Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin

Dr. Roger McFillin (00:02.508)
Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I'm Dr. Roger McFillin. What is awakening? This is the question my guest today has spent his life living, mapping, and defending. And the defense has been necessary because in 2020, a senior Buddhist monk published an academic article in the Journal of Mindfulness with one explicit purpose to destroy his credibility. The monk later told him.

That he'd been asked to write it by a senior mindfulness teacher with the explicit goal, and I'm quoting, that nobody will ever believe you again. The article was engineered to surface at the top of Google searches of his name. The man being targeted is a retired level one trauma emergency medicine physician. He committed the unforgivable offense of publicly claiming an advanced stage of awakening and assisting that the stage was empirical.

Measurable and observable. Today's conversation will take us into territory that some of you may find uncomfortable. We'll be discussing enlightenment as a measurable neurological phenomenon. We'll examine the substantial body of scientific evidence accumulated over more than a century and quietly ignored by mainstream institutions. We'll discuss consciousness, how it affects matter. We'll confront

The failure of modern medicine to recognize spiritual emergence and the itrogenic harm that failure produces every day in our clinics and our emergency departments. We will discuss direct encounters with non-ordinary states of perception, including entities in other realms. We'll probably speak about magic, not in the theatrical sense, but in the technical and ancient sense of trained consciousness producing measurable effects in the world.

If any of this sits uneasily with you, I understand. Not long ago, much of it would have sat uneasily with me. But here is what I've come to believe, and what I think this conversation will help demonstrate. The wall that our materialist culture has constructed between science and spirituality may be one of the most consequential errors of our age. It's produced a medical system that pathologizes the normal.

Dr. Roger McFillin (02:26.434)
The spiritual. It has cut off honest inquiry from some of the most important questions a clinician can ask. And it has left countless patients walking into our offices and emergency departments, describing experiences no one is qualified to recognize, and often walking out with prescriptions for problems they do not have. His name is Dr. Daniel Ingram. He has been studied extensively in fMRI laboratories at Yale, Brown, and Harvard, where researchers have documented.

in him capacities they describe as extraordinary and in some cases unprecedented. He is the acting C CEO of a 70 person international research consortium spanning Harvard, Yale, Brown, Cambridge, Oxford.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (03:10.963)
It's actually about three hundred plus people now.

Dr. Roger McFillin (03:13.848)
Okay, that's old. Thank you for jumping in there. So now 300 plus people. And this is dedicated to bringing rigorous scientific method methodology to spiritual, mystical, and what they call emergent phenomena. He is the co-author of peer-reviewed neuroscience papers, studying advanced meditative states, and the author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, now in its revised and expanded second edition, work that has shaped contemporary contemplative practice for tens of thousands of readers worldwide. He's a co-author of

The Fire Casina, a practical guide to one of the oldest and most powerful concentration practices in the Buddhist tradition, and one that virtually nobody is really discussing publicly. Dr. Daniel Ingram, welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (03:59.209)
It's great to be here. Thank you for that remarkable introduction. Just a few things. the EPRC was co-founded by about 20 of us when we got together and realized we could try to be the change we want to see in the world. And I'm sort of its unofficial main organizer. I don't have a formal title. and then I'm the CEO of Emergence Benefactors, which is the 501c3 charity that we and some friends of mine, yeah,

we decided to found to help be the bank that could help receive donations and support projects and provide a little bit of institutional backbone to the EPRC and its allies. So grateful for all of their help and work on all of this. 'cause it takes it quite takes quite a team to take on these kinds of challenges.

Dr. Roger McFillin (04:35.007)
Yeah, thank you for

Dr. Roger McFillin (04:42.21)
I imagine so. Thank you for the clarification. We are going to get into that rather extensively. I'm fascinated by it. But first, I think we do have to define some terms for my listeners here because you've you've publicly claimed that you are an arahat, a term most of my listeners will not have encountered, and it's one that carries enormous weight inside Buddhism. So before we get into the controversy your claim has generated, what does awakening mean? What is arahat's?

specifically and then we can jump into, you know, why that has created such a controversy for you.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (05:18.761)
Yeah, so first of all, I should mention that there is a lot of controversy around this. I very reasonably get accused of redefining terms by some people, and depending on which part of things like the polycanon or the commentaries or the various traditions around this you think are most salient, some of my definitions and lived experience really line up. Some don't actually fit some of the ancient ideals and orthodox models and

Therein lies a lot of valid controversy. I get why the Orthodox people are annoyed by me. I understand that. I do actually go far out of my way in the book to really define what it is I mean by the term, and I'll get to that in a second, but I just want to acknowledge the complexities here. And the word arhat is defined a whole lot of different ways depending on when you look. Like the Tibetans often use it as like the whipping boy of their bot bodhisattva.

advertising strategies and they define it as a a range of ways. And even when in the Theravada, you see a bunch of different apparent definitions and ideals of what it actually means. So I have my particular way I use it. I'm very explicit about that. I don't need it in mean it in any of the other ways. I just mean it in this way. So what do I mean? And the the basic thing is that when you start paying re attention to reality, you start to notice certain things about it.

You start to notice that thoughts arise and vanish on their own. That's the first insight that a lot of people will notice. And you can start to notice that, you know, intentions lead to actions, mental impressions lead to sensations. You can start to notice these things changing and changing and changing in a very natural way. You can start and these basic insights actually that seem very simple, and a lot of people who have done basic meditation practice or just paid attention to thoughts will have seen them. If you take those far enough.

And you just keep noticing those basic qualities of more and more aspects of experience, eventually you can start to have these shifts where like it feels like a whole layer of experience will sort of now start automatically knowing that in a very direct, natural way. And if you do that long enough for enough categories of experience, all the things that seem to be self, thoughts, and physical sensations and emotions, and all of the qualities of experience, interpretations, memories,

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (07:38.729)
the sense of agency, the sense of observation. And eventually just by very straightforward observation through this very simple three characteristics-based filter, or a lot of other ways. Again, there's a lot of ways to to to climb this mountain or mountains, if you will, depending on whose models you like, one mountain, lots of mountains. Anyway, then you can come to notice, wait a second, the the self is nothing like what I thought it was. The observer is nothing like what I thought it was initially.

And in the same way that a person wandering in a jungle where like you see a snake and your whole you know, you go, a snake, maybe it's a poison snake, and you your heart races and you back up and you, wait a second. No, that's a rope. That's not a snake. This is a classic analogy from the old texts. And when you see it now as a rope, you can't see it as a snake again. And in the same way, with the sense of a self. So I it used to be that and and this sort of disappeared by layers and quirks and

yeah, various shifts. It used to be that there was this sense, I really am here, I really am in control, I really am doing things, I am really stable, I'm really a continuous entity. And when you've seen through that at all the layers of experience that there are, which are not infinite, they eventually you run out of layers to see this at, and then it's just straightforward. There's a there are these sort of rope snake shifts that happen where it was a

sense of a self and now it's a sense of just transient, immediate, luminous, natural phenomena, changing, changing, changing. There's nothing that could grasp them, there's nothing that could stop them or fix them or freeze them. the past is gone, the future is not yet arisen and even this moment doesn't withstand scrutiny. These are all classical ways to describe this, or as in in something called the Bahia of the Bart Claw Sutta, so the surtas of the old text that the original Buddhist

Well, the oldest surviving texts we have of Buddhism were mostly written down in Pali. And these there's one called the Bahia of the Bart Clause Sutta, which I like a lot, Udana 1.10. And it basically Buddha describes realization as in the seeing just the seen, in the hearing, just the heard, in the thinking, just the thought, and the cognized, just the cognized. So meaning there's not an extra s stable self in them. There's just these

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (10:00.947)
Qualities, these very immediate, very straightforward qualities. So it's not something else or other. It's taking the same data, the same snake data, and seeing, no, that's a rope, taking the same thoughts, sounds, feelings, sensations of all kinds, and seeing those are just natural. They just know themselves where they are. The sensations of the finger are right here. There are qualities that pretend to be observing them right here, but that's not the same thing. And so all the way through, this side, that side, and everywhere.

