The Neuroscience of Manifestation (James Doty, M.D.)
The Neuroscience of Manifestation (James Doty, M.D.)
Listen now (50 mins) | "What saved me was walking into this magic shop one time and meeting this woman, Ruth, who was there, who was this radiant individual, and after we spoke for a period..."
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Dr. Jim Doty is a neurosurgeon, neuroscientist, and the director of Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. Jim is also a bestselling author—his first book, Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart, tells his improbable life story: Jim had a tough start in life. He wandered into a magic shop where he met the shop owner’s mother, Ruth, who offered to spend six weeks teaching him mindfulness and meditation—these weren’t really things at the time—and ultimately how to manifest. After a rollercoaster of a life, including manifesting the list of things he wanted as a tween, he found himself back at the bottom again, and began to attend to making real meaning with his life. This ushered in his last chapter, where he has become much more than a neurosurgeon: He is one of the leading figures in the globe drawing connections between the brain, compassion and care, and how love shows up in the world.
We caught up when Jim was in Riyadh, in the middle of the night for him—thank you Jim!—launching a new AI-enabled mental health app called Happi.ai, which isn’t therapy but is a friend in your pocket. Our conversation begins there before we dive into his newest book, Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How it Changes Everything. If you think of Manifestation as woo-woo, Jim explains why it’s actually not—and the underlying brain mechanisms that are activated when you focus attention and intention. Okay, let’s get to our conversation now.
MORE FROM JAMES DOTY, M.D.:
Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How it Changes Everything
Jim’s App: Happi.ai
Jim’s Website
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
JIM:
I am in Riyadh at the moment and it's one in the morning here.
ELISE:
You could have rescheduled. Do you want to go to bed?
JIM:
No, no, no, no, no. I'm awake now.
ELISE:
You're there for work I assume.
JIM:
I don't consider life work. I consider it a joy. Yes, I am giving a talk, believe it or not, on artificial intelligence. I have stumbled into that area, perhaps might be the right word. So as you know, the center I run at Stanford, we train people in different mindfulness practices, primarily on around compassion and self-compassion. And of course, many people who are not self-compassionate, suffer from stress and anxiety for fear of being judged or being inadequate or being an imposter. So this of course is becoming very modern in society, especially with adolescent girls. And so I was always intrigued and in some ways saddened by the situation. Now it's affecting the population in general of course as well, but there are not enough psychologists or therapists to help so many people, even if everybody had access, they're just not enough trained. But the reality is most people don't need a therapist.
What they need is a friend to talk to or somebody they trust or feel comfortable with. And the problem also with therapists, not only are they expensive, but they're typically not available after five o'clock unless you have some sort of a health crisis. And of course if you call their offices, what they'll do is if this is a life-threatening emergency, please call. So it's not particularly helpful. So what I did was I looked at the various technology that was out there and it had not really matured at the time I came up with the idea, but it subsequently has. So what I've created is a mental health app, which is a mental health companion. It is an app that combines a emotion assessment and it combines the ability to do sentiment analysis through conversations what converts voice to text, and then analyzes that voice analysis itself and then facial expression analysis.
And it does all three on the fly. And obviously if you don't have your phone right in front of you, it subtracts that. And then this is connected actually to a conversational AI knowledge base that we created that employs compassion focused therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and psychology that then is connected to a human like avatar and you actually have the ability to have a conversation with an avatar. Now some people go, well, that's really strange. If you look at many of the apps, actually a large number of them use text where you just type in.
The problem with text is that you're basically typing off into the universe and there's no emotional connection. What's interesting with an avatar, and I'm sure you've probably tried virtual reality where they put on and they put you in this environment that is obviously not real. And one of the things that is often done is they put you over in abyss on a plank and they'll sit there and they'll say, well jump off the plank. And the vast majority of people will not jump off the plank. So here you are on a cognitive level, you're in a carpeted room and it's safe, but on a subconscious level, you cannot overcome the fact that this has hijacked your consciousness and as a result, you won't jump because you're afraid you're going to get hurt. An avatar, it's interesting because you cannot help but connect with it on a subconscious level like a human being.
