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Each episode of the podcast Personal Kosmology traces one seeker's journey: the beliefs they inherited, the experiences that broke them open, and the questions they're still living.
I'm drawn to people who didn't just change their minds, but rebuilt their lives around what they found.
In their stories, you may recognize your own.
Neil Theise: My mother begins
six months of hospice care.
No walking, no talking, no eating.
Oh, wow.
She can talk, but she won't
talk to anyone who's alive.
She'll only talk to dead people.
"Mr. Neil, Mr. Neil, come quick.
Your mother's in the kitchen asking
for a cup of tea." And she starts
walking, talking, and eating again,
and lives for another six years.
And now dead people are showing
up, not just as deathbed visions,
but like visitors to the house.
My mother's experiences, if we come
from a materialist perspective, we
have to dismiss them as she's demented,
she's delusional, uh, she's taking
drugs, or she's lying about it.
But the sorts of experience she's having
have been core to human spiritual life
as long as there have been humans.
From my perspective, the
brain doesn't make the mind.
The brain is a receiver,
like a radio is a receiver.
I could see things under the microscope,
or I could see things in the world
like my dog's ghost or the sense
of my grandmother, and just pay
attention to what's in the moment and
worry about the explanation later.
I'm having these experiences in
the world, and I just hold them.
And things like Zen stuff coming together
with the science, I was holding those
things for four decades at that point.
But then there was a moment where it
was one thing being held, not two.
So I think my Zen practice has
cultivated that ability to just
go, just be with it, like a koan.
You just sit with a koan.
It reveals itself to you
if you're patient enough.
I try-
Devin Martin: You don't throw away data.
You don't throw away experiences because
you don't have a good explanation.
You're willing- Right … to
sit in the mystery.
Neil Theise: Just be open
to what's in front of you.
You know, that's what
being a scientist is.
See what's in front of you.
Don't dismiss it just because
it's not what you expect.
Devin Martin: Welcome to The
Personal Kosmology of Neil Theise.
I'm your host, Devin Martin, and we are
here online with Neil, who is in Lisbon.
And I think if people know who you
are, I, I first came across your
work, uh, a few years ago with
your book, Notes on Complexity.
Neil Theise: Mm-hmm.
Devin Martin: Um, and I'm
interested in complexity theory.
I vaguely knew that it was gonna tie
science and consciousness together
in interesting ways, but, um, I've
been- profoundly excited to learn just
how much overlap we have in how we
think and how far you go beyond the
bounds of your academic discipline.
So you're an NYU professor.
Yep.
Um, I came back across you at my
friend Rohan's event where you were on
stage- Oh … with some other experts.
You were there?
Yes.
So it- Oh … yeah, so I saw you on
stage and, um, who, who was there?
Robert Kuhn?
Neil Theise: Uh, Robert Kuhn.
Um, and, uh… Oh, God.
Yeah, I, I'm too old to
come up with names on, on
Devin Martin: cue like that.
And, and essentially you, you, you
were- Yeah … exploring, uh, scientific
perspectives on consciousness.
Neil Theise: Right.
Devin Martin: And-
Neil Theise: And I was
very angry that night.
Devin Martin: And I was very touched
by your anger because I resonated
with your perspective so much.
And essentially I felt like you brought
not just an academic perspective,
but a Buddhist perspective- Mm-hmm
a psychedelic perspective, and then
you really won me over when you
explained Gödel's incompleteness
theorem- … and how that really
undermined the material reductionist
paradigm that everyone else was stuck in.
Right.
And so I reached out to you online
afterwards and said, "Thank you."
Neil Theise: Oh, was that when you…
Oh, that's… Oh, I can't remember.
Devin Martin: That was when… And,
and then we started chatting online.
That's right.
Okay.
Right.
Um, and it was really, you know, a- as
somebody who was raised fourth-generation
Jewish atheist- Mm-hmm … and was, like,
staunchly against all of this woo stuff-
Yeah … and then had a crazy mystical
experience on LSD at one point, and
had no framing for it, and really- Wow
fell into a nihilistic
suicidal depression for years.
Neil Theise: Wow.
Devin Martin: Because I was so s- I
believed so strongly that math and science
and rationality could explain anything.
Mm-hmm.
And then eventually I discovered
Zen and, and then when I finally,
when Gödel's incompleteness theorem
was explained to me, which is
essentially very complex, but it says,
in a simple sense, no mathematical
system can be complete and coherent.
It will always exclude-
Right … some part of truth.
That just by design.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
And so fundamentally you can't use
math, which means you can't use
physics, to explain everything about
consciousness- Mm-hmm … or reality.
Oh.
Oh.
And that just confirmed everything
I'd experienced in a scientific way,
and so it was very satisfying for me.
And so I was like, "Wow, this guy
is a kindred spirit. This guy is
working in science, is…" You're
now being known for, it sounds like,
discovering the first new organ in
the human body, the interstitium.
And, and we're saying it's
maybe an organ, but you've
definitely- Well, well, actually-
…
Neil Theise: confirmed
Devin Martin: it exists.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Well, so, you know, uh, new organs
happen actually every two or three years.
Is that right?
Shockingly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So three years before our interstitium
paper, uh, the mesentery was determined
to be an organ, and since then
there have been two very tiny little
organs discovered subsequently.
Um, now the interstitium, we are not
saying it should be considered an organ.
What we are are saying, which is even
more exciting, is that the fascia-
And the fascia's interstitium, which
is not the entire interstitium, but
it's a lot of it, and it's the part my
team sort of clarified and discovered.
Um, the fascia and its
interstitium is a new organ system.
Mm. And it's the first
new organ system ever
Devin Martin: That's amazing.
Yeah.
And, and, and so people understand,
this is l- this moves throughout the
body like the vasculature or the fascia.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's really a connective
highway- It's- … of the body.
And, and, and- Yeah … and maybe
we'll, let's, let's work up to
exactly how you came across this.
Okay.
'Cause I, 'cause I- Sure, sure
what I love to force people to do on this
podcast is explain their journey a bit.
And I, I think of it as happening
in three chapters, which is
essentially the worldview and the
lifestyle that you were born into.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
The moments in your life that
challenged that or broke it down.
Mm. And then where you are
today, what you're exploring now.
Mm-hmm.
And so if you don't mind,
take us all the way back.
Neil Theise: Oh,
Devin Martin: sure.
Sure, sure, sure.
What was it like growing
up in the Theis household?
Neil Theise: Oh, wow.
Okay, um.
Devin Martin: What were
you taught as good, true,
Neil Theise: beautiful- Let
me, let me- … you know?
… let me get my baggage.
Let me start to unpack it for you.
I want all that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, the… I think it's funny that
you said you're gonna force me to.
Try and stop me, you know?
You- You'll, you'll find even
if you ask me a simple, simple
question, the answer tends to go on.
Um- Beautiful … so, uh, I'm writing
a lot about this actually in, uh,
the current book I'm working on.
Uh, well, every book is sort of this,
but, um, that I didn't get the memo
that you apparently got when you
were young that science and religion
couldn't occupy the same space.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: And so my
parents were from Europe.
Uh, my dad was born in Germany, um,
and was, uh, and were Jewish, um,
so that wasn't a good combination.
He was on the Kindertransport that
got Jewish kids, 10,000 Jewish
kids from Germany to England.
Oh, wow.
So he was sent when he was 12, um,
a few weeks before his bar mitzvah.
And his parents were, and his
older brother were sent to Riga.
His parents were killed.
His brother survived, but wound
up in Poland after the war.
Mm. And, you know, the, his
side of the family was pretty
decimated, though I've got a lot
of cousins, and we've now all met.
We've started to have family reunions
and stuff, and, um, been to his
hometown, and, uh, teaching the high
school students there about our history.
It's really kind of- Oh,
wow … interesting stuff.
Um, but, um, so that was m- so my father
wound up in England, and they were…
His family was, uh, they were rural.
They, they were tailors, but a lot of
the family were farmers, um, in Germany.
The, uh, his father and his two
brothers all fought, fought in the
trenches in World War I for the Germans.
Uh, you know the story
of the Christmas truce?
In, in World War I. Oh, there's…
It's a, one Christmas, the, the,
the Brits in their trenches and the
Germans in their trenches, there
was a ceasefire, uh, Christmas Eve,
and they each started singing, um,
Silent Night in their languages.
And then- Wow … came out of the
trenches, and for Christmas Day
played soccer, and sang, and drank
together, and then exchanged gifts.
And one of… And then by nightfall went
back into the trenches, and they were
killing each other again the next day.
And one of my uncles, one of
my father's uncles, was there,
and, uh, I grew up with him.
He actually had a silver flask
given to him by a British soldier,
uh, a hip flask that he kept.
How
Devin Martin: much more traumatizing
is it to have to go back to war
with people you just humanized?
Neil Theise: And, uh, y- there
are so many layers to this . Yeah.
So welcome to my family.
Um- Yeah … so my father
wound up in England.
Um, one of his, hi- th- one of the
other brothers who was in the trenches,
um, had already gotten to England.
Um, he met my father off the, the,
the, the boat and the train in London,
but then he was put in prison on the
Isle of Man because the Brits rounded
up any enemy aliens, which meant
anyone who was German, and it didn't
matter whether you were Jewish or not
Jewish, which generally meant Nazi.
And so they were… That happened.
And- Wow … he wound up in the United
States after, but my father went into
the children's circuit when they were
evacuating kids from London for The Blitz.
He wound up in a, um, in a
hostel for, with 40 other boys
in Northampton, England, that
was run by the Jewish community.
They were all German Jewish boys.
Um, old man Marks, Rabbi Marks, ran
the place, and he was Orthodox, and
that's how my father, um, came of age.
Uh, and, um-
And then he was apprenticed when he was
14, um, so this is in 1941, to a local
factory because all these immigrant boys
who were essentially orphans or would soon
be orphans, um, needed to have trades.
And so he was apprenticed
to this clothing factory.
Um, Northampton was an industrial town.
My mother's family came to England
from Poland before World War I.
Uh, East End, rag trade, worked
their way up very, very slowly.
Um, but in the 19- uh, late '20s, early
'30s, they took off business-wise.
There were seven kids.
She was the sixth out of the seven.
And though they grew up in poverty,
the older kids, she grew up in luxury.
And, like, the, the house she grew
up in in London, um, I can tell
Londoners her street and the house,
and e- people know which house it is.
Devin Martin: Really?
Neil Theise: It's that fam- It's an art
deco mansion in, in, off the Hampstead
High Street called Frognal Way.
And, um, but during the Blitz,
they decamped to my grandfather's,
the town of my grandfather's
factory, which was in Northampton.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: She was 12.
And that's how my father first saw my
mother, 'cause he was staying up all
night to watch for fires in case there
were bombing runs, and he'd be there
looking out the window when the boss's
chauffeur-driven car would come up, and
in the backseat were his two youngest
daughters, and my mother was the redhead.
And the guy who he helped overnight
would elbow him and say, "Der roter, the
redhead, you're gonna marry her one day."
And they never spoke.
Devin Martin: Wow.
Neil Theise: But everyone in the factory
knew he had a crush on my mother.
He came to the US, to Hartford, where one
of those trench brothers, trench brothers,
um, wound up getting, um, sponsored to
leave Germany just after Kristallnacht.
And the other brother who had
been in England in the Isle
of Man, he wound up there.
