lucid dreaming the world of dreams in general the world of meditation spiritualism explained from a neuroscience perspective honestly this was the one conversation in the year that i enjoyed the most i hope you guys enjoy it as much slightly different from what we do on the ranvi show but today we have dr balanchadal a world-renowned neuroscientist he's got an incredible story of his own he does have a basis of spirituality when it comes to his own thought process and he's someone who's dedicated his whole life to learning about how the human brain operates all the mysteries of the human brain the occult experiences that so many of us experience with sleep paralysis be it hallucinations be it intuition be it getting our answers in our dreams this and more on this very special episode of the runway show before i let you slip into the podcast gotta remind you guys trs is now a spotify exclusive every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world


hours before it's available anywhere else in the world this one's a heavy episode this one's a rich episode this episode will change you please listen to it till the end i even suggest that if you're someone who's fascinated by neuroscience consider listening to this podcast with a notebook and a pen by your side you'll pick up a lot of nuggets and you'll pick up pieces of information that you might want to research a little bit more about very very stimulating episode this one enjoy yourselves with dr jalal on the randi show [Music] dr balan jalal i'm very very excited about this episode so many questions about the human mind so many questions about your work which is related to sleep paralysis the world of dreams the brain in general neuroscience psychology so many questions thank you for being on the runway show you're very welcome very happy to be here uh whenever i hear you speak in any of your videos you seem like someone who's genuinely in love with your own subject so


who's genuinely in love with your own subject so when you were growing up as a teenager what kind of got you into the studies of the human brain well that's a that's a great question ranvir i mean for me how did i get started i mean it's actually a very deep story because i i my parents came from uh they're kurdish from iraq and they came as refugees actually to to uh to europe so i grew up in denmark as a refugee and and um and i had a very tough beginning you know refugee camp and stuff like that and it started very like that very humble beginnings in a ghetto-like area growing up and um but even in high school you know i didn't have a great passion for science but i guess later on in my life maybe we can get into that i would just meet very passionate mentors that would inspire me and i would read certain books and i became very passionate about science and uh so yeah that's how it


about science and uh so yeah that's how it started from really sort of humble beginnings as a you know refugee child you know do you remember anything about refugee camp like you have any memories of no no i was very very small so i was like an infant i just have pictures of me like playing with balls and sort of you know playing football and stuff as a little baby you know uh but yeah no i don't have any recollections of that uh i was very very i was very i was a baby pretty much but how did you get into the subject of neuroscience that's what i'm interested in because it's a pretty heavy subject and it's not something you grow up thinking that you'll be a part of yeah it's very true how do you get get into it i mean i think for me it was just in high school as i said uh i wasn't really into psychology and brain science and stuff but i mean i think at some point i started to question uh you know why you


point i started to question uh you know why you know we do certain things how our brain works and stuff like that there wasn't really one particular trigger i guess maybe some of my own dreams and sleep paralysis episodes got me really curious about the brain and psychology and things like that so that certainly inspired me um so yeah i think that that was the gradual process ranveer i can't just point to one thing say this was the main thing was a really gradual because it's a very heavy subject as you say you don't grow up typically you know say i want to be a brain scientist and stuff so it's a gradual thing and then uh yeah just reading and then meeting mentors so initially i was sort of into clinical psychology and then i met my mentor ramachandran indian guy like you guys and i met him and he sort of got me into brain science particularly and so meeting mentors at certain points in life were just sort of uh you know that that really got


just sort of uh you know that that really got me on track to do this so i've got to ask you about sleep paralysis because you mentioned it so much and i think it's the one search term associated the most with your name on the internet as well uh take us through that experience like could you take us to what happened to you that night that night well it was actually early morning so i was straight out of high school i might have just graduated high school or something and i was lying in my bed and i was just lying there and i i was just sleeping pretty much silently and then i realized my god i'm actually awake but you know um what's happening i can't move i can't speak so you know i started to to you know shout your mom dad i tried i tried to but nothing could my throat was sort of stuck i couldn't get the words out and yeah it was this was a heavy thing you know and then i felt like something was pressing


you know and then i felt like something was pressing on my chest suddenly and and i had this very strange peculiar feeling of something intensely evil in my bedroom there and you know this feeling got worse and worse with every second and the choking and strangling got more and more intense and until i saw my legs being pulled up down sort of uh as i was lying there and i was just i was like my god this is a ghost strangling me pulling my legs up and down and it felt it felt extremely real like it felt as real as this conversation that you and i are having so there was no question for me like i had an encounter encountered a ghost here you know and so this you know i just then the next day i was just uh enthralled by this experience and i had to sort of explore what happened to me and for me obviously it was clearly a supernatural event it was a ghost um no doubt and really this got me going


um no doubt and really this got me going and started to question uh what sleep paralysis is and i started to then you know embark on my journeys and study this phenomenon uh doc now that you've studied it i have a couple of questions for you so usually this is what i've observed with people of science right like when someone says oh i'm a man of science or a woman of science it's often the case where that person goes so deep into science that they start believing a realm even beyond the realms of science do you get what i'm saying like you kind of realize oh okay there's so much left to discover so i'd love to ask you about that i mean the deeper you're getting into science are you realizing about are you realizing things about things beyond the world of science for example you mentioned ghosts in this experience you said that you had a supernatural experience yeah you get into your own world of neuroscience do you also believe in like the supernatural


do you also believe in like the supernatural aspect of things or are you becoming more and more just a scientific mind well the thing is that the reason why initially you know i was convinced it was supernatural was because it was as real as this conversation you are are having so for me to question that would be you know would be onset [Music] right goes there i saw my legs flying up and down so that was the rational conclusion now after my research and the stuff that we've done over the years you know theories for why people see ghosts so we have theories uh that we developed in terms of trying to explain why people see ghosts what's going on in the brain why do you your brain trick you into these experiences so we certainly done a lot of research on that but i would tell you this ranveer i would say regardless of how much i'm studying it and theory is that um that i'm sort of developing research around the world i think we've


of developing research around the world i think we've done research in six countries by now you know and it's really explored what people you know how they experience the paralysis and how they interpret sleep paralysis there's still this uncanny sensation to this very day right when i'm lying in my bed and i occasionally have a sleep paralysis episode and i just feel like there's this evil you know present there and i can't explain it you know well i try to explain it in terms of my science i say well look this is the brain there are certain parts of the brain that might be active certain receptors that might cause this organic firing of of sort of fear of being fired up in my brain but i still start once in a while start to question all of this what's going on you know why is this so uncanny why is this so terrifying so yeah of course you know the subjective human vantage point of course can take over uh once in a while and just make you really uh you know


a while and just make you really uh you know feel the striking effect of this if that makes sense yeah for sure uh just want to give the listeners some context on sleep paralysis i have dealt with a lot of sleep analysis growing up which kind of stopped by the time i was 21 i think i got deeply into the world of health and uh started working on my whole process of sleep so that's my explanation to why it stopped happening to me but right after the age of 20 21 i'd get like sleep paralysis episodes very often including one i've spoken about on this show where it happened when i was 11 and i felt this woman sitting on top of me choking me i'm not able to move my mum was sleeping next to me so i couldn't even like reach out i couldn't scream out at her uh i was just like kind of stuck in feel and then eventually that experience faded away uh and i went back to sleep but i've had these experiences growing up


to sleep but i've had these experiences growing up where i won't be able to move i'll see someone in my room and i think a lot of people deal with sleep paralysis in general so so my question to you is if you had to explain sleep paralysis to a five-year-old but from a scientific perspective in terms of what happens in the brain i saw your videos and uh you know maybe for the average listener it can get a little bit heavy that's why i'm asking you the explanation for a five-year-old what does your brain go through in a sleep paralysis incident and it can happen to anybody very good so let me first explain uh so i'll explain to you what sleep paralysis is in terms of the paralysis first and then let's explore the dream world a bit because it's sort of related right so sleep paralysis emerges from one of the stages of sleep called rem sleep so each night we go through several stages of sleep and one of these stages is called rem sleep


sleep and one of these stages is called rem sleep rapid eye movement sleep so you're lying there and your body pretty much is paralyzed so there's a part of the lower part of the brain there are certain chemicals there that paralyzes your entire body okay so you have that and the reason you have that paralysis of your entire body is because your brain is clever you have vivid life life life like crisp dreams during rem sleeps all the bizarre dreams you see yourself you know on a moon wrestling with an alligator then suddenly on buckingham palace having tea with the queen and everything is mixed right places people time it's all warped so that experience is a rem phenomenon so you're pretty much psychotic every night you're going through a bizarre experience that you don't even question you don't even question the bizarre nature of your dream world right so we have that so that is the logical thing for your brain is to shut down the person so you don't hurt yourself or your