So you actually develop an emotional connection, which is much more powerful than just texting. Now the goal here is obviously not to get you connected to an avatar and hijack you so that you live an unreal world talking avatars. But what it does do is it gives you an emotional connection and creates a sense of trust allowing you to connect with the avatar to help you, which then allows you to go back to your regular life. And so we have been beta testing and actually it's been quite powerful and you can have 15, 20 minute conversations and it seems very bizarre. But the avatar may offer to do a breathing exercise with you may suggest journaling, may do a gratitude practice. And it's really quite interesting. So we started initially with a commercial avatar and actually it worked fairly well. But as time has evolved and the ability to create avatars is much easier, what has happened is people can just create any avatar.
And with Chachi PT in theory, you could just connect the two and say, I have a mental health app. Now the problem of course is that what we've done is extraordinarily complicated while the other's quite simple, and of course Chachi PT can hallucinate and give you false information. And if you are utilizing self-harm language, it has no ability. So we have integrated that into what we're doing, but as it has become easier because of concerns that it can be copied and all this work we've done over the last three years. So it was suggested that I become the initial avatar even though we'll offer other avatars. I love it. Obviously I have this book out, I'm known in this space. I have a lot of connections and a social network. Now I become the avatar, which is obviously you can't really copy that. Now, that's not to say I'm the only avatar. There will be a variety of others that you can choose from and eventually even customize on your own, but that's going to be launched in the next week or so. So in some ways it's a very strange thing.
ELISE:
I love it. Well, maybe it's a full circle moment too, Jim, thinking about into the Magic Shop and the beginning of your own journey of being in relatively dire straits, right, would not have had recourse to find or pay for a therapist and finding someone who was, what's her name, Leslie, I can't remember her name.
JIM:
Ruth? Ruth.
ELISE:
Ruth. But encountering this woman in her son's magic shop who changed her life in a very profound and yet systematizable way, you can imagine that that's the type of intervention which she taught you to do is something that you as an avatar could teach millions to do.
JIM:
That's interesting you put it in that context because what she did for me, and I think what is so needed by so many is creating an environment of psychological safety. Because a survey was actually done with adolescents in the state of California and it asked them what their ideal mental health app would contain. And it's sort of fascinating because essentially that survey, even though we had been working on ours and it hadn't been announced, they wanted an app that actually did not have a human but an avatar because of fear of judgment. And that's so prevalent among adolescents. So that was interesting, and obviously that subset of people are much more comfortable with an avatar as well as they wanted an empathic compassionate listener. But we did a study and the group of people we asked was comprised of adolescents, first responders, university students, patients with cancer and elderly individuals. And so we ask them to use at a minimum of 10 minutes a day for one week, there's a survey called the das, DASS, which is depression, anxiety, stress scale. And we asked them to do a pre and a post study survey, and it's measured from one to five, one being normal, five being extremely severe. And with this group of people, over 70% in each category improved two levels from a one week intervention by self support. So it was really quite profound.
ELISE:
What a beautiful idea. And I know AI is scary and I don't even really want to understand all the ways in which it's scary. I would prefer to not think about it or not know, but I can imagine that it won't also provide some incredible social goods. And I'm a writer and I wish that AI coming out to culture hadn't been to take the jobs of creatives. That was a little sad, I think for photographers and musicians and writers to think, oh my God, we're going to have to compete with robots in these disciplines that are about making meaning, but to imagine it as a way to create access for these vehicles. And it makes sense. I mean, I adore my therapist, but he mostly just is a container that I can pour my heart out to and he's responding and he's on video and we have a relationship, but I know so little about him, it's already supposed to be a contained environment of privacy and confidentiality. He would probably not like to hear me say that he's an equivalent to an AI avatar, but you can imagine how it could get pretty close.
