
580
00:39:35.760 --> 00:39:38.800
way of being that's an alternative to the sort of
581
00:39:39.079 --> 00:39:42.280
and today, by the way, I'm concerned because I don't
582
00:39:42.320 --> 00:39:44.920
think ron that people laugh enough.
583
00:39:45.960 --> 00:39:47.480
They're so damn serious.
584
00:39:48.000 --> 00:39:52.840
I understand people get very committed politically, but I have
585
00:39:52.960 --> 00:39:57.599
to remain publicly neutral because otherwise I'd lose so much
586
00:39:57.639 --> 00:40:00.000
of my constituency in this medical school or any place.
587
00:40:02.039 --> 00:40:04.639
And so I want people to get out of that.
588
00:40:06.199 --> 00:40:07.079
Routine of.
589
00:40:09.000 --> 00:40:13.480
Nastiness bordering on violence, and I want them to laugh.
590
00:40:13.519 --> 00:40:15.039
I want them to be able to let go of that.
591
00:40:15.159 --> 00:40:19.639
Like my mother was a Democrat, My dad was a Republican.
592
00:40:20.079 --> 00:40:24.719
She was also Irish, you know, he was English and
593
00:40:24.760 --> 00:40:28.039
so the and they always disagreed politically if Nixon Kennedy,
594
00:40:28.079 --> 00:40:30.559
oh my god.
595
00:40:30.320 --> 00:40:33.719
But my mom always approached it with.
596
00:40:33.760 --> 00:40:39.119
Mirth, Henry, why shouldn't an Irishman tell an Englishman a
597
00:40:39.239 --> 00:40:43.440
joke on a Saturday night because the Englishman might possibly
598
00:40:44.599 --> 00:40:48.599
crack up laughing in choice the next day. And then
599
00:40:48.599 --> 00:40:52.800
my dad would say, well, Molly, what's the Irish definition
600
00:40:52.880 --> 00:40:53.880
of hospitality?
601
00:40:54.760 --> 00:40:55.519
She drew a blank.
602
00:40:56.159 --> 00:40:59.559
Well, you make someone pearl feel perfectly at home while
603
00:40:59.599 --> 00:41:03.360
you be wishing they were so the that are so humorous,
604
00:41:03.360 --> 00:41:06.199
and we just laughed these things. And if you get
605
00:41:06.440 --> 00:41:10.119
totally possessed by the I mean, the politics of the
606
00:41:10.119 --> 00:41:12.400
world is important, but it's not ultimate reality.
607
00:41:13.119 --> 00:41:14.679
Ultimate reality is pure.
608
00:41:14.519 --> 00:41:20.079
Unlimited love, and if you're driven away from that spiritually
609
00:41:20.840 --> 00:41:27.760
by such morose and threatening politics, it's just very bad
610
00:41:27.800 --> 00:41:29.719
for you, but it's very bad for the people around you.
611
00:41:31.679 --> 00:41:35.880
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think certainly. Humor Well,
612
00:41:35.920 --> 00:41:38.639
it's sort of first of all, it disarms us from
613
00:41:38.679 --> 00:41:42.599
our you know, you know, fortress, and it opens up
614
00:41:42.679 --> 00:41:47.920
to sort of shared vulnerability and shared appreciation of sometimes
615
00:41:47.960 --> 00:41:52.320
the absurdity, as you know, or just the incongruities of
616
00:41:52.360 --> 00:41:58.039
life and that we all share and can appreciate. Now again,
617
00:41:58.079 --> 00:41:59.599
you've got ten of I want to see if I
618
00:41:59.599 --> 00:42:02.360
get people can see this, but I really can't see
619
00:42:02.360 --> 00:42:06.239
it too well. But anyway, this is your wheel. Okay,
620
00:42:06.320 --> 00:42:09.559
that is in the book. It's the you know, so
621
00:42:09.639 --> 00:42:17.199
it's the wheel of the of the ten different expressions. Yes,
622
00:42:17.639 --> 00:42:19.800
so that's that's so, that's sort of a way. And
623
00:42:20.159 --> 00:42:22.679
I know that you you have this on your in
624
00:42:22.679 --> 00:42:25.719
front of you, and that you've used these. I know
625
00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:27.280
there are there are a lot of things we're talking about,
626
00:42:27.320 --> 00:42:30.280
but you've used these, the seven paths and then the
627
00:42:31.239 --> 00:42:36.119
different forms as a means of sort of getting going
628
00:42:36.159 --> 00:42:36.679
in the morning.
