Ever wondered if your mind could reshape your reality? Join us on Super Normalize as we delve into the fascinating world of Dr. Howard Eisenberg, a neuroscientist, physician, and expert in human performance. Dr. Eisenberg’s unique blend of scientific knowledge and practical wisdom offers profound insights into consciousness, neuroplasticity, and human potential. His groundbreaking book, “Dream it to Do it: The Science & the Magic”, explores the power of imagination and its connection to personal evolution. In this episode, we explore Dr. Eisenberg’s interdisciplinary journey through medicine, psychology, and parapsychology, uncovering how these fields have shaped his understanding of the human mind.
We discuss the placebo effect, mind-body medicine, and the power of belief in altering our physiology. Dr. Eisenberg shares practical strategies for managing stress, enhancing creativity, and achieving ambitious goals. He challenges conventional thinking about the brain, consciousness, and the nature of reality itself, offering a new perspective on our place in the universe. Discover how to harness the power of your mind to transform your life and work. Tune in to Super Normalize and embark on a journey of self-discovery with Dr. Howard Eisenberg. Learn how to break free from limiting beliefs, embrace the power of imagination, and dream your world into being. Explore the fascinating intersection of science, spirituality, and human potential with Dr. Eisenberg’s groundbreaking insights. Don’t miss this thought-provoking conversation on Super Normalize, the podcast that explores the extraordinary potential within the ordinary.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Audible-Dream-Do-Science-Magic/dp/B0B1W352G1/ref=sr_1_1
00:00 Introduction to Dr. Howard Eisenberg and the Power of Consciousness
01:56 Dr. Eisenberg’s Interdisciplinary Journey and Holistic Approach
02:15 Mind-Body Medicine and the Placebo Effect
04:42 Neuroplasticity and the Power of Thought
07:05 The Importance of Imagination and Materialization
13:20 Lucid Dreaming and Dream Programming
14:13 Psychotherapy and the Power of Choice
17:03 Pattern Interrupts for Negative Thoughts
18:00 The Three Brains: Head, Heart, and Gut
22:15 Societal Trauma and Disconnection
25:19 Advice for Aspiring Leaders and Entrepreneurs
28:57 Mystical Experiences and the Perennial Philosophy
31:13 Universal Consciousness and Connection to Others
33:22 The Role of the Ego in Suffering
35:35 Limiting Beliefs and Media Consumption
36:50 Dreaming the World into Being
42:29 Visualization and Imaginal Techniques
45:07 Dr. Eisenberg’s Wake-Up Call to the World
47:36 The Importance of Self-Awareness and Emotional Regulation
54:00 Conclusion and Call to Action
Transcript
Dr Howard Eisenberg (00:00)
Claim your awareness and your compassion. Awareness that we’re all connected, and compassion how you connect to others.
CeeJay Barnaby (00:13)
Welcome to Super Normalize, the podcast that explores the extraordinary potential within the ordinary. Today we delve into the fascinating world of Dr. Howard Eisenberg, a neuroscientist, physician, and expert in human performance. Dr. Eisenberg’s unique blend of scientific knowledge and practical wisdom has helped countless individuals and organizations achieve breakthroughs in their lives and work.
We’ll be exploring his journey, his practical insights into the power of consciousness and his practical strategies for unlocking human potential. Listen in as we uncover the secrets of enhancing creativity, managing stress, building high performance teams and achieving ambitious goals. And we’ll also be discussing his groundbreaking book, Dream It To Do It. I had the honor of reading the book. It’s fantastic. It’s such a really good book on consciousness.
and personal evolution that I highly recommend it. Stay tuned to discover how you can super normalize your life and work. On with the show.
Welcome to super normalized, Dr. Howard Eisenberg. Dr. Howard, we connected over email and I’ve read your book. has, ⁓ look, I’ve got to say I’m, I’m a sort of person that’s been through a lot of psychedelic use in the past and it’s the book I would have
Howard Eisenberg (01:26)
Thank you. Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
CeeJay Barnaby (01:42)
Love to have written if I had the researcher mind and understanding that you bring to the subject of new thought and greater understanding of what it is to actually be a human. So welcome to the show. I’m looking forward to talking to you all about this. Okay. So your background in ⁓ medicine, psychology, parapsychology, how did this interdisciplinary approach shape your understanding of human potential and your work?
Howard Eisenberg (01:56)
Thank you. Let’s dive in.
CeeJay Barnaby (02:12)
with individuals and organizations.
Howard Eisenberg (02:15)
Well, as you, I guess, realize, I have an extremely varied background and different skill sets. And it gave me a holistic and integrated ⁓ understanding of how things work and the practical applications of it. I mean, just taking medicine alone. ⁓ There’s this expression sometimes called mind-body medicine.
There are for behavioral medicine and there are a number of different terms as they say out there. But the concept is that it is possible with our own mind, our own consciousness, to actually change the physiology and the health condition of our bodies. One example of this, which is not woo-woo, is the placebo effect, where if you’re given something that looks like a medication by a trusted provider, physician or a nurse, and you believe it,
you often will have beneficial results even though it’s chemically inert completely. On the other hand, if you’re phobic and you’re afraid of new medications and side effects and so on or interactions with other medications you may be taking, you’re more likely to have what we call a negative side effect even though again there’s nothing in it chemically that can affect you physiologically. So again, our mind can change our physiology in our body, mind over matter. And that’s just, know, from my background as you put it in medicine but…
I’ve also have designed training programs in creative thinking for companies like Motorola. ⁓ Teaching people again that you can learn to have a whole different mindset that can be way more powerful. Same person, same brain, but just learning certain techniques, greatly expanding your range of things that you can generate with practical applications. So all of these to me ⁓ dovetailed.
CeeJay Barnaby (04:01)
Mm-hmm.
Howard Eisenberg (04:04)
and gave me, as I say, more of a base to have a holistic and integrated understanding of reality. And plus, personal experience too.