One can notice for oneself as a doable, reproducible thing, that this is a way of experiencing that reality that regardless of what you want to call it, just happens to be vastly better. This is vastly better than the previous way I used to experience reality or interpret reality because it's not just sort of experience, it's also interpretation at that sort of snake rope kind of way.

When the whole system is just no longer seeing itself as a coherent, stable, grasping, graspable, fixed, frozen, in control, separate, independent entity. And instead it's just the natural universe just occurring, which is what science told me when I was a kid, right? When I was eight, eight eighth or ninth grade and reading books like The Dancing Woolley Masters, it was talking about like a sort of Zen and the new physics, particle physics kind of books. Good book, by the way. Gary Zukov wrote that.

When I was reading books like that, it told me, no, wait, this is all just natural unfolding. This is all, you know, sort of mechanical is kind of the wrong word for it, but there's something Newtonian about it, there's something causal about it, there's something natural about it, there's something inevitable and non-negotiable about it. And there's no real actual separate negotiator. The all the qu qualities that appear to be a negotiator are just more things that the that sensation types that arise. The quality of effort can just arise naturally.

Quality of effortlessness can just arise naturally. The quality of observation can just arise naturally. It's just a quality. It doesn't mean there's an actual stable separate observer, but the quality of observation occur. And so we can train systematically and we can learn to perceive this for ourselves. And that, and when you do that all the way through for everything and it automatically knows, knows everything at every level, that's what I call our hot ship. And the controversy comes because the traditions would also say, well, when you have really understood that.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (12:21.587)
You will have no lust, you will have no anger, you will have no desire, you will never be able to say a bad thing, you will never be able to do a bad thing, you might not be able to become aroused, or you might not be able to be sad or something. Although if we look back at the lives of the early followers of the Buddha, a lot of them, you know, were able to be sad and and the Buddha got angry pretty frequently. And so we we see that that

Even in the lives that we hear about the early monks and nuns of Theravada Buddhism, there's a fascinating book called The Great Disciples of the Buddha, which I recommend. And you can see if you just pay attention to what they're feeling and thinking, they grieve for their friends when they die and they they, you know, have pain and they they had get ill and they don't like it. And so that would be aversion from an orthodox point of view, that kind of thing. And so you see that the models even then weren't actually the way the

Some people in the contemporary orthodoxy make them out to be, or at least if you believe the stories about the early Buddhist Sangha.

So that's kind of my take on this thing. I've been talking for a while. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Roger McFillin (13:29.324)
So my first question is why would that be in a optimal state of of a human experience to be without the full range of emotions in in including like an in intense feeling of like sexual desire or this energy of love and its dialectical opposite, why would that be a state of being we would try to attain?

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (13:52.243)
Well, that's a good question. There are a lot of people that obviously don't like their emotions. They don't like feeling lust or anger. I I understand that. I can't fault them their wish to remove these things. I you can look at the world, obviously, and see a tremendous amount of damage that these things cause. I can't fault them their basic analysis of the problems with greed, hatred, and delusion in the world today. Those are pretty obvious. Okay, fair enough. But it is also true that the Buddhist tradition has been split.

fundamentally and fractured along these model lines. What what is this all going for? What was the Buddha really talking about and what does it lead to? And if you look at, say, Zen or the Vajrayana in particular, you will find a very, very different relationship to the emotions, particularly ones labeled, you know, people would think of as undesirable, negative, or emotions that they would say lead to suffering and should be eliminated. And so you see the Theravada

Mostly coming down on the side of you should eliminate your emotions. You should never again feel this, this, this, this. And then you have various strains of the Mahayana andor Vajrayana, these are Tibetans and other forms of Buddhism that basically say one can come to see the true nature, the emptiness, or the the the various terms they use for this, the Rigpa, the whatever, pick your shinyata, the various terms. or

wake up in the face of these things or you can transmute them. So when you get more into the Vajrayana, again I'm no great Vajrayana expert here, but the basics of it are that you can work with the emotions, with the passions, with the colors, with the feelings, with the sort of archetypal power that comes through these things and transmute them into skillful means. And the Theravada and the Tibetans and the Zen kids don't really, you know, see eye to eye on the on this. So there's

This whole question is an ancient one. It's been very divisive. It's very complicated. I, through ter relentlessly Theravadan means pretty much ended up with a what to me feels like a sort of a validation of the more, yeah, the emotions remain, but you can see something very, very different about them. And when you do that, they become much more proportional. So the amount of space of my total experience of like this room that would be taken up by any emotion is quite small.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (16:07.463)
the amount of force they have ends up becoming substantially smaller. They move through exceedingly quickly. They they're they're more space is Teflon y so none of these emotions can stick to space or awareness or I'm not trying to permanentize or reify any of these sorts of things. But there's the sense of clouds can pass through the sky in the same way human feelings pass through and have their envelope, their attack sustain and their d decay. But

with increased sensey clarity about them when you actually notice the amount of, you know, of your total experience of any feeling is not that strong really in comparison to like being kicked in the shin or something even. If you're really angry, it's not that much of your experience. Most of the room is fine. Most of your body is actually fine. most of space is fine. and and so there's this sort of direct, literal kind of moronically

Yeah, moronically direct and literal perception of just thoughts and sensations. And you see there are these wispy little things and they just kind of do and it's not they don't occur, they do, but they they don't have the staying power in quite the same way that they did. That doesn't mean that they can't sometimes if if continued circumstances continue to trigger a response, then the system and the mammal still has, you know.

it still has adrenaline, it still has you know, whatever other chemicals go through it and still seems to perform physiologically, neurotransmitters and cortisol, and it it still responds as a mammal, which is hardly a surprise if you're a doctor or a scientist that the thing still responds as a mammal when you wake up. It still you know, it still has physiology. That's still part of it. Although something about it is changed. That's true. there's without the the sense of permanence or graspability

or reification, there is a transience to these things that just happens to be vastly better. And what else is better about it? There's something of a phase problem. This is a hard thing to understand. And when I stop talking like this, you can tell I'm sort of neuroatypical, right? I I and I did sound for a long time and I think about things in terms of phases. And so when I say a phase problem, sort of a weird way to describe it, but the sense of subject and object kind of going

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (18:24.605)
Back and forth. And are you looking? Are you controlling? Are you looking? Are you controlling? Is this, are you this? Are you not this? Are you the there's something in this very weird back and forth, phasey out-of-phase relationship thing that when all of a sudden that stops and everything's just sort of singing together is a very new age goofy way to put it, but in phase, in tune, like all lined naturally with itself and not trying to split off some part of reality as separate or in control.

Then there's something vastly nicer about that, that everything is just in phase and in tune, and there's not that weird back-and-forthiness that there was before. And that just feels a lot better having perceived reality both ways. I can tell you I'll take this one any day over the previous one. So it doesn't meet a lot of the standards, you know, I I don't manifest a million bodhisattvas across a zillion dimensions or whatever the boomy models would say.