My father followed, and, um, but for
a time was living in New York, and was
walking down the street and saw someone
who looked familiar, stopped him.
It was one of my mother's brothers-in-law,
who also worked in the factory,
and said, "What happened to Sarah?"
And he said, "Well, you know, the whole
family came here, but she was engaged to
be married," and my father's heart sunk.
But she broke it off in order
to come to America, and- Wow.
But… And I said growing up, I was really
a horrible Anglophile, and wished I could
have been one of my English cousins with
the English accent and the whole thing.
And I, I berated my father once
for having come to America.
And and he said, "Yeah, but if I had
stayed in England, the German off- the
German orphan could never have spoken
to the English princess. But in America
he could." And so he called up my
grandfather, asked permission to take out
my mother, and that's how we wound up in
Hartford, Connecticut, where I grew up.
And so- So you grew up
Devin Martin: in that house in Hartford?
Okay.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
So, um, in a community of German
Holocaust survivors, it was probably
one of, if not the last fully
German congregation in the world.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, everyone spoke German when
they didn't want the kids to understand.
And, um, and that's partly how I
wound up in Lisbon, because I have
a German passport, because my- Oh
grandfather was a refugee.
I consider us refugees from America.
We didn't wanna leave New York City, but,
um, but we didn't wanna stay in a country
that, that was doing what it's been doing.
Um, so we moved to Lisbon.
And, um, and people here are like,
"Wow, lucky for you, you have a
German passport." Well, lucky is…
Devin Martin: Tell a, tell a- But
fortunate … German Jew they're lucky.
Neil Theise: Fortunate.
Yes.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, but so- Tiny
Devin Martin: little silver lining.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
So I grew up in a community
where… a Jewish community
that was fairly observant.
They weren't Orthodox, per se.
Um, uh, they wound up being a conservative
synagogue in, in, in Hartford, West
Hartford, Bloomfield, um, in New England.
And- The, the religion wasn't
sort of foisted upon us as
this rigid, um, uh, imposition.
We were really, we were the dream they
didn't think would happen, the kids.
Devin Martin: Mm-hmm.
Neil Theise: Um, and so we were really,
um… You know, I mean, there's a wide
range of, of, um, families and, and
responses, but in general, compared
to other kids in West Hartford and
their synagogues and stuff, there was a
sense in which the children were really
treasured, and, um, that we all sort of
felt on some level, even if we didn't
stay, uh, connected to the Jewish stuff.
Um, but I did, and part of that…
So we had a, a really robust,
uh, Jewish life growing up.
Uh, more observant than most
Americans, but not Orthodox.
And on my mother's side, she
came from a long line of rabbis.
Actually, I can trace this back- Mm
… um, to, you know, a thousand years ago.
Um, and most of those, I came to learn
eventually, the, the great rabbinic
scholars were often usually also not just
legal scholars, but they were mystics.
And so, and my mom's from, uh,
you know, as I said, from Poland.
Um, uh, Isaac Bashevis Singer, the, the
Yiddish Nobel Prize winner- Mm … um,
uh, he writes about dybbuks and angels and
demons and goblins and stuff like this.
He's a cousin.
Um, that's the that's the
storytelling side of my family.
And, um, but there was a, you know, I
referred to it back then as superstition,
um, a, a very rich, magical side to the
Judaism she brought in from that line.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: And, um, so I, I
really liked the Jewish stuff.
It felt important because my
p- my father was a survivor.
Um, and it was full of a lot of
warmth because of who my parents were.
Um, and, um-
Devin Martin: And would you say you
were exposed to the mystical side,
that that was- Yeah, no … part of
the fabric of your understanding?
Neil Theise: You know, in the, in the
manner of which, you know, my mother
would spit on us three times if she
thought someone had invoked the evil eye.
Um, or if you, you know, pour water out
of a jug backwards, "Oh, God," you know?
Or my brother, if I was lying on the
floor watching TV in the den and my
brother stepped over me, my mother would
be like, "Step back over, step back over.
He won't grow." So
Devin Martin: So, so, so maybe
more superstitious than, uh- More
superstitious … unity consciousness
or non-dual- Yeah … understanding.
Neil Theise: No, for sure.
But, um, when I was 14, one of my
father's cousins, uh, who was on the
Kindertransport as well, got out of
Germany, wound up in Canada, he came to
visit us with his new girlfriend, Ollie.
And Ollie was a blonde shiksa goddess.
She was really something.
And, um, and I was 14, and, uh, we
really hit it off, she and I, and we were
talking about stuff, and she gave me, um,
the book The Source by James Michener.
Now- Mm … James Michener was a
novelist back in the '50s and '60s who
would write, like, 800-page novels.
He would take a location and explode
it out into chapters over the course
of hundreds or thousands of years.
So famously, one is, I think
maybe his first one was called
Hawaii, and it was Hawaii from
pre-European times up through today.
And then he wrote one called The
Source, which took place in Israel in an
archeological dig, and the layers of the
archeological dig provided the chapters.
And in there, there's a chapter from the
15th century, um, about Jewish mysticism.
And, um, there's a rabbi who comes
from Italy, and he winds up in the
Holy Land, and he winds up in Safed,
which is where the, the major town
of the Kabbalists was at the time.
And what most people refer to as
Kabbalah, uh, in America today, that's
what they're talking about, that lineage.
And, um, and that was my first
introduction to, uh, mystical stuff.
And it put this idea in my head, and
I remember, it's a very vivid memory,
walking on a beach, uh, on the Connecticut
shore with a friend of mine, 14, and
saying that, um, I clearly had always had
a problem understanding how I'm praying
to this God, and serious devotional
practice in our family, me included.
And, um- praying to this God who
cares about us, et cetera, and
yet my grandparents are dead.
Right.
And my father's an orphan.
So what the fuck am I
supposed to do with this?
And reading- The chosen
Devin Martin: people is, is a
confusing term for Jews to hear
after- I- … the Holocaust.
Neil Theise: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And, um, I, uh, and I said, "Oh, but
maybe through mystical practice, if
you, um, experience a unification
with God, a, an actual submersion in
the God's-eye view, maybe from the
God's-eye view, all of this makes sense."
Devin Martin: Hmm.
Neil Theise: And so I thought, "Okay,
maybe that's the thing, and if I
become a mystic one day and experience
devekut," is the Hebrew word for, uh,
unification, cleaving to God, "um,
and get a taste of the God's-eye view,
I'll understand." And so that was when
mysticism started to open up for me.
It wasn't much available to, uh,
a suburban, uh, non-Orthodox,
non-yeshiva st- uh, student, um, kid
in the '70s, and gay on top of it,
so that was gonna be a monkey wrench.
And, um- And were
Devin Martin: you out at 14?
Did you know?
No.
I mean, you knew, but you were… No.
But you knew.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Uh, y- yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I kept thinking- On some
level … it was a phase.
At, at some point- Hmm … I'll
wake up and understand, like,
what you do on a date and why
kissing a girl would be appealing.
Um, it took a while.
Um, I didn't… That was a… Well,
we're getting ahead.
So, um, but that's when I
started reading about mysticism.
And, um, I- At 14?
Devin Martin: Wow.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
And there was actually a chapter
of, um, the Zohar, the, the, the
big Jewish mystical text from the
15th century, um- translated in
English in my high school library.
And I found it there in the stacks, and
I remember I was staying after school in
the library, which I often did 'cause it
was either Dungeons of Dragons or staying
reading Lord of the Rings in the library.
And, um, and I had some sort of,
um, altered state reading this
book standing there on the stacks-
Devin Martin: Mm
…
Neil Theise: one afternoon,
and it scared me.
I put it back, and I
didn't touch it again.
Um, but something happened.
Devin Martin: And- Looking back, I, I-
Yeah … I've had one or two experiences
in my life where there, there's a term
that, uh, meditators often talk about,
transmission, where a teacher- Mm-hmm
will send something in your direction
which grants you an altered state
and some ki- level of insight.
Once or twice in my life I have
felt like that happen from a book.
Neil Theise: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And this was that kind of thing.
Something opened- Mm … closed
immediately after, but enough
of a glimpse to tell me, oh.
There was also, um, in 10th grade,
um, I had s- I start fr- The
best I can recall it is… And I
was, like, a serious science kid.
Uh, junior year of high
school I went to- I was gonna
Devin Martin: say, yeah, you
were mathy and sciencey and-
Neil Theise: Yeah, I was on the
math team, and, um, they made me
ride on the trunk of the car 'cause
I lost us three points by not-
seeing reducible fraction, you know.
And, um, I went to Israel for the
first time the summer of junior
year, but I went to study particle
physics at the Weizmann Institute.
Oh, wow.
So that, that kid.
And, um, and I was going to bed one Friday
night and trying to, you know, the, the
classic stoner, but I wasn't a stoner
yet, um, kind of question of, well, if
you go f- to the edge of the universe,
what's beyond the edge of the universe?
Devin Martin: Yes.
Neil Theise: And why
can't I figure that out?
And it really- That still breaks
Devin Martin: my brain.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
And it, and it be… Well,
now I would call it a koan.
It was a very powerful koan.
Mm. And I don't know what happened to
me that weekend, but I know that there
was somehow m- my understanding or
experience of the world kind of broke
to pieces and then reassembled itself.
It was very powerful.
I don't know anything about the
contents of the experience, but later
that week, I stumbled on a quote
from, uh, Thoreau, um, where he said,
um, "When any preal- when any real
progress is made, we unlearn and learn
anew what we thought we knew before."
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: And which is exactly what I
felt like what had happened, and I made
that a quote in my high school yearbook.
Devin Martin: Oh,
Neil Theise: wow.
And people were like- "Who are
you?" … "What do you mean by
that?" And I'm like, "I don't know."
Devin Martin: But I know it's
Neil Theise: important.
But I remember.
But I know it's important.
Um, so then I went off to college, um-
Devin Martin: And, and what
was the decision there?
Did you have a sense of, like, what
you were gonna do with your life?
Did you have a career vision
or- … you wanna go party or like…?
Neil Theise: And I… No, no.
If only… I wasn't ready to party yet.
No, I got to college.
I went to Penn undergrad back when
it was the doormat of the Ivy League.
It was nothing to be, uh,
particularly excited by.
Um, but it was great for me.
Um, and I, I became a social
being in college, but I was
still very much in the closet.
But I got involved in Hillel, uh, the
Jewish student organization, which at
Penn is, still is a very large, complex
organization, and, um, wound up by
senior year being president of the thing.
Mm. And I majored in, um, I
majored in a lot of things.
I had four declared majors.
Um, I kept changing my mind.
I had another 10 that I thought
about but never actually declared.
I had three in my first semester.
What I wound up with was, um, uh, what
they called, uh- Oriental Studies,
Judaica and Hebraica Division.
And basically it was mostly rabbinics,
but a little bit of Greek biblical stuff.
Um,
Devin Martin: and- And were
you thinking this would lead
to you being an academic or-
Neil Theise: Well, well,
this, this is the thing.
So I was thinking, um, yeah, I
was, I was sort of moving towards
academics, but I also thought, "Oh,
gotta be practical." And I also took
a course in, uh, computer systems
design at the School of Engineering.