CeeJay Barnaby (04:13)
Yeah, yeah, I’m fascinated with the placebo effect. Grinder and Bandler, the developers of neuro-linguistic programming back in the, I think it was the early 70s, they were actually doing experiments with placebos and were even thinking of the idea of putting out a drug, is called placebo, just to help everyone. But they got shut down at the time, so they moved into NLP instead. So I found that a bit of a fascinating side story, I thought I’d add in. Now…
Howard Eisenberg (04:20)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah ⁓
Interesting. ⁓
CeeJay Barnaby (04:42)
I would say that ⁓
the way that you seem to present your information to the world, seems almost very psychedelic in its presentation. like you have a psychedelic mindset that has come from experience. Would you say that that’s true?
Howard Eisenberg (04:48)
seem to present your.
like you have a sock down.
Mm-hmm.
Yes,
so it’s partly the experience but also partly the different knowledge bases that I’m exposed to and the skill sets I developed. So to me again, it’s very holistic, very integrative. But yes, that is certainly part of it.
CeeJay Barnaby (05:11)
Mm.
Right, so you were where you were around during the the the 60s and experimentation times.
Howard Eisenberg (05:21)
Yeah, I’ve been around a while.
I’m almost 79 now.
CeeJay Barnaby (05:25)
okay, so you got to see all that. So I actually was born at the end of it. So I got to grow up in the 70s. So I didn’t actually get to experience that sort of end of that sort of world. So I’m just fascinated by that, how that may have been an influence upon you at the time.
Howard Eisenberg (05:32)
Mm-hmm.
Also meditation, my first introduction to meditation was over 40 years ago. So I had a number of different ways, know, of experientially having a different sense, as I say, of reality.
CeeJay Barnaby (05:51)
Yes.
Hmm.
Hmm. Yeah. I came to meditation myself after, well, first of all, I was introduced to it by, by spirits as a baby. ⁓ and then, ⁓ moved out of it after a while, ⁓ as I was growing up, trying to be a normal person and then back into it again, ⁓ integrating it more into my life. Cause I found that, you know, once you, if you meditate on it, you know, in a fairly regular sort of pattern, it reduces the pinball and cyclone of life. ⁓ and
things just seem to wash off you even so much more easily.
Howard Eisenberg (06:27)
Right, and as you may
know coming back to mind over bodies or speak over matter, when we change the way we think and repeat it a number of times, it actually changes the wiring pattern of the brain cells or the neurons. We call that neuroplasticity. So it’s another example again of mind over matter. Contrary to again popular Western science now which assumes the opposite. But the evidence is very clear. Mind is more powerful than matter.
CeeJay Barnaby (06:34)
Yes.
Yes.
Have you found with your work, ⁓ with that understanding of mind over matter, and basically the magic of who we are and how powerful we actually are, have you found that to be a bit of a battle to get that across to people ⁓ in the past? And it’s just changing now that more people are embracing that, so you’ve come into your own?
Howard Eisenberg (07:05)
Mm-hmm.
I think people right now are in a state of confused panic, broadly. So it’s harder for people to even have an attention span. We’re finding, you know,
less and less people reading books anymore. They don’t have the time, they don’t have the patience, they don’t even have the ability to keep their imagination focused on whatever they’re trying to read and to develop it more and enhance it with their own mind. ⁓ So it’s not just for my subject matter I find more broadly, so many people have just tuned out. I wrote this article that you may have seen in LinkedIn, Why the World’s Going Insane and What You Can Do About It, and I said, I think right now most people can’t
think anymore and they don’t know it which is even scarier but they can’t they cannot think for themselves you know what is real what is false what is propaganda what is good what is bad it’s all scrambled right now yes
CeeJay Barnaby (08:12)
right, the discerning mind’s been hijacked. It’s been hijacked, you know, and I
would even say it’s by design for some reason that it is done that way, but that’s a conspiracy sort of tip. We won’t go down that way.
Howard Eisenberg (08:23)
Well, on that subject,
just before we started talking, I was listening to two people called the godfathers of AI, Jeffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. And they both said that computers now have developed consciousness and that they are competing with us for domination of our world. That sounds far out. These are the two people who are the godfathers that are recognized broadly in the industry. And that’s what they’re saying right now. We’ve lost control.
CeeJay Barnaby (08:50)
I’m not surprised by that.
I’m not surprised by that at all. Because you’ll find that often with the technology that we see in the public space, the private space has had for anywhere up to 10 to even 30 years before it’s even seen in the public. Look at the SR-71 Blackbird. Didn’t exist for nearly 50 years, but it was being used. these things are real and they actually are, well, to put it plainly,
could be seen as a threat to our experience and it’s probably not surprising that our consciousness is being short-circuited and our attention is being short-circuited to the benefit of something else. So it’s a battle and it’s a battle for our minds, a for our soul and the best thing we can do is get up a habit of making that choice to meditate, making that choice to be in nature, making that choice to connect with people.
Howard Eisenberg (09:36)
Yeah.
Wake up.
CeeJay Barnaby (09:48)
and our ability to dream to do it, which is the name of your book.
Howard Eisenberg (09:54)
Yes.
CeeJay Barnaby (09:54)
Now
that explores the power of consciousness in shaping reality. Can you share some practical examples of how individuals can apply these principles to achieve their goals and improve their wellbeing?
Howard Eisenberg (10:07)
Well, guess the biggest splash would be from what is sometimes called ⁓ materialization or manifestation, where you conceive of something in your mind and somehow bring it into what we call, if you want, common, consensual, physical, external reality.
As I point out in my book, contrary to what many people think about imagination being something soft and not really having much importance in science, everything humanity has discovered, everything humanity has developed, has come first out of imagination. Everything. And yet in our schooling system in the West of these, we’re taught exactly the opposite. Don’t waste time daydreaming. Concentrate. Focus.