the person so you don't hurt yourself or your sleeping partner so that's why you are paralyzed during rapid eye movement sleep during rem sleep this stage of sleep right but occasionally the um perceptual part of the brain you're the part of the brain that has to do with perceptual awakening you know waking up and being mentally active and that can start becoming active even though you are paralyzed in other words this tells us around here that in the brain there are two systems there's a system for paralysis lower part of the brain and then there's the system for perceptual activity mental awareness okay and when these two systems go awry or decoupled from each other so one system is on the other is off or whatever you get this oh this this uh the synchrony it's almost like in the brain there's a switch an on and off switch and when you click it your brain paralyzes you and you start you know and if that on an off switch sort of gets stuck in between on and


off switch sort of gets stuck in between on and off you sort of gets you get this the synchrony where you are mentally awake but your body is still paralyzed so this is uh the sleep paralysis experience and of course we know that from from science that um you know animals can have sleep paralysis like you know rats cats and stuff like this so they have rem sleep and so they can be paralyzed as well so this is the basic phenomenology the basic experience of sleep paralysis uh you know but occasionally of course you can have these striking hallucinations so so basically i just want to make this clear you can have this basic paralysis and just being like oh my god i'm awake i can't move you know this is terrifying and that's it but then occasionally about 40 of the time people will report striking hallucinations of like those like intruders or as you mentioned you you saw a person or i've even seen a copy of myself floating around and the conversation is usually who's the


floating around and the conversation is usually who's the real balance you know the cop the person floating above or the person down there you know there's a debate going on uh so you can have all that and we have theories for why that your brain would cr you know create these striking hallucinations and so this is the basic uh experience of sleep paralysis right so the paralysis and then the hallucinations and the hallucination parts is much more serious and elusive i would say uh wow uh could you just name those two portions of the brain the one which is associated with paralyzing your body and the one which is associated with perception absolutely so the lower part of the brain there's a portion called the brain stem stem right so in the brain stem you have certain structures like the medulla and the pons that's responsible for this paralysis of your body and then the cortical regions the frontal regions is responsible for a sense of agency and awareness and wakefulness actually reveal let me take you to the dream


wakefulness actually reveal let me take you to the dream world because it's related right so we need to understand so to understand sleep paralysis you have to understand dreams because as i said sleep paralysis emerges it's when you wake up mentally when you are in rem where you are in this world of dreams and so when you are dreaming what happens to your brain is that you have this shift in your neurochemistry okay in other words the parts of the brain that has to do with emotion and having strong emotions and you know those parts of the brain flare up they become hyper activated okay and the parts of the brain that has to do with motor uh movement also starts becoming activated in in you know but then the part of the brain that's we let's call it the ceo of the brain the frontal part of the brain you know that the part of the brain where your sort of logic is administered so logic is you know comes about in that part of the brain awareness as we


about in that part of the brain awareness as we talked about uh logic awareness we let's call it the ceo of the brain okay that parts of the part of the brain becomes weak during dreams whereas the emotional part becomes active and this explains why during dreams dreams are very highly emotional instinctual and illogical irrational and this is simply because of the shift in the neurochemistry so you have that uh you know fabric of reality to dreams as i mentioned where everything is mixed and blended uh so that's part of the the dream world but as i said when you then wake up during sleep paralysis you would have some of this illogical strangeness of dreams pouring in you know into your reality almost like having a dream uh coming alive before your very very eyes so so the dream world and wakefulness is colliding uh you have that uh mix of two parallel parallel realities that normally wouldn't meet you have them meet in in this clash of of worlds wow uh doc why


this clash of of worlds wow uh doc why do you think there's so many stories of people in history being led by their dreams you know they say okay i found my next decision in my dream i feel that's the case for myself as well where a lot of key decisions have actually happened in my dreams i wake up and i know what to do but what's the actual scientific reasoning behind this according to you well it's very it's very interesting so the brain right so because the the let's call it the ceo right the top the the frontal as i mentioned the frontal part of the brain that has to do with log logic and even restricting your thinking in a way right making your thinking more focused and narrow that part of the brain loosens up there's a loosening you know the the chemical no adrenaline you know when you have adrenaline in your brain you are very focused and hyper focused and when you when you learn in a dream in a dream world you know no


in a dream in a dream world you know no no adrenaline starts dampening down so that means your mind can wonder and make connections in the world and you don't have you're not sort of imposed by logic making you restrict it so you have all these concepts that are seemingly unrelated and then you connect them in unrelated new novel ways so your brain has this bias this inclination to connect things that you otherwise wouldn't uh you know connect and that's how you make scientific breakthroughs or have new insights i believe it was edison so edison what he would do he would usually uh uh sit on a chair and then you have like a spoon and he would hold a spoon like this and have a plate on the floor and then he'd close his eyes and and drift off to sleep and then when the when the when the uh spoon would fall on the the plate you know and then he would wake up and then he would write down all his new ideas and in that way you


down all his new ideas and in that way you know you know come up with new ideas for his for his work and uh you know ramanujan you know ramanujan yes mathematician he would also uh talk about like how dreams would inspire him and his his his math you know and and undoubtedly my own much my own stuff is also inspired by dreams and being in in you know this world of sleep paralysis and of course during sleep paralysis you can also sort of uh pave your own way into a lucid experience and become lucid and yeah and when you have that you can even experiment more you know so there's a lot there's a lot there it's very very rich experience yeah uh gotta talk about lucid dreaming but i'd love to know about your experience you said that even you're guided by dreams uh before before you i let you answer so i've just got to kind of encapsulate everything that you just said so you've got like a logical portion of your brain which works out


like a logical portion of your brain which works out things in your daily life which probably learns is aware of things then that part gets slightly switched off when you're sleeping and your emotional side gets more turned on but because your brain has accumulated so much data through your waking life you're able to draw patterns much more easily in your dream and then when you wake up probably those solutions or those answers are transferred back to the logical side of your brain which tests them and says yeah i think this is it yeah very right that's exactly what's going on i mean that that fabric of reality of dreams has has intrigued me for for a very long time and there's a lot of elements to this i mean think about it have you had that dream where you're sort of running and you feel like something is chasing you very very heavy have you had that dream before yes yes of course you ask people i go to give lectures all over you know and i ask people people always tell me they


know and i ask people people always tell me they tell me the same thing they had the same dream and i've certainly had that so what's going on is this a demon chasing you what's going on but you can actually explain this simply in terms of neuroscience and the fact that look you know uh your mortar cortex uh when you are when you are dreaming it doesn't get the fuel as it showed prefrontally so you have this clash really of your emotional brain as you mentioned right here being active but then your motor programs not being able to compete with the emotional content does it make sense so the ghost in your dream right would represent your emotional part of your brain being hyperactive okay and then the you not being able to move simply represents the frontal part as we mentioned before that being weakened because it doesn't have its fuel so there's actually a chemical called serotonin you might have heard of serotonin it's important for mood and stuff like that for you know it's used


and stuff like that for you know it's used in psychiatry that chemical usually fuels it's important for fueling that part of the brain where you as we mentioned have logic and you have motor movement and all that but that sense of gasoline is not you know working as it should there's an absence or there's a lot and not enough of that so you have the the emotion over you know competing and taking over the the uh moving part of the brain is that is that clear yes yes yes for sure uh but i want to know about your experience with dreams you said even you've had uh some guidance through your dream so i'd love to hear that so oh yeah so my own dreams and there's been there's been a few let me let me tell you about uh one thing so this is something i usually you know a tongue-in-cheek example i give i mean this is actually real so i was in california and i was sleeping and i realized my god i'm actually stuck i'm stuck


realized my god i'm actually stuck i'm stuck to the bed i can't get out what's happening you know i was like my god this is heavy stuff then okay oh my this is actually sleep paralysis but it didn't feel that you know fearful in the same sense that you normally feel fear you know it's just like my god and then i sort of you know try to get up and then i realized my god my my ghostly self you know you know ejected out of my physical body and i was sort of a this this um almost like an astronaut astronaut on a moon expedition walking around in my apartment in california and my god you know what do i do i have to do some kind of experiment right now what would happen you know if i took a piece of paper from the from the floor i saw a people's piece of scrap paper and put it in my pocket and then go back to my physical body would it still be there when i woke up you know


it still be there when i woke up you know i thought to myself and uh so i went around and i and i put it you know put it in my pajamas you know in my lucid dream in my lucid experience and went back to my physical body to to have this little test of sorts uh so what do you think was it there when we when i woke up i hope it was there for the sake of the story how about we revealed at the very end how is that good okay all right i won't reveal it now but no it's there's a lot of experiences like that certainly and i've had experiences when i was so so as i mentioned we have ideas for why we hallucinate ghosts and the certain parts of the brain are over active and parts that has to do with our sense of creating a sense of a self right these parts are overactive uh or disrupted during sleep paralysis and so i've thought to myself when i'm lying there can i what if i