And I still have human feelings, but the the experience of it seems compellingly, straightforwardly, literally, amazingly direct. And and regardless of anything else, it was what I was looking for on the path. So then it's just a question of aesthetics and how do we make the world a better place and help people. So the sort since once the insight problem is solved, then one gets to wrestle sort of full time with the question of

How do we make the world nicer? How do we make people better relate to these things? How do we help spread this sort of technologies in various contexts and across various groups and explain it to people and do the neuroscience and figure out how medicine can have a better relationship to all this deep end stuff? And then that's sort of the whole project these days that I work on.

Dr. Roger McFillin (20:07.077)
My experience with the mental health crisis that kind of exists right now is I I tend to I see it as multifactorial. I don't want to limit just to this, but there is a crisis of meaning that is occurring. That when you really sit down and you explore someone in the depths of their own suffering and their own pain, they struggle to understand why why pain exists at all and what what they're here for. Like really, what did their if they acknowledge a soul at all?

What did their soul come here to experience and what for? So I'm kind of interested to know your your thoughts on the human experience. Like why does a soul incarnate into a body? What is the greater purpose?

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (20:52.253)
Wow, I should first say that I also myself am something of a strict ontologically agnostic empirical, empirical pragmatist, which is a whole lot of fancy words that I'll break down for just a second. So when I get asked questions like that, I need to explain this first, even though it seems kind of philosophically pretentious or a bit heavy, but it is important to explain. So ontologically agnostic. Ontologies are statement of what is. Like there is a soul, there is a God.

There is not a God. This is all luminosity. This is all emptiness. This is all pure energy. This is all the dream of the great God Vishnu. Whatever. Like pick your f- Those are ontologies. These are statements of what is sort of truly true. These are all impersonal, you know, quantum particles and forces converging from psi squared, whatever's. These are these are all statements of ontology. And I am strictly ontologically agnostic. Just so

When people say, is there a soul, is there not a soul? I see so so I hold that in the quest in sort of an empirical, empirical pragmatism. What does that mean? Empirical in the sense of my own experience is my first basis, in the sense of sort of David Humean British empiricist, if that means anything to anybody anymore, but the sense that d one's immediate experience is the first basis by which you can extrapolate anything. So in an empirical way, and then empirical in the sense of science, reproducibly.

Like again and again, do I notice it as useful in what circumstances? This is the pragmatism part, to hold the concept of a soul. When is the concept of a soul useful? When does it seem to not be so useful? And we do this all the time. You know, we think of like when we're doing our taxes, hopefully we think about accounting. And these are, you know, the the the assets and the debts and the percentages and whatever. And then hopefully when we go into relationships, we don't think in accounting terms. We think in some other terms, hopefully, usually.

unless we're in a strictly business transactional relationship or something. And so hopefully we're then thinking in emotional terms and relational terms and something like that. So there's this sense in which we can we shift all the time between different ways of viewing the world. And then we can pragmatically think about what is it what do you get when you say there's a soul who's on a journey to learn something in this lifetime that is incarnating. Now from a Buddhist point of view,

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (23:15.827)
They're very funny about this, right? So the Buddhists are very, very funny about stuff related to souls. And they'll say, No, there is no soul. But they will say, You had all these past lives and you incarnated as a this and then I was a this and then it was this. Even the Buddha will say stuff like, I was a this and that's why I have back pain now, or I was this, and that's why I learned compassion or something. So you you have this sense even within Buddhism of people having these sort of past lifey experiences.

And the sense that there is a soul that may transmigrate, although they will say it's not a soul. Okay, yes. And from a real realization point of view, I get what they're talking about. But experientially, there is this sense that we come here, we are in these bodies, I'm in this body, you're in that body from an ordinary point of view, right? Sort of, you know, not being all too woo-woo, just kind of my experience is my experience. And that must be for some reason. Like, of course, there's gotta be a logic to this. I don't believe in a

A random universe, despite what my quantum friends will occasionally say, I believe in a lawful causal universe. This is just a belief. That doesn't mean it's absolutely true. And I hold even that ontology kind of lightly, right? So maybe I'm totally wrong there. but this sense that of why are we here? and from a Buddhist point of view, we would say karma. So there's gotta be causes that led to this. If you if you have a sense of science and a sense of models, something causal led to this incarnation. Okay.

Fair enough. I'm not a bug today. I'm a human today. Okay. And then what about pain? So pain's a really interesting one. I've had all kinds of pain in my life. Big kidney stones, you know, broken bones. So I I know what real pain is. and I don't like it at all. Why is it here? Do I think we need that much? I actually don't. There's a there's some fascinating cat cases of people who actually don't feel much pain or feel no pain.

Feeling no pain at all actually is not good. So as a doctor, I I've got to be very careful with some sort of a a HIPAA point of view. But let's just say I I've had the chance to encounter someone who has no pain. that doesn't work out well. Your hands, your feet, you need some pain, or else you y you don't navigate life very well. But a little bit of pain actually, it turns out, rather than like what most people feel, actually can be quite functional and even maybe better.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (25:35.113)
So we could look at the the people who genetically have only a little bit of pain and enough to avoid their hands and feet becoming trashed out. And that actually is a really good mod. So actually when you say, why do we have pain? I actually think this is one of the things that it maybe at some point we figure out a way to genetically modify humans or something to maybe not be so have so much pain. I actually think that would not be a terrible idea because I think it's a little bit excessive.

And in some people, really terribly excessive, like if you get spinal cancer or some horrible thing like that, at that point, it's not doing you any favors at all as a warning or protective system. And so from a medical doctory point of view, from a pragmatic point of view, I do think a lot about pain and suffering and how we can hopefully do something about it. But from an insight point of view, from an awakening point of view, I think a lot about how you can change the relationship to it. And even very basic mindfulness practices, people experiencing chronic pain will notice.

There is a skillful way to relate to pain. And you can see how big it actually is, what the mind is react you know doing in reaction to it. You can see the physiological responses. You can notice places that are not having pain. And people can learn to train the mind to have if I'm not talking about like a dissociated relationship from pain, not that I don't get why people don't sometimes associate from pain. That may be skillful too in certain overwhelming circumstances, but a much more skillful meditative relationship.

pain and a more proportional and realistic relationship to pain that maybe doesn't spin out so much of what Buddhism might call the second arrow or like you get shot with the first arrow and then there's like the pain of like, what's going on with this arrow? I'm gonna freak out about the arrow. And maybe maybe just pull out the arrow or realize, I've got a hole in me now, but I don't have to add all the the rest of the suffering in quite that sort of way. And so from a a person who just trying to figure out how to help people as a doctor and as a practitioner, I think a lot about

all of these different relationships to pain. But I in terms of the story, like a grand mythic arc, like I I think those are really fun ways of looking at reality sometimes, if they're held lightly. So, you know, why w was I born into this body that has its strengths and its challenges, or any of us in fascinating to speculate about, I've had some sort of past lifey sorts of experiences that seem to lend

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (27:53.639)
Some sort of explanation to these things if I believe them, which I don't necessarily have to. those are some of my thoughts on it. How about yours? What why do you think we're here and what's the meaning of pain in this human journey?

Dr. Roger McFillin (28:05.971)
Well, I I see Earth, the human experience, as a curriculum, a school. And we enter into this school for the polarity, the experience of both the joy and the pain, as a way to advance our spiritual growth, our soul's learning. why do I believe that? Well,

Just some spiritual experiences that I've had in the depths of meditation. I believe. Well, I got I got awakened about five or six years ago from end up meeting a woman who was a medium, and she delivered me messages from my deceased father that were so specific and exactly what I needed. And I'm a a practicing psychologist. at the time I was working with some of the most challenging

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (28:40.467)
What were those like?