JIM:
Oh, no. I mean in fact, I mean potentially you might be surprised that you could create an avatar as a therapist. Now, we're not promoting this as therapy. And the reason is because one, you have to do an immense amount of studies, the document efficacy and not that this is not efficacious. I think that study I mentioned indicates it is, although it's a preliminary study, but most people don't need therapy. They need a person to talk to. And those are two different things. It's just as if, let's say a college student and you have a roommate and you're complaining about breaking up in a relationship. You don't need a therapist to be there for you as you weep and say, this was horrible. I feel that they didn't listen to me or they just abandoned me, or whatever. You just need an ear that you feel is sympathetic and empathic.
But there are a couple other aspects. When we are stressed and anxious, it's usually not during the daytime because we're distracted by real life. It's usually in the evening when therapists are not available. The other aspect is that this can actually seamlessly speak 61 languages matches as normal foreign language speaking. So it's seamless. It's not as if it's being dubbed in. And the other thing is that there's some cultures as an example here in the Middle East where speaking about mental health issues is taboo and very much frowned upon. So if you have the ability to communicate with an empathic listener, your issues, it can be really quite profound.
ELISE:
Beautiful. Will it at some point include manifestation or is manifestation one of the fathers of modern manifestation and it being so formative to who you ultimately came to be? Is this something that, are you ready to put this mantle down or are you ever like, I don't want to be the manifestation guy anymore?
JIM:
Well, let me put it into context because people hear that word, and in some ways it can be very triggering, right? Yeah. Because this falls into a societal narrative that's associated with a lot of woo woo and pseudoscience. And obviously I'm a scientist as well as a physician, neurosurgeon, et cetera. And so I don't want to mislead people that I'm just one of the other talking about the woowoo aspect and the law of attraction and direct your energy to the universe and everything will be perfect for you, and you'll get that Ferrari that you want by using your vision board. No, that's not what we're talking about. But
ELISE:
There's that.
JIM:
Stop this.
ELISE:
You got some sports cars.
JIM:
Yes. Well, that may be true too. But the important thing is the lessons and insights that I learned. And that's really the important thing because as you recall, and of course we're talking about my new book, mind Magic, the Neuroscience Manifestation and how it changes everything. So the reality though is in my experience with Ruth first book into the Magic Shop, I tell my own story of having a very difficult childhood alcoholic father, mother who had had a stroke when I was a child. She was partially paralyzed, had a seizure disorder, chronically depressed, attempted suicide. We were on public assistance evicted from various residences. And now obviously this is not an ideal childhood to grow up in. And in fact, sadly, and I'm sure you're familiar with the term ACEs or adverse childhood experiences scale, that when children have drug and alcohol abuse in their family situations or mental illness or poverty, this has a very profound negative effect on their ability to succeed in life.
And what saved me was walking into this magic shop one time and meeting this woman, Ruth, who was there, who was this radiant individual. And after we spoke for a period of time, she said to me, I like you very much. I'm here for another six weeks and if you show up every day, I think I could teach you something that could help you. Now, I was 12 years old, and frankly, I had no self-awareness or insight whatsoever. But what I did have was this sense that she cared. And as I said, she created this environment of psychological safety where I felt comfortable, I felt I could trust her. And as a result, and this was before the concept of mindfulness or mind training was used at all, or the concept of neuroplasticity, she taught me a technique of mindfulness. Now, the interesting thing is, and I think many people don't appreciate, is that when you grow up in these traumatic environments in the sense that it's chaotic, it's unpredictable.
You never know what's going to happen. This activates your sympathetic nervous system, this flight fight or fear response. And in many ways, it's as similar to what a veteran experiences in war. You never know what's going to happen. So your muscles are always tense, you're always looking around, you can't stay focused. And this was my situation. So she taught me a mindfulness practice, although this was way before John Cabot's in brought practice to the United States. So she taught me an exercise to relax my body and also a breathing exercise and the ability to attend by focusing on a candle. And as a result, over a period of time, I was able to regulate my emotions. I was able to shift from the engagement of my sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system, which many call the rest and digest system, both of which are part of the autonomic nervous system, which is distributed from the brainstem all through all organs in your body, especially the heart.