Mm. And I thought, "Oh, let's do that,
too." So I wound up with an applied
science degree in computers and, um, a
Jewish studies degree, and I was thinking
about going to rabbinical school- Mm
uh, modeled on some of the other students
who were ahead of me in the hierarchy
at Hillel, um, 'cause I thought, "Oh,
I could be like them when I grow up,"
except they're straight, and that
wouldn't have worked out too well either.
Um, but then my mom, uh, the
freshman year I was, um- uh, having
a moment of, "I think I'm gay.
Oh, shit." Um, and to me, what that
meant at the time was I'm never gonna
get married, I'm never gonna have
any kids, and I'm gonna die alone.
And if I become an academic rabbinic
scholar, then the only people who
will come to my funeral will be
other dusty, old rabbinic scholars,
unless I outlive them, in which
case no one will come to my funeral.
And I thought of this on a Tuesday in
early spring my freshman year of college.
And a short while later, uh, my mom
called me on the phone and told me that
the doctor who ha- the OB who delivered
my brother and I, and for whom she now
worked, had died suddenly of a heart
attack on the golf course, and… Dr.
Robinson.
And so the next morning, um, she
called, the next afternoon after the
funeral, because Jews do funerals
the next day, um, she called me
and I said, "How was Dr. Robinson's
funeral?" And she said, "It was amazing.
All of Hartford came out for his funeral."
And I thought, "If I go to medical
school, people will come to my funeral."
Wow.
And so that's how I became pre-med.
Which was a really, really bad idea.
Um,
Devin Martin: I- Something about choosing
out of fear doesn't often work out well.
Neil Theise: No, it doesn't.
Exactly.
And as, uh, I've been asked a few times,
"So most people go to medical, medical
school because they want to help people,
but you went so that they could help you?"
Devin Martin: Like, yeah, kinda.
Neil Theise: I just wanted to have… I
thought this would be a chance to have a
life of connection to people with meaning.
Mm. And since I wouldn't be able
to have that by having a family,
um, then I could be not alone by
helping people and being useful.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: Um, but then I got
to medical school, um, and I
was a very bad pre-med student.
Um, I didn't have great grades.
I got a C in organic chemistry.
Um, I only got into one medical school,
but it happened to be Columbia, so.
Devin Martin: Mm. Mm.
Neil Theise: They, they could afford
to take a risk on, on a weird person.
And within the first few months, I
realized this was a terrible mistake.
Um, and I still was in the closet.
Um, and I became very depressed
and wound up being suicidal, um,
pretty much about the gay stuff.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but you can't be suicidal and be
getting good grades in medical school.
I failed, uh, uh, first year, second
year of medical school by one point,
and had to repeat the entire year.
And so that was something.
Um,
Devin Martin: and then- And
Neil Theise: were
Devin Martin: you s- were you de-
depressed because you thought-
People, like, was it a fear of telling
people and being rejected, or was it
even if when you did come out, this
vision of a life that was isolated?
Neil Theise: Both.
Both.
Both.
It was all of the piece.
Yeah.
And what triggered, what triggered
the actual suicide moment, 'cause I
was up on the railing of the George
Washington Bridge ready to jump.
Devin Martin: Oh, you were
Neil Theise: really
Devin Martin: there?
Neil Theise: And, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I was… But, and I got up and down.
Thinking, "I wanna kill myself because
I'll be such a disappointment to my
parents, and I've done Hitler's job for
him because I won't have any children,"
and I layered that into it, too.
Um, but if I jump, they could
die because they'll be so
grief-struck, so I would get down.
"But I can't…" And I would get up,
and I went back and forth a few times,
and then ran home terrified, and then
got into- Hmm … therapy the next day.
And that was the beginning
of sorting myself out.
Um, and it was triggered because
there were four guys I had become
friends with in my class, all of
whom I had a crush on, um, who I
was the best friend of, you know?
Hmm.
The, um, the nerdy kid down the hall
likes to play backgammon, so… And
they would tell me about all their
troubles with their girlfriends, and
I would pretend to be understanding.
And, um, and they all got a house,
uh, an apartment together for the
next year, and I found that out, and
I had not been asked to, to join them.
And I was like, "That's my loneliness.
This is what my life is gonna be."
Devin Martin: Yeah.
Neil Theise: Um, on the outside.
Um, but, you know, the, the severity of
failing a year of medical school gave
me coverage to get into, um, an actual
full Freudian analysis, 'cause I thought-
Hmm … psychoanalysis would be the, um,
the best way for me to become straight.
And- You're
Devin Martin: gonna, you're
gonna analyze the gay away?
Neil Theise: Yeah, basically.
And, um, I could… So four
times a week on the couch.
Devin Martin: Wow.
Neil Theise: A 45-minute bus
ride from the, the campus,
um, during medical school.
Um, and in four and a half years,
uh, I came out to my parents.
Um, that was the day I met my husband.
Really?
Who I'm still with.
Yeah.
He was the bookstore clerk at the gay
bookstore that I went to to buy the book
on having a gay son that I knew my mother
would want to read on the way to the
train to go home to come out to them.
And, um-
Devin Martin: Wow.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
So now in there, there's the
religion thing, and I didn't really
h- the… You know, I, I, I kept
wanting God to take the gay away.
Um, but I never felt like
that was a particular problem.
Um, just checking on quality, your
video has gotten kind of funny.
Devin Martin: I think it's
probably good on my end.
You think…
Neil Theise: Okay.
As long as it's good.
It's probably
Devin Martin: recording here.
Yeah.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
And, um- So during college, um, I, I
was, I was on the lookout for some way
to get a taste of that mystical thing.
And-
Devin Martin: Mm
…
Neil Theise: uh, junior or senior year of
college, um, a fellow, a classmate, um,
gave me the book The Three Pillars of Zen
by Philip Kapleau, which was- Mm … one
of the first books that actually not
only talked about Zen in a serious way,
lots of translated primary texts, but
also first-person accounts of kensho
enlightenment experiences from Japan- Mm
and some from America And
those sounded like the Jewish
mystical things I had read about.
And I thought- Did
Devin Martin: it bring you back to
that experience reading the book-
Neil Theise: No … in the
Devin Martin: library?
Neil Theise: No, but I thought, "Oh,
here's a mystical path maybe I can
try." And since you look at a Zen
temple, yeah, there's an idol on an
altar, but there's not much else.
Maybe I can just not look at that, and
it won't be a problem for the Jew thing.
So I started meditating on my own, um-
Devin Martin: Mm
…
Neil Theise: following the
instructions of that book.
I had tried- Counting the breath?
Uh, yeah, yeah, um, starting with that.
And, um, uh, um, I tried TM,
transcendental meditation, when I was
in high school with a friend, but I
got into the final commitment thing,
and there was an altar and an offering,
and I was like, "Can't do this.
Okay." So, um, but the Zen stuff didn't
push that button, or I was old enough
to go, "Wait a second," you know?
Just, just tiptoeing.
Um, and then, um, I met Mark two
years… I, we moved in kind of
at the day of our first date.
And, um,
Devin Martin: Really?
Neil Theise: Yeah, I,
you know, I was ready.
And, um, um, and, mm, six months later,
a year later, there was an article in
The New York Times, this was all in
New York City, um, getaway weekends,
uh, from New York in the country.
And there was a thing on
three-day beginning Zen retreats
at Zen Mountain Monastery.
Devin Martin: Oh,
Neil Theise: amazing.
And he said, "Why don't you go do this?"
And I was like, "Yeah, why don't I?"
Devin Martin: And, um- I, I don't
know if you can see it, but, but
right back here is beginner's mind
hand calligraphied by John Daido
Loori from Zen Mountain Monastery.
Neil Theise: Oh,
Devin Martin: really?
Oh, oh.
Yeah,
Neil Theise: yeah.
So he was my first teacher.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mm. And, right.
And, um, and, uh, um, Barbara O'Hara,
um, Joshing, um, who met my s-
primary teacher, Enkyo Roshi, O'Hara.
They're both O'Hara's.
Um, and they met at
Zen Mountain Monastery.
And, and this is arou- And Enkyo, at
the time, um, her apartment in New
York City was already the New York City
sitting, uh, Zendo for the monastery.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: She was the senior,
um, lay student up there.
And Myotai, um, uh, was the, the senior
monk And, um, and when I arrived for the
beginning weekend, Joshen, who would end
up marrying Enkyo and also be my teacher,
and we're still… She's still my teacher.
They both are, um, was the person
signing people in at the front desk.
And, um, and I wrote my little check out
and she… And it says MD on the thing.
She goes, "You're a doctor?" And I said,
"Yeah." I said, "I just got bit by a bee.
Can you take a look at this?" And,
and that was my entry to Zen practice.
And so I started at the
monastery and started sitting,
um, at Village Zendo with them.
And, um, but I was, I was, uh, a
resident at the hospital, and getting
to the monastery for retreats and
stuff, it just wasn't happening.
And I don't, and I don't drive.
Neither Mark nor I have driver's licenses.
Mm. Still.
Still, yeah.
And, um, so I, uh, my practice
was really at the Zendo.
And Enkyo Roshi left Daido as a
student, went to Miyazumi Roshi.
There was a kerfuffle, so her apartment
could no longer be the Zen New York
City extension of the monastery.
So I helped found the new
Fire Lotus Zendo, which is-
Devin Martin: Hmm
…
Neil Theise: um, uh… But then that
didn't feel right because she was really
my teacher, and I wasn't really getting
to the monastery, so I stopped going.
Um, and then a couple of years
later, it was also the AIDS era,
and we lost a lot of people.
Um, and one of the worst of those, um,
the grief was, was really, really hard.
And, um, and how I had to help him out
at the end was really, really hard.
And I needed to talk to someone, and
I thought, "I wanna talk to Enkyo."
And so she helped me get through that.
And after this friend Richard died,
um- The only thing that could help me
with the grief was, uh, was sitting.
And so I started sitting again.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: And, and then fin- with her.
And then finally after a few months,
I, I went into Dokusan to one-on-one
interview with her to, in a formal
way, say, "You know, I'd like
to become your student, I think.
I'm not really a student
of Daido's anymore.
I'd like to be your student."
And she said, "Well, I thought
you already were my student."
And, um, and she was my student since,
until she retired basically, uh, just
after I came to, after we came to Lisbon.
Devin Martin: So about a year after.
And how were you… A- at this time, how
were you thinking about Zen and science?
Neil Theise: I wasn't.
Devin Martin: Were they, were
they- They, I- … two totally
distinct pursuits in your life?
Neil Theise: Yeah.
I, yeah.
I, I… You know, to some
extent they were dissociated.
Um- Mm … one of my… I have some
Lubavitcher Hasidic cousins, and, um,
uh, the mom of whom tried to pull me in.
Um, and I was tempted.
I w- you know, that was a dodged bullet
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: Getting, you know, matchmade
to, to marry a woman when I was 18.
That could have happened.
But, um, I was like, "No, I… Something
tells me this is a bad idea." But, um,
she would send me things written by the
Lubavitcher Rebbe, who was actually an
engineer and a scientist, seriously.
Mm. And he would write about
science and religion stuff.
And I wrote to her, she still has the
letter, um, I wrote to her saying, "You
know, don't send me stuff like this.
I'm not interested.
They're in two separate boxes in my
head, and they don't really need to
have any relationship." And and now
looking back, I'm like, "Hmm, that's
pretty dissociated." Um- But, but
Devin Martin: I j- And pretty common.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
And I, and I didn't see any… They…
I think both of them, um… This is
the way I think about myself now,
that prior to either of those forms
of practice, I had a really profound
sympathy/empathy for the world.