Dr. Roger McFillin (29:03.613)
Trauma cases, you know, some just violent, you know, sexual trauma, multiple multiple problems rated to substance abuse and eating disorders and a number of things. And she introduced me to my guides who knew exactly who my clients were that I was struggling with by name. And then sh then I was delivered information on how to help them because I

The the exact message I received was that I'm missing vital information and my understanding of reality is not what it is. And so she in that meeting directed me to a number of of books, which started my meditation practice. I would say at the time previous to that, I was just a busy guy who loved to work and loved to think and loved to do.

And it changed my life where I learned to quiet my mind and realize that we are energy and almost like tuning in or turning a dial that you can actually change the frequency. And that's where the guides were working through her to me that say, listen, invite us in. Invite us in to assist you. And you know, I think I then I was exposed to a number of synchronicities, which got me to the point where I am today and it's completely

I just finished writing a book called The Awakening They Cannot Medicate. it's in the publisher's hands now, but I hope that later this summer or the fall it'll be available. But it's a a a different understanding of what reality is than what I understood as a materialist. And so I see us now on a soul's journey, and the journey can be challenging, but we choose it. we choose it for this advanced learning, and we enter into this, I don't know, avatar.

the this this experience. And I'm learning to see it with more joy, to embrace every aspect about it and not viewing our life here as the end, right? Like I think we get attached to just this personality, just this identity, and then we enter into a state of fear. And in that state of fear, we are attached to only this life and then we enter into a state of individualism.

Dr. Roger McFillin (31:27.535)
and competition and then we get attached to worldly possessions and materialism and I think that creates a lot of suffering. But when you let go of that and you see things on a much grander scale and that we're here to learn love, unconditional love, and that what everyone who comes in your path is there for a greater purpose and everything's happening for you, not to you, that switch for me changed my entire life.

And so fear has dissipated to a very low level where an openness and an expansion and a curiosity and a love has replaced it. And that when I see life as a journey in that way, my my life has has improved. And my my meditation experience has been one that I just say is extraordinary, where I look forward to it.

And I find myself sometimes in hours in meditation. At the worst of it, I'm just in a peaceful silence. at the best of it, I some feel like I'm connecting to something much greater and I'm directed to do things that are really meaningful in in my life. And so yeah, a lot's changed for me in the past five or six years.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (32:47.881)
Nice. Amazing. Wow. That's great. Cool. Good.

Dr. Roger McFillin (32:52.561)
Yeah. So let I let's let's transition a little bit because I'm still on my journey. And whenever I ask, I receive. Right now I am knee deep into reading Robert Munro's work and exploring the Monroe Institute and some of the science that comes out of there. I'm reading his last book currently. and so that helps begin understand possibilities about the nature of reality and and this life.

One of the things I'm interested in that you have spoken about is our exposure to the unseen. I want to get a sense from your perspective, because I know that consciousness has left your body. I know that you've experienced things that a lot of us have not yet. and it's sometimes even taboo to talk about it. But like this idea of exposure to entities, various realms.

where are we here on this this this planet in our exposure to maybe lower dimensional fields or lower dimensional entities? I just wanna get in the depth of that and your experiences with it if you're willing.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (34:03.593)
Sure. So the the first thing I should say is when you say the unseen, plenty of this stuff can actually be seen. So I do these very intense visualization retreats. You can go to firecasina, k-a-si-n-a.org, and you can read and listen to the reports of those of us who have left behind the breadcrumbs in case p brave adventurers want to follow and and

When doing that kind of thing and certainly plenty of other practices, you can run into and or if you're doing psychedelics or sometimes just spontaneously for no obvious reason. I remember I saw one right in this room when I was coming home from an ER shift one time. but yeah, you can sometimes see these things, sometimes hear these things, sometimes even feel these things. and they can

can sometimes seem to know a lot. They sometimes seem like you have a little bit of control over them. Sometimes they seem utterly foreign and have n there's no sense that you can control them at all or do anything to them as if they're a fully independent entity. Sometimes they can the can transmit information in various ways, sort of mind-to-mind downloads or or whatever that that can be quite surprising and and again, sometimes seemingly relevant or predictive or explanatory or helpful or sometimes just bewildering.

often just bewildering, I found. And they can seem any kind of way you could imagine anything being. Sometimes they seem not very smart, or they don't talk, or they just seem creepy, or sometimes they seem massive and like awe inspiring, like you gotta be kidding me. Wow, you can s you can see why in the Old Testament they talk about people trembling and falling to their knees when angels come, which in the Old Testament are be these big frightening

kind of terrifying, very strange looking things. And you can have experiences like that. I've had experiences like that. and experiences of things that seem to be ghosts, experiences of things that, you know, like experiences of things that seem to be frankly demonic is a very reasonable way to put this. Things that seemed very qu sort of angelic or divine or extremely benevolent, things that seemed sort of very archetypal and very powerful.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (36:20.915)
Things that I just didn't know what sense to make of them. They didn't really declare themselves much. They'd like it's not uncommon when doing this fire casino practice to just have like a face sort of emerge out of the background and then just kind of disappear back into it. Doesn't really announce itself or seem to have any import, just was kinda looking through, goes away, okay. they can seem like animals, lizards, dragons, beasts, gods, goddesses, aliens, all kinds of weird stuff.

There it is. So so the first thing I can say is you can have these experiences and then you can have the story you tell them yourself about them or the relationship you have to them or the reaction that you have to those. And for better I I would actually I would say luckily I'm the kind of person that when I have these experiences, I don't really do much in the face of them. I don't tend to freak out, I don't tend to get overly amazed, I don't tend to over analyze, I don't tend to

I often just like, okay, I can't make sense of that. And I just sort of move on. So that and I can definitely tell you having that sort of a reaction definitely makes one a lot more functional. That doesn't mean it's necessarily the best reaction to have, but I can tell you you end up, you know, not ending up in psych wards if that's your reaction to pretty much every entity that arises. So now whether or not people should end up in psych wards is a relation as a point of when they experience these things.

even if they have another reaction is an entirely different and really important question. But one tends to stay more functional in the face of them. You've got something to say. Go ho go for it.

Dr. Roger McFillin (37:55.261)
I do. I want to jump in there because I actually think your response is the optimal response. Now, again, I cannot confirm this. Again, it's just information. It's I I can't confirm what I'm about to say. It's just these are things I've received in the depths of my silence, or I've been drawn to other people who've communicated this to me, that where our attention goes, our energy flows. And this realm is a little bit is much more

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (38:03.271)
It certainly worked out for me.