I think a repeat, ⁓ it’s behind all of our achievements. We just are mislabeling it and being more more confused about what the source really is of our creativity, our intuition.
CeeJay Barnaby (11:08)
What do you think imagination is then? I’m curious about your understanding of it. I’ve got a theory myself, but yeah.
Howard Eisenberg (11:13)
So, well, we can go so
deep in so many ways here. And I also want to be appreciative that our listening audience doesn’t have access to the book perhaps at this point to know the background. I think it’s helpful to talk about this in terms of an analogy. ⁓ I’ll start first of all with ourselves as human beings when we have dreams. Sometimes we have dreams that we are not able to realize.
our dreams while we’re in that state until we wake up. So why we’re in a state of a dream, for some of us, for some of the dreams, we cannot tell that it’s just a dream. We think that is our reality until we wake up. I think all of this, if you to question imagination, is coming from, so to speak, a grand dreamer.
In religious terms, it’s what some people have called God. I prefer not to use that term because there’s so many sectarian differences and conflicts with different organized religious groups. And it’s something much even more fundamental than religion. In my book, I call it the universal mind. These days, when I’m speaking, I usually refer to it as a source, the source of all. So as I understand reality now,
We’re all in this sort grand, if you want, divine dream from the dreamer, the source. And everything that we experience are in some ways extensions from that source. Just like again, when we have a dream as humans, we are populating our dream sometimes with other people, other entities, other creatures perhaps, other landscapes, and it’s just coming out of our imagination.
when we go back to things like the placebo effect is the imagination that causes the changes in the body.
So again, to me, imagination is the source, the grand divine dreamer, you like, extending itself and manifesting as the dream in a broader way.
CeeJay Barnaby (13:20)
Sorry, our dreams are talking to us and through us.
Howard Eisenberg (13:23)
Yes, and if we’re open to it, we can use dreams to actually dive into a deeper level, closer to Source. We call this lucid dreaming or dream programming. Interesting, in your country of Australia, the aboriginal culture has a long history of appreciating the importance of dreams that we can have as humans and what it can lead it to beyond being humans.
And they call it sometimes the dream time, as I understand it. And they think it’s more real than what we call our waking reality.
CeeJay Barnaby (13:58)
I with that for sure for sure.
Okay, so you’ve worked with a wide range of individuals and organizations. Now, are some of the common challenges you’ve encountered and what strategies have proven most effective in helping people overcome these obstacles?
Howard Eisenberg (14:13)
So as you know, I’m also a physician and the particular area of medicine I’m involved in is psychotherapy. For a long time, medical psychotherapy, psychiatry, has been dominated by the pharmacological model, various drugs before that, and even sometimes electroshock therapy and things of that nature. I don’t use drugs. I’m never given shock therapy to any of my patients.
And I’ve worked with patients with severe illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder. These days, most patients I work with would be suffering from things like anxiety, which is really big in our world right now, and depression, again, very significant in our world right now. And again, I’m not using any physical means. I’m not using drugs. I’m not using other devices to stimulate their brain in some way or anything of that nature. What I do is help them awaken to realize
They don’t have to continue to be who they were, how they were. There’s always choice. Always choice. And that choice is choice of focus on the different options and alternatives. And there’s a power when you make that choice. There’s an expression, you may know it, it’s partly in mysticism, but it’s also in neurophysiology. And expression is, where your focus goes, energy flows.
So if I’m dealing with someone, let us say, depression, who feels despair, life is futile, nothing ever works out, ⁓ I invite them to go beyond that sense of themselves as a loser, as somebody who’s weak, who’s perhaps overly passive. And I help them realize they can actually choose to be very different type of person and live a very different type of life.
and they don’t realize that themselves at first. And then I build on it and I help them step by step to step into that larger life. And I sell them in advance. My goal as a doctor is to graduate them because it’s really a teaching process. And I do graduate them.
CeeJay Barnaby (16:18)
That sounds wonderful. I love the way you explain that. I’ve experienced depression myself in my early life. And when you’re in those sort of states, it can be very hard to get out because you are literally limited by the choices that you can see before you. And the only way to get out of that is to actually have a pattern interrupt of some sort. And that pattern interrupt, yeah, I was going to say you are the pattern interrupt.
Howard Eisenberg (16:41)
That’s right. I’m the pattern interrupt in part. ⁓
CeeJay Barnaby (16:48)
And I
really appreciate the way I explained that pattern interrupt. It’s good for people to actually have a pattern interrupt to see that the stories they’re telling themselves aren’t all.
Howard Eisenberg (17:03)
Well, you mentioned that that’s a good term, pattern-interrupt, just to share something with your audience, a quick one. And that is if some thoughts come to mind at times or feelings, which are very negative, which restrict you or hold you down, try to visualize in your mind a stop sign.
then let go of it and if again the thoughts, the image, the feeling re-emerges in a negative nature, bring back the stop sign. Eventually that’s a pattern interrupt and you break the circuit. So it doesn’t continue by default to keep preoccupying you and get you into rumination.
CeeJay Barnaby (17:39)
key there is when you’re actually, yeah, I love it. love it. It’s just, it’s so easy and simple. And what you’re doing is retraining your ⁓ patterns internally to throw up that instead of the ugly pattern, which holds you back.
Howard Eisenberg (17:40)
It’s called the stop technique. It’s actually called the stop technique.
Exactly. Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
That’s right.
CeeJay Barnaby (17:57)
What do you think is going on in our society now that is causing a lot of this anxiety and depression from a meta sort of point of view?