Mm. And a deep sense of connection.
And that can manifest for some people
as a spiritual thing, um, but it can
manifest also as a scientific thing.
Yeah.
My curiosity for what the world is
came out of that sense of connection.
But my spiritual, uh, the…
There was a spiritual sense of
connection, and I honored that, too.
And I had examples on both sides
to honor both of those things.
Why dismiss one or the other?
And in my household
there was no discussion.
I didn't come from a long
line of Jewish atheists.
Um, there was no discussion about
this as a potential conflict.
Um, my parents, you know, they,
they looked at the science stuff.
There was a… I, I had a quantum
physics book, um, uh, I think it was in
eighth grade, open on a table in the den
while I was watching TV, and my father
walked in and he saw it, picked it up.
It was, you know, splayed open.
Looked at it, and it was a bunch
of matrix equations probably.
Put it down and walked out.
Didn't say anything.
I was like, "Okay, fine. He's going to
particle physic- do particle physics in
Israel for the summer. Okay, fine." Um-
Devin Martin: And at this time when
you're in residency, are you thinking
that you're going to be a physician
or working at a hospital or…?
Neil Theise: Well, so by this time,
you know, I had gone to medical
school to, um, have patients,
um, so I could have meaning.
Right.
And then I failed a year of medical
school and realized I hated this.
I was really good with patients, but I had
a really hard time separating myself, um,
sufficiently emotionally, um, to really
survive that, and I was actually thinking
about pediatrics as my main thing.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: Um, and I did the
sub-internship, which means a
month where you're actually like an
intern, on call every other night.
Every patient that comes in that night is
your patient, and follow them for a month.
And I had four kids with new diagnoses
of cancer in the first week, and one
of them was dead by the end of the
month, and I thought, "I can't do this."
Meanwhile, because I had failed a year,
I had a summer off, and I needed a job.
And there was a pathology department.
One of their interns, um, didn't come
in for some reason, was coming in late,
so they hired three medical students
to do the job of a pathology trainee.
Mm. And so I got to see what pathology
was actually like, which was nothing like
the classroom stuff, and I discovered I
really liked looking at slides under a
microscope and that I'm really good at it.
But I came to medical
school to see patients.
Um, so pediatrics, but then I did that
and I was like, "Why?" And I was in
analysis and getting somewhere, and we
were like, "Why not be a pathologist?
It's what you like." Mm. And, and that
was just like, oh, I'm an academic.
So I'm being an academic.
Instead of studying biblical texts
or rabbinic texts, I'm studying
little bits and pieces of people.
And, um, uh, so that gave me that career.
And, um, but I still… There
was no interest in bringing
these things together.
The way they actually came together
finally was not sought after.
It was, uh, a surprise to
me, and it was years later.
Looking at… I s- I wound up specializing
in liver pathology, um, and looking at
specimens from the liver transplant team.
I had figured out how to show that
human livers had stem cells, and
now everyone… It's a commonplace.
Everything has a stem cell.
But back then, bone marrow, GI
tract, and skin had stem cells.
The liver did not, the brain did not,
the heart did not, kidneys did not.
And my team showed that the
liver do, and in human tissues.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: That led me to, um, get
into back at the turn of the millennium
when there was the big argument between
adult stem cells being able to do
everything embryonic stem cells could
do, and George Bush gave his address
to the nation saying adult cells can
do everything, so we shouldn't do e-
we don't need to do embryonic stem
cell research, you know, serving the
abortion lob- anti-abortion lobby and
squelched embryonic stem cell research.
It was my adult stem cell
research that led to his address.
Devin Martin: Oh, wow.
Neil Theise: And so we showed that a
single adult cell could do everything
an embryonic stem cell could do.
That led me… So that was happening.
And, um, and because of that, I wound
up in an art science collaboration,
um, with this artist named Jane
Prophet, uh, sponsored by the Wellcome
Trust, a, a funding agency in the UK.
And they wanted to see how an
artist and a scientist would
communicate with each other.
Hmm.
And all we had to do was fly back and
forth New York to London, where we each
were, and the friend who put us together,
a mutual friend of ours, he actually
just wanted us to meet, and he never got
us in the same city at the same time.
So he got the grant for us, Peter
Ride at the University of Westminster.
And the three of us would hang out
alternating cities for the course of
a year, and she would tell me what she
does artistically, and I would tell
her about my science practice, and
eventually we started to cross-fertilize.
And he would record the conversations,
so other people could study
how we spoke to each other.
Devin Martin: Hmm.
Neil Theise: And I was talking about how
s- adult stem cells could move around
the body, becoming cells of any organ.
And she said that that sounded
like, um, the way complexity theory
people talked about ant colonies.
Devin Martin: Hmm.
Neil Theise: And I said, "What's
complexity theory?" And so she
taught me about complexity theory.
And, um, and we started thinking about
cells as a complex system, which people
hadn't really w- written too much about.
We were one of the first groups, certainly
I think the first to talk about stem
cells in a complexity theory perspective.
So that was happening.
Um, and when we made that connection, um,
I was back in New York, and it became…
It was another unexpected co-on When I
look under the microscope and I see the
cells of my body, when I'm doing stem cell
experiments and I'm looking at the cells,
um, and the cells are self-organizing
into organs, tissues, and a whole body.
Well, then what's the
real definition of a body?
Is it this thing?
Or is it the smaller scale, it's
actually a flock of cells that
only looks like a thing when you're
at the higher level of scale?
An ant colony doesn't look like an ant
col- a colony of ants from a distance.
It just looks like this shadow
shape, dark on the ground.
Maybe it's moving.
And then you go up closely and you
see, oh, it's not a thing at all.
It's just ants dancing with each other.
Yeah.
Um, so is this thing
a body or is it cells?
And I was walking around town and sitting
in my office looking at cells under the
microscope, looking at bodies coming
into my office to talk about cases.
Um, is it a body or cells?
Body or cells?
And this went on for a few weeks,
and I was crossing, um, the street
Devin Martin: and- And, and
were you meditating at the
time as well, and was this-
Neil Theise: Yeah, I
was already a meditator.
Yeah.
Devin Martin: So, so deep focus- And I
had- … and contemplation on questions
was part- Yeah … of your practice.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Well, um, uh, I'm not sure had
I started koan practice yet.
Um, yes, I had started- You might have
still been doing concentration or- I had
started… No, I had started doing koans.
Um, and I was used to scientific
questions becoming like a koan.
Um- Mm … all my best discoveries have
come to me sitting on a cushion or ways-
Devin Martin: And,
Neil Theise: and if people
Devin Martin: don't understand a koan,
my explanation is usually it's an
unanswerable question that's meant to
break your rational brain and create an
opening for intuition or insight to arise.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
That- And that's certainly one way
of thinking about it, but the, the
direction of how to, um, work on a koan
is that you have to become the koan,
which is a really obscure instruction.
You know- … what the fuck do
you mean by become the koan?
But… And sometimes, you know,
a Zen koan is like, "What's the
sound of one hand clapping?"
This is not the answer.
Um, but sometimes it
comes from somewhere else.
And so I'm walking around town really
obsessing about, "Why can't I figure out
whether I'm a body or cells? One of these
must be the right answer, and the other
one is secondary, but I can't find a way
to do that." And, and is, is this asking,
"
Devin Martin: Am I an
individual or a collective?"
Is that-
Neil Theise: Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Basically.
Um, but for me as a pathologist,
I deal with bodies and cells-
Mm … concretely all the time.
I wasn't thinking in terms
of collectives or unities.
I was just thinking, "Am I a body
or am I cells?" And I came to the
street corner, "Body or cells?
Body or cells?
Body or cells?" And there was a
do not walk sign, so I stood there
on the corner, "Body or cells?
Body or cells?" And then the light
changed, and other people next to me
stepped off the curb, which is how I
noticed that the light had changed,
and then I couldn't move because my
leg had become a flock of cells, and
I didn't know how to tell it to move.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: And then I recognized
that that's a weird experience,
and then I could move again.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: Um, a short time later, I
was at the Zendo, and my teacher always
knew that the best way to get me to
attend regularly was to give me a job.
And so s- Thursday mornings, I was
the opener for anyone who wanted to
meditate in the Zendo in the morning.
And, um, and sometimes this
was in the early days, there
might not be anyone else.
Um, and, uh, it was a
smaller community then.
And so I was in there on a Thursday
morning, and I lit the incense
on the altar, and I sat opposite.
And I was, um, my practice
at that particular moment
was following the breath.
And, um, so I'm trying to focus on
following the breath, but body or
cells, body or cells, body or cells.
And at one point, I don't know what got
my attention, but I looked up and I could
see the incense stick turning into smoke.
I always get choked up with this.
I wait I'm wondering, will I ever get so
bored of this story I don't get choked up?
Um-
Devin Martin: I hope not
…
Neil Theise: um, and, um, and all
of a sudden it was like body, cells,
stick, smoke, it's the same thing.
And it isn't one or the
other, it's both and.
And in that moment, I had, uh, a direct
visceral experience of, um, emptiness.
Mm. And I was like, "This is
what emptiness of inherent
existence is." I just knew it.
Devin Martin: Yeah.
Neil Theise: Um, and, um-
So the next time I got the chance to go
into my teacher uh, in Dokusan, one-on-one
interview, and I said, "This happened the
other day in the Zendo," blah, blah, blah.
And I said, "Is this what they
mean by emptiness?" And she goes,
"Yeah." I said, "That's it?" She goes
It's simple.
It's just not easy.
It's like, oh.
And then, but that didn't really
answer the question of emptiness
per se, because this is just the
nature of the body is emptiness.
It's cells.
But cells by Western medicine, which
is defined by cell doctrine, um, all
living things are made of cells, and
every cell comes from a prior cell.
That's what we mean when we say
Western medicine or Western biology.
So cells, are they this reifiable object?
Devin Martin: Mm-hmm.
Neil Theise: Well, it doesn't take
long when you're sitting looking
under a microscope to realize,
no, the cell doesn't exist.
It's just molecules organizing themselves
into a cell the way ants organize into
a colony or humans organize into a city.
Um, so- And it,
Devin Martin: and it's again,
you're changing your layer
of resolution zooming in.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
And I think one of the things that,
that let me see this so clearly and,
and relatively quickly, you know, it
took years, but, um, relatively, is
that most people don't get the chance
to live at different levels of scale.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: But as a pathologist,
I'm spending hours every day
moving between the everyday
scale and the microscopic scale.
Devin Martin: Right.
Neil Theise: And where people get
to experience this is if you're,
an, um, if you're in an airplane and
you're up above the world and you're-
Mm … coming in for a landing, there's
a moment if you're looking out the
window and paying attention to it,
where you're suddenly going from being
above the world to being in the world.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: You go from above at a
higher scale down to the everyday scale.
And for me, there's actually, I
wouldn't call it queasy, but there's a
visceral experience of a shift in there.
So pilots get to do this all the time-
Right … like I do as a pathologist.
We're living at two different scales.
Most people, they're only ever
living at the everyday scale.
And so that allowed me this sort of
flexibility of mind, I think, and
my Zen practice certainly did too.
Um, and so what about
cells aren't actual things.