Dr. Roger McFillin (38:23.44)
energetic than we recognize, and there's an energetic aspect to these malevolent and benevolent forces that are part of our our realm. And the malevolent ones do feed off of lower frequency emotional states like fear, for example. And so Bob Monroe termed the that as loosh loose is that energetic production

Of low energy or energetic experiences of shame and like depth of sadness and fear. And they feed off that energy because they're not creators. So they're creating they're what they're doing is they're trying to influence humanity in order to create these institutions and these experiences where that type of production occurs and they feed off of it, they harvest off of that. Again, can't confirm it. It's just something that I've learned. I've met some other people who have these.

abilities to interact with these entities. And one gentleman told me that maybe the optimal is not to give it much attention at all, because then there's no energy to feed it. But another way is to bless it or to actually meet it with love. So raise your internal frequency and then you almost become you're outside, you're changing the channel. You're outside of what they can actually even feed on.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (39:43.687)
Right. Yeah. So when people I you know, I over somewhere in the late nineties I hung out a shingle and said, if you're having weird meditative, energetic, psychedelic, magical, whatever experiences, I'll talk with you about those for free and I won't even take a donation. Turns out when you do that and you keep the shingle out for thirty something years or whatever it's been, you get a lot of takers. And so I got to talk to thousands of people and thousands of EVMLs and co founded with some friends of mine something called the Dharma Overground where people talk very openly about weird

meditative and sometimes psychedelic and other stuff. And yeah, when I'm going through the list of ways that someone can relate to these things, that's those are all part of my list. So I think that was a great list you gave. yeah, so so various things you can do. You can just see it as like meaningless energy. Like so you can kind of vipassanize it as we say. Just see it as moving particles that come and go. you can look into the depths of it from a youngin archetypal point of view. You can

Teach it the Dharma. If you see an entity, you can attempt to teach it the Dharma. You can send it loving kindness. You can put up a strong barrier and say, nope, not today. You know, you shall not pass, or whatever Gondel said, something like that. you can banish it. You can ask it what it needs. You can ask it questions, you can feed it things, you can you can be curious, you can have all these different

reactions and it's hard to tell necessarily which is always the optimal one, or you can just ignore it. Like just whatever, whatever's dude. so like one does with the vast majority of entities one meets. So if you're walking down the street, the vast majority of the entities you meet on the street, you don't have much interaction with. You don't care much about whatever and plenty of the stuff in the astral etheric, whatever you want to call it, second attention, you know, p pick your favorite name for this sort of thing.

you can actually have the same reaction to and some of these things I've just seen and I didn't actually interact with at all and some have had very strange interactions with. And keeping your wits about you, not making undue stories, thinking about very metaperspectively of the range of reactions I could have to this, is this the best one? And what do I get and what do I lose by choosing this way of relating to this experience set of sensations that are coming in?

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (42:03.003)
and set of meanings that may be arising interpretively, ha keeping that kind of spacious meta perspective I think will do does people a lot of favours on the mental wellness journey path.

Dr. Roger McFillin (42:15.673)
okay. So you did bring up the whole psychiatric aspect of this, and this is part of my work. What were you seeing, first of all, when you were working in emergency rooms and and and what are your thoughts on where we have to evolve to as an understanding as a field in both the medical field, the psychological field to what is actually happening with individuals who are experiencing various phenomena?

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (42:37.789)
Well, I could give you the very short answer, but I'm gonna give you the slightly longer answer first. And the slightly longer answer, which isn't gonna be the long answer today, is when I get done with moving, so I'm moving houses right now, I will be my next project is to chief edit and co-write a textbook called Clinical Phenomenatry. So I actually think we need a new medical specialty. I think psychiatry and psychology as sort of dogmatic entities ha what's the word?

They kind of said no to this stuff and I respect their no. Okay. I think saying we no you have to do this is not necessarily respectful of their strong boundary and no, they don't want to deal with this stuff or they just want to say it's all biochemistry and you need meds or whatever or it doesn't exist. If that's their boundaries that they feel comfortable with, fine. But that doesn't mean that some at an MD and or PhD levels shouldn't have skillful training and the you know, postdoctoral training.

In how to do this stuff. So the next thing I my next major project is writing the textbook of clinical phenomenotry and why phenomena. So I want to unpack this for a little bit. So you have fun you have psychology, which is PhD, right? And then you have psychiatry, which is MD, meds and out-ordering labs and tests and stuff, right? And you have phenomenology. So the phenomenology of these experiences interesting. That's the PhD or master's level or whatever. But then what's the MD level? What's what's the

What's the MD specialty that would then logically handle phenomenology is going to be phenomenatry. So iiatry means the healing related toology is the study of, not that psychologists don't heal, obviously they do. but just going back to the Greek, right? So so the idea is then to get with a bunch of my MD colleagues and also PhD colleagues, because it will take quite a village to to write a first textbook of a new medical subspecialty. and the

That will be a long conversation. This will be a long book. It will be a big project. It will take a lot of smart, kind, thoughtful, experienced people trying to figure out how to train people to be able to have the kind of conversation we're having, to be sophisticated about epistemology. How do you know ontology? What do you know? Linguistics, what do you call it, meta relationships, how do you relate to it? And what do you gain and lose from each of these approaches? And when is

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (44:55.315)
That not that's not your kundalini. That's actually a seizure. Or when actually, no, that's not a seizure, that's your kundalini, or whatever. Those kinds of questions, or actually both. Maybe you're having some seizures and some energetic stuff, whatever. We so these kinds of questions and and somebody that will own the deep end at the top level of human education, which is the postdoctoral level in our current guild system and university system, so and accreditation systems. So that's that's the project that will be.

consuming most of my time, and which has been what the whole APRC Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium has been building towards and continues to work on and add science to. And how do we really write that in a professional way, in a thoughtful way, in a skillful way that acknowledges the richness of the traditions while embracing the complexities and acknowledges medicine and its full glory and horror, and yet also takes the deep end seriously. There isn't actually any textbook that really does that.

that says, no, this is when you need to think be thinking about porphyria, or this is when you need to be counseling the person on the pros and cons of an exorcism. Like there isn't there there isn't anything that actually does that and takes both in the same breath, just at the same level. And that's what I hope to work on. So that was kind of the the long aspirational professional answer to your question, but it didn't answer actually answer it for the viewer. Sorry about that.

Dr. Roger McFillin (46:17.866)
That's okay, Doc. I mean, because I'm gonna have specifics around this, right? And this is that general field that I'm interested in. We can call postmaterial science for me, also psych neuroimmunology. You know, this this is this burgeoning field where we understand the power of like intention, the power of our mind to be able to like influence reality, the outcomes in medicine around seebo placebo nocebo effects or the

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (46:29.022)
Yeah.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (46:37.065)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (46:46.025)
there's amazing literature, like and real like good doctors and really do this well and obviously other healthcare providers, right?

Dr. Roger McFillin (46:47.861)
Yes.

Dr. Roger McFillin (46:53.726)
Right, the presence of the practitioner, how they frame a condition impacting its outcomes. You know, it's it's it's absolutely so talk talk to me about that. Like what do you really want people to know? What are you, you know, what have you been exposed to and what is your research consortium like bringing that you want the field to know about?

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (46:59.857)
Right. Huge. And particularly in the mental health world.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (47:16.221)
Well, on the first, do no harm, right? you know, sort of the medical ethics. If you think about medical ethics, the four main pillars of the way medical ethics is usually framed. And I realize it's way more complicated than this, but for a for a a basic person, you want to have autonomy, which involves informed consent. So informed consent about everything diagnostic systems, treatment systems, what are the real options, what are the framing options, what happens if we call this this? What happens if we call this that? Can you really describe the risk, benefits, and alternatives?

doctor of what happens if y somebody having what I would call a kundalini awakening is labeled as a hysterical person with bipolar something. I don't know. What do you gain and what do you lose when you medicate this process halfway and it doesn't really complete and sort of gets arrested versus main maybe they gain some temporary sort of muted metabolically messing with you functionality from some low dose antipsychotic or whatever you put some somebody on

Right? Can you have an honest conversation of the risk, benefits, and alternatives with high quality science? So that's the first thing. Can you have high quality science of if we use the traditional DSM system and we ignore all the sort of what I call the spiritual exemption criteria, these little lines they got in Lukov and Turner in ninety-three, ninety four, where it says, if this is actually, you know, considered normal in your spiritual dish and you're otherwise functional, maybe it's not mental illness, right? And then nobody ever wrote the phone book.