Howard Eisenberg (18:08)
It’s a good question. As I was saying earlier, my understanding of reality now is that we’re all, in a sense, extensions of Source Consciousness. And therefore, that consciousness is primary, or you want call it something called spirituality, is primary. Materialism is secondary, as I understand reality. But in our educational system now, dominated by Western concepts,
We’re being taught the opposite. We’re being taught that there is an external, existing, objective physical reality that somehow, through eons of evolution and accidental combinations of different chemicals, there was evolution and eventually humans developed as the most sophisticated being on the planet and that our sense of being aware, having some sense of agency, of choice. ⁓
is all from our head brain, the physical brain, which sort of computes consciousness for us. And that’s the official teaching, except that there’s no evidence whatsoever that the brain produces consciousness. There’s not even a theory that can possibly explain it that’s accepted.
All the evidence is the other way around. the mind, our consciousness, dreams up the brain. Also in the Western understanding of our physicality, we’re taught that not only is our consciousness in our head brain, but that’s the only brain we have. And we now know, if you really look at the signs, all humans have at least three brains, three physical brains. The head brain, a heart brain,
and a gut brain we call the microbiome. The heart brain used to be considered something that primitive people believed in. They believed that was like the center of their awareness, the consciousness, because you feel things in your heart emotionally. We now know that the heart is not only a brain, it’s more powerful than the brain in our head. The heart has its own nervous system. The heart has its own memory system.
The heart has more nerves going up to affect functioning of the brain and the head than the brain and the head can affect the heart. We’ve been totally misled on where consciousness comes from and what’s really primary. In the world as we live right now, we’re being taught that the reality is all material. We’re taught to devalue imaginations, I was saying earlier. We’re taught to devalue things like intuition, the inner knowing.
It’s all out there. Memorize the facts. Fall in line. Go with the guidelines. The greatest acceleration of this right now, in two respects, one was these smartphones, which have addicted so many people to screens. And that’s part of why they have very few little attention spans and don’t read many books anymore. But now also a development of AI, of artificial intelligence. It’s again drawing us even more so
to depend on things in the outside world. And that’s not where it’s at. So we find, for example, a real correlation statistically between the adoption of popular smartphone technology and practice and social media and the incidence of anxiety and depression in people and also particularly loneliness.
So it’s interesting here. So on one level, this stuff connects us to anyone, anywhere in the world in moments, magically, in part, as we’re connecting right now. But it’s disconnecting them from being inside. It’s disconnecting them from connecting at heart level with other people. I repeat, there’s evidence that the heart’s actually more important to go back to our bodies than the brain and our head.
So to me it’s greatly accelerating that trend where more and more we’re looking for the outside world for guidance and more and more it’s controlling us and less and less human spirit, less and less human heart and relationships.
CeeJay Barnaby (22:15)
Do you think that this ⁓ is like a self-manifesting loop of disconnection in that ⁓ this sort of like, I would say it’s like a societal trauma is causing the birth of more of these devices and ways of disconnecting?
Howard Eisenberg (22:35)
Yes, and that’s why said earlier that think people have lost the ability to think generally. They don’t realize what’s happening. There was this fictional movie called The Matrix. Fiction? ⁓ Well, it’s both sad and frightening for me to watch humanity marching voluntarily right into it. That’s what they’re doing. They’re surrendering their own awareness, surrendering their own sense of agency, and all becoming cogs on a wheel controlled by the over-rich people.
CeeJay Barnaby (22:44)
I thought it was a documentary, sorry.
terrifying where it could go, but there’s also the spark of the movement of people becoming ⁓ aware of it and also then embracing ⁓ mindfulness, ⁓ forest bathing, reconnection to nature. It’s like it seems like at the same time it’s going downhill that we’ve also got the balance happening.
Howard Eisenberg (23:24)
Well,
I say in value those forward, upward ⁓ trends. think statistically, though, it’s such a small percentage of the totality. And the threats we’re dealing with right now are so serious, I don’t think we have much window of opportunity. The reason I wrote my book…
was as a wake-up call, because I saw the world just going literally crazy. And since it’s been out, the world has gotten considerably more crazy in so many different ways. And I don’t want to be a downer here, but in my first chapter, as you may recall, I talk about some of statistics on various collapses in our ecosystem that we take for granted, but they’re very real collapses.
CeeJay Barnaby (24:11)
⁓ I think beyond all of the ⁓ darkness that is occurring, the key to it all is realize that we are co-creators in this. And within being the co-creators, we have to really still hold the lantern and go, there is light, there is a way. that’s right, that’s why I do this podcast exactly so.
Howard Eisenberg (24:31)
That’s right, that’s why I’m here with you. ⁓
CeeJay Barnaby (24:37)
And that’s why I really enjoyed your book. For me was like, my God, this is the book that I’m, like I said, when we first talked, that I wish I could have read. So I wish I could have written, I should say. But yeah, so what advice would you give to, ⁓ exactly. ⁓ Well, on a higher meta perspective I did, and so did you.
Howard Eisenberg (24:44)
Thank you.
Or both.
Ha ha.
CeeJay Barnaby (25:04)
Now, what advice would you give aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs who are seeking to make positive impact in the world to maybe instead of inventing that new device that keeps everyone broken and distracted, finding a new way to actually help people to uplift them?
Howard Eisenberg (25:19)
There are many things that I provide as examples in my book, but they’re very concise. Something has to be taken in slowly with reflection to really appreciate it. Even looking at some of the indigenous wisdom, for example, ⁓ in North America, the indigenous cultures have something called the law of seven generations.
And that was a cultural value system, wherein if the tribe, let us say, the band of natives, was considering some major change, changing their encampment grounds, changing their ⁓ hunting practice, or perhaps the type of relationship they were having with other tribes, ⁓ they would try to think out seven generations of their kin into the future as to how it might impact the consequences. We currently are doing
It is short-term thinking and is largely motivated either by fear or greed.
totally different way. I think it’s also important when we’re talking about making changes, like as you said, entrepreneurs and so on in business, that they do something which is not common practice at all right now. Think out the implications and consequences. The two godfathers of AI, I was just as I said listening to before we started our conversation, have both cried out that we’re not doing that and it’s perilous for our existence. They actually think there’s an extinction threat.