They're just molecules self-organizing
as a complex system, um, in water.
Um, so what about molecules?
Well, they're just atoms.
Well, what about atoms?
They're just subatomic particles.
But it's not turtles all the way down.
It's not an infinite regress to
ever smaller and smaller things.
You get to a smallest scale of space
and time called the Planck scale, and
there you simply, spacetime, you know,
we, we're often call it a vacuum,
the, the space between cells, but a
vacuum is empty, and it's not empty.
It's an energy-rich field.
And- E equals MC squared.
Thank you, Einstein.
Um, energy will sometimes turn into
matter, and when it does at that level
of scale out of spacetime, it cr- usually
creates matter-antimatter pairings,
which immediately self-annihilate
as they come into existence and
then disappear back into the energy.
Um, Star Trek engines,
you know, antimatter.
But every once in a while, one doesn't
self-annihilate, um, and that allows
it to interact with other smallest
things, whether we call them strings
or branes or loops or whatever.
Not a good agreement about what that
is, but what they become are the
subatomic particles we all agree
on, and those become atoms, become
molecules, and become all of existence.
So now the entire universe is a
complex system across all scales in
which whether something appears to
be a thing or a phenomenon arising
from interacting smaller things
depends on your scale of observation.
So emptiness of inherent existence
is a ti- scientifically demonstrable
axiom of the nature of reality Ta-da.
But in that moment- And so,
Devin Martin: and so now you've
married Buddhism and science.
Like, you can think- Yeah … rationally
Neil Theise: about- And Jewish
mysticism and- Yeah … Kashmiri
Shaivism and, you know.
Devin Martin: Right.
Neil Theise: I have, I have
a meta tradition I can't
play games like this with.
And so, um, though I often
need other people's help.
But, um, but that moment in
the zendo was the moment…
In that moment, I not only got
that perception, the experience of
emptiness, which now I knew was real.
I hadn't yet fully explained what
it is, but I had experienced it.
Hmm.
Um, and in that moment, I also
knew that the science and the
religion stuff were not two things.
Devin Martin: Yeah.
Neil Theise: They were two
sides of the same coin.
And, and that was completely unlooked for.
I was not looking to be this person in
the world that I seem to have become,
where one of the things I'm expected to
talk about is how science and religion,
you know, they're all like this.
But in that moment- Well, was it
Devin Martin: the
Neil Theise: opposite?
…
Devin Martin: that's what happened.
W- was it the opposite?
Was it you had to be careful not
to bring this up in certain circles
because it would under- undermine- Oh,
no … your credibility scientifically?
Neil Theise: No, I just didn't…
I, why would I be talking religion
if I'm talking to a pathology crowd?
Yeah.
Why would I be talking pathology if
I'm giving a Dharma talk at the zendo?
Uh, it, it, you know, it's
just different domains.
Was this
Devin Martin: around the time
that you made the decision to
write a book on complexity?
Neil Theise: No, no, no, no.
That was- This was way
before … tw- 20 years.
Yeah.
Devin Martin: Okay.
Neil Theise: No, I didn't wanna
write a book on complexity.
That wasn't what I wanted to do.
What I wanted to do was write a book
about my mom, um, her last six years.
Um, so my father died in '95 or '96.
'95. And, um, she and I both had, uh,
vivid experiences him after he died.
I had-
Devin Martin: Hmm
…
Neil Theise: she and I both had
experiences of people who had died.
My friend Richard, who I mentioned
before, who sent me back to the zendo
when he died, he paid a big visit.
A few of them, actually.
Um, that's something that's sort of
not unheard of in my mother's family.
So I was always open to the woo-woo.
Um, and, um-
But, um
Where was I?
Devin Martin: Writing a
book on your mother versus
Neil Theise: complexity.
Oh,
Devin Martin: that's right.
That's right.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Yeah.
Where I went was, um, the first ghost
I remember coming to me actually,
um, happened, um, uh … Wow.
It happened
30 years ago today.
Devin Martin: Really?
Neil Theise: Yeah, because I was standing
in a synagogue in, um, New York on
Yom Kippur, and, um, which is today.
And it was an Orthodox synagogue,
and I was in the men's section, and
out of the corner of my eye, I saw
someone looking at me, and I turned.
And as I turned, I got the sense of
a woman, uh, shoulder-length dark
hair, dark dress, very specific, very
kind eyes, kind of smiling at me.
And, and that… But when I turned
all the way, no one was there.
And then I thought, "I'm in the men's
section. How could there be a woman
standing there?" And then I happened to
look up at the clock, and it was 12:05.
And the next thought that came
to me was, "Misty died." Misty
was the dog I grew up with.
She was a Schnoodle.
We did not pick her name.
I can't be blamed.
Um, but and I thought, "Well,
that's a weird thing to say, think."
And then I went back to services.
And when the holiday was over, after
sunset, I went home and called my
parents, and my father answered
the phone, and he was crying.
I think this may be the only
time I ever heard him cry.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: And he passed the phone
to my mom, and it turned out that, um,
they had to put Misty to sleep that day.
What time?
12:05.
Devin Martin: 12:05.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Devin Martin: Wow.
Neil Theise: And I told this to my
mother, and she was like, "Yeah, sure." So
yeah.
But don't step over your brother when
he's laying down 'cause he won't cry.
No, exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
So sure, you saw… Misty
came and visited you.
Why not?
Um, in 2010, um, she, um… So
my father passed away in '95,
and, um, we saw his ghost too.
And then my brother passed away in 2001.
So it was m- just my mom and I.
And, um, and he showed
up too after he died.
Um, and, um- So, um, after my father
died, she came back to New York,
and she eventually got diagnosed
with Parkinson's, and that put
her at risk for falling and stuff.
So Mark and I moved her to a home
near ours, about three blocks away.
And, um, in 2010, something happened.
I think she got an infection or something.
Um, maybe had a little minor
stroke at the time, not clear.
But I was actually … We were
talking about synchronicities before.
Um, I was supposed to be going to
Stockholm to attend the Towards a
Science of Consciousness meeting there-
Devin Martin: Mm
…
Neil Theise: that year, and
consciousness was not something
I was particularly interested in.
But a friend of mine and collaborator
from Tibet House, named Bill Bischel,
who's a medical anthropologist,
but a scientist, um, and I met him
because he got me involved in a
conference with the Dalai Lama in
2006, um, to talk about stem cells,
and that's how we started hanging out.
He had to give a talk at this meeting
in Stockholm, and he really hated
speaking in public, and begged me to
submit an abstract so I could attend
the meeting, so I could be in the
audience, so he could give his talk.
And I agreed to go.
That afternoon, my mother stopped
walking, talking, and eating.
And we took her to the hospital, um,
to … We had already decided that
should she ever need … Um, she'd
already lost her short-term memory.
This is what had come before, and we
don't know exactly why that happened.
But she knew who everyone was.
I wouldn't have classified
her as demented.
She just didn't know what
happened five minutes ago.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: Um, but then this,
some event happened that day.
We had already agreed she
would not go to a hospital.
Um, she didn't, you know,
that was not of interest.
But, um, her doc said, "Well,
take her to Bellevue Hospice."
And so we called for an ambulette and
we got her admitted to Bellevue Hospice.
And in the ambulette, I'm with her, and
she starts talking to, um, a dead, uh,
brother and a dead sister, and seeing
right through me, talking to them.
I'm, I'm between her and the back door
of the ambulance, and she's clearly
focused past me, talking to them.
Mm. And I'm like, "What the hell?" And we
get her to hospice care, and I've got a
f- I've got a plane at 9:00 o'clock, and
it's now, like, 4:00 in the afternoon.
And they and Mark, the, the staff
of the hospice, they're like, "She's
not gonna die in the next few days.
We know what dying looks like.
Um, she'll be here fine.
We'll take good care of her.
You go, you need to do what you're
gonna do." So with this, I get on
the plane and I go to Stockholm.
And, um, the first morning,
um, I hear, um- Uh, oh God.
Um Englishman who specialized in,
a psychiatrist, uh, who studied,
uh, near-death experiences
and end-of-life experiences.
Um-
Devin Martin: Oh.
Neil Theise: It'll… Yeah.
Um-
Devin Martin: Oh, I can't
think of it at the moment.
Neil Theise: Yeah, it'll, it'll
come to me in eight minutes.
Um, Adrian Brain.
Um, and he was talking about
end-of-life ex- experiences,
deathbed visions, and I realized my
mother was having deathbed visions.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: Which meant she was
about to die, so that freaked me out.
Um, and then the next morning, um,
I attend this plenary session, uh,
by this hotshot cosmologist quantum
physicist named Menas Kafatos, whose
work I knew about from when I was
studying physics in high school.
Mm. And he's giving a talk on
consciousness, and he says in his talk
that in order to understand consciousness,
we need a new kind of biology the way
we also needed a new kind of physics
and got it with quantum physics.
And the new biology he's describing
is basically what I've been writing
about and no one seems to care
about, about complexity theory for
the last 12 years at that point.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: And I was so annoyed that
my apparently very important relevant
work was completely ignored and unseen
by anybody, I walked out in a huff.
Devin Martin: Really?
Neil Theise: That afternoon, I had
to present this little abstract
I had submitted, which was on
consciousness, 'cause I had to come
up with something 'cause it's a
consciousness meeting and complexity.
And, um, it's a little side room.
There are 12 people there, three and,
three others and me who are presenting,
and eight people in the audience.
So it was not a big deal, but
the moderator is Menas Kafatos-
Devin Martin: Mm
…
Neil Theise: whose talk
I had just walked out on.
And I give my talk as the last one
of the session, and he comes up to me
after and he says, "Here's my card.
You and I have to talk."
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: And that's when I started
working on consciousness studies because
the, he recognized immediately that the
piece he had been talking about missing
was what complexity theory was offering.
Mm. And so that's how I started
doing consciousness studies.
Meanwhile, I come home and my mother
begins six months of hospice care,
no walking, no talking, no eating.
Oh, wow.
She can talk, but she won't
talk to anyone who's alive.
She'll only talk to dead people,
and if I try to sneak in the room
when I hear her talking to dead
people, she always stops talking.
I got the feeling that the… I would
crawl in, like out of her line of
sight, so she, she'd be facing the wall
and I'd be coming in behind the bed.
And then s- she'd go silent.
And I think they were telling her,
"Shh, Neil's here." And the circle
expanded to more brothers and sisters,
my father, my brother, friends.
And then one day I get a phone call.
This is what the book I'm… This
is the book I wanted to write.
Devin Martin: This is
the first book, yeah.
Neil Theise: That's how we got to here.
This is the book I wanted to write, and
they said Uh, you know, "Why do we want to
know about you and your mother?" You know?
And then some of the publishers who said
that looked at the internet and saw the
complexity stuff, and they said, "Oh,
if he writes about that stuff, then
we might wanna know about this stuff."
Devin Martin: Hmm.
Neil Theise: So that's how I came
to write the complexity book,
so I could talk about my mother.
Um, I got a phone call and,
um, from the home attendant.
She had 24-hour home care at this point,
and hospice, and she was at home though.
Um, "Mr. Neil," a Jamaican lady.
"Mr. Neil, Mr. Neil, come quick.
Your mother's in the kitchen
asking for a cup of tea," British.
Devin Martin: Hmm.
Neil Theise: And she starts
walking, talking, and eating again.