Of what was considered acceptable in the traditions to support a standard of care. Writing that phone book is actually the Emerge Wiki project is basically writing the phone book to help answer that question and support standards of care and actually ask the traditions what is normal in their anyway. It's a long that's a long sidetrack, one of our projects. But so being able to have honest conversations and high quality data of the risk benefits of alt and alternatives of diagnostic systems, of treatment systems, of cultivation systems from the positive psychology point of view.

How do you increase resilience for the inevitable shocks of life? How do you increase the how do you take advantage of all of the amazing things these minds can do? Deep meditative states, incredible richness of experience, genres, these like, you know, if you look at the various people who are promoting these like very deep, tranquil, calm states of mind, whatever you want to call them. how can you take advantage of all of that for neuroimmunology, as you mentioned? Because these things clearly have very powerful neuromodulatory and immunometer.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (49:37.425)
immune modulatory effects, very powerful physiological effects. I mean, how many people do I know who had some you know weird muscle spasm tension and learned to just look at it clearly and it released and and freed some emotional blockage and all of a sudden they're like not only not in pain, but they're they've they've resolved some sense of trauma or sankara or whatever you want to, you know, p knot of body armor or whatever pick you know, trauma. Pick your favorite ways of describing these sorts of things.

So to have that full range of capabilities at the MD level and that range of of comfort, the ability to normalize experiences so that you could talk to someone at the MD PhD level and they could really normalize, hey, this is part of the range of human experience, this vast deep deep end that people have been reporting for thousands of years. I actually think that's about half of it. Literally just being able to listen to someone and hear their story and have them tell it, I think is about half of the healing that I do and support that I do as I and

To have that context where you can do it safely and someone's not going to say you are broken and need meds or you will need these meds forever, which is what happens when people get diagnosed with bipolar. and not that there's not sometimes some bipolar that might not need some meds, perhaps, as part of a reasonable conversation mixed into this, but there are no head-to-head trials of what happens when you do the one versus the other. There are no comparative studies of what happens when people run into this stuff and you treat it various ways. We don't have that science.

And we need that science. So to actually do the stuff that would reasonably support standards of care in a really high grade way, we'll start with just what we think we know, which is expert opinion, which is how you start building fields. And then we need to hypothesis test this stuff. And we need to really say, Hey, what happens when you call this this versus calling it that? When you frame frame it through a spiritual or emergent lens versus framing it through a p pathological lens, and what happens when you do both, and what happens when actually that was just really low sodium. Sorry yeah.

You had SIADH and you just needed to whatever. Like, you know, so that, you know, or maybe your calcium, potassium, thyroid, whatever is off, right? So some of the stuff, there's medicine involved too. And to be able to have someone who's fluent across that range, that's really what we want to cultivate. And to do all the science and all the neuroscience and all the validation. So like the studies I do at Harvard mostly these days and some other places too. I've been to Vanderbilt recently and and what Cambridge and some other places. But

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (52:01.649)
you know, with wires on my head or in fMRIs and things, showing that you can actually show that there are reproducible changes that come from this stuff. You can actually measure some of this stuff. And that's not just me, but I have plenty of colleagues we recruit, you know, advanced practitioners and people who have sort of trained in meditative athletics or gymnastics or whatever you want to call it, where you can reproducibly drop into various states, you know, that are very precisely controlled and tell when you've shifted to the next one. That kind of meditative athleticism is also

trainable for those who have a weird obsession with stuff like that, which I for better or for worse do. And and you can show, hey, there are there is a there there. You can really show stuff that that makes a good story of physiology and to be able to bring that to the clinical world and say, hey, there are developmental ways that you can not only help measure this stuff, but help people point people in good directions. So some there's plenty of work people can learn to up regul.

upregulate their executive centers and downregulate their default mode network or regulate it in different ways, for example, that allow them to have more sense of metaperspective or sense of cognitive, relative cognitive control. I realized I was talking about no control earlier, but from an ordinary psychological sense, a sense of like more ego strength or a sense of more spaciousness around phenomena, these are trainable skills, right? And we all know that we, you know, we can develop these. And to be able to do that with skillful biofeedback, to be able to measure this stuff.

Those are all the kinds of things we really want to bring to the clinical world and then figure out how to scale this globally. One of the biggest things when we looked at like transpersonal psychology, so tran the transpersonal movement, which really came, I mean, it's has its origins in the late 1800s of the cosmic consciousness kids and and Buck and all of those people, but it really got its sort of boost with Esselin starting in the early 60s, and people like Abraham Maslow and the Groffs and and other transpersonal, it's a lot of them.

The the problem is they chose language that just doesn't scale. So they they chose terms for things like kundalini and alien whatever and stuff that unfortunately makes a lot of assumptions and linguistically just rings oddly to the ears of medical specialty boards and the people who write textbooks. And a lot of the Abrahamic religions as well, and and you know, even d the Mughal materialists don't like the language that they chose. So figuring out how we can have just very precise technical descriptive professional lexicons that d that

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (54:25.819)
For better or for worse, don't make the mistakes that we think the transpersonal kids are making and made, because we can show 60 years later their stuff didn't scale. They kn they got almost no clinical penetration at all into any major, anything, any textbook, any DSM, I any ICD 10, any insurance reimbursement. It just didn't happen. So how can we look at that, build on the incredible foundation these people have created and the openness to the deep end and figure out linguistically and and from a sort of tactical

lexicons of professionalism, do something more descriptive, more ontologically neutral and more globally scalable, because justice and equity that scale it everywhere, you know, sort of part of medical ethics is also really important to us. So the four pillars of medical ethics, that's what we're really trying to follow. And that's what really drive our project is we try to practically apply through all the tools that we have in the whole world, from neuroscience to economics to linguistics to, you know, behavioral science to everything, how do we get this out there?

And that's the the job of the re EPRC and its research consortium and around its benefactors and all of our allies and other aligned, you know, philosophically people in the space. That's what we're trying to do. Sorry, I've been going on and on I as I do.

Dr. Roger McFillin (55:35.36)
no, I I'm I'm fascinated by the work and I'm really looking forward to continuing to follow and see where it leads. I do have some kind of questions philosophically, you know, that also just come back to the nature of reality and then lead us back into how do we optimize the human experience? So one is I guess my greater question is to what extent, to what degree are the individual a creator of their own experience? So

Do we project inward and outward to a a field? And then that comes back to us for our own experience.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (56:15.027)
So again, when I hear something like that, I very much appreciate why that is a very interesting ontology. So again, I have this ontological obsession with ontological agnosticism. But when you adopt that frame, I think you definitely gain some things. You definitely gain a sense of agency, which is really important for people. A lot most people really value the sense of agency. And even from a relative point of view, I must say I value something in in the the sense of the ability to

Make my reality better. I'm thirsty, I take a drink of water. That's better. So that basic sort of agentic quality, even if you eventually realize it's all just the natural unfolding of a of a skillful universe or something, empty, compassionate universe, or what however you want to frame one's sense of realization, the the practical aspects of it are valid. So that sense of I can create my reality, I can sort of choose how I frame my reality.

I might get back more of what I put out into the world and I can selectively amplify or deamplify the things that I are occurring in skillful ways, right? Those are not new concepts, and you find them in Buddhism as well as across pretty much all spiritual traditions. And I think those are all great things to have. And that sense of do we create a reality? Okay, so I'll tell you this, I'll just sort of go to something very weird.

Doing these fire casino retreats we were w w which we do, which is where you look at a light source like a candle flame or a light bulb or whatever, and then you close your eyes and you follow your eyelid colors until you get bored, which might be a minute or an hour, and then you open your eyes and you look at the light source and you close your eyes and you do that again. Turns out if you do that in very high dose, like ten, twelve, sixteen, eighteen hours a day, for like two, three weeks.