That’s seriously. And the other thing, just coming back to your question on the business sector, since everything comes from imagination, if you imagine something you consider desirable and you think it through, whether it’s seven generations or not, but really think through consequences broadly, then you can energize that and bring it into the world. As they call it manifestation, but it’s really just taking something comes up to you as a strong concept.
CeeJay Barnaby (26:47)
Do you think that, go ahead.
Howard Eisenberg (27:11)
and finding a way to bring it into the common reality that we all experience on this level. To me, this is like a level of our reality. And call it something like a central reality.
CeeJay Barnaby (27:21)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see how that would work. I’ve been considering what I’ve been seeing with the path of invention and entrepreneurship myself that has been a little disturbing over the last maybe five or 10 years. And it seems like a lot of it is like, as you say, driven by fear and greed. But a part of that fear is like this existential threat that they think that ⁓ because of…
a very strong vein of atheism in tech that they’ve only got one life and they’ve got to try and beat death. And by beating death, they win, which is really quite odd and paranoid. Yeah, and that’s why transhumanism is a part of the story and all that we see from that. Yeah.
Howard Eisenberg (27:51)
strong.
I know, we have transhumanism, yes.
And it’s like insane.
They’re basically dehumanizing us.
CeeJay Barnaby (28:19)
Yeah, yeah, to achieve the goal, which is really odd. Yeah.
Howard Eisenberg (28:23)
to turn us into robots controlled by a
mastermind computer. Yeah, the Matrix again.
CeeJay Barnaby (28:27)
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it seems like they’re seeing everyone on the planet is a part of the threat of their story of trying to escape dying. Within that, they’re doing everything they can to make sure they reduce the population and at the same time, keep everyone caged.
Howard Eisenberg (28:47)
Yes, sadly.
CeeJay Barnaby (28:48)
tough place. How do the commonalities of mystical experiences across different religions resonate with your own spiritual beliefs?
Howard Eisenberg (28:57)
One of the scholars that I really appreciate, I quote him in my book, Aldous Huxley, wrote a book some decades ago called The Perennial Philosophy.
And most of us, if we’ve been raised in a family with a religion, and are told by our family, we’re fortunate, we were born in the right religion, while the other people had the wrong religion. And that’s still going on today in this world as we know. He looked at it very differently, and he looked at what’s in common to all the major religions. In engineering, there’s something called signal noise detection. So if you want to transmit a signal,
to somebody else at some other location. And if the strength of the signal is weak or there’s interference, there’s noise in the system, one way to ensure accuracy is to keep repeating the same signal over and over again. And the noise kind of cancels out, so to speak. So coming back to the pre-real philosophy, he looked at what’s in common to all of these different major religions.
and that brings you back, so to speak, to the signal. And they all have the same understanding. Reality is multi-leveled. At some level, we’re all connected. They all have the same notion. Interesting enough, we think often of physics, particularly quantum mechanics, what leading edge of physics right now.
as being the opposite of things like the soft science of psychology or even the softer science of parapsychology or spirituality. And yet the physicists themselves, I quote a number of them in my book, are totally buying into this notion that it’s an illusion that we’re separate. We’re all coming from the same source. They also believe that source is consciousness, not material. That’s not what we’re being taught, but these are the experts. That’s what they’re thinking.
CeeJay Barnaby (30:48)
Unifying consciousness seems to be a part of the only path towards the, what would you call it? Like ascension to the singularity of being in pure infinite love, which is what I see is pretty much the ultimate goal of consciousness. And how does the concept of universal consciousness impact your understanding of your place and universe and your relationship to others?
Howard Eisenberg (31:13)
I say to some people, once you become aware as I have, you cannot help but care. Because once you know we’re all connected, how can you be indifferent to the sufferings of others or in various ways try to exploit them or hurt them as we see so much of going on in the world right now. So for me, once I have this awareness, ⁓ I don’t want to say it’s not a choice, that sounds negative. ⁓
But it’s more, I’ll say, just natural for me to appreciate the connection with everyone all over the world, no matter what their races are, no matter what their religions are, no matter what their ideologies might be, and so on. That’s just surface stuff. At a deeper level, we’re all the same. We’re happier and we’re stronger if we connect more with each other. And again, a lot of that is from the heart.
We sometimes evaluate things when we still think, some of us, in our head. We think things out, we may write things down, or again, use a computer device. But another way of evaluating the goodness of things, the correctness of things, the ultimate consequences is from the heart. What’s it feel like in your heart when you think of these things? So when we’re angry, this whole area of our chest feels tighter, it’s tense.
But when we’re happy, if you meet someone, a friend for example, or someone you love, that whole area of your chest softens. And you can actually use that almost as a compass, as a guide for wise decisions and not wise decisions. What’s it feel like in your heart?
CeeJay Barnaby (32:53)
I find personally when I go into a deep meditation that I sense ⁓ actual dropping down of my point of consciousness from my head all the way down into my heart space and operating from there. ⁓ it’s like the universe smiles when I get there. I love that feeling. What are your thoughts on the role of the ego in our experience of reality and suffering?
Howard Eisenberg (33:22)
So I think one of our core challenges and problems, just greatly amplified right now, is the ego. So again, as I said, I think everything comes from the source, there’s an extension of it, just like everything in a dream comes from the dreamer who’s having the dream.
But there’s still some level of two-way connection, so it comes from the dream. But again, when you become more awake and you realize we’re all part of the same whole, you can go back, going back to the lucid dreaming and dreaming program or the Australian Ocean, the aboriginal culture of dream time and work with that very actively. It’s discombobulating to…
be told that reality is almost the opposite of we’ve been taught. That it’s not, I guess I said, independent of us. You know, it seems that way. And everything around us, people and also objects, although again they seem totally separate from us, they’re not.