when i'm lying there can i what if i imagine a ghost what if i sit now and use my rementation my dream part of the brain right to see if i can imagine a certain ghost looking a certain way would i then be able to do that uh so stuff like that but i'll tell you that ex that little uh playful thing i wasn't able to complete out of sheer horror i was so i was so terrified that i that i couldn't go ahead and start to imagine a uh you know a monster in my in my room so i simply i quit that experiment but was the did you find the piece of paper in your pocket a piece of paper i'll reveal that no so the paper wasn't there the paper wasn't there oh okay okay cool so uh i have some stuff to share from all my spiritualism learnings as well maybe it's got parallels with neuroscience um so the world of spiritualism says that basically a human identity is made up of three bodies the


a human identity is made up of three bodies the physical which is your arms your legs your face your astral and your causal your causal is like the purest form of the body which people refer to as the soul the astral is the slightly more subtle soul which actually holds the soul inside it's it's kind of a cross between the causal and the physical so it has the same features as so doctor have you seen this movie called doctor strange doctor strange i've heard about it but i haven't actually seen it got it so it's it's got a lot of um kind of chatter about the astral realm and astral bodies i'm sure you might have come across some reading about you know the actual realm or astral bodies in your studies also i'd love to know your opinion on it in in terms of neuroscience because you know we say that uh all all three of those bodies actually kind of hidden within our brain and our spinal cords in spiritualism so i'd love to


spinal cords in spiritualism so i'd love to know your opinion on this concept ah it's it's it's a difficult one so i'll i'll give you the neuroscientific view right so we all have a sense of self a sense of an eye a sense of bland or run view right so we have this feeling and this feeling is created in the brain so there are certain structures in the brain that create this feeling and particularly a structure called the superior parietal lobule and a right brain up here sort of mostly the right part of the brain back here and in that part of the brain if uh damage occurs to that region strange things will happen so let's say you have a stroke or some trauma to that part of the brain a patient might say doctor doctor you know this arm doesn't belong to me it belongs to my sister in italy or they might say doctor doctor this arm which is now paralyzed or whatever it belongs to you right or things like that in other words they


you right or things like that in other words they start to attribute their limbs to somebody else right so their sense of self get all disturbed um and and so this so we know pretty much that are structures in the brain responsible for mediating the sense of self um and another part that's important it's that it's called the tpj right so that's another region close by also uh where you integrate information in the world from diff different sensory modalities like touch vision seeing hearing and then you pull this information and you create a sense of ranveer okay you create that feeling now in just two seconds you can disrupt this feeling by an electrical current and so you zap this part of the brain and you will feel like a ghost like in a person is floating out there so your sense of self get projected out there and this ghost like person it will mimic your postures uh as if like you're moving and it will mimic you so you know it's you but it still it feels like


know it's you but it still it feels like a different uh creature so this is your sense of self right and it can get disturbed and it's mediated in the brain um so now in terms of of of spiritualism you have to tell me what the uh what's going on and how that is interpreted but in neuroscience this what this is what we we sort of uh research points at and let me give you an example so if you have your limb amputated so you have loss of limb even though that you you've lost your limb you will still have a vivid sensation of a limb being present in some cases some limbs showing you that the sense of self is very much an illusion that the brain creates it brings about this feeling of a sense of an eye a sense of a me and and this is why for example during sleep so a normal person i mean this is hopefully not too technical here but a normal person when he's wakeful he moves his arm from a to b in


wakeful he moves his arm from a to b in space right so he goes like this so that feeling is created in the brain there's sensory feedback coming back from the the limbs telling your brain and telling that part i told you about before how to create a sense of the cell so so there's sensory feedback coming back from your moving limbs telling your brain how to create a sense of a cell now um occasionally uh no for example doing sleep paralysis you don't have sensory feedback and that's why we believe because of that lack of sensory feedback because you're paralyzed you feel like your sense of self is shifted out there in other words the crux of all this is that the sense of self is the feeling of you being anchored in this body is something the brain creates and through certain experiences like you know stroke to that part of the brain damage or electrical stimulation or sleep paralysis it gets shifted and you get you start to float out there you feel like


get you start to float out there you feel like you're floating out there in space remember i told you before that i during my own sleep paralysis i saw my legs being flying up and down well now i know that's because i was probably trying to move my legs and since i you know i couldn't move my legs my brain started to fill in the gap for me like google autocorrect and started to move my legs for me and i started seeing these bodily hallucinations so so this is uh in a nutshell how your brain uh deals with these situations got it got it um i mean is it true that only 10 of your brain is used by a human being you know you keep reading this meme online you keep reading this piece of data online but is it true that there's a huge part of the human mind that's yet to be unlocked and we're evolving into a more unlocked version of ourselves you know i wish that was the case uh unfortunately their research doesn't suggest that is


case uh unfortunately their research doesn't suggest that is the case but i certainly feel like you know the brain is off then you know has a lot of potential and it can be used much more but but this idea of a 10 is only used it's mythology it's not really it's not grounded in any science so but uh it shouldn't you know make you despair i mean you could definitely use much of your brain your brain is extremely plastic and malleable and there's so many scientific experiments on how your brain by using it in certain ways you can strengthen certain connections and improve in certain skills so by doing certain things over and over your brain will literally you know build new build new connections and you become better at these things so uh the brain is certainly a tool that can be shaped so from what i hear i feel like the brain is sort of a muscle possibly with infinite potential but you've got to keep working that muscle and this is the case i've


working that muscle and this is the case i've seen with you this is the case i've seen with a friend of mine who's an astrophysicist mr abhijit chavra you guys can talk about like multiple subjects because you'll have to go so deep into one subject so it kind of expands your mind so that's one way of looking at it i'd also love to highlight two words that have kind of become really popular in terms of neuroscience from a commercial mainstream perspective people are very fascinated by meditation and people are very fascinated by ayahuasca these two uh you know kind of feels and they both kind of uh they lead you to the same place i've experienced ayahuasca i saw the changes it brought in me i'm a daily meditator i've seen the changes this is brought about they both effectively the same thing they've helped in healing they've helped in a certain sense of self-belief they've they've helped me with uh i don't know my my sense of


me with uh i don't know my my sense of intention my sense of uh willpower so i'd love to know what these two things have to do with the human brain according to you and according to the world of neuroscience yeah it's it's a good question so i think what what's meditation does it allows you to sort of uh mentally uh well so we use a lot of sleep by the way and sleep paralysis and other treatment we use meditation all the times in for treatment of depression and anxiety and things like that so but what it does perhaps it allows you to sort of uh sort of detach yourself from the ego the sense of self that you have so we all as we said we get stuck in this first persp person perspective right so we always have have the sense of me i'm looking at the world and i'm stuck in this first person perspective right and we believe possibly that the parts of the left hemisphere might mediate this sense of subjective vantage point of the self


this sense of subjective vantage point of the self just being here and now anchored and you see the world in front of you whereas i think uh um potentially what meditation does and some of these chemicals you're talking about like ayahuasca and drugs like ayahuasca and other things they perhaps activate some of the parts of the brain in the parietal lobes where your sense of self gets more loosened up it's almost like the outer body experience you start seeing the world from a more third person perspective it's almost like a dream in your dream you can have different perspectives of the self right so you see yourself like this looking just at yourself or you see yourself from the outside and so potentially uh what meditation does and what what uh ayahuasca can do is sort of tap into some of these circuits allow and allow you to see the world in a sort of more uh aloe what we call allocentric point of view so a more detached third-person point of view which is then relaxing


third-person point of view which is then relaxing and it's more uh it's more expansive so potentially that's what it does and that's why i think it's so useful in in psychopathology meaning when we treat depression anxiety and stuff like that because particularly patients uh and people with psychological distress they tend to get more stuck in the sense of emotional fixation and they don't see the bigger picture so that's what i think it does it allows you to see the bigger picture and tap into some of these circuits i think early on in this podcast you spoke about how when you're sleeping you go into the emotional realms of your mind and find patterns and then bring them back do you think this is sort of a parallel to that does a similar thing happen in meditation in ayahuasca yeah so so when you are dreaming right so when you are dreaming you are the part of the brain that has to do with the sense of self which is like i mentioned before it's called


of self which is like i mentioned before it's called a tpj right so this this structure is uh sort of becomes deactivated it doesn't work it takes a nap when we dream okay so when it takes a nap the sense of self is loosened up that's why you can see the world from this perspective as i said or sometimes you occupy somebody else's body and or you see yourself like a netflix movie and whatnot and this is the self being loosened up so i certainly think these drugs uh work on the same circuits possibly allowing it to have a more loosened sense of self so that's what i mean how it's really related to to to dream and the dream world and i also i would say uh ayahuasca but so for example uh things like lsd and psilocybin so what they tend to work on and what they tend to activate a receptor called the serotonin serotonin 2a receptor and i don't want to become too technical or technical on your audience and