Occasionally you can get into a state, and there are other ways into this state too, but this is the only way I've ever gotten there, which we call malleable, malleable and wiely. So, which is basically you can make your experience become anything you want it to be. It doesn't act you don't actually you can't actually tell at the time because you're just hanging out and everything seems very normal. But when you enter into this particular mind space, whatever you want to do, you can do.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (58:34.565)
I could suddenly turn this into a butterfly or make it disappear to my experience. That doesn't mean anybody else would necessarily experience it. Although when you have shared experiences in these kinds of states, that's where it really gets wild. We could talk about that and how b how that'll shift your whole sense of what's what. But it does give you what appears to be total control over everything in your sense of reality. And that is a very strange thing to do. Now

You'd think you would do all kinds of wild stuff when you get there. You can imagine all the things you would do. It turns out almost certainly none you wouldn't likely do any of that. It's a vi it's a state that feels very normal, but it's not normal at all. And so like one's imagines, if I was in a state like that, I would do this and this and this, and I would make my experience this and this and this. Well, very little chance I think of that actually happening. But it does prove the point that all of this

perceptually, at least in certain modes of attention, is up for grabs and malleable, you can change it, you can modify it, and at pretty extreme levels. Now anybody who's taken a psychedelic or gotten into intensive states of meditation or or this kind of stuff through however else they got into it, through fasting or chanting or whatever they did to get into one of these states, you know, reality can obviously become very, very altered and extremely weird.

And and even those kinds of experiences which don't have the sense of incredibly clean control that the state I'm describing has, you at that point realize, wait a second, reality can do all kinds of weird stuff, right? As one realizes in dreams, particularly very compelling lucid dreams, where you realize reality seems to be able to do nearly anything. Well, you can get into states where you're quote unquote awake, like we in theory are now, and again, I'm holding ontologies loosely.

And you know, like not asleep, not dreaming, so I believe. Although I've had plenty of dreams that that I tried my falsification checks and looked at my hands and clocks, and they they still passed the tests, and I was still dreaming. So who knows? You know, I hold all that loosely too. But but you can realize that reality is is nothing like the stable, normal thing that we muggly thought it was or sometimes think it is necessarily. And

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:00:55.185)
The implications of that potentially incredibly vast from a mental health point of view, I think it's very interesting. And again, I got that sort of doctor habit, and or you're, you know, the psychologist in me, you know, thinks about how then that does give the sort of empowerment to create a sense of what your thoughts are around things, how you use energy, how you relate to emotions, what emotions you call up. it's sort sort of like CBT.

you know, on steroids with like a high degree of what you can actually do to make all of this something more skillful, hopefully more healthy, relating to others and the world better. it it does provide those kinds of frameworks provide a tremendous amount of empowerment. And sort of then the shout outside obviously of that is if you can't do it always, right? Because sometimes reality just does its thing, then you you know, I hope people don't feel too guilty about that. I thought

All these pure thoughts, but I still got cancer or whatever it is. Like, you know, you gotta be careful with that, because then the sort of flip side of the whole the secret, you know, radical empowerment, whatever, is that then everything is your fault. Right? I don't know if how helpful I always find that one. I don't find that one that helpful sometimes for really bad things. Although the Buddhists would say the same thing. If you everything that happens to you is a unfolding karmic seeds, but but then they take this.

radical view that it may have been like 10,000 lifetimes in the past when you were an ocelot and you bit some other ocelot or who knows what the hell, like and that's why you now have this ripening karmic negative seed. You know, so it sort of diffuses it out rather than, right then you were thinking a negative thought and that's why you now have cancer or something. Right. So you have to be careful with these frameworks and what you gain and what you lose by adopting them. They all have their pros and cons and shadow sides. So that's sort of

Again, my holding these things loosely as I attempt to find what's good in them and realize the problems. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:02:57.626)
It's interesting.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:03:00.593)
I do go on.

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:03:01.24)
I y you do. So there's a lot to comment on. And again, I I hold some of this loosely. what I find interesting is to the degree in which my internal state can influence my external reality. The more that I become skillful, the more I become intentional, the more I become conscious, the degree of control I have over the events as they arise is uncanny.

as if I am somehow influencing that aspect of my reality. I I tend to think things now in terms of like frequency, energy. And there's a when I'm in a maybe a lower energy state, lower frequency of emotions, I'm very more conscious, I'm very conscious now that I don't want to create a that experience. So I surrender to it to an allowance that allows me to move through it.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:03:31.027)
Sure.

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:03:59.289)
When I become when I experience, you know, a higher degree of love and passion and creativity, and I feel like I'm aligned with what I understand is what I see as like the Christ in me, that I'm in flow and my soul has is come here for this particular purpose and I'm energized by it, then I choose to create out of that experience. And the to the to the extent in which it's unfolding.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:04:25.929)
Nice.

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:04:28.962)
And it's been experimental in a lot of ways for me because it's still real I'm relatively new in the path, is is pretty amazing to the point where when I said earlier, like what I ask for, I receive, right? So like in stillness, when I really want the answer to something, it can come in that moment or it can come 24 hours later, or it can occur right when I get out of that meditative state and enter into something, and it just it's could be provided into me like a book recommendation.

And the the synchronicity of this is fascinating to me, just from an observational, experimental level. The more that I believe in it, the more frequently occurs. And so I am just now kind of like surrendering to the awe of this, right? also to the degree which I can silently, without using words, try to influence people who come in my path. So a great example would be.

of this would be just to create a a feeling of of of love and compassion and then direct that to specific people. Sometimes they're right in my past, sometimes it's from a distance, but direct that energy toward that person and then to get what what appear to be almost measurable effects, whether it's been in my sessions that I've worked with with somebody or it's been in other areas of my life where then I've got a phone call or it alters their state of

in how they relate to me is somewhat uncanny. Again, I surrender to there's a lot I don't know, but it seems to have a positive influence, by fruits, you should know it, on my experience of my reality. And so I feel like as you said, I do feel a a degree of c interconnectedness of all things, which leads to my final question. And this is around I'm sure you've been exposed to this.

That we're in a transitional state, that the earth in its cycles, as again, a vibrating energetic being is shifting in its state of energy. And where there's an expansion of consciousness that is currently going on. Where may one might say an expansion from th a three-dimensional reality into like a four and a fifth-dimensional reality, where

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:06:52.655)
We understand the interconnectedness of all things. We might engage in telepathy, which is measurable, as you probably well know, in post-material science. Maybe there's this evolution that's happening for all of humanity. Another term for this is Christ consciousness or the return of Christ consciousness. Have you been exposed to this and what is your understanding of it?

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:07:13.467)
So lots of things in there. the first I'm just I'm gonna go back to some of the first things you said, which is that sense of like sending compassion or like loving kindness or to to people. I think that is some of the most powerful. If you're going to do magic or or ha whatever, I think those are some of the most skillful magical things you can do. I have a whole chapter in this in my book. You can find magic in the Brahma vihara. So the Brahma viharas are divine abidings of loving kindness, of compassion.

Of appreciative joy, appreciating the successes and well-being of others, and then equanimity, which sort of balances them out, the sense of like that spacious acceptance that just allows things and can attune to whatever is going on. I so all of those things you mentioned, I think, are great, yay, and worth lots of time cultivating and experimenting with. And that sense of experimentation. You meant you said this experimental in your life, you're playing around with this. So for me, empirical empiricism, the sense of my in my experience reproducibly.