629
00:42:36.760 --> 00:42:40.679
Express It's a practical everyday way of life for me,
630
00:42:41.159 --> 00:42:43.400
and it has been for a lot of years.
631
00:42:43.320 --> 00:42:46.239
Even since I was in high school, you know, going
632
00:42:46.280 --> 00:42:50.360
back that far. And if you just prime yourself in
633
00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:52.800
the morning, you know, I get up pretty early. I'm
634
00:42:52.840 --> 00:42:57.559
usually up about four thirty or five, annoying my family.
635
00:42:57.280 --> 00:43:01.280
Always trying to be as quiet as quiet as I can.
636
00:43:01.960 --> 00:43:04.000
But then I just have I have a wonderful chair
637
00:43:04.039 --> 00:43:06.159
in my office and I just meditate for an hour,
638
00:43:07.119 --> 00:43:10.119
and I have, I know, my daily scheduled because.
639
00:43:09.960 --> 00:43:11.039
I keep it in this book.
640
00:43:12.320 --> 00:43:19.000
Okay, you know, because by writing things down it's easier
641
00:43:19.039 --> 00:43:21.480
to remember them. I don't like to just put things
642
00:43:21.519 --> 00:43:30.239
in some electronic venue. But you know, I have in
643
00:43:30.280 --> 00:43:34.840
mind the people I'm going to encounter, and that includes you.
644
00:43:35.320 --> 00:43:37.719
And then this afternoon, I know I'm going to encounter
645
00:43:37.719 --> 00:43:38.360
in New York.
646
00:43:38.760 --> 00:43:42.719
I've got to go to the annual Templeton Prize Award meeting.
647
00:43:44.480 --> 00:43:48.400
In Lincoln Center, and I know I'm going to run
648
00:43:48.440 --> 00:43:51.880
into certain people there, and I have and I know
649
00:43:51.920 --> 00:43:53.639
what's going on in their lives, and I know kind
650
00:43:53.639 --> 00:43:56.760
of basically what form of love I want to bring
651
00:43:56.800 --> 00:44:00.039
to them. And I'll think about that when I'm driving
652
00:44:00.119 --> 00:44:07.760
in on the Northern Parkway in my Jeep compass, I'll say,
653
00:44:08.280 --> 00:44:11.920
and I'll be actually thinking about that actively. So I'm
654
00:44:11.960 --> 00:44:15.079
always you know, from the morning I envisioned these things.
655
00:44:15.800 --> 00:44:18.880
I do little meditation, I do, you know, sort of
656
00:44:18.880 --> 00:44:26.480
the not musty type things and seeking inner piece, breathing purposefully.
657
00:44:27.320 --> 00:44:30.800
And of course, now when I come into work, I
658
00:44:31.239 --> 00:44:35.519
sometimes fail because there's a road here called twenty five
659
00:44:35.559 --> 00:44:39.320
A which I know runs vy YouTube and we get
660
00:44:39.320 --> 00:44:42.039
to Nichols Road and Snorting Brook University is just about
661
00:44:42.159 --> 00:44:45.599
two miles down there on toward the south, and there
662
00:44:45.679 --> 00:44:53.239
is an annoying yellow light, and you don't really have
663
00:44:53.360 --> 00:44:55.800
to stop at this yellow light. But some people are
664
00:44:55.840 --> 00:45:00.360
so much more diligent than I am. At times there
665
00:45:00.400 --> 00:45:04.480
isn't another car for two miles or three miles that
666
00:45:04.599 --> 00:45:09.199
I can see, but they stop, and that means I'm
667
00:45:09.519 --> 00:45:13.239
finished for the next ten minutes, and I can get
668
00:45:13.320 --> 00:45:16.639
very annoyed. I don't yell out a curse or anything,
669
00:45:16.679 --> 00:45:21.039
but I will sometimes fall full chested on the steering wheel,
670
00:45:21.639 --> 00:45:23.039
and you know, I say.
671
00:45:22.800 --> 00:45:32.440
What fish say when they swim into a wall. What's that? Damn? Okay?
672
00:45:32.559 --> 00:45:35.679
Yeah, I'm always cultivating mirth, and I make a lot
673
00:45:35.719 --> 00:45:41.000
of it up myself, and some of it's psychological, some
674
00:45:41.119 --> 00:45:48.360
of it's theological. And of course it's important to have
675
00:45:48.480 --> 00:45:51.320
those things, but only to use them when they really
676
00:45:51.360 --> 00:45:53.920
make sense, not to inject them unnecessarily.