And there are ways to learn to use again your mind to change your mindset to access a different level of power. I give a simple example, again in beginning of my book, before I get into these placebo facts, in the martial arts, where they teach young kids with a bare hand and just one strike to split a wooden board. And they’re not taught to hit the board hard. They’re taught to strike through and beyond the board.
And when you remove the board as what you’re hitting, you’re able to go through it easily with no harm, no injury. If you don’t and you’re hitting the board, you hit the board. in psychology and psychiatry, I think this is a symbol we call limiting beliefs. So when you have an inappropriate belief, it can hold you back. It’s like a reverse of the placebo effect. Literally, it can blind you or just restrain you.
But once you’re aware, it’s just a belief, and you think through it, you become more empowered. You have more sense again of choice and agency.
CeeJay Barnaby (35:35)
Do you think that the content that people consume nowadays is a major part of those limiting belief stories that we are sort of embodying and adopting? Because I say all the time when I look at like, I’ve actually dropped my subscription to all streaming services just because, you know, I started this rule. It’s like if I see somebody murdered or…
Howard Eisenberg (35:53)
see you all the time.
or
CeeJay Barnaby (36:04)
or some sort of traumatic event happened in
Howard Eisenberg (36:04)
some sort of traumatic event happened.
CeeJay Barnaby (36:06)
the first 10 to 15 minutes of a show, I just turn it off. I don’t need to see that because it’s not good for you. And once I recognise that for myself, everything changed. I just feel calm. I don’t have this continuous state of underlying anxiety that I don’t need to have.
Howard Eisenberg (36:10)
Good, No, it’s not.
And it’s good you have that other level of awareness, so it’s like a meta-awareness we call it. But by contrast, for many other people, it’s sort of the opposite, unfortunately. So when something comes up that would cause fear or make them angry, they’re more magnetically attracted to it and sucked into it, sadly. That’s what’s happening big time in the world right now.
CeeJay Barnaby (36:41)
Yeah. Well, it’s seen as exciting
and they can’t discern it any different from the excitement of terror rather than the excitement and actual excitement. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So how does the concept of dreaming the world into being resonate with your own experiences and aspirations?
Howard Eisenberg (36:50)
Because of the lack of awareness, yes.
I have.
He’s done many different things in my life. I could write a book that was more autobiographical of what was the magic I experienced in my life. ⁓ Let me give you a couple of examples. ⁓ I did a joint degree in medicine and psychology. I did this at McGill University. When I proposed to the university that I wanted to do these two degrees together, they said, can’t do that.
limiting belief. And I said, said, no one’s ever done it before. And I said, but aren’t universities supposed to be at the leading edge of knowledge to advance, not just conserve? They said, well, there’s more practical reasons too. I said, like what? They said,
Our computer system, this is quite a few years ago, but they still had, every student had a computer ID. The university could keep somewhat track of the enrollments they had in different faculties and so on. And they said, every student has a computer ID, but you’d be in two different faculties. How would the computer deal with that? And I said, the computers are there for us to program, not to control us. Then they said, well, how would we calculate like your tuition?
You’re in two different programs, two different faculties. I said, I’m not asking for a discount. Guess what? They gave in. I went through the wooden board. I have my two degrees. That’s just one example. So again, I was told initially, you cannot do it. I challenged it. They gave me more reasons why I can’t do it. I didn’t accept the wooden board. I went for what I dreamed up as my goal, and I did it. That’s just one example.
I also dreamed that if I was able to do these two degrees, the research that I would do in the psychology department at McGill would be on parapsychology, specifically telepathy. At the time, the chairman of the Department of Psychology at McGill University was D.O. Hebb. He’s the father, by the way, of neuroplasticity.
He was also a former president of the American Psychological Association, extremely highly esteemed in the world. He’s the who came up with the notion that cells that fire together, wire together, that’s from him. he was my teacher for the courses I was taking as an undergraduate, but he was also the department head. That same person, as well, again, I acknowledge that he was, as being a very brilliant and important contributor to understanding of.
CeeJay Barnaby (39:16)
Yeah, right, nice.
Howard Eisenberg (39:34)
consciousness in the mind, in a conventional level. He also said in print in one of the journals of the American Psychological Association that although the evidence for psychic phenomena was kind of interesting, fascinating, he said he rejected all of it because it’s a priori impossible. quoting him. A priori, if you like, impossible. Some years later I determined I’m going to do that research under him.
And just another anecdote, it was his secretary in the end who ended up typing up my thesis. And I was in the office talking to her about some fine editing changes I had to make in the final manuscript when he was walking out of his inner office. And she said to him, Professor Hebb, you were wrong. Clever thing is real. This proves it. Just a matter of a year or two later, he recounted in public. He said he’s now willing to accept the evidence.
for some psychic phenomenon, cannot be dismissed. So it’s another example, know, something that’s really impossible, and I worked under him, and that was my intention, but going through that wooden board. And the research not only was, you know, allowed to go ahead, the actual research project was extremely successful, very powerful in proving it.
CeeJay Barnaby (40:55)
That’s awesome. I love that story because it’s like a… Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. I love that you actually use your own technique to prove other things that were pretty much dismissed by science.
Howard Eisenberg (40:58)
There’s more, you know, to ask your question. I don’t want this view of me. It’s more about what I’ve discovered, right? And that I really could learn and use too.
know, another one, just to say I’ve also worked as a corporate trainer consultant internationally. I never went to business school. I was never trained to do that, but I’ve worked with the top fortune 10 companies in the world internationally. It was a dream. I thought I’d like to do it. And part of the reason, by the way, it wasn’t an ego thing, I was thinking as a doctor,
Usually I’m only able to help one patient at a time, sometimes perhaps a family, but usually it was an individual and almost always after they had a problem. That’s why they would come to me as a doctor. And I thought, wouldn’t it be an improvement in what I could do in this world if I didn’t wait for people to have problems? I taught them proactively to avoid problems. And if I didn’t just deal with one…
or a few people in a family at a time, with hundreds and thousands. So that took me into the corporate realm. It wasn’t about making money. That never was my motive in anything I’ve done.