Pragmatically, I can notice what the effects are when I do certain things. Huge fan. So great. I think that's excellent. And the sense of synchronicities you mentioned. You should have Bernie Biteman on, Dr. Bernie Biteman. He he's he likes to podcast and and he studies synchronicities. And you should check out his books on this stuff. He has whole books on all the types of synchronicities and w like the various science of this and like the the descriptions and and he's he's great to talk chat with.

We just did a podcast recently, so so I would recommend Dr. Bernie Biteman, good guy and friend and fine member of the EPRC. I might as well might add. So cool synchronous cities thing. And then in terms of sort of f three to fifth dimensional transition or whatever, my mom has been into this stuff for for decades. So for a very long time, I've been hearing about that sort of stuff. And it's very much a frame that she appreciates. I hmm.

Wha what does one say? So in the face of all of that positivity, you'll forgive something of my gen X, whatever. I do not necessarily believe everything will necessarily get better. So I and th I am torn between the side of me that works on a 30 to 40 year project that requires some reasonable degree of financial and political and and human stability to come into

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:09:37.341)
being in some really complete way, if we're lucky 30 to 40 years, right? To build a new medical specialty and really do all the science and really establish this in a way that can really help humanity, filling in the MD, the the MD is the missing part of the very complicated equation of how we promote this skillfully and globally in a more valid and appreciated way. yeah, the sort of that that component of it.

So on the one hand, I work on these things and I would love to believe that my family is going to be around and everything's going to go well and that we'll shift to higher dimensions and everybody will wake up and everything's going to be great. I have that side of me. And then I have this other side of me that is really full-on doomer. Like that feels this incredible urgency right now that that there are extremely large number of challenges that I cannot necessarily trust the mothership or the Galactic Council or the

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:10:19.951)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:10:32.253)
the avatar, whatever the guides to all save us from the the unbelievably stupid things we're doing to ourselves and the planet and each other. And so I feel what's the word? I I feel the the nipping dogs at my heels of death and destruction and and between these two my life flows. So I use this, I think, very reasonable fear to drive the the passion

That gets me up every morning to dedicate as pretty much as much as I can to this when I'm not moving my house, which I am right now. But as soon as the house moving project is done, I will plunge back into doing this, which is what I generally do full time and pour my social, temporal, and financial capital into and help find other people aligned in that mission. And so so that if that helps answer your question, does that help answer your question of my sort of views on these things?

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:11:28.644)
It's it it does and it's very consistent with what you've spoken about through the rest of the show. you do s you do present to me as a true scientist.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:11:35.059)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:11:39.081)
Trying to be. we we I have an the co-PI a number of scientific projects right now that are looking at this sort of stuff through various lenses, expert lenses, textual lenses, data-driven lenses. I keep up with, you know, we I do neuroscience again, mostly with Harvard these days. So I find myself sometimes other people putting wires on my head or putting me in a skin or other places. Vanderbilt and and some other places recently. So I guess it was a few years ago, but and

Trying to figure out how to promote other scientists. So I also I actually like gathering together and building teams and building plans and figuring out like what are all the steps we need to do? Like what's a reasonable plan of how you study this? How do we like have reasonable competition in the space? How do we have competing teams that like may have different ideas about this stuff? And how do how do we promote them? So I spend a lot of time thinking about

How to bring them together, how to get them resources. By the way, s sorry for the shameless plug. I do this all as a volunteer, by the way. I pay to play, I help support the charity. I don't I don't get any money from any of this. I I give to these projects when I can. But should anybody in the audience have deep enough pockets to help support these things, there are lots of places you can contribute, lots of people working on this stuff through a lot of different lenses. The EPRC is just one of them, emergence benefactor is just one of them, but we would welcome your philanthropic partnership.

So sorry for the shameless plug for this work, but it does cost money, right? If you're gonna do science, it takes cash. You know, universities get their cut, the machines cost, the an analytical time costs, people have to eat. And like again, I'm retired, I'm doing okay, so I I don't do this for cash, but but the rest of them do mostly. And so figuring out I spend a lot of time figuring out where the money comes from, and we're woefully underfunded. So somehow

There is this massive disconnect between all these tech billionaires wandering off to the jungle and doing ayahuasca or whatever the hell and like going on these journeys and kundalini yoga and getting their gurus and the the five MEOs blah blah. You know, the the that and not appreciating that you need the rational infrastructure to support this. It is weird. The the mental health care system sucks at this. There is real science to be done, there's real biofeedback to be d be developed, there's real

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:13:54.341)
A B comparisons to various mitigation and cultivation strategies, right? That takes real work. And I I see all I talk to all these people who are like super into this stuff, and they totally don't get the infrastructure part. It's like wanting to build Teslas when everyone's driving on like dirt roads. Like we you need the roads, you need the the filling, the power stations, you need the infrastructure, you need the power plants in the same way. You need MDs and PhD people.

And neuroscientists and and also epidemiologists and lawyers and and healthcare insurance people and actuary people, et cetera. You need a lot of th bureaucrats to understand this stuff in a language and with the kind of epistemology, the kind of science, the kind of papers, the kind of journal presence, the kind of media that can make it make sense for them in a rational, functional way that allows them to then incorporate it in a skillful way into bigger systems. And all these people have these dreams, we're all gonna wake up to fifth dimension.

But they don't want to pay for all the stuff that's that like I think is gonna be really, really helpful for promoting those kinds of things. So again, I'm the sort of get it done pragmatist and sure, five D, whatever, great. Okay, but let's let's put in place all the infrastructure. If people have a sort of a vision of a five D, whatever, let let's do all the things and be part of the change we wanna see in the world to really make that happen. Sorry again for the shameless plug for these things.

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:15:15.705)
No. Well first of all, I I admire your search for truth, right? And this is this seems to be the role that you're playing for humanity right now, is that you you want to bridge science and spirituality. And I yeah, and and provide the best updated modern care and move us out of the limitations of the paradigm. And that's a that's an interest of of of mine. Like I said when we we spoke off cam camera, I think this is gonna be the first conversation of potentially

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:15:29.545)
Yeah, and clinical care.

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:15:45.431)
more because I recently founded a a media company and we are gonna be we want to promote and produce this type of content to be able to bring it to humanity to overwhelm the matrix to which is keeping us in a and I'll use my terms energetic low energetic vibration of fear and we're not we don't have awareness to our capabilities.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:15:47.049)
Cool.

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:16:14.872)
the c capabilities that we as humans have and on self-healing and of creation. and things that I think are are are intentional. That's another conversation. But would love to get you in my studio in in the future and be part of the documentaries that we're gonna be producing and just to learn more specifically about what your science is producing and what you want to continue to fund because those are the those are the questions that I think most people walking the street

have never been exposed to. They're not they're not exposed to postmaterial science, psych neuroimmunology, this amazing work coming out of labs that show what we're capable of as we're facing a chronic disease epidemic, a mental health epidemic, and we're continue to walk down the same path doing the same thing, expecting different results, which is insanity to me. So Dr. Daniel Ingram, I wanna thank you.

for a radically genuine conversation.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:17:17.545)
Thank you. It's been really fun. And thank you so much for helping to promote these things. And if anybody else is, you know, is out there thinking about what they can do to help, go to T H E P R C dot O R G. We have a huge white paper plans. I have all kinds of shovel ready projects of real you know real researchers at real universities, real clinicians, real good people who really contribute and can help move that part of the conversation forward. So, you know, just be in touch, figure you know, help us do this. It takes a lot of people.

Dr. Roger McFillin (01:17:47.84)
And I will include that link in the show notes. Thank you.

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH (01:17:51.049)
Thank you.