become too technical or technical on your audience and you and and stuff like that but my point is this this receptor in the brain that mediates more mysterious and mystical experiences and and things like that and uh you know ayahuasca i would you know venture activate probably this receptor and and during and during sleep paralysis i've mentioned for example you might also have this activation of certain receptors that allow you to enter a more mysterious realm or certainly the sensation of it um yeah that's what's going on but let me project this back to you ranveer uh so i have two questions first how do you see meditation and how do you feel like meditation is related to the dream world so that's my first question and the second is do you feel that sleep paralysis and these dream-like states have a uh sort of mysterious supernatural nature so those are my two questions can i answer your second one first sure uh i think you you just spoke about something about perceiving mystical realms or at


about something about perceiving mystical realms or at least having the sensation of mystical realms so there was this i think spiritual article i read once way back which said that the physical realm the astral realm the causal realm is all around us there's multiple realms all around us but the way our minds are built we have filters put on our head because all that data would be too much for our minds to process and as you keep evolving spiritually those filters are sort of like lifted off i think i don't know if you're familiar with ar rahman he's a music composer he's one of india's most famous music composers so he's a follower of sufism and sufism also says something very similar it says that between you and the divine or between you and the ultimate there's about 70 000 filters and every time you kind of undergo some sort of spiritual process which could be even living an honest life being a better person meditation uh maybe an experience like ayahuasca you go


meditation uh maybe an experience like ayahuasca you go one step closer to the divine and one filter is lifted off so towards the end of that journey of filters being lifted off sometimes there are certain filters that get lifted off only when you yourself are spiritually ready to witness all the realms around you all the mystical realms around you uh i'd spoken to my shaman about the same concept five years ago and he said something similar like according to shamanic culture uh they believe in a parallel theory where things are available around us things from different dimensions are available around us but they can't interact with us and we can't see them until certain functions of the brain are unlocked which do get unlocked in ayahuasca or peyote etc etc i'll answer your first question now and i'll maybe come back to the second one i've meditated a lot and i do believe that there's sort of two different forms of meditation once what beginners do you know which is it just calms you


do you know which is it just calms you down it'll help you sleep it'll calm down your anxiety uh the second one is a little more advanced where if you actually explore india a little bit you've got a bunch of really good meditation schools that kind of meditation is more like how you perceive martial arts to be you know there's the shaolin temple and you go and you learn certain uh techniques you learn certain ways of the mind ways of life so these advanced meditation schools train you in that whole aspect of things so of course they're gonna help you reduce your anxiety they'll help you increase the amount of rem sleep your your body is going through they'll help you um just stay calmer it'll increase your decision making uh but at the end of the day the the core logic of it the core logic of any meditation is that you close your eyes and you put your focus onto one thing now that could be god that could be your own breath that could be some mantra


be your own breath that could be some mantra or saying like some some chant you're saying but you keep bringing your mental focus back to that you keep bringing it back because the way the human mind is built you keep going away you think of my girlfriend or my parents or my job or my money and then you keep bringing it back to that one thing uh that's basically the core of it now since i've been doing this for a while i've experienced the beginners meditation i've also done a bunch of these courses and i have experienced what they have on offer and your body does go through some magical experiences your mind goes through some magical experiences uh you have these really mystical experiences sometimes during your meditation you feel like you're visited by light you feel like you're sometimes visited by some beings i don't know whether that is your mind just having mystical experiences or you're actually entering those realms what concerns me is that when i come out of it the sleep i


that when i come out of it the sleep i get is beautiful i'm a much calmer person my relationships are better i treat people with more empathy uh i can have conversations on a deeper level i wouldn't have been able to speak to you like this two years ago because i probably wouldn't have been able to perceive everything you're saying um so just i i definitely feel there's been a change in my brain and i don't know what that changes so i mean you're the neuroscientist so so i'd leave you to it but this is what i've gone through no matt i think it's great i think it's great um so there is the question of course um that any human being has to ask us ask himself right you know when you're having these experiences are these supernatural are there dimensional creatures or is this the brain as a as a scientist um of course we explain these things in terms of neuroscience and the brain and that's where our parameters are we can't go


and that's where our parameters are we can't go beyond that because obviously you can't study that but as a human being like yourself i mean you can't help but wonder and i'm certainly open to the fact that you know that there's more things more than than than you can explain by science so i'm not like saying oh it's you know reductionist in that way it's only science and this and that of course i stick to the science and i explain things in science and i do experiments showing how the brain can have these uh fool you to having these sort of experiences of these illusions now um certainly another aspect as you mentioned is how helpful it is right and that's where spirituality or spiritual practices can certainly be very helpful and like in your cases you're seeing all this how this is affecting your brain making you more resilient more flexible so you're less sort of focused on your sense of ego and the self and you're becoming much more broad-minded and


self and you're becoming much more broad-minded and flexible in your way of thinking which is the uh what we love to see in in in the brain in the in in terms of neuroscience and psychiatry how you know people become more flexible in their way of thinking and as i said look a a hallmark a great sign of a mental illness is this a emotional inertness you know this idea of being stuck on emotions and being stuck in this ego egotistic view of the world and if you can loosen that you know whether it be micro dosing you know i'm not an expert on that but if you're using micro dosing of certain you know uh chemicals like psilocybin or whatever uh that's that's used uh or you're meditating meditating is meditation of course is very powerful i meditate myself and it's extremely extremely powerful and in fact my my treatment for helping sleep paralysis that i've developed and and we sort of have some positive uh early results for of


sort of have some positive uh early results for of course it's very early results but it's also through meditation and and focusing in on positive objects and things like that so yeah it's it's great it's great that you're seeing all this uh kind of improvement yeah um just side note i wasn't having a great day but after speaking to you i'm feeling a rise in energy levels so i i don't know i just wanted to mention that um maybe it's just the stimulation my brain is undergoing uh but yeah i'm glad we can like speak on this level because i read about this concept recently it's called the concept of mental immunity and it's very similar to what you just said so uh about how a lot of people are stuck in their stiff kind of mindsets about no this is how the world works because i think this way or this is how the world works because this is what the numbers say uh and mental immunity in on a global scale is going for a toss people are


a global scale is going for a toss people are developing extremely strong opinions now these could be political opinions or opinions about food opinions about other people opinions about religion for that matter but people are developing really stiff opinions which are actually harming their own being in the long term the stiffer your opinions the worse your sense of life because your empathy reduces in the in cases like that so i think yeah other than mental health battles which are the kind of curse for our entire generation the next 10 years are going to be about overcoming your own mental health battles the other side of things is mental toughness developing a certain sense of toughness because of the times that we live in and the third one i'd like to highlight is mental immunity which is just being open to hearing the other side of the story just being open to hearing perspectives beyond your own perspectives beyond your own beliefs it's beautiful you know um let me tell you i same here my energy


um let me tell you i same here my energy also sort of came up after talking to you it's a very it's very it's a privilege to talk to smart people you know you feel you feel uh it feels good you know um and uh and so let me tell you this you get you're you're certainly uh talking about a very interesting subject so we actually developed a treatment uh devin henton harvard medical school and i we actually wrote a book on this very subject you're talking about which is um so how do you treat psychopathology but not only psychopathologists but also sort of things that can be applied to everyone so these are things like everyone everyone goes through anxiety depression like symptoms and getting stuck on emotions and stuff like that so there's certain key features or certain things that things that we're addressing and one of these things is so um one is awareness of the brain an awareness of the mind like knowing that you have a emotional part of the


knowing that you have a emotional part of the brain we call it the limbic structure right the the the the primitive part of the brain that can play tricks on you that can feel you to have anxiety and sadness and and have terror all of a sudden no feel have certain emotions and that you can sort of see this as a separate part of use you know having so in other words have being aware of your own mental state and your your brain in a way right that's one way that we target psychopathology and and symptoms of anxiety and depression and things like that and not part is um is the flexibility part meaning we train people to be flexible in the way of thinking so this gets to your point of like when you so we say to people go out and when you see uh the the clouds moving notice how the clouds are moving you know notice their movement okay or when you see a leaf fall from which you know see houses and notice how it falls down so in that


houses and notice how it falls down so in that way you have like meditation you have emotion emotion centeredness that trains your brain to be less sort of uh tend to have a tendency to ruminate the brain of course you teach you to be more focused and also be more more flexible and notice patterns and stuff so we do that a lot um and then the third component so so psycho education being aware of yourself is one component second component is mental flexibility notice things and noting noticing the beauty around you and then the third component is flexible flexibility of the body as well so that's why we teach things like stretching and doing yoga like postures and things like that because what ultimately happens when you have anxiety or depression or you feel stressed out your body feels tense you feel like your body is very tense and so what you typically typically then do is like you go my body is tense and you worry about it and then because of that where your body body is