CeeJay Barnaby (42:12)
Sounds like you’re a bit of a karma mechanic in that case. I’m wanting people’s disconnects. Yeah. How can you incorporate visualization and other imaginal techniques into your daily life to enhance your creativity and wellbeing?
Howard Eisenberg (42:29)
Well, to go back to one basic understanding I try and teach when I’m working with patients particularly, you don’t have to be how you were, who you were. It’s very fundamental. You need to learn to fully inhabit, center yourself as we call it, in the immediate present, the here and now. As I say, when you’re in that state, that now, that immediate present is your point of power, where almost anything becomes possible when you allow yourself to just be in that state.
Now for most of us, we’re rarely in the present. Again, particularly right now, and again partly because of the technologies we’re dealing with, we’re so distracted into the outer world. So we lose, if you like, our intelligence and our power. If you realize that you don’t have to be, as I say, as you were, if you imagine something you consider, as I was saying earlier, desirable,
that you think would be a good service or product to bring out into the world if it doesn’t exist yet, or an enhancement, a better version of it. And then you think it out, RIP it again, in terms of not just will people buy it, but how will this affect those people longer term, and perhaps the generation or two after them. And if you do that, you get a clear sense of the vision, that’s the right vision, to bring forward, to actually manifest.
And some people, going back to what I said about dream programming, are actually able to elaborate on that type of envisioning, literally in the dream, through, again, lucid dreaming. But there are also techniques you can do in your total waking consciousness that allow you to do it as well. As I mentioned earlier, I actually developed training programs in creative thinking for Fortune 10, Fortune 100 companies, broadly.
I could take people who never thought they were creative and teach them in just a workshop a number of tools that guarantee they no longer will just see things in one way. They’ll see possibilities they didn’t see and maybe consequences. So that can be taught to be more aware. And again, it’s being more aware of what comes up within you. Where’s our whole trend right now in…
society is not to be so much aware of what comes up within us, more and more to be tracking what’s outside and depending on that, which ultimately weakens us.
CeeJay Barnaby (44:58)
I’m are you developing any courses online or anything like that for people to be able to take up and understand these techniques as well?
Howard Eisenberg (45:07)
You know, the challenge I’ve taken on for myself is, as you may imagine, rather overwhelming, but, modestly. As I said earlier, I wrote this book as a wake-up call to the world. I have been involved in a lot of things as we were discussing for many years, but a few years ago, something different happened, and it wasn’t under the effect, by the way, of any psychedelics. I had a revelation.
If we want to use lay terms and tone it down, could say an insight, but it’s a lot more powerful than an insight. I suddenly understood and saw reality in a whole different way. That’s apparently where I said again, once I was aware, how could I not care? I’ve taken upon myself to try to bring sanity to our world gone mad.
I never thought as a trained psychotherapist that I’d have to go beyond individuals and families and countries and have to take on the whole world, but that’s what it feels like right now. I don’t think many people are even able to think for themselves right now. It’s that bad. And a lot of them, unfortunately, don’t even realize that. They think they are thinking, they’re not. When are, to come back to just conventional medicine for a moment,
When we’re in a state of stress, when we’re anxious, depressed, angry, there’s a primitive part of the brain that’s activated called the amygdala. It’s actually very small proportionally, but it’s powerful. When it’s stimulated, it takes over. For example, when we do fMRIs, which track blood flow changes in the brain, when we have someone in a scanner and we ask them to imagine something would be upsetting to them, the blood actually drains away from the top part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.
and goes into the area the amygdala, it’s like pouring oil on a fire. And when the blood again flow is reduced to the upper brain, which is a prefrontal cortex, it’s like a computer going offline. And so when you really get into that emotional state, be it depression, anxiety, or anger, it’s very hard to pull yourself out once you’re in it. But there are techniques. When you talk to someone about how you’re feeling, when you journal, when you put it in words, there’s an expression we have.
to name it as detainment. Because when you try to put a word to it, you’re part of activating the prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of your brain, reducing the fire and the amygdala. So again, we can teach people these techniques, but they’re not taught broadly at all now. Not yet.
CeeJay Barnaby (47:36)
Eventually there will be because it’s necessary for the, I would say the survival of the whole race and basically the benefit of consciousness as an expression of the higher self, universal self, universal mind. Okay. So this has been really big. It is, it’s heavy, but it’s also very, very interesting. Like I’ve pondered a lot of these understandings myself, which is part of the reason why I started this podcast.
Howard Eisenberg (47:40)
Bible.
No, it’s heavy.
CeeJay Barnaby (48:06)
I wanted to tell people that there are people out there doing great work like you are doing. And ⁓ it’s all about healing our ancestral trauma, you could say, to bring us back in alignment with and in accord with the universe and where the universe needs us to go. So all power to you. And I’m really happy that we’ve talked about everything we’ve talked about today. But I’m curious to know, would you be willing to talk about that experience of the ineffable that came upon you and then…
Howard Eisenberg (48:09)
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
CeeJay Barnaby (48:36)
what happened?
Howard Eisenberg (48:36)
I don’t mind. I was invited to present a keynote to an annual conference of healers based on my first book, was Inner Space’s Parapsychological Expression of the Mind, that I wrote half a century ago.
I had somewhat left that behind as I was doing many things. I had developed my medical practice, I had an academic career, and I was also traveling the world as a corporate trainer and consultant and working with sometimes governments as well. I still had the interest, but I wasn’t invested as much in terms of doing any more research or keeping out but the literature. But when I was honored with this invitation, for my own sense of professional integrity, I…
wanted to do it really, really well as a professional. And so I did a very, very deep dive into a half century of parasological research, into a half century of the developments in physics and quantum mechanics. And I did also a very deep study of comparative religions and the wisdom traditions from many different areas and times of the world.
what was going on with the psychedelic research as it was starting to become more legalized in some jurisdictions and many more things. You’ve read the book.
and it all fit together like ⁓ pieces of jigsaw puzzle.