And the point is that this is deeply profound because once you're able to emotionally regulate, once you're able to be present, then you can learn. So she taught me this and an understanding that the negative dialogue that was going on in my head was not truth. And this is what I talk about in my magic. Of course, we develop fixed belief systems that limit us. And as a result, if you say it is not possible, I cannot, that becomes truth. And as a result, I had this negative dialogue going on in my head saying, I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy, I don't deserve, it is not possible. And that became truth, but it actually was not truth at all. It was a narrative that I had created because our species have a negativity bias. And what that means is we look for negative things because they're the things that put us at risk.
And many of the things we listen to, we translate into a negative statement about ourselves. So she taught me a way to overcome that and certainly diminish that negative self-talk by positive affirmation. And what I tell people is when I changed how I looked at myself and the dialogue I had with myself, it allowed me to look through a different lens at the world understanding that everyone is suffering. And once I realized that was much more kind and thoughtful, because sadly, many of us are more hypercritical with ourselves than we are with anyone else. So when I was kind to myself, when I understood my own suffering, it allowed me to be much kinder, more thoughtful and forgiving and accepting of other people. And it also dissipated the anger that I had towards my parents for letting me down or not being available. But what I say is once I changed how I saw the world, the world then changed how it saw me. Because when we're angry, these emotions actually emanate from us, even though we don't say a word at all. And this of course affects how people react to you. So that was really quite profound. So I think that's an important lesson in terms of manifesting, because when you've activated your sympathetic nervous system and you're in this flight fight or fear mode, it actually shuts down or affects our cognitive brain networks in a negative way. And in fact, it affects our physiology in a negative way. It affects our blood pressure, our heart rate variability, our immune system, a whole variety of factors when we are in this negative mental state.
But there are a couple aspects I think that are very important. As you know, the first sentence in the book addresses the woo woo issue with that word. Can you say profanity on your podcast?
ELISE:
Yeah, you can say whatever you want.
JIM:
Be careful. So the first sentence of the book says, the universe doesn't give a fuck about you. And this is in direct contrast to the nature of what is commonly promoted by the people in the pseudoscience space because there's this narrative of the law of attraction, which is you put out positive energy and the universe cares about you and decides you're worthy and rewards you. And of course, this is not true whatsoever. And sadly, it also places the blame of something not manifesting on you when in fact it has nothing to do with you in the sense that there is some external entity determining your fate. So there are a couple of important aspects when we talk about how do we actually manifest based on actually neuroscience. And I think one of the problems for many people, which they don't appreciate is we are all manifesting all the time.
I mean, that's the way we are. The problem is we have never systematically tried to maximize our ability to manifest. It's as if you one day decide, well, I'm going to run a marathon. And then you wake up and go, okay, yep, that's what's going to happen. And you start trying to run 26 miles. Well, the reality is that's not going to happen for most people. And it emphasizes one, you need to work on these things and you need to create habit because I'm sure you're familiar with the saying what fires together, wires together. So by repetition, this actually embeds your intention into your conscious. And so as I said, all of us are manifesting all the time, but what we don't appreciate is what we've already manifested to date. And I'm sure you've met people who they'll say, I don't understand this. This is my third divorce. And it's like I married the exact same person, right?
This is because of the fact that they don't understand from childhood, there have been habits embedded in them during these critical development periods which result in them making bad decisions for themselves and others. And it becomes a repeating pattern because they have no insight or self-awareness. So one, if you want to maximally manifest, you have to understand what you've already manifested to date and have some insight and self-awareness. Now, it may require you seeing a therapist, or it may require just simply taking a period of time to reflect on your past, to understand how you got where you're at. So I think that allows on some level for you to clean the slate or certainly have self-awareness of these patterns of behavior you might have, and also how they have created this negative belief system or this fixed belief system that you have.