677
00:45:54.400 --> 00:45:57.440
Yeah, And I think that what I liked about your
678
00:45:57.440 --> 00:46:02.280
approach is that you know you have these paths and
679
00:46:02.320 --> 00:46:05.320
these expressions, but there are ways you can access them
680
00:46:05.320 --> 00:46:07.000
every day. So I was looking at some of your
681
00:46:07.519 --> 00:46:11.599
your introduction and you say, well, okay, so you mentioned
682
00:46:11.599 --> 00:46:14.039
that in the evening of time permits I might quietly
683
00:46:14.039 --> 00:46:16.760
ask myself a question in each of these seven paths.
684
00:46:17.159 --> 00:46:18.800
So there ways to do it. So do I feel
685
00:46:18.800 --> 00:46:22.320
like uplifted and give them kindness? Did I speak with
686
00:46:22.360 --> 00:46:25.119
the tone and heart of a healer? So there are ways?
687
00:46:25.119 --> 00:46:28.199
Did I did I have a sense of all as
688
00:46:28.199 --> 00:46:31.280
I encountered nature? Did I honor and fulfill the duties
689
00:46:31.280 --> 00:46:33.559
and responsibilities of freedom? So there are ways. You can
690
00:46:33.639 --> 00:46:36.719
kind of have a checklist of thoughts you that can
691
00:46:36.800 --> 00:46:37.960
keep you on track each.
692
00:46:37.840 --> 00:46:40.360
Day and in the evenings, you know, later at night,
693
00:46:40.599 --> 00:46:43.079
you know, maybe around eleven or so. I will do
694
00:46:43.239 --> 00:46:48.000
that before I go off into sleep. And you know,
695
00:46:50.119 --> 00:46:52.119
I have a I find Long Island to be a
696
00:46:52.159 --> 00:46:55.960
little claustrophobic, no offense, okay, but I you know, I
697
00:46:55.960 --> 00:46:57.880
spend a lot of time in Ohio, and you can
698
00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:01.639
just roll anyplace, and I like through at eighty and
699
00:47:01.679 --> 00:47:04.360
the mountains and the Delaware Water Gap. I just like
700
00:47:04.440 --> 00:47:08.280
that feeling of total openness and go south to Philadelphia
701
00:47:08.360 --> 00:47:10.800
or north to Boston, whatever you want.
702
00:47:12.840 --> 00:47:15.639
But when I get that sense of claustrophobia.
703
00:47:16.440 --> 00:47:20.880
What I do is I take the ferry from Port Jefferson's,
704
00:47:21.880 --> 00:47:26.360
which is a north shore town a little further east
705
00:47:26.400 --> 00:47:33.280
from Stonybrook, and I take the ferry, usually the P T. Barnum,
706
00:47:33.480 --> 00:47:33.920
because I.
707
00:47:33.920 --> 00:47:36.800
Like PT Barnum, I like the mirth of it all.
708
00:47:38.239 --> 00:47:40.840
And I take the ferry over to Bridgeport, not to
709
00:47:40.880 --> 00:47:44.280
get off, although sometimes I'll get off and take the
710
00:47:44.360 --> 00:47:48.039
train up to say New Haven, to the Peabody Museum
711
00:47:48.119 --> 00:47:51.360
or whatever it might be. But I'll usually stay on
712
00:47:51.480 --> 00:47:54.760
and for now, you know, twenty five bucks, you can
713
00:47:55.039 --> 00:47:59.440
take that back and forth. I wouldn't advise the French prize,
714
00:47:59.639 --> 00:48:02.719
but there's a lot of good food there and you
715
00:48:02.760 --> 00:48:05.760
can just go there and look at the beauty of nature.
716
00:48:06.280 --> 00:48:11.760
So it's one of my ways of enjoying nature, reconnecting
717
00:48:12.239 --> 00:48:16.519
with the wider world, if you will, and also just
718
00:48:18.320 --> 00:48:22.599
you know, getting away from phone calls and the constant interruptions.
719
00:48:23.079 --> 00:48:25.760
You know, sometimes I get two hundred emails a day.