Suddenly they weren’t separate things again. They weren’t just different things. They were just more of an expression. You said earlier that you think ⁓ consciousness, the Source, seeks to be okay, to be at peace. I think what it really seeks though is experience. If you think of expression, one is only a number.
have a situation if there was nobody else in the world, you’re the only one, that would be really painful and horrible. So back to your question. So we this deep data dump and all of a sudden again these are connecting. So quantum physics fit with the wisdom traditions, different religions fit with other religions, it all was fitting together. That was though, how should I say, intellectual realization. But then something unexpected happened, back to your question.
I suddenly had an experience, I called again a revelation. It was fast, in a minute or two, totally unexpected. At first, very scary, not welcome. And the realization, the awareness was, there is no outside world. There are no other people. There are no other things, materially. And then I was like, gosh, I’m all alone. That was horrible, feeling. And it flipped.
quickly into, not alone, I’m connected to everything and everyone. That was the experience. It was fast, maybe a couple of minutes. First our peets, scary, frightening, but then it morphed into something beautiful and it’s remained.
CeeJay Barnaby (51:42)
So instead of being alone, you became all one.
consciousness.
Howard Eisenberg (51:45)
Yeah.
CeeJay Barnaby (51:46)
Beautiful.
Howard Eisenberg (51:48)
Even
with animals, this wonderful relation with a new cat, mind-blowing. I’m someone who studies the mind in both ways, in terms of the parapsychology realm, but also psychiatry. Wow, what a connection. What a connection. Yet I just heard at a conference a week ago, a somewhat eminent psychiatrist saying, and you think your cat loves you? Ha ha ha.
and he thinks he’s knowledgeable and he’s wise. We’re all connected. Consciousness is in everything. Just like when you have a dream, in a sense. Your dream consciousness is in everything, right? The different people, the different objects.
CeeJay Barnaby (52:29)
normal. That’s exactly what it is. Totally agreed. Totally agreed. So we’re coming towards the end of the podcast, Howard. How can people find you and your book and learn more about you and your work?
Howard Eisenberg (52:32)
Yeah.
Thank you. Again, as you asked, I don’t have a course per se, ⁓ but I do try to communicate with people who are interested in the book and my teachings.
So I have a very large following on LinkedIn and also on Meta, Instagram. ⁓ I’m in contact by email with people all over the world. It’s just me though. I don’t have a staff and no one is funding me. I’m doing this out of my own savings to be honest, because I just feel like I have to, as I said, once I have this awareness. The book can be ordered pretty well anywhere in the world online, whoever online distributors it might be. ⁓ People could go to their local bookstore and ask the store to make a special
order for the book. It’s not stocked in stores. It’s so-called print-on-demand. It’s available in multiple editions, ⁓ hardcover, paperback, e-book and audiobook. ⁓ My own website is drhowardisenberg.com and I have a lot of other material on that website for free for the public.
So anyone’s available to look at that. It’s drnot, the whole doctor, howardisenberg.com.
CeeJay Barnaby (54:00)
Curiously, when you said that ⁓ you’re being guided to do this, you said one word there was they instructed you to do this. I’m curious to know.
Howard Eisenberg (54:09)
I
don’t know if that came out as a slip or a tech thing. There was no they. It’s all one.
CeeJay Barnaby (54:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just trying to cure it. I’m just curious, because sometimes people have worked, when we’re working at these levels, you’re guided by higher entities and some people talk to you. Yes.
Howard Eisenberg (54:24)
Mm-hmm.
Well, there are different levels of reality, but
I repeat, ultimately I think, as most of the religious traditions teach, and the indigenous teachings, ultimately, we’re all one. We’re all coming from the same source. Again, I go back for analogy, which is a little more understandable and comprehensible to people. Think of us as humans when we have a dream. They can seem very real, they can be populated, they can have exact locations, but it’s all coming from our mind.
CeeJay Barnaby (54:44)
of April.
If there was one message that you’d like people to take away from this podcast today and our discussion and your ideas, what would you like for people to take away with them?
Howard Eisenberg (55:08)
Claim your awareness and your compassion. Awareness that we’re all connected, and compassion how you connect to others.
CeeJay Barnaby (55:17)
Beautiful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time, Doctor. It’s been a pleasure talking with you and I respect everything that you’re doing. I had the honour of reading your book as I mentioned at the start and it’s right on point for right now and what’s needed for people to wake up in a really easy and clear way. And ⁓ I thank you so much for your time.
Howard Eisenberg (55:19)
Thank you.
everything
Thank you so much again. Be well. Thank you. Take care.
CeeJay Barnaby (55:45)
Thank you. All right,
I’ll just say goodbye to the listeners.
Howard Eisenberg (55:48)
Ciao.
CeeJay Barnaby (55:53)
I feel really honored to be able to talk to people like Dr. Howard Eisenberg because number one, he has done so much for consciousness and the realization of people and their connection to consciousness in ways that I wish I could have done myself. And I am doing now through Supernatural Eyes. So hopefully you’ve listened all this way to the end of the podcast and you actually enjoyed it or watched the YouTube all the way through the end. And if you have, like and subscribe.
That’d be really appreciated. But if you’ve enjoyed today’s show too, and you’d like to reach out to Dr. Heisenberg, ⁓ I’m sure he’d really appreciate you contacting him and saying, thank you so much for coming on the show. That’d be really neat. So if you’ve ever really enjoyed today’s show, please ⁓ share this to a good friend who you think would benefit from it. And if you could get onto your podcast app and give me five stars and write something really nice.
I’d appreciate that too. That’d be really nice. So thank you so much for listening until the next episode. It’s bye for now.