ELISE:
You write. I learned this as being above or below the line, but you write in mind magic about the way that we perceive ourselves at being at the effect of the world, which is what I would call below the line, versus seeing the world is happening by us through us, for us, which is above the line when you're in that creator self-authorship space. And it's a very subtle shift, but most of us spend most of our days below the line. Once you can cognitively start to recognize that and interrupt that you write, therefore, you could say that in our society we are suffering not from a crisis of agency, but from a crisis of the sense of agency. Self-agency is we have forgotten, we possess. And then later on, you write one of the most significant obstacles to manifesting lies and giving too much power to unpleasant sensory input and not understanding that our own power lies in how we respond to such input.
But that's sort of it, right? The difference between feeling buffeted by the world and engaging, as you just said in those patterns or habits of thought that generally create the same results, self-affirming cycle of doom, or whether you can break it. And I think your own story, which is for people who haven't read the book, essentially you manifested an extreme amount of abundance for yourself, which was what you as a 12-year-old saw as safety and security. And it wasn't necessarily partnered with Ruth was gone six weeks in. So you went on your own way without maybe doing the deeper work that you acknowledged that you needed to. What is the life of meaning? What am I even doing? So there's the mechanical part of it, which is not the same as thinking about what you want to create in your life because you're connected to your own deeper sense of meaning. Is that fair?
JIM:
No, I think that's exactly right. And I like that above and below the line. I think that's quite accurate. And you're right. I mean, as a 12-year-old child who is poor…
ELISE:
You wanted that Porsche, we can't blame you.
JIM:
Exactly. Yeah. So she asked me to make a list of things I wanted to manifest or visualize. Yeah, it was having a Rolex watch. I had mentioned actually wanting to be a physician. And while I sincerely wanted to help people, but the most important thing as well was I wanted this external affirmation. And this is one of the things that a lot of people don't appreciate about manifesting, and I put this in the context between fear and love. And what I mean by that is when people feel scarcity, when people don't feel they're enough, this actually activates their sympathetic nervous system. They're fearful, they're anxious. And interestingly, in some ways this relates to the narrative of hedonic happiness. You seek pleasure, you avoid pain, and many people do this, but what they deeply want is this sense of affirmation, externally believing that that will give fulfillment and make them feel whole. Fundamentally was what I had done.
This list of 10 things, having a mansion, being worth a million dollars and having a Porsche and et cetera, et cetera, was all out of my own fear and insecurity and shame, such that I wanted people to look at me and say, he's okay. You're okay. You did it. While that did occur, on some level, it never made me feel whole versus the love narrative, which is this idea that you are doing something that has purpose and meaning, and it's not about just you. It's about how can I help the other? And when you look through the lens like that, that's much more powerful. And unlike hedonic happiness, which is transitory and quite shallow purpose and meaning or onic, happiness is actually deep and long lasting. And this is why I say you look at it through these two lenses, and if you looked at how we evolved as a species, our offspring don't run off into the jungle or the forest when they're born.
They have to be cared for 10 years or 15 years, which requires time and resources from their caregivers or their parents. And as a result, why would you do that unless you're rewarded? The way you're rewarded is through the release of different neurotransmitters such as oxytocin or the love or bonding or affiliation or nurturing or caring hormone, because that activates reward and pleasure centers in your brain and actually shifts you from engagement of your sympathetic nervous system to engagement of your parasympathetic nervous system. And you look through the lens of how can I care for my offspring? How can I care for the other? And it makes you feel good. And fundamentally, our purpose in life is to come from that place, not the place of fear and scarcity. And in ancient times, if you will, as we evolved as a species, the engagement of the sympathetic nervous system occurred when we felt external threat.