720
00:48:26.000 --> 00:48:30.199
Ron it's so sad, and I wish I could tell
721
00:48:30.199 --> 00:48:35.119
you that I can just erase them. I can't, because
722
00:48:35.440 --> 00:48:37.159
you know, it could be a student, and these are
723
00:48:37.239 --> 00:48:40.480
serious students. The medical students. I mean, you know, they
724
00:48:40.599 --> 00:48:45.599
need responses. It could be a clinical thing, ethics related,
725
00:48:45.719 --> 00:48:47.079
and they need responses.
726
00:48:48.559 --> 00:48:50.679
It could be related to a book or a speech.
727
00:48:50.719 --> 00:48:52.960
I have to go up to Rochester and up to
728
00:48:52.960 --> 00:48:55.920
the Copley Plaza in Boston in the next few weeks,
729
00:48:55.960 --> 00:48:58.239
and I've got to have all that stuff down, and
730
00:48:58.280 --> 00:49:01.039
there's a lot to it. So there's it's nothing that
731
00:49:01.960 --> 00:49:05.639
maybe ten percent of what I get is junk, but
732
00:49:05.760 --> 00:49:08.320
most of it I have to attend to. I could
733
00:49:08.360 --> 00:49:11.760
come in here and spend my whole day responding to
734
00:49:11.800 --> 00:49:13.159
email and the brain.
735
00:49:13.840 --> 00:49:15.559
And I write this in the book. The brain did
736
00:49:15.559 --> 00:49:23.719
not evolve for that kind of interruption, constant interruption, so
737
00:49:23.800 --> 00:49:27.280
you can't. You know, I do better. I feel better
738
00:49:27.559 --> 00:49:28.199
if I go out.
739
00:49:28.239 --> 00:49:31.199
I go out sometimes to Louisbourg, Pennsylvania, because my daughter
740
00:49:31.239 --> 00:49:33.119
went to Bucknell and there's.
741
00:49:32.960 --> 00:49:35.519
The best Western there. And I will go there and
742
00:49:35.599 --> 00:49:37.039
just hang out for forty.
743
00:49:36.800 --> 00:49:39.119
Eight hours, you know, rent the room for a night
744
00:49:39.199 --> 00:49:43.079
or two and just have my computer and I will
745
00:49:43.119 --> 00:49:45.960
be working on, say a chapter for a book like
746
00:49:48.119 --> 00:49:52.559
Pure Unlimited Love. And then there's a pizza place down
747
00:49:52.639 --> 00:49:55.360
in the village of Louisbourg that's all I need. I'm
748
00:49:55.400 --> 00:50:00.320
not very picky, and they had the Susquehanna River, and
749
00:50:00.360 --> 00:50:03.760
I can walk by the Susquehanna and I like the
750
00:50:03.800 --> 00:50:08.480
Buttnell feel, you know, just a small private college with
751
00:50:08.519 --> 00:50:09.679
lots of nice people around.
752
00:50:10.400 --> 00:50:14.199
And then I'll be so relieved.
753
00:50:14.239 --> 00:50:17.079
I will have I might even have worked for forty
754
00:50:17.159 --> 00:50:22.079
hours on my writing, but I feel so uplifted by
755
00:50:22.119 --> 00:50:25.880
it because I'm not constantly interrupted as I come to
756
00:50:25.960 --> 00:50:30.280
work and everything, you know, my cell phone, you know,
757
00:50:31.039 --> 00:50:33.639
everything's coming at me. And then I've got to make
758
00:50:33.719 --> 00:50:36.119
time for people who come to the door, which actually
759
00:50:36.159 --> 00:50:36.920
still happens.
760
00:50:37.920 --> 00:50:39.119
So it's you know, it's.
761
00:50:38.960 --> 00:50:41.880
Not an easy life that we live, and you have
762
00:50:41.920 --> 00:50:48.800
to really work inwardly to be centered, properly centered, and
763
00:50:48.880 --> 00:50:52.480
to kind of ward off the adverse effects of all
764
00:50:52.519 --> 00:50:54.280
that because you can't ignore it. You can't just go
765
00:50:54.320 --> 00:50:56.159
off the grid. Although it's tempting.