and then because of that where your body body is even more tense and then because of the tense tension you're even more anxious so it's a vicious cycle so we train people to notice these these symptoms and break out of that cycles and one of the way we do that is through uh these these um stretching like techniques and it's like that so so this is a way that we've been approaching uh treatment of of anxiety depression stress um and we we know hopefully hopefully this can help people uh so yeah that's one of the things that we do um it's so strange that you brought up stretching it's something i've been tweeting a lot about lately it's something that has been a big subject i've been thinking about i took up stretching in yoga about three to four months ago um in feb because i was dealing with a lot of football injuries and i came across this podcast of these old wwe wrestlers the undertaker chris jericho who were talking about how


undertaker chris jericho who were talking about how they've taken up stretching to deal with their injuries their long-term injuries which haven't healed i had a bunch of injuries in my ankles and my knees all all of it faded away but the big benefit of stretching was actually uh the mental benefits i felt i did definitely feel that it benefited my mental health even on in micro situations right like if i was having a very stressful day which happens to me pretty often but even if i was having a very stressful day a yoga session would settle me down a bit i wouldn't say it would completely get rid of the mental health issues but it would definitely settle my mind down a little bit so it got me thinking that yeah i'm definitely experiencing this i i'm self-aware enough to experience the state of my mind in two distinct formats but how are my muscles related to my brain i have no idea and that's something i've been wondering about a lot


that's something i've been wondering about a lot so so what's going on yeah i mean certainly i think there's this idea of biofeedback right so so one thing you notice when you see people um when you see people that have mental disorders or are anxious or even yourself if you're stressed a few days to get poor sleep you're stressed you're anxious you notice that your body becomes quite stiff and so by stretching and relieving yourself you know in that way by by doing this posture you know as you as you might do these postures they they potentially give signals back to your brain to be be less sort of uh release less cortisol be less stress so you break that cycle uh that is causing the tension in the first place potentially or contributing certainly uh to that so it's a way of providing feedback to your brain and i think a lot of things a lot of these things are very interesting in terms of doing things that are seemingly strange like why would


doing things that are seemingly strange like why would a doing a certain posture you know work in terms of your brain or mind right you know isn't isn't that like weird or and but a lot of things that your brain is these this feedback can be helpful we believe and same thing with like smiling potentially like so we think about actually doing experiments where we uh ask people to smile go around and smiling even though they don't feel like smiling but by smiling and you know knowing that they're smiling these kinds of feedback mechanisms continue feedback to the brain and you know tell it that you actually i'm feeling better than i'm i actually am to begin with so it's a way of of doing that um so so these things are interesting curious uh new ways of looking at that you know my colleague ramachandran uh my indian colleague in california we talked about maybe you know having people wear masks of smiling faces to see if that could uh so when they


faces to see if that could uh so when they looked in the mirror they would see this big smile you know this exaggerated smile see if that could uh having a positive effect you know wow yeah uh i just feel you know the eastern world asia in general has already and if you actually study asian culture it could be indian culture it could be ancient mesopotamia it could even be ancient egypt for that matter right yeah i feel these cultures have already already discovered a lot of secrets about the human mind the human body and i don't know if you ever played this video game called age of empires have you played this asia age of empires and i've heard of it it's a very well-known game i haven't played it though so the game basically you're in charge of this one village which eventually grows into a town which eventually grows into a city and your job is to go out and conquer other empires so you can play as the japanese empire the indian


you can play as the japanese empire the indian empire or whatever but a key feature of that game is that when you're confined to your village you have to have people who are building your village and then you have to send out like an exploration crew as well so when you send out the exploration crew the map that you're shown keeps getting brightened up so initially what you see on the map is one big black kind of chart paper and only your village is lit up and then when you send explorers out okay then you figure okay here's a jungle oh wait here's another culture oh wait here's a bunch of mountains oh wait here's another culture yeah and as you keep sending your explorers out the map keeps getting uh lit up and i feel science works the same way that everything's out there already and we're just like finding and refining things that ancient human cultures possibly new and this is what i've come to realize even through this podcast we had someone called dr mark


even through this podcast we had someone called dr mark plotkin who's an ethnobotanist so he studies botany but from an ethnic perspective from what you know the tribes of the amazon had to say about the plants the the insects the reptiles if you derive this substance from this reptile or this substance from this plant this is the effect it has on the body and mind now how did these ancient cultures even figure out all that i don't know but the fact is that they did and a it's a great point you know and and i can tell you so we've actually worked in this cultural sensitive psychiatry uh field for quite a while so this is one of my interests as well how to make treatments more culturally acceptable and use certain cultural practices that's already present in a certain culture now my work hasn't focused on the indian culture but but actually i've just talked about one with one of my colleagues to explore that to explore some of the things in


explore that to explore some of the things in the punish shots and whatnot that can be used in psychiatry because it can be helpful but so what we uh in in the book that i talked about the work that we've done it's also taking things from the the muslim culture the arabic and muslim cultures and the things that they have in terms of you look at things like fasting not only in muslim probably indian and probably a lot of so if you have fasting which is extremely helpful helpful in terms of reducing inflammation you know helping the brain making your brain more sharp um some of these practices that they do yoga in the indian tradition and prayer that muslims do all this sort of movement is very helpful it gets you out of your being stuck in inertia and so i think you know these cultures whether it be india whether it be the muslim culture what culture they have a lot of rich practices that people have known for for very long time


practices that people have known for for very long time and used and you're right you know in terms of science we're starting to use this but meditation is uh it's very hot these days you know and so powerful we use it for sleep we use it to treat you know sleep paralysis i use it for that you know this you know it's so powerful so i think certainly uh you know these asian ancient cultures were on track and we have so much to learn and so many hidden gems that we we can we need to explore for sure what i'd like to ask you now sir is uh because you're a researcher so that means you're still figuring the human brain i mean the world of science is still trying to understand the human brain better yeah um so what are the areas of interest for neuroscience in general right now i know that ayahuasca is one of those bubbles i'd love to know if neural link is also something that interests you guys elon musk's neural link


that interests you guys elon musk's neural link or what else like what what is the world of neuroscience trying to figure out right now it's a great question so what are what are the world of um i think there's it's really very so obviously these things of computer machine brain interface is quite fascinating right so it is cutting edge stuff if you can stimulate parts of the brain in certain circuits right so we talked about being stuck in emotional egotistical ways but that if you can can you deactivate that circuit or activate circuits that is activated by drugs using you know certain you know machines or chips or whatever that's a fascinating area the problem you know ranvier with drugs is usually drug drugs it's it's almost like dropping a bomb on your brain it it's very it's very general it's like kills everything or affects everything in a way roughly speaking and so if you can target circuits in a more specialized way i mean the potential there to to you know


way i mean the potential there to to you know play with the brain is is amazing and even using and this is another related area if you can you stimulate these part of the brain using uh like magnetic stimulation so not even intrusive intruding on the brain like being in like putting chips inside the brain but if you can have a cap and you can activate it not enough even though even some of the deeper structure potentially in the future i think that is a very fascinating area so that i would say is quite fascinating i would say the area of sleep so you know people we all sleep you sleep i sleep and sleep declines with age and it propels aging and make aging so much worse because you know you sleep declines as you age and then when you sleep badly you age even more and it's like this vicious cycle so if you can improve sleep and allow you to gain more quality deep sleep you know as you age by synchronizing waves or whatever you can do you know


synchronizing waves or whatever you can do you know using using state-of-the-art techniques that's a very intriguing and interesting uh thing uh that i think is is important for the future and for mankind um so yeah that would be my that would be the obvious one aside from the micro dosing stuff which is very interesting as well right in terms of of using lsd cytosine in small doses and making your brain more flexible and more expensive i think that's an area of course um so those would be my hunches of important things um yeah if i think of something i'll let you know but those are my my main thing one thing that i'm thinking about um so dreams right so why do we dream and this is a this is a question so the part of dreaming is for you to do uh a virtual reality simulation of sorts so you see yourself like wrestling with an alligator right or something in your dream and so when you wake up the next day you are profoundly better at that


the next day you are profoundly better at that skill you were dreaming about we know that from science you you are taught to play a piano the next that you sleep and then the next day you wake up you haven't practiced but you're 20 better just from sleeping for example so it shows you that when you sleep and you dream you become better at certain skills so you're doing vr in your brain now what i think is particularly powerful about the human brain is the fact that it knocks out your ability to know that you are aware because if you were aware that you were dreaming if you knew that this is merely a dream it wouldn't be as emotionally intense right if you see that you saw that bloody bear in your dream you wouldn't be that you know riled up and so the whole thing would be less realistic so you have that realistic aspect because of your sense of agency and awareness of it being a dream being gone so now i i speculate and i think