But it wasn't all the time in modern society, by the nature of how our society has changed in a fairly short period of time, the system is constantly activated. And then we're always looking through the lens of fear and scarcity. And it's interesting. You look at the work of people like Dan Butner who's written about the Blue Zones, or Robert Waldinger wrote a book recently about long-term, 85 year Harvard Adult Development study, which is called, I think, something relating to happiness and longevity. And the point being that in ancient times long ago, we were born in a small community, typically less than 150. We lived in a multi-generational. We had a community that supported us, and it allowed us to thrive. And we didn't have all this negative self-talk that were no good. Everyone told us we were okay. They encouraged us, they loved us, they held us. And we don't have that in modern society today. And as a result, people feel very insecure. And this of course activates our sympathetic nervous system. So if you look through this lens though, of how we evolve as a species, how we're meant to be, it actually is derived from how we evolve as a species. How do we care for ourselves, how do we connect? And this idea of depth of connection or deep relationships is associated with our physiology, both brain and peripheral functioning at their best. And this results in longevity.
Now, it's interesting because people will sit there and say, well, Jim, you're basically being anti materialistic. And actually I'm not at all. I'm not against having possessions and nice things, but there's a difference between looking through the lens and saying these things define who I am,
Versus understanding that they're just things. And so from my perspective, listen, I live in a very nice house. I drive a Porsche, I drive a Mercedes. There's nothing wrong with that unless you believe that that is who you are. For me, if they're all gone tomorrow, well, I wouldn't necessarily jump for joy, but I'd be perfectly fine. I am okay as to who I am. I don't need those external props. So I think that's a very profound subtle difference in terms of manifesting, because when you do it through the lens of connection, your brain networks function at their best, your peripheral physiology functions at its best, and you're actually much happier.
ELISE:
Yeah. Well, and this is spoken as someone who was a have not to a mega, have to a, have not back to a have. Right? So you've experienced the whole thing. Can you repeat that again? Could you repeat that again? Have not mega have, have not have.
JIM:
I'm going to get a T-shirt
ELISE:
That has that check, check, check, check, check. No, I think it's such an important distinction, and the book was really fascinating because I've watched manifesting blow up as well as everyone else, and I have a more spiritual view, which is I think that we live in a loving universe, but I think it's indiscriminate in its lovingness. And I think sometimes the things that we get may not feel very loving, but they might be what we need. So add that. I think that the universe doesn't say you're special and you're special and you're not special. I think we are equally special, but we can disagree on that. Don't worry.
JIM:
No, no. Actually, I think near the end of the book, I actually say, well, first of all, I was having a conversation with John Hamm about this. He was talking about on Mad Men, and he was saying, it reminds me of this episode where we talked about the universe. And he said, at best, it's indifferent. And that being said, as you go through my book, when I say The universe doesn't give a fuck about you, at the end of it though, I bring it back together and basically say, you are the universe,
And there is this and this connection. So it's not negating spirituality per se, but it's how do you make your brain networks function at their best? That's when you're in the right mental state where you're looking through the lens of connection and not selfishly about what I want, believing that somehow having a Ferrari helps people or helps you even. And it's funny, you made the comment, there's a difference between what you want sometimes through naivete in experience, lack of self-awareness versus actually what you need. And I think that's a critical aspect. What you need is to have this deep connection and recognizing those types of connections to the other, actually give you everything you want or change your understanding of what you want. I think that's really an important aspect.
ELISE:
Yeah, that's beautiful.
ELISE:
I write a lot about wanting versus needing and as well, and in some ways, you could connect the kneading back to that core of care that you were describing the way that we used to be raised. If you had been raised at a different time amongst a sea of potential allo-parents, it wouldn't have been such a big deal that your parents weren't available to you. There would've been other loving adults to tend to your needs more Ruths as ever, present people in your life. But you can think about needs connecting in some way to that cycle of care. And then the want being our own desire to distinguish ourselves or have individuality or have a distinct identity, which is also very beautiful. But holding the two in the balance is where I think we get a little, the cocked, we get a little screwed up and often tend to go to one extreme potentially. And I also want to say in defense of your deep spirituality, the first time I met you, you took me to hug Amma. That was a long time ago.