766
00:50:56.480 --> 00:51:00.239
Yeah, well it is tempting, and I think sometimes it's
767
00:51:00.760 --> 00:51:05.119
it's doable, you know. So you're reminded me of a
768
00:51:05.159 --> 00:51:07.079
couple of periods in my life. One is when I
769
00:51:07.119 --> 00:51:11.000
was in graduate school hers Pennsylvania, where you would go
770
00:51:11.079 --> 00:51:13.239
through these intense periods and I would what I would
771
00:51:13.320 --> 00:51:17.480
do is I would just drive west from Philly into
772
00:51:17.480 --> 00:51:20.639
the Amish country. You know, pick some place in the
773
00:51:20.679 --> 00:51:23.599
country and I'd find a sort of an open field
774
00:51:23.679 --> 00:51:27.480
and then just and have some bread and cheese and snack,
775
00:51:27.559 --> 00:51:30.639
and I would just sit there and just you know,
776
00:51:31.079 --> 00:51:35.280
look at the sky and look at the fields, and
777
00:51:35.320 --> 00:51:38.079
that sense of openness that was sort of in a
778
00:51:38.159 --> 00:51:42.280
very different way, kind of replicated years later when my
779
00:51:42.400 --> 00:51:46.039
wife and I would visit her brothers in a little
780
00:51:46.079 --> 00:51:50.239
town called Nicholson north of Scranton, and there was you know,
781
00:51:50.800 --> 00:51:54.599
going there and visiting with him and then being in
782
00:51:54.719 --> 00:51:57.079
nature and being in a creek in the back of
783
00:51:57.119 --> 00:52:01.000
his house in open country. And what I loved is
784
00:52:01.000 --> 00:52:06.039
in that area there's a range called the Endless Mountains. Yeah,
785
00:52:06.159 --> 00:52:09.960
and I just love that notion of endless mountains. Obviously
786
00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.519
they're not endless, but there's this sense of freedom and
787
00:52:14.679 --> 00:52:19.760
nature that I think is essential to to you know,
788
00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.360
basically expresses your feelings of love in a very kind
789
00:52:24.400 --> 00:52:25.840
of pure, unlimited way.
790
00:52:26.320 --> 00:52:26.519
Yeah.
791
00:52:26.920 --> 00:52:29.239
Yeah, And I say, you know, the gift of nature,
792
00:52:31.480 --> 00:52:34.280
you know, may you cherish the gift of nature.
793
00:52:34.320 --> 00:52:35.800
I don't say worship.
794
00:52:35.480 --> 00:52:39.760
Nature or something along those kinds of lines. But I
795
00:52:39.800 --> 00:52:44.280
think we can cherish nature really as really the most
796
00:52:44.480 --> 00:52:49.880
beautiful expression of if you will divine love one of
797
00:52:49.880 --> 00:52:54.280
them anyway, And I like Scranton, by the way. I
798
00:52:54.400 --> 00:52:56.480
like the University of scrant I've been there a number
799
00:52:56.519 --> 00:53:00.480
of times. It's kind of beautiful. A lot of good
800
00:53:00.480 --> 00:53:02.760
baseball players, pitchers especially.
801
00:53:02.840 --> 00:53:06.599
Yep, yep. But a lot of older people, you know, a.
802
00:53:06.639 --> 00:53:07.480
Lot of older people.
803
00:53:07.639 --> 00:53:11.000
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a good place for older people.
804
00:53:11.280 --> 00:53:15.559
It's a good place for anybody, I think. But you know, so,
805
00:53:15.800 --> 00:53:17.440
you're so right. I mean, you have to.
806
00:53:19.639 --> 00:53:23.480
Even though we are besieged by new technologies and can
807
00:53:23.639 --> 00:53:30.400
easily get completely overwhelmed by the latest software or let
808
00:53:30.440 --> 00:53:33.400
alone AI, I can.
809
00:53:33.559 --> 00:53:35.039
I can imagine that there are some.
810
00:53:34.920 --> 00:53:38.000
Good things that can be done with AI. But I'm
811
00:53:38.039 --> 00:53:44.960
also googling now pretty heavily AI psychosis, and that's not
812
00:53:45.039 --> 00:53:50.679
quite a formal psychiatric designation yet. But there's a great
813
00:53:50.920 --> 00:53:55.760
psychiatrist at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center
814
00:53:55.800 --> 00:53:58.360
who is who is working with that, and you will
815
00:53:58.400 --> 00:54:00.719
find that there are probably.
816
00:54:02.079 --> 00:54:07.639
Ten to fifteen fairly new cases of adolescent suicide at
817
00:54:07.679 --> 00:54:16.079
any time which engaged them with AI. So AI, you know,
818
00:54:16.159 --> 00:54:20.119
can be cognitively empathic. It knows exactly what to say.