being gone so now i i speculate and i think this is first time i talk about this publicly but i speak like what if you do a video create a vr system where you could you remove the ability to know that you are in vr you know can you make it more immersive and more dreamlike and in that way more potent and powerful i think things like that would be my uh something that i could i would love to to work on and see if i can you know so that would be non uh what we call a non vr non virtual rears almost like like reality but like the matrix right so yeah well i think things like that could be powerful and potent yeah uh i think elon musk said that uh neuralink has the ability to virtually fix almost any brain issue uh present right now i don't know how true that is i don't know whether that's a marketing gimmick but say that is true the next step for neuralink would obviously be to enhance what's already fixed yeah


would obviously be to enhance what's already fixed yeah so are we going to see the birth of superhumans again you all know harare talks about this that the next level of human being is going to be sort of superhuman at least in the brain and then probably designer babies where we'll be able to alter genes of people uh will will kind of be able to alter the way the body looks the body is shaped the musculature so will we all be superman and you know wonder woman going forward i don't know maybe this is the start of it so so we might all look like shahrukh khan and brad pitt in the future and you know like einstein in our intelligence you know it's possible i think that uh genetic engineering is certainly you know a beautiful new way of doing things of course aside from the ethical part i'm not talking about ethics or whether you should or should not do it i think for diseases and things like that it's an obvious thing i think you


like that it's an obvious thing i think you should um but in terms of enhancing your brain i think certainly that would be an interesting and new way of of of of proceeding and could be powerful but the thing is to be honest with you i'm i see so much mental illness i mean think in your family right now you would automatically think of two or three people who have some kind of problem could be that they have chronic sleep problems they can't sleep and their whole life is in sha you know shambles because of it or you know somebody who's anxious or depressed or have ocd or have a neurological disorder i mean i get these emails all the time so i think we should first think of our fellow human beings who are suffering and cure these ailments and then once you know for the most part that's done then we should think about enhancing the human brain i think that that would be my own priority for sure i mean there's so much mental illness


for sure i mean there's so much mental illness and so much suffering in terms of brain disorders but i think ultimately you know there's somebody in silicon valley you know in san francisco that's going to proceed with this whole uh enhancing the human brain uh just for its own sake and i think it's an interesting i mean as a scientist i'm always looking into the future so i'm not opposed to it but i would rather i'd rather be focused on the those who are suffering uh even if it's like subclinical meaning you know what subclinical i mean uh we have like a full-blown disorder like you have ocd you go to a doctor you have depression you go to a doctor but then there are people in the population like who have some symptoms of these that is creating distress this could be like 10 of people who have distressing symptoms so even those we should help right people who are stressed anxious who don't necessarily have a full-blown disorder which is of course


have a full-blown disorder which is of course a little bit a bit more rare so that's that's my view wow and you know maybe all these things we've spoken about be it meditation be it mental immunity be a lucid dreaming they could all be kind of one step in that direction so i mean just just saying it out loud i've done a bunch of podcasts by this point you're probably around my 150th 160th episode by this point um i feel even you're someone who has a lot of love for the human race in your heart you know you're very you spoke about being broad-minded i feel like that's your inner motivation so at least that's what i'm picking up from your conversation you know it is it is look uh coming from humble beginnings you know coming i don't know around how how european beginnings were but but maybe you can tell me after but i'd like to know but mai were really sort of coming from poverty coming from you know i you know now i do


coming from you know i you know now i do research i'm so lucky to be at very good institutions but you know coming from my school when i grew up in my ghetto like area we had six different internet nationalities of people and this wasn't because it was a prestigious international school this was because it was a ghetto we were all packed into these schools and these apartments and you know stuck on each other and stuff like that so coming from that and seeing suffering and poverty and seeing drunk people and seeing all this has made me has made this a priority to be expensive and look at uh the world in that way and i'm picking up the same thing with you i feel like you are uh very generous in your the way you see people you you have this affectionate uh point of view and so i'd love to hear why you have that because you don't always see that in people um wasn't always there for sure uh i think if we dial back to my


sure uh i think if we dial back to my meditation practices i said it's like martial arts so martial arts are never about just the actual technique the kick or the punch it's also about a mindset it's also about your viewpoint on the ones around you i think martial arts is more from a self-defense perspective yeah what would be the opposite of self-defense you know self-defense is assuming someone's going to come hit you so you've got to protect yourself the opposite would be no one's out there to hit you yeah and in fact you can go and help people yeah so that's the mindset and it's a part of spiritual growth to practice love uh every religion of in the world says the same thing that you treat others as you would want to be treated and uh there's this guy called humble the poet he's a rapper he tweeted something incredible recently that's just stayed with me i think most people often cry about what's not there in their life so if if they


what's not there in their life so if if they say oh i don't have enough support or i don't have enough love in my life or i don't have enough opportunity the solution to that is not just taking action and creating those things for yourself but the solution to that is creating those things for other people so if you feel like you're not getting enough love you go out there and give love to someone if you feel like you're not getting enough opportunity you always have the ability to give opportunity to someone who's even worse off than you if you feel the world isn't good enough you go make it like better so yeah that's the mindset it's beautiful you know and and for me i mean first of all in terms of research the all the research shows that if you are volunteering and you're helping and you're charitable it's very very effective for your mental well-being so already there you have a sense of a benefit mentally it's good for your brain it goes free for


it's good for your brain it goes free for mind so there you see but even from my own life like i feel like when i've been giving people things have always come back to me of course i can't explain this scientifically and and uh maybe i never will be able to newton's newton's third law yeah yeah possible i don't know you know maybe i'm not i can't put a causal error there because scientifically you can't but definitely when you give so much comes back to you and you feel happier as this is as a start but then but these laws of karma like laws in the universe you know seems to uh you know i don't know when you do good good comes to you we know that from science and uh in terms of like just being mentally you feel better and stuff and and from my own experiences uncanny events happen um i think i think being good is always is always is so fulfilling for sure yeah how old are you sir people think i'm very young


old are you sir people think i'm very young i'm actually not that young i'm 35 years old of age wow wow so you're like what 86 1986 85 1985. got it are you different from how you were 10 years ago and how are you different as a man yeah i am very different from how i was 10 years ago actually so for me um and i think we sort of touched upon this earlier you know in high school i was the worst student i was the worst the guy that didn't really take school seriously and i never thought that one day i would go and lecture at a big university or do research or anything like that i was like the guy who always got the worst grades you know you know and social expectations were low i mean maybe you have this in india as well with certain you know certain people but for me i had low social expectations were low nobody expected me to become a scientist if i got a high school degree high school degree would be


got a high school degree high school degree would be wow this is it you've made it you know this is it and i almost dropped out of high school very very close but i had a friend about about when i was about to drop out i was 100 sure i would drop out then i had a friend a mentor who came and said look if you drop out right now this pattern of dropping out and not completing things will repeat your entire life so whatever you do complete your high school and i'm forever grateful for that advice so i completed high school and after that i completely changed and i started becoming into intensely curious about the human brain and studying books on my own and things would start to change um but yeah you see how close i was from being a total differently a different person you know just that little decision that person i met at that time who told me don't drop out you know he sat with me said look don't drop out whatever you do i was 100 certain


drop out whatever you do i was 100 certain i would drop out you know i had about 25 absent rape so this was my life you know and and i am here where i am now and i'm i'm extremely blessed i don't take any credit for it it's just pure blessings and having great mentors uh you know that i've had that that's really uh guided me along the way and so do you pray do you pray even today yeah i do pray i do pray i've always sort of prayed and i and and even though i've kept my my i do my science and things like that i never sort of mix spirituality and science you can't you know these are two different worlds and you have to treat them you have to go into science in an unbiased way but personally i pray and and have that mindset uh absolutely um and it helps me it gives me fulfillment and i and i and i feel very blessed absolutely what do you think happens to the mind


absolutely what do you think happens to the mind when you're go putting it through daily prayer what happens to the mind when you do daily prayer so that's a good question because now you're sort of taking uh the science and then the mind like the spirituality and then i've always told by my mentor uh in california whatever you do don't mix science and spirituality uh try to keep them separate and and i do understand people that you know mix them and and they can people can do whatever they like and it's just for my own uh i keep them separate but i can't say what's going on in the mind i haven't really thought about what's going on in the mind but of course when i pray for example i say a prayer or something like that um something is obviously happening that i that i believe in you know that that's that's positive that has an effect but i wouldn't i'm so focused on my science and what's actually going on in the brain that i