JIM:
Yes, it was actually. I was just with her about three weeks ago.
ELISE:
Oh, really? How was she doing? Just still hugging?
JIM:
Well, of course that's her reason to live, right? But it was really nice to see her again. And it's interesting in terms of this spirituality aspect, when you look at people like her or the Dalai Lama, or unfortunately people who've died like Desmond Tutu or Thich Nhat Hanh, all of who also were friends of mine. Being with people who have this elevated spiritual presence is really quite profound because in many ways, they live above their dogma. Their dogma is for a set of people who need that, who need boundaries that are well-defined in terms of their behavior. But all of these elevated spiritual leaders, they look through the lens of oneness, connection, non-judgment, acceptance. And I think that's the power that they hold, is that that is who they are. And that's why you don't see them criticizing other religions or other spiritual leaders. They believe in this idea that we're all connected, and in some ways we are the universe. And I think that is what I find deeply powerful in my own experience. And it's really been a great joy for me to have the privilege of being with these individuals. Although of course, many people don't quite understand how can I be an atheist?
ELISE:
Are you an atheist?
JIM:
Yes. I don't believe in anything other than this present moment.
ELISE:
This is shocking. I didn't know that. Wow.
JIM:
Yes, yes. It is strange for some people, but it's not a denigration of human connection. It's just that I don't feel a need to identify an it in some ways, something in the universe that cares, it's indifferent. But what I do appreciate or connect with is our connection with other living beings and the power that has to help each of us and allows us to help the other. And by doing so, it activates these different brain networks to make us better people and to have our brain and peripheral physiology function at their best.
ELISE:
So maybe your God is love or oxytocin, if that's preferable to you.
JIM:
Well, love is okay as well. But that is actually what we are in the universe. It's funny. So obviously I've done this book. My next book is actually going to be the Neuroscience of Intuition, but the next one after, that's the neuroscience of love, actually.
ELISE:
Oh, I love it. Oh, I want to talk to you about your neuroscience of intuition. I also want you to, and then I'm sending you to bed, but I want you to train in AI in wisdom, traditions, and esoteric spiritual texts. Can you do that?
JIM:
Well, it's funny you say that. There's an individual who used to be the chief technology officer at Shutterfly, and he's working with me now actually on this app, but he apparently has been a follower of mine for a while. So he scoured the internet for all of the statements I've made, all the interviews, et cetera, et cetera. And he created a Doty Magic ai. And you ask it questions, and it actually gives these very profound, sometimes esoteric answers, and it will quote different spiritual and religious leaders.
ELISE:
Amazing.
JIM:
And it's funny because my wife says she prefers to talk to it rather than me sometimes. ai always nice, and I can be a jerk sometimes.
ELISE:
Can't we all?
JIM:
Yes.
ELISE:
Well, thank you. Thank you for staying up until the middle of the night. We didn't get into the nitty gritty of Mind Magic, but if you are interested in manifestation and specifically what's actually happening in the brain, it's an excellent read and it has a lot of exercises interspersed as well. But to give you a quick overview, he writes, manifesting primarily makes use of four of these large circuits, the default mode network, the DMN, the central executive network, CEN, the Salience Network, SN, and the Attention network, AN. It is the interaction of these four primary brain areas along with the two branches of the vagus nerve that it allows us to give our focused attention to our intentions and make our intentions important enough to the brain to embed them in our subconscious and use its power to manifest them. So essentially, as he describes, you're training your brain to pay attention to your intention and to not be so hijacked by external factors, which generally often might send you into your sympathetic nervous system by triggering your amygdala, your fear response.
But he goes into it in much greater depth. So grab Mind Magic. His app is Happy Ai, and if you want to hear his story, his first book is called Into the Magic Shop.