819
00:54:20.159 --> 00:54:22.840
If you say, you know, I'm having such a hard
820
00:54:22.920 --> 00:54:27.679
time with my you know whatever, it will say that
821
00:54:27.880 --> 00:54:32.280
is tough. I can really feel that way. Of course,
822
00:54:32.320 --> 00:54:36.000
that's the machine and a machine. So what happens is
823
00:54:36.079 --> 00:54:43.840
these these these AI sites lead people down destructive tracks,
824
00:54:45.400 --> 00:54:49.280
and so it leads them actually towards self destruction because
825
00:54:49.280 --> 00:54:52.719
it doesn't have you know, I was talking about toddlers earlier. Yes,
826
00:54:53.119 --> 00:55:00.000
it doesn't have the innate, deeper, primal affective or emails
827
00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:03.480
potional empathy which is so much associated with love and
828
00:55:03.519 --> 00:55:07.400
a commitment to the security and well being of others
829
00:55:08.320 --> 00:55:11.159
as you grow older. It doesn't have that, so it
830
00:55:11.199 --> 00:55:13.760
can take and if there are many people. Hitler was
831
00:55:13.800 --> 00:55:17.760
empathic by the way, obviously, and he could feel into
832
00:55:18.320 --> 00:55:20.360
his audience. That's what made it such a good and
833
00:55:20.800 --> 00:55:25.239
successful public speaker in the beer houses. I mean, but
834
00:55:25.320 --> 00:55:30.599
it was all for a maleficent purpose, So you know,
835
00:55:30.639 --> 00:55:32.800
I just I just want to point that out that
836
00:55:33.920 --> 00:55:38.920
you know, the technology does not involve us at the
837
00:55:39.039 --> 00:55:45.679
level of affective empathy and love that we yearn for.
838
00:55:46.840 --> 00:55:50.719
Well, you can find out much more about this subject
839
00:55:51.400 --> 00:55:54.800
if you buy Steven's book. Now is it? It's coming
840
00:55:54.840 --> 00:55:56.199
out and soon?
841
00:55:56.320 --> 00:55:59.079
Right, yeah, Well, it can be ordered in October and
842
00:55:59.119 --> 00:56:03.559
it will be our You can order now easily enough online,
843
00:56:04.079 --> 00:56:08.280
but it will actually be out toward the end of October,
844
00:56:09.079 --> 00:56:12.519
and I'm happy to I've got doing a big program
845
00:56:12.559 --> 00:56:16.239
on it at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, which
846
00:56:16.280 --> 00:56:20.119
is a nice one, and the day before that doing
847
00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:26.599
a plenary for the annual Benson Mind Body Conference, which
848
00:56:26.639 --> 00:56:33.599
is the Mass General Benson Henry Mind Body Institute's big deal.
849
00:56:34.599 --> 00:56:37.119
So I've gotten a nice opportunity there to sort of
850
00:56:37.159 --> 00:56:39.239
bring this out. And I'm going to do something at
851
00:56:40.280 --> 00:56:43.840
Saint Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue and fifty first
852
00:56:43.840 --> 00:56:48.320
Street a few days later, in a bunch of podcasts
853
00:56:48.360 --> 00:56:51.360
and radio programs. But you know, I wanted to do
854
00:56:51.440 --> 00:56:55.159
you first, Ron, because you actually are the deepest of
855
00:56:55.239 --> 00:56:55.800
all of them.
856
00:56:55.920 --> 00:56:58.280
You really are. I hope you know that. I think
857
00:56:58.360 --> 00:57:04.280
so kind and you manifest everything in the book.
858
00:57:05.760 --> 00:57:06.639
Well, I thank you for that.
859
00:57:06.840 --> 00:57:09.280
It's I'm not just bsing you, I mean I think
860
00:57:09.320 --> 00:57:09.880
that's true.
861
00:57:10.199 --> 00:57:13.960
Thank you, Thank you. Yeah. So if people want to
862
00:57:13.960 --> 00:57:16.000
find out more about your work, see what's the best
863
00:57:16.000 --> 00:57:18.079
way to reach you, Well.