Devin Martin: Wow.
Neil Theise: And lives
for another six years.
And now dead people are showing
up, not just as deathbed visions,
but, like, visitors to the house.
"Hey, Ma, anyone visiting?" "No."
"How about today?" Well, Rabbi
Bodenheimer, the rabbi I grew up with,
um, who she was very good friends
with, he'd been dead for years.
He was showing up around a k- regular
basis, but he never-- He stayed too long,
and he was really kind of annoying her.
And so I went over one day and I said,
"Any visitors?" And she goes, "Oh,
Rabbi Bodenheimer was here." And I said,
"Oh, I'm sorry, did he overstay again?"
"No, he didn't stay very long at all.
Um, his sister was arriving,
and he had to go welcome her."
And I thought, "What does that mean?
Mrs. Brown, his sister, she must have
died years ago. She'd be 102 today."
And then I go back to my apartment,
and I get a phone call from Hartford.
Mrs. Brown had died that afternoon at 102.
Devin Martin: Wow.
Neil Theise: Then she started
traveling out of body, got
corroborative stuff for that.
Then v- spirit guides from the
universe started showing up.
She started having spontaneous
enlightenment experiences, um, and died
in a total bliss bubble with a smile
on her face at home when she decided.
Devin Martin: And so you are obviously
… You're on the telepathy tapes, correct?
Neil Theise: Yes.
Devin Martin: And so you're, you're
very familiar with their work.
Yeah.
Um, and these highly autistic
people who have aphasia- Yeah
which is a, they, they
struggle to be in their body.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Devin Martin: Yeah, yeah.
And some- and something about not
being grounded in the corporal realm
seems to give them access to these
higher states of consciousness or
these- Uh-huh … psychic realms.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Devin Martin: And so was there something
about your mother leaving her body,
you think, that helped her access-
Neil Theise: No, I, it, it-
Devin Martin: the afterlife?
Neil Theise: Yeah.
So here's, here's what
I think is going on.
Mm. Um, the complexity stuff,
we haven't even gotten around to
talking about consciousness yet.
Um, where that book winds up is that space
time is not the bottom level or the outer,
you know, or the, the ground of being.
Um, I'm on the side of things,
and this is informed by Buddhist
studies, the Jewish mystical stuff.
And Menas, my collaborator,
he's a Kashmiri Shaivist and a,
a scholar of Vedanta as well.
And but when you look at all these
traditions, shamanic traditions, and I've
got some shamanic training too that's
come in from left field, 'cause why not?
Um-
Devin Martin: You wanna be balanced
…
Neil Theise: that … Yeah, yeah.
Um, this is more feeling
unbalanced all the time, but okay.
What now?
Um, and you can either say the brain
makes consciousness, or you can say
that the universe makes consciousness,
or you can say that consciousness
comes first and the world arises from
it, and these are called idealists
after Plato's idea of the ideal realm.
Um, I'm a confirmed idealist.
Um, there is no scientific reason
why that can't be the case, um,
though materialist scientists
insist that that can't be the case.
Um, but there are lots of unanswered
questions that seem to not be answerable
from a materialist perspective.
Having come out as an idealist in
the first book saying consciousness,
fundamental awareness, non-dual
awareness is in the process of-
Trying to understand itself gives rise
to, um, separation into subject object,
so non-duality becoming dualistic.
And in that process, you can't have
separation of subject and object without
separation in space, in time, and
any other dimension that might exist.
And thereby you arrive at spacetime,
which is an energy-rich field,
and as a complex system gives
rise to all of material reality.
My mother's experiences, if, um, if we
come from a materialist perspective, we
have to dismiss them as she's demented,
she's delusional, uh, she's taking drugs,
or she's lying about it, she's deceitful,
or I'm making it up and I'm deceitful.
Right.
That's all we have.
But the sorts of experience she's having
have been core to human spiritual life
as long as there have been humans.
From the point of view that consciousness
comes first, um, I can make hypotheses
as to what her end of life visions are,
um, what ghosts are, um, what travels
out of body when you're traveling out
of body, what are non-material beings
living in non-material realms that are
conscious living beings, but not…
And I can-- And so my mom's book
is her, the stories of what she was
experiencing, but then attempts to
sort of look at what these things are.
Makes, makes
Devin Martin: sense of it all.
And the- And, and did she have
experiences of non-human entities,
higher beings, or other types
Neil Theise: of beings?
Higher beings, higher beings, uh, not
that I'm aware of non-human beings.
Devin Martin: Hmm.
Neil Theise: Everything that she
reported to me was a human being.
Um, my own experiences I've,
hmm, it's more diverse.
Though not as robust as
hers, but a bit more diverse.
Yeah.
Um, and, um, so a- and in particular,
I think the, the, the thing I can
make the strongest argument for,
and this comes back around to your
question finally in the end, um,
what are the end of life visions?
Can we pause here and I can go run
and get the cord for my computer?
I'm a little blurry.
Yeah, yeah,
Devin Martin: please.
Yeah, go
Neil Theise: ahead.
Yeah.
Okay.
Um, hmm.
Devin Martin: Okay
There we go.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
So the end of life visions to
me is, is my most solid example
of what I'm trying to do.
Um, most people, if not everybody, has
heard of people who are dying and seeing
people from their past Um, a few people
have witnessed it, been present for it.
Um, but it's usually thought of as sort
of a rare thing, and usually it's like,
you know, wishful thinking as you're
dying or, you know, or you're losing-
Devin Martin: Yeah
Neil Theise: you know.
Um, and most people won't talk about it
because in our culture, oh, you must be
crazy, and someone who's dying doesn't
necessarily wanna be thought of as crazy.
Um, but here my mother is
talking to all these dead people.
I don't think these are actually ghosts.
Um-
Devin Martin: Hmm
…
Neil Theise: what I think is
happening… So these are not uncommon.
There's a wonderful book called, um,
Death Is But a Dream by Christopher
Kerr- Hmm … who is the medical director
of Hospice Buffalo in New York State.
And I don't know how many people, when
he wrote the book, it's about 1,200
people in the hospice were interviewed,
every single one, um, every day, being
asked whether they're seeing, whether
they're having deathbed visions, and
what the composition of them are.
It turned out 90% of them
have deathbed visions.
Wow.
Of the 10% that don't report them,
half of those are not speaking.
It's the whole cohort, so some
people couldn't answer the questions.
Maybe the 5% left just really
thought they were going crazy
and didn't wanna talk about it.
But 90%, 89.2 or something like that.
Um, what I think is happening
here is that from my perspective,
the brain doesn't make the mind.
The brain is a receiver, like a radio
is, is a receiver, and samples infinite
radio waves, and transduces them by
the circuits they have and the kind
of speaker they have into sound.
Or you can turn it into an
audio-visual thing, you know.
They used to be big when, uh, laptops
first came out, and you could have
music as color on your screen.
Um, your brain is sampling that
big C consciousness, that big M
mind, um, into your own personal
consciousness, and the brain of a bee
transduces it into a bee conscious.
An aspen grove turns it
into the consciousness of
an aspen grove, et cetera.
Um, but there's a seamless continuity
between- Mm-hmm … this personal
consciousness and that transduction.
And that transduction, the receiver
that makes… out of which the
brain arises, is material reality.
From that big C consciousness,
spacetime, subatomic whatever, atoms,
molecules, organizing living things
I think this would be a separate line
we could go down, but I think one can
make a case that one of the primary
expressions of that fundamental
awareness is what people in some
traditions would call compassion,
what some people would call love.
Um, that that's the
fundamental nature of it.
And in Buddhism, when we talk
about the two pillars of Buddhist
practice, of, of, of Buddhist, um
Devin Martin: Philosophy Yeah Yeah
Neil Theise: Are wisdom and compassion.
What is wisdom?
Yeah Seeing the world as it
actually is without delusion.
Well, science is part of the way we
do that, and what science shows me
is that this is a reasonable way to
understand how the universe exists.
And when you get down to the
non-dual level where there is no
separation of subject and object, um
I had a dream once, um, I'd forgotten
about this, but I just saw it on my
laptop in an old talk, um, thinking, "Oh,
maybe I… It popped up so I could use it
today." I had a dream once that where I
heard a voice as I was waking up that said
Boundaries are where there is something
to be given and something to be received.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: Now I'm
gonna get choked up again.
In the realm of the boundless, there is
nothing to give and nothing to receive.
So, you know, routine everyday
compassion, um, there's a homeless
person with their hand out.
Do I give them money or not?
Or should I call 311 or do I call
911 or do I just ignore them and I'm
really busy, I'm going to the office?
You know, all that stuff you
sort out, and you either display
compassion or not in some fashion.
But if you reach onto a stove and
it turns out to be hot and your
right hand is stuck there burning,
your left hand doesn't pause to
think about what the right thing is.
It just… And the reason is
because there's no separation.
Devin Martin: Right.
Neil Theise: They're
actually the same thing.
So if the nature of reality is this
seamless wholeness in which there
is nothing to be given and nothing
to receive, that's pure compassion.
And if as your brain, which
is the radio transducing big C
consciousness into your small mind,
is starting to fall apart as you're
Devin Martin: dying- Hmm
Neil Theise: then, you know, a, a radio
that's not able… You can't tune a radio.
You're just getting static.
It's not because there's less information,
it's because there's more information.
More.
And so as your brain is getting…
is less able to focus and fine-tune
into your little human mind with your
memories and feelings, stuff starts
leaking through, maybe too much.
Hmm.
And it's the nature of the human
brain when it's still got some
function to turn things into stories.
And if what's coming through to
you is compassion, love, then
you're gonna have to cloak that
In a story that has meaning.
Devin Martin: And one of the things-
And there is something about the heart
and emotions being like the dial on a
receiver, which is choosing the stations.
Yeah, yeah.
What comes through is often what
we're emotionally resonating with, the
people that we have felt connected to.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
And it, you know, deathbed
visions aren't always pleasant.
Devin Martin: Right.
Neil Theise: But the, what, what, what
Kerr writes about in the book, because
they, they analyze each of these
experiences and these cases that are
reported, is that, um, the effect almost
100% of people who have them is that on
a dime, whatever their conflicts, anger,
fear, anxiety, sadness, regrets are,
turn on a dime into, "It's all okay."
How does that happen?
If it's just like, "Oh, I had an
insight because my memory of my
mother showed up." It's something
far more profound than that.
Um, he tells one story that was very
unpleasant, where there's this guy
who's dying and, um, he starts to
have, uh, deathbed visions at night.
They, they often will report them as
dreams that are more real than real.
And he, he was afraid to go to bed at,
sleep at night because he would have these
dreams where he had been a soldier on the
Normandy beaches on D-Day, and it was his
job to go and collect the, the, find the,
the people who were still alive amongst
all the pieces and dead bodies scattered
around the beach to try and get them back.
And so he was surrounded
by death, and he was having
He was having these nightmares, but
were really vivid, of all the dead
boys on the beaches coming to him.
And he had never talked about
any of this to anybody because he
felt guilty for having survived-
Devin Martin: Mm
…
Neil Theise: um, and
because it's so horrifying.
And now he's afraid to go to
sleep in his last days of life
because they're coming to him.
And, um, this had been going on a few
days, and Kerr writes about how they
came into his room one morning, and he
was rested and looked fine and was okay.
What happened?