and what's actually going on in the brain that i that i don't i never think about what's going on is the mind floating outside is there consciousness is there you know all these things that people talk about i never go there i keep my science completely separate from you know my belief and spirituality and and uh personal but but but i but but you know we always you know think about these things of course and in private but in terms of when it comes to science we just keep it separate so we don't confuse people it's i think very important um a couple of things yeah so in spiritualism in yoga the third eye is given a lot of importance what is the third eye it's supposed to be your pituitary gland uh in in your mind so i'd love for you to shed some light on that like what is the functionality of it and again there was this other uh i don't call it a meme but like a post i read from a spiritual page that said that there


i read from a spiritual page that said that there is a part of your brain which is capable of uh photoluminescence i don't know if that's the word you know where you emit light from it uh is that true is there actually a part of your brain that's capable of emitting light i have that i i must say i i haven't heard of so that that is beyond i i must take a step back and say i haven't heard of that um in terms of the third eye of course the pineal gland and all that i mean yeah i'm so sorry not not the pituitary the pineal gland no no that's okay that's okay um this unfortunately the thing is in terms of spirituality in terms of a spirit world and things like that there's no actual scientific basis for this and this is just to be 100 clear i think it's very important because because then a guy like let's say you start you decide i'm going to be a scientist as well as a part you know


be a scientist as well as a part you know podcaster you're going to science and then you see oh my god all this thing about the pineal gland that the third eye all this wasn't real and then you start you know you have no beliefs anymore and your spirituality totally you know uh uh you know goes into the trash because you see you know you see that it doesn't have a scientific basis so i think it's important to stress that um in terms of the brain there's no basis that i know of and in terms of the scientific consensus where we can sort of say this is us you know the third eye or anything like that but that doesn't negate the fact that these things could exist but it's just science is limited in what it can look at and what it can sort of uh provide of answers it's just the parameters of the game it's just certain games it looks at material matter as it as we can be observed you know and losing the laws of physics and spirituality


you know and losing the laws of physics and spirituality and metaphysics is by nipah it's very definition above the physical world and so therefore we can't uh i know of you know there's simply no evidence of anything like that but but that shouldn't uh leave you know it shouldn't take spirituality away from anybody you know you should still have your spirituality if you if that makes gives you meaning and it certainly gives me meaning um and but it's just important to to to be clear about that otherwise people get get disappointed and oh my god you know there's no science in this and then there's you know they start you know maybe not having those beliefs anymore uh of yeah um i i mean i also feel that maybe in our lifetimes in the next 20 years they'll carry out a lot of research with these things and that's that's my big hope honestly that's the reason i've taken up entrepreneurship gonna be straight up to be able to earn money to be able to maybe


be able to earn money to be able to maybe fund uh these kind of studies at some point uh i guess be the change you wish to see in the world and again i i i feel like you should believe something or not believe something totally based on your experiences so if you yourself have experienced something maybe there's some truth to it uh yeah yeah i want to say that on via yes belief and spirituality is an experiential thing and that's where i think we agree it's experi experiential thing that you have a belief and you shouldn't you shouldn't mix that with evidence and you shouldn't you know it's for me personally that's how i definitely uh conceptualize it it's that that personal uh experience that you have um and i want to say also on that point you know if 100 years ago i told you you know on your skin right now there's a hundreds of uh trillions of creatures walking out you know jump you know on your skin right now you'd say


jump you know on your skin right now you'd say i'm crazy wouldn't you but now we have the microscope you know of the bacterial world we know that the majority of your cells uh you know are actually bacterial cells and and uh so so the question is in 100 years in 200 years maybe that what we call metaphysics perhaps starts to become physics but until we get there i think that's important we shouldn't blur the line i think that's where we get in trouble as scientists we must be extra scientists you know we have to be extremely loyal to the data very precise and we of course we can speculate and wonder we should but then also stick to the data and not over extrapolate but uh philosophers can of course think more broadly and and then but but that's that's my that's my view anyway yeah i mean is it fair to say that maybe philosophy is the basis of psychology and science in some ways yeah of course of course there's it's in in


yeah of course of course there's it's in in a way yes because science is based on the philosophy of science and the philosophers in a way uh defined what you know what what what is science like what are the rules of science what is science what is not science and then so you know thank we're thankful for that that there are these but science is a very very powerful endeavor i mean think about it we jump on planes and we do all have all this technology you and i are speaking i'm in london you're in in uh in india bombay you're communicating so we shouldn't under under mist under underestimate science right and we should stick to to the scientific rules but then we should always try to go to the next level and keep growing and expanding as as you are hoping to do as well so that's really that's awesome 100 so um you know all this deep spiritual talk actually brings me back to that earlier subject you spoke about which is the mental health issues


subject you spoke about which is the mental health issues happening all over the world again speaking from experience i have seen how i've kind of i won't say overcome all my mental health issues but definitely kind of battled with them a little bit with the weapon of spiritual practice or meditation or activating the more emotional sides of my own mind um so maybe this could be one of the next steps for science and what you said about us kind of normalizing metaphysics going forward as a mainstream part of science that might just happen you never know um yeah coming to the last section before the twitter was i think this is one of your favorite subjects lucid dreaming so maybe if you could just explain what it is how you do it your own experiences and also this kind of weird uh statement that you keep reading where some people believe it can be dangerous so why can it be dangerous etc etc it's a good question so let me start with the danger part no there's no evidence or


with the danger part no there's no evidence or haven't encountered any dangerously lucid dreaming but perhaps it's just the fact that you know people uh it's so weird right so you are in a world where you are in the dream world which is bizarre and strange and maybe you've seen inception and you've seen the movie inception yes where uh you know you know so lucid dreaming no there's no danger to it in my any of my stuff that i've seen in research literature and stuff but basically what is lucid dreaming so lucid dreaming is this this state where you're you are so you're steeply sleeping in rem sleep and you are dreaming so you have these bizarre strange dreams but occasionally the parts of the brain i told you about before the the frontal part of the brain that has to do with awareness and logic particularly a structure called the dlpvc dorsolateral natural prefrontal cortex it's a fancy name for a cluster of cells okay structure that turns on


for a cluster of cells okay structure that turns on and when it turns on when you're dreaming you start becoming active aware of yourself so you gain agency and awareness and that's really what lucid dreaming is it's it's you being is were you waking up while still inside a dream um so that's the neuroscience of it in a nutshell and and so when you are in the lucid dream of course you can meet all the people you want to meet engage in and the fantasies you want to engage in fly you know whatever you want to do you can usually do that but um not always so so often it's just being aware of yourself that's the basic experience but then in some cases you can actually you know conjure up images of landscapes and people and things like that so that lucid dreaming is a is a it's a very interesting subject and i'll tell you this um during my own lucid dreams sometimes i become aware of myself and then i sort of i look i


of myself and then i sort of i look i start flying and i see myself and i'd see and i look down and i see landscapes you know i see landscapes and i say my god how come my brain is creating this landscape you know i'm seeing all these houses and things like that i'm so intrigued and sometimes i even go the layers deeper so i go and dream within a dream have you had that before this is related so you're dreaming and then you realize this is uh this is a dream within a dream and maybe dream within a dream so several layers down and these are all ways that you know you can you can you can play around in the world of uh dream consciousness so to speak but how do you actually simulate or lose a dreaming experience simulate um like how do you enter it how do you get into it yeah how do you get into it so there's um so for normal people like you and i from most you know something that randomly occurs but you


most you know something that randomly occurs but you can so people talk about like um and laberge from stanford has done a lot of work on this but it's basically uh maybe try to remind yourself before you go to you go to sleep right so you might say oh uh try to remember your dream so i would do this when i was a kid the land when you were dreaming try to try to think of it you know try to remember that this is a dream try to make yourself aware of yours you know that this is this is a dream kind of it's a bit strange but you do that and uh and then you start becoming aware but you know there's gadgets these days you know like commercialization of dreams so you wear certain you wear certain like goggles and you see lights emanating and then you you know beforehand that three lights if you see that in your dream that means it's a lucid dream so you're lying there and then you see the three lights in burning


there and then you see the three lights in burning in your dream and say my god oh this is i now know it's a lucid dream so that's the way to remember but other ways that lucid dreams are remembered it's really through things like seeing things that shouldn't normally happen maybe you see uh like shakespeare in your garden you know having a chat with you about the hamlet and then you go what should happen oh it's a lucid dream you become aware so some of these strange things that you know can also be a reminder but uh yeah these gadgets are interesting and i'll tell you this it seems like people that are meditators that can activate their frontal structures through meditation and have very you know uh very good power over their minds in that ways you know they can potentially enter into lucid dreams in a in a more manual uh way and so how that occurs i mean it's just has to do with their ability to potentially control their their brain and the frontal