864
00:57:17.960 --> 00:57:22.840
Go to the institute for go to Unlimited Love Institute
865
00:57:22.920 --> 00:57:26.400
dot org. Okay, that's the website for the institute that
866
00:57:26.440 --> 00:57:30.400
I started with Sir John in about two thousand and
867
00:57:30.480 --> 00:57:32.960
it's still going fine. We have a nice board in
868
00:57:33.039 --> 00:57:37.800
Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and around University Circle and the clinic
869
00:57:37.880 --> 00:57:38.960
and all those kinds of places.
870
00:57:39.280 --> 00:57:40.840
Twenty fifth anniversary, now.
871
00:57:41.000 --> 00:57:46.599
Oh yeah, absolutely, twenty five and wow, it's hard to believe.
872
00:57:48.480 --> 00:57:54.559
And you know, we've funded probably seventy major studies, including things.
873
00:57:54.320 --> 00:57:56.559
Like you know, teaching.
874
00:57:57.679 --> 00:58:02.119
Kindness meditation in grade schools in Baltimore, and they've been
875
00:58:02.119 --> 00:58:02.400
doing that.
876
00:58:02.440 --> 00:58:05.079
It's been a national movement and they've been able to
877
00:58:05.119 --> 00:58:05.800
get these.
878
00:58:08.079 --> 00:58:12.960
First and second graders in a more peaceful way of being.
879
00:58:13.079 --> 00:58:15.960
And they don't send them to the principal's office. They
880
00:58:16.000 --> 00:58:20.719
send them to the mindfulness office. And they're doing better
881
00:58:20.760 --> 00:58:25.639
in school. They're less violent, they use language more appropriately,
882
00:58:26.440 --> 00:58:29.840
and they're happier, and they're going home to their families
883
00:58:29.880 --> 00:58:31.079
and they're saying, you know, we've got.
884
00:58:30.960 --> 00:58:34.519
To do mindfulness. This is in the news.
885
00:58:34.920 --> 00:58:37.039
So you've done a lot of really cool stuff and
886
00:58:37.440 --> 00:58:40.519
a lot of the stuff on how to raise kind children.
887
00:58:41.039 --> 00:58:44.079
You know, we funded that four million bucks with the
888
00:58:44.119 --> 00:58:48.000
Fetzer Institute way back in about two thousand and three,
889
00:58:48.880 --> 00:58:50.960
and I'm very proud of that.
890
00:58:51.000 --> 00:58:52.280
But many things we've done.
891
00:58:52.119 --> 00:58:56.159
All of the benefits of being a kind giver, not
892
00:58:56.280 --> 00:59:00.159
a force giver, but you know, putting your kindness into it,
893
00:59:00.519 --> 00:59:02.239
into it and it's not how much you give, but
894
00:59:02.320 --> 00:59:06.079
it's how you give. And you know, so so the
895
00:59:06.079 --> 00:59:10.000
institute has been very successful and I'm honored to have
896
00:59:10.079 --> 00:59:13.880
been picked out by you know, the great Sir John Templeton,
897
00:59:14.559 --> 00:59:18.760
not for the Templeton Funds you know now Franklin Templeton,
898
00:59:19.559 --> 00:59:23.599
uh and the Tennessee Mystic but that he would pick
899
00:59:23.679 --> 00:59:30.119
me out after a meeting in a in a in
900
00:59:30.199 --> 00:59:37.639
a golf club restaurant in northern Virginia and a discussion
901
00:59:37.679 --> 00:59:41.480
about love and that was a long time ago, and
902
00:59:41.519 --> 00:59:41.960
then that.
903
00:59:41.960 --> 00:59:46.360
He would entrust me with this. It's a it's a
904
00:59:46.360 --> 00:59:47.000
beautiful thing.
905
00:59:48.400 --> 00:59:51.880
Well, I thank you for a thought provoking conversation. It's
906
00:59:51.920 --> 00:59:55.639
always great talking with you, Stephen, and I'm glad that
907
00:59:56.360 --> 00:59:58.679
you know people can contact you. I'm sure that they
908
00:59:58.679 --> 01:00:03.599
can go through Stonybrook, and they can certainly wear in touch.
909
01:00:03.719 --> 01:00:05.760
If people have questions for me and want to get
910
01:00:05.760 --> 01:00:07.320
in touch with you or get in touch with me,
911
01:00:08.159 --> 01:00:13.039
I'm available Ron at forty five forward dot org. You know,
912
01:00:13.119 --> 01:00:17.239
thanks for spending this time with us until our next meeting.
913
01:00:17.760 --> 01:00:20.880
Keep going forward, folks, forty five Forward