One of the, the ghosts had
stepped forward and said
We're here for you.
There's nothing to be afraid of.
We're here to bring you over
And then he was fine, and I
think he died two days later.
So it isn't necessarily even a pleasant
experience when they start to appear.
Um, and who you cloak it as, I
apparently … Well, my dog, she, you
know, I was her deathbed vision maybe.
I don't know.
How did she find me?
Um, but my mom… But then it shifted.
After she, then people who were
dead, it was much more like ghosts.
Uh, deathbed visions,
they don't have agendas.
Devin Martin: Hmm.
Neil Theise: They're usually described
as coming in and just being present.
There's a precedence that, presence
that's radiating something.
They're just being there.
Devin Martin: Ghosts- Aren't
people often saying that they're
welcoming them to the other side?
That, like- Yeah, yeah … their
relatives showed up to welcome them in?
Neil Theise: Yeah, yeah.
But it isn't often like, "Hey, I
got us a good seat. Come this way."
Devin Martin: No, it's like, "Let
me put you at ease." Often it's
just- "There's something here."
Neil Theise: Yeah.
No, right, exactly.
It's this presence that radiates a
sense of everything was always fine.
Devin Martin: Hmm.
Neil Theise: We're the ones who
make it into something not fine by
our separating and categorizing and
choosing and, you know, being averse.
And, um- But then people
started coming in with agendas.
So first it w- like Rabbi Bodenheimer
wanted to hang out with my mom.
He missed her, and, um,
and now she was available.
They would bring friends.
They would bring other family members.
People she didn't know would start
showing up, asking her for help.
Devin Martin: Um- Would they
have messages for the living?
Neil Theise: Um, n- uh, not so much that.
The, the one that I remember most
vividly, um, 'cause it was really
disturbing, it was disturbing to her.
I was sitting on, on her couch, and
she was, um, in, uh, her wheelchair,
and, um, she said, "I'm… I've
been very upset. There's someone
coming to see me, and I don't want
her here. She scares me." Mm-hmm.
I said, "Who is it?" She said, "Well,
she's right there," and she pointed
to the couch pillows over my shoulder.
I said, "What is it?"
She said, "It's a girl. Um, she's
gebrent. She's burned." In Yiddish, my
mother would often speak in Yiddish.
Um, "She's gebrent, and she only has
an arm and a shoulder and her head,
and she's asking me to help her, and
I don't know what she wants, and I
don't know how I could possibly help
her, and it's very disturbing to see
her, and she's right there right now.
She's been here for days." And I
said, "Well, have you told her you
can't help her?" She said, "You mean
talk to her?" And I said- … "Yeah."
I said, "Well," I said, "you know,
maybe just, you know, tell her you
would if you could, but you don't
have anything to offer." So she turns
slightly to look over here and starts
speaking to the young girl in Yiddish.
Devin Martin: Hmm.
Neil Theise: And, um,
and then she relaxes.
And I said, "What happened?" She
said, "I, uh…" She understood
I wasn't able to help her.
She went away
Devin Martin: And so this-
Neil Theise: Now I don't have
corroboration for that, but it
was pretty moving to be part of.
Devin Martin: Right.
And so this does sound like when
people say, like, there are ghosts,
and they're trapped between realms,
and they're s- they're confused,
or they don't know they've died, or
they… But they somehow know how to
find the people who can presence them.
Neil Theise: Do you want that story?
Devin Martin: Yeah.
Neil Theise: This goes in the third book.
Um, thinking ahead.
So my father was sent to England.
Um, five days later,
Germany invaded Poland.
My grandparents never heard from him
again, and he never heard from them again.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: They said
goodbye, and he was gone.
His older brother, um, too old for
the Kindertransport, he was 18, um,
my grandparents had the option to send
him to the Netherlands, um, in 1940.
Um, but my grandmother couldn't let him go
because she'd already sent one child away.
And the result is that
he was sent to Riga.
The German Jews were mostly sent to
Riga to be killed, work camps and
worked to death or shot in the forest.
Um, now he survived the war, and I spoke
to him about this, and he said that
had, um, they sent him to Amsterdam, he
would have died because the, the Dutch
were mostly sent to death camps, and
they didn't have the chance to survive.
And he, and he was young and
probably almost certainly would've,
would've died in, in Auschwitz.
Um, but having been sent to Riga in
Latvia, he was in a work camp, and
that gave him the chance to survive.
Um, and he ultimately did and
wound up in Poland after the war.
Um, I went to Riga.
Um, for years I had thought
I needed to go there.
It really disturbed me that so many
family members, particularly my
grandparents, had died there, and no
one had ever said Kaddish for them,
the, the Jewish prayer of mourning.
And, uh, this was 2018.
Um, it was the 80th anniversary
of Kristallnacht, and my dad's
hometown invited all the surviving
descendants to visit the hometown.
And so m- most of the
cousins got together.
Many of us had never met each other
before, um, so that was a whole-
Devin Martin: Mm
…
Neil Theise: experience.
Um, but I thought for years I'd been
thinking I should go to Riga one day, I
should go to Riga one day, and finally
I thought, "Okay, on the way to Germany,
maybe this is when I take this trip."
So I went there, um, by myself,
and it was astonishing how much
I could find out, um, between the
museum there, the actual sites.
The, the Riga ghetto was just a
working-class neighborhood that
they put barbed wire around.
It's still there.
The, the building where my
family was stuffed into an
apartment, it's still there.
Um, I know what time they
arrived on the train.
I know the temperature on the track.
Wow.
I know the path they walked
from the train to the ghetto.
Um, and I found where my
grandmother was shot in the woods
And um
So I was standing there and I, I, and
I had a very vivid sense of, um, I
remember thinking to myself, "Oh, I
feel like I've met my grandmother." And
the question I was asking myself at the
moment was, who was she in that moment
when in the middle of some winter night
she was shot into a pit full of corpses?
Um, and I thought she died,
um, with regret, that she had
made all the wrong choices.
She had sent my father
away, never saw him again.
She didn't send her, um, my Uncle
Walter away, and he wound up
here and sent off to a work camp.
Who knows?
Her husband was gone, and now she's on the
edge of a pit and she's gonna be killed.
And that's what I imagined her feeling.
So… And I thought, "Wow, I
feel like I've met my grandmother
I went back to the hotel, and
the next morning I was going
to take the plane to Germany.
And, um, the shaman thing, so I
have this friend who's a shaman
and, um, who was worried about me
going there and, um, thought this
would be a pretty dark place for me.
And he checks in with me, um, before
I'm heading to the plane, and he says,
"You know you're not alone. Someone's
with you." And my grandmother's, um,
name i- was Elisa in German, Elise.
But, uh, people called her Lisan
as a, an affectionate name.
I said, "Who is it?" He goes, "It's a
woman." I said, "Does she have a name?"
And he said, "Well, it's funny,
I'm getting two names, Lisa, Lisan
So I say, "It's my grandmother."
And he says, um, I said, "What's
she like?" He said, "Well, imagine a
houseplant you've forgotten to water.
It's not dead yet, but it's really
straggly." And I said to him,
"She's been here for 80 years."
And he said, "Well, time in that
sense isn't the same for them."
He said, "She's not… didn't experience
it, waiting here for 80 years, but you
showed up and she has clung to you."
So with his direction, I started to at
least imagine that I could feel her as
this presence and, you know, and that
might be something I talked myself into.
I'm very careful about like, could
I be talking myself into this?
And I, um-
I get on the plane and I go to the
village, and I'm thinking, "Oh, maybe I'm
bringing her home. That's what's going
on here." And I'm feeling her there.
We're moving around the village.
We're talking to students at the local
high school, and we're seeing family sites
and, and we're getting to know each other.
Um, and on the actual anniversary
of Kristallnacht, I had to represent
my family to speak to this crowd
of 300 Germans on the site of
my family's destroyed synagogue.
Wow.
And, and, um, with, with h- three high
school students translating line by
line into, from English to German.
Um, and I do a good job.
Everyone's crying, and, um, and I'm
getting choked up and, you know,
and, but the performative aspect
like, "Oh, I'm getting choked up.
This is gonna get them," you know?
Nothing like getting a German
crowd to cry over the… you
know, it's very satisfying.
Um, so, um, but everyone's
pretty emotionally baked at that
point, and I come off to the side
where the eldest cousin of the
generation is, um, uh, standing.
She's this, you know, four-foot-something,
really tough Dutch pig farmer.
We have that in my family, too.
And, um, she takes my hand and I, and
I'm just like… I've been walking
around with this for a couple of days.
I lean down to her and I say,
"Can I tell you something?
Do you believe in ghosts?"
She says, "Of course I do."
I said, "I think I brought my moth-
grandmother back from Riga." She
goes, "Ach, I already knew that."
So I'm thinking maybe
I've brought her home.
Um, but I get on the plane back to
the States and I can feel her with me,
and I check in with my shaman friend.
I said, "Is she with me?" "Oh, yeah,
she's with you." Um, couple of days go
by and I feel like she's gone, and I'm
thinking, "Oh, maybe she's moved on."
Um, and so I check in with my
shaman friend who can travel the
astral plane and is much more
adept at this stuff than I am.
Um, he goes… He looks around
and goes, "Oh, no, she's with your
mother. She's taking him around--
taking her around to see the
grandchildren." Um, okay, so that's nice.
A few days later, I feel her back,
and Kristallnacht was in November.
The train ride to Riga
was December 10th to 12th.
It was two days.
And so I wrote to all the cousins and I
said, "I think, um, she died thinking that
she had made all the wrong, uh, decisions,
um, and so lost everybody." But the fact
is she was the only one of her siblings
and cousins who didn't lose a child.
Most of the kids were killed,
but some only lost one or two,
but she saved both of them.
She just didn't know she had
made the right decisions.
And so on the anniversary of the
train ride, those two days, light a
candle, and the, the Polish side of
the family, they're now Catholic, so
the candle thing is working for both
the Jewish side and the Catholic side.
And I said, "Put out photographs
of all her descendants
So everyone did that.
And I said, "You know, tell her
thank you. You made all the right
decisions." That weekend she went away
Now, maybe I'm delusional or demented
or lying
Devin Martin: But,
Neil Theise: you know- Although
there are people I told about this
in real time, so partial bits of the
story I was witnessing, you know, and
Devin Martin: sharing.
I mean, it's compelling in part because
you have a rigorous scientific training.
A r- You're successful as a scientist.
You know, you clearly know the
method, and you clearly question
yourself at every step of the way.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Devin Martin: I'm curious how … I
mean, so many … There's a story
that I hear, and I don't know how true
it is, that the world of academia is
full of closeted spiritual seekers.
Neil Theise: No.
Devin Martin: People who- It's not
full … profess one thing in public.
Well, they're there, and, and, you
know, I, a lot of my clients are
people in finance or in business.
Right.
And what I've discovered is this secret,
you know, underbelly, and- Yeah … you
know, everybody's not talking about
it to the person next to them about
the thing they both believe in.
Like, it's, it's far more
pervasive than anyone believes.
Neil Theise: Yes.
Devin Martin: And everyone believes
if they act like you, you come on a
podcast and you tell these stories,
that's the end of their funding.
That's the end of their career.
They're gonna be laughed
out of every talk.
Have you experienced any of that?
Neil Theise: Well, you know, um,
I'm set up really well for this.