to potentially control their their brain and the frontal parts of the brain that has to do with logic like they have the switch to turn it on manually in case so that's that's potentially very so yeah that's a lucid dream and then you have loose as i said dreams within dreams i'll tell you another one that's interesting you know there's i've had dreams where i was in a dream and i forgot about the dream and then i haven't had another dream where i remember that other dream but i had a forgot about it during wakefulness have you had that before yes yes interesting concept right like you you only remember the dream exclusively in your other dream it's almost like you're using those brain circuits in your in your dreams so yeah those those are all f interesting interesting ideas yeah um i think the the there's a couple of interesting dream experiences i can share one is the dream within the dream experience that you spoke of again i'd gone to a meditation school in south india it's


gone to a meditation school in south india it's actually satguru's meditation school if you know satguru from isha foundation yeah yeah i remember being extremely mentally exhausted at that phase of my life and i needed a break i remember going the incredible landscapes they gave us this really peaceful cute room i was with my co-founder at that point he went off to sleep and it was about like 5 p.m and i thought okay i'm just gonna take like maybe like a half an hour one hour nap i had a dream uh i mean i touched the bed i went to sleep i entered this world of dreams and i found a bed in that world i went to that bed and i went to sleep again i woke up first in the first dream and then i woke up in real life i had slept for like an hour and i don't remember anything about that dream other than the fact that i slept within it so it was an hour long in the physical world but i felt like


hour long in the physical world but i felt like i'd slept for like nine hours it was the freshest i'd ever felt in my life that's amazing isn't it uh well we actually we've thought about this question and it's not really known in science whether your dream and the timing dream is slowed down or not right so there's this these ideas of people who are deprived themselves of sleep and then they sleep for a minute and this uh and recorded that's been recorded in in history they sleep for a minute and it feels like hours or days even i mean it's crazy uh but but i'll tell you this so we don't know whether the the dream world is condensed or not i give you an example of an experiment that we're thinking about doing so imagine that you are sleeping and you're dreaming and then in this dream uh let's say uh you are dreaming that you are walking you know in the streets of bombay it's sunny you're walking around right and then during


it's sunny you're walking around right and then during that in that in that dream i you know we know so as a scientist i'm eavesdropping on the on the activity of your brain and so take a take some water and i splash this water on you like on your your face pretty much right and wake you up instantaneously okay so here's the question this water will you be able to incorporate this water into a narrative or not in other words would you go would you go mike i was walking in bombay then the clouds came out i took up my uh my umbrella and it started to rain slowly you know and then it started to pour down or would you go my god you know just wake up and it was like a tsunami you know is there a slowing down of reality or or is it like instantaneous like that because we know that from science that when you are dreaming and you know the external triggers in your environment can influence your dream this is known so if you're


influence your dream this is known so if you're sleeping and there's a smoke outside you might dream that you're there's a smoke in your dream too or if it's cold you might you know suddenly if it's cold like the window your mom forgot to close the window and you're sleeping and then you feel like you are in green land you know and then the mountains in greenland it's icy and cold so we know that things from the outside can influence the dream and the content of the dream but the question is how is time dilate how is time is it slowed down or is it sped up like is it like inception where our in dreamland you know an hour and we in the real world is like thousands of years in the dream world how does it work how is the comparison of these two worlds and this is all science you need to uncover this and look into this but it's a very fascinating world yeah that's why inception captured so many of our minds it's just


captured so many of our minds it's just an incredible movie that everyone has to watch again this is uh something i've actually picked up from the world of islam so there's a lot of dream interpretation done in islam there's actually this experience i keep having where at important junctures of my own life i often have dreams with animals in it um and those animals are doing certain things and you know how you always remember your dream in the first 10 15 minutes after waking up so if i've ever had an animal based dream i always google it and i actually go on to a website i think it's called islamicdreams.com or it's basically the islamic interpretation of jesus because they were a part of dreams have been a part of islamic culture like if you if you go back as and i believe it's been a part of indian culture as well but so many of those dreams have been so accurate for me um for example i'd done a big business call once i'd done a business


done a big business call once i'd done a business call with some people who were who had offered to take who had offered to kind of take a bit of a stake in one of my companies and i wasn't too minds about working with those people in particular and i got a dream of a monkey in my room like right after the rice i slept right after the meeting and the dream i got was a monkey in my room uh and i woke up i immediately googled it and said that a monkey in your bedroom means that you can be prone to being uh conned in a particular deal yeah so that kind of just made me think a little bit again about those people who i was figuring working with yeah eventually we didn't end up working with those people and in retrospect when i look back at that decision this was in my earlier business career yeah i've learned more business now and if i decided to work with them it probably wouldn't have been in my favor yeah


it probably wouldn't have been in my favor yeah i'm kind of looking back right now and i don't know whether this is just my mind playing a trick on me or what but this has happened repeatedly um for example like you know tigers have their own significance in your dreams wolves have their own significance whales have their own significance i've seen that if i've ever started a relationship with someone uh i i end up getting a lot of these dreams which kind of give me an indicator for how the relationship is potentially going to go so there was this one very endearing relationship that i'd had and at the start of it i remember seeing orcas like uh killer whales uh and the symbolism for an orca and your dream is that you've now found a companion who's gonna support you no matter what and that relationship was beautiful yeah it ended but um it was a good representation of what i'd read online so i've had experiences like this and i'm a huge believer in animal-based


like this and i'm a huge believer in animal-based dreams again i don't know whether that's my own brain kind of projecting itself or its own emotions into the dream world but just sharing an experience no i i think so first the whole animal aspect i think it means probably you have a uh imaginative childlike mind which is in a positive way because your children tend to see more animals in dreams so it's it shows that you have a fresh young mind which is i guess it could be a positive positive thing so that that's interesting in terms of that um the causal link between you you see something in your dream and then it happens that of course that's outside the scientific interpretation of dreams that we know um but it's certainly interesting it's part of traditions all over the world and you know cultural tradition biblical traditions the islamic tradition you know the bible and the quran and stuff like that talk about like how joseph would have dreams and these dreams would be you


would have dreams and these dreams would be you know occur and happen and stuff like just like you're mentioning right you dream things and it will happen um so that's all interesting stuff you know of course in science we would say it's you have the dream and then things are happening you're over interpreting these things so there's a real causal thing and the reason why we're saying this is because there's no uh scientific you know say any science that can explain that cause a link between you seeing something and happening uh but it's really interesting and just like um what you're talking about certainly a lot of people talk about this like they see certain things and then interpret those those dreams and and it happens like uh it's a it's a fascinating it's a fascinating concept i'll tell you this the scientific view of dreams uh is like um so i told you before that one reason why we dream uh is because of of of um that he can potentially give you like


of of um that he can potentially give you like a vr simulation so that it's a way of dress rehearsing for real life that's one of the mechanisms right so you see that bear you wrestle with and that happens and you are more prepared to encounter that in real life so that's the sign one of the scientific purposes of dreams another and the reason why you sort of you have all the stimulation of neurons that fire away and your brain creates a story around it but now you're adding this extra layer of spirituality you're saying well maybe it has a spiritual meaning right and it's actually predicting the future you know nothing in science can corroborate that or support that at the moment obviously but uh maybe that maybe that is something again for a hundred years that that yeah scientists will have a different view but um i think it's an interesting thing it's it's a very interesting world and it's fascinating you know yeah now this calls for us beginning the twitter verse section so


this calls for us beginning the twitter verse section so this is just general uh neuroscience based questions i think our whole audience got super excited that we had you on the show these kind of episodes are being very well received and i really appreciate you opening up the way you have so i'm just going to go for it feel free to answer these questions in short or even if you want to go along with it that's perfectly fine um okay we'll begin with the nanogram uh her questions are centered around the effects of social media on the mind so the simple question is does an excess use of social media destroy your peace oh yeah i think it definitely does for many reasons to excess of if anything destroys your your mental wellness and but especially social media uh can be very toxic because for so many reasons first of all you're sitting in there and looking at a screen so your eyes are focused on this narrow item this object and we all we all know when you look at narrow


we all we all know when you look at narrow things it it activates the stress centers of your brain so if you look at deep landscapes it uh it provides relief so this is uh some some stanford researchers have shown a lot of this work so just by looking at something narrow landscape like like a screen is bad and then when you when you're clicking on these items what you're doing is that you are having this hyper dopamine uh spikes right so you're pressing there and you see this picture of this this person and that and then you keep going and all that is unnatural so yeah definitely it makes you it can be very toxic and just just just look at your your own well-being when you sit and look at these screens and press around you know on social media and then also from a psychological perspective right so you're seeing all these people enjoying themselves and putting these fake worlds out there right so they only show the positive sides of things and then you feel like