As a pathologist working with a liver
transplant team, they don't care what
I do scientifically or spiritually.
Do I make a right diagnosis on
the patient's liver biopsy or not?
As long as I … And that pays my salary.
I don't, I nev- And I'm now retired
from clinical practice, but I never
got much in the way of research money.
I know.
I did all my research getting stuff,
little bits and pieces through the
department or through the transplant team.
Get small little grants.
But my salary was my clinical practice.
Devin Martin: So you were
Neil Theise: primarily an MD financially.
So I could say anything.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I'm not a PhD. I'm an MD. And I
stumbled into the basic science stuff,
and I keep stumbling forward, and it's
led me to these weird places, but if I'm
making the right diagnoses on a liver
biopsy, they can't withhold my salary.
The salary is for the diagnoses.
Um-
Devin Martin: So do, do you think if you
were in academia more it would've been
more challenging for you to speak out?
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Oh, for sure.
I mean, there's, um … Yes.
But
I probably would not have had, uh, you
know, I, I have a hard time keeping
my mouth shut, as you can tell . So,
you know, if it led to problems, okay,
then it's gonna lead to problems.
I'm just not gonna be able to censor this.
Um, uh, and that's partly also why,
you know, I've done a lot of science.
I'm, I'm been really gifted,
um, a bunch of discoveries that
were, were pretty important.
Um, part of the reason I was able to do
that, I think that's my Zen practice.
You know, Sh- Shinryu Suzuki Roshi,
who founded San Francisco Zen Center,
said, um, uh, "In the mind of the
beginner, there are many possibilities.
In the mind of the expert, there are
few." That's where the beginner's mind-
Devin Martin: Right
…
Neil Theise: phrase.
Again, it's, it's him
making that statement.
And, um- So I could see things under
the microscope, or I could see things
in the world like my dog's ghost or
the sense of my grandmother, and just
pay attention to what's in the moment
and worry about the explanation later.
Um, I'm not thinking, "What does this mean
for the future?" I'm not thinking, "How
does this fit for the past?" I'm having an
experience of this slide at this moment.
This patient has these changes in
this liver biopsy, and I'm pulling
it together, and it looks like they
have recurrent hepatitis C. Okay.
Um, I'm having these experiences
in the world, and I just hold them.
And, you know, things like, uh, the
Zen stuff coming together with the
science, I was holding those things
for four decades at that point.
Devin Martin: Yeah.
Neil Theise: But then there
was a moment where it was one
thing being held, not two.
Um, so I think my Zen practice has
cultivated that ability to just
go, just be with it, like a koan.
Yeah.
You don't solve a koan,
you just become the koan.
You just sit with the koan.
It reveals itself to you
if you're patient enough.
Um,
Devin Martin: and I- I, I, I often
note that one symptom of spiritual
attainment is a comfort with paradox.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Yeah,
Devin Martin: yeah, yeah.
It seems to be a requirement to get
anywhere in your spiritual practice.
And, and you reminded me earlier, and I
just wanted to add, uh, I don't know if
you ever heard this, Ken Wilber said,
"Wisdom is transcending perspectives.
Compassion is embracing them all."
Neil Theise: Yeah.
I… And that would be a not…
That would be a pithier way of
saying what I was saying before
about wisdom- … and compassion.
I, you know, I, I, I tend to
take the long long way around.
Um, and with a good editor,
sometimes I can da- condense
it- … around into a good moment.
Um, or it comes to me in a dream.
Um, yeah, so, uh, uh, but what you
said about if you scratch the surface,
do most of them… No, most of them
do not, because people who go into
science generally are doing it because
they're focused on materialist science.
That's our culture.
Um, that doesn't mean there aren't
a lot of us, but I wouldn't be
surprised if you find more of them
in business or, you know, the people
who value money and material stuff.
You know, that's another issue.
Um,
Devin Martin: but- Yeah, a lot
of them talk to astrologers
before making investments.
Right.
It's surprising.
Neil Theise: Right.
Yeah.
Devin Martin: But- They know the world
is more complex than their mind can
grapple with, and so they're looking-
Yeah … for other perspectives.
Neil Theise: Right.
Right.
And science not so much.
Um, however, uh, people like me can do
it safely, and that helps other people
do it more safely, and I, I'm pleased…
I'm, I'm doing this in a moment
where people are ripe for it.
Ha- If I were trying to do
this 30 years ago, not so much.
The complexity stuff, I've been
talking about it for 25 years, and
it, it's, um- One of, one of the,
the really nice experiences I had
was, um, uh, I was invited, um, to
the stem cell biology program at,
uh, University of North Carolina.
Mm. Very prestigious program,
um, to talk about stem cells.
But the colleague who was inviting me,
I said, "Can I throw in a little bit
about my complexity stuff and just be a
little weird?" And she goes, "Do whatever
you want." So I had a room of, like, 25
grad students, hardcore science people.
And, um, I said to them, uh, "You
know, we're, we're gonna talk about
stem cells, but I really f- you know,
each of us is here for a reason.
Some of you wanna win a Nobel Prize,
some of you wanna cure cancer, um,
some of, some of you are entrepreneurs.
Um, and you all wanna use science
to achieve whatever your goal is.
But once upon a time, science
for you wasn't goal-directed.
It was just something you loved and felt.
And I'd like to do something a little
different with you to see if I can
return you to that feeling of where
your urge to do science came from."
Devin Martin: Mm.
"
Neil Theise: So I'm gonna talk about
complexity of biological systems, and
we're gonna do a little guided meditation
while we do that." And so at every
level of scale, every day to cells, to
molecules, to atoms, I would have them sit
up in their chairs , feet on the floor,
close your eyes, come back to your breath,
and take them through experiencing their
body at the everyday scale as this thing.
At the cellular level where you're a
microbiome that's diffusing into the
environment, to the molecular level,
to the atomic level, to the quantum
scale where you're the universe.
And, you know, half the crowd, they've got
their legs crossed and their arms crossed,
and they're so highly defended . But by
the end, something softened in the room.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: A few people came up to me
after the talk and thanked me for it.
But half the class wrote
me secretive emails after
saying, "That was amazing.
I'd forgotten," you know.
Um, children , what I was trying
to do was bring them back to
a state I knew they all had.
But by the time you get to adults,
you know, our teach- our culture
teaches us to shut that down.
My favorite intervention, um, is whenever
I know someone who's lost someone close to
them, when I talk to them after the fact,
I say, "So have you had any visits?" And
80% of them who don't know me
look surprised that I would ask.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: About two-thirds of
them say, "Yeah, I think so." But
they're not gonna tell most people
because they don't wanna look crazy.
Devin Martin: Right.
Neil Theise: And there was just an
article in The New York Times yesterday
about mediumship and- Mm … um, how a
lot of psychologists like, it doesn't
matter whether it's an actually a, a
dead person appearing or a hallucination
their brain is creating for themselves.
These are meaningful experiences
that help them process grief.
So that's the new model in, in
psychotherapy is it doesn't matter
whether there's life after death or not.
The point is it's helpful for
people who are grief-stricken.
And it is.
Um, and in my experience, two-thirds, and
that's actually what they quoted in the-
Devin Martin: Is
Neil Theise: it?
… Times article yesterday was like,
ooh, doing good record keeping.
Um, have experiences either, you know,
my dog, people appearing in dreams,
um- A symbol appearing at odd moments,
coincidences that point to something.
And it sort of doesn't matter
whether they're real or not.
But on the other hand, why not
say that maybe they're real?
Why do we not say that?
Because we've got this materialist, uh,
perspective that the world is a machine
and utterly predictable and machine-like,
and that's a very recent idea that I
think is pretty misguided and- Yeah
sterile, and gets us into this situation
of, oh, we think we're separate from
the world 'cause the world is this big
machine, and we're these little machines
in it pulling levers and stuff, and
so now we have climate change and…
Devin Martin: Do you think there
is a paradigm shift happening?
Do you think- I know that
Neil Theise: we're it
Devin Martin: quantum physics
and all of this research we're
talking about, like that we're
gonna be… Material reductionism
is starting to show its cracks.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
I, I think the end of civilization because
of climate change and AI may force it
more quickly, but, um, you know, whatever.
However you get there.
Um, preferably not through a
mass extinction event, but okay.
Um,
I know there's a change because
when I first started talking about
this stuff 25 years ago, and medical
students would get wind of it, like
I'd be teaching a, a pathology lab,
and the kids would be asking me what
sort of stuff I do, and I would tell
them, and we'd have conversations.
Ooh, there'd be someone who would
say, "Could you talk to us?"
And 25 years ago, that might
be an integrative medicine club
that met after hours, and they
had funds for a pizza, you know?
And so I'd go, and we'd have a little
evening pizza, and I would talk about
acupuncture and energy bodies and stuff.
Um, now I get invited to give grand rounds
on that Those kids are now professors.
Devin Martin: Yeah.
Neil Theise: And so it has been shifting.
Um, there's, you know, I've,
I've… Oddly, I have three
documentaries coming out this
season talking about energy healing.
Um, one just landed two weeks ago
called, um, The Energy That Heals.
If you Google The Energy That Heals.
Devin Martin: Mm.
Neil Theise: I do a little
song and dance about quantum
physics and complexity in there.
Then there's, um, a six-part podcast
and a multi-part docuseries coming
out called Phenomena Healing.
If you go to phenomenahealing.com, you
can sign up for when those are released.
The podcast has already come out,
and I, I'm pretty mouthy there.
Um, and then there's another one
that was made with a team in China,
um, that's, they're editing it now.
It's coming out, called Qi Rising.
That's coming out, I think,
in October or November.
Devin Martin: Mm-hmm.
Neil Theise: Um, the fact that these
movies can be made, that people want
them to be seen, that there are people
like me who are actually hardcore
science medical people who are
saying, "No, but I've also had these
experiences," and we have scientific
ways of thinking about them, um, uh-
There's a, a greater readiness to, to,
and curiosity to look at these things.
Um, and there's less of an assumption
that it's gotta be bullshit.
Devin Martin: Yeah.
And that's a great place.
Maybe I, I wanna be respectful
of your time, and I know
we're probably at our limit.
Um, and so those are three places people-
You're the limit … can connect with you.
Neil Theise: I can go on for hours.
I
Devin Martin: could talk to
you for a couple more days.
I
Neil Theise: introduced you,
I could just like… Yeah.
Devin Martin: Um, and I've also,
I've been directing people towards
The New York Times did a, an amazing
multimedia piece on the interstitium.
Oh, the interstitium.
Which is beautiful, which I,
must've been so much fun for you.
I ma- as soon as I saw that,
I imagined what it must've
been like for you to see that.
Um- Well- … such a beautiful
new format for this work.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, since the stem cell
stuff, I wanted my mother and the
dean at Columbia who failed me
to see me in The New York Times.
And the stem cell stuff didn't
happen because I had an opponent
in the stem cell world who was
buddy-buddy with the Times reporter,
and I was like, so I never got in.
Really?
I inter- I did the interview for this
piece, like a year and a half ago.
Hmm.
Never heard.
Kind of forgot about it.
And then I was in Germany visiting
my dad's hometown, uh, back in May,
and as I'm getting on the airplane to
Dusseldorf to fly back to Lisbon, a friend
texts me, "What about The Times, A?"
Capital T. And I'm like, "What?" So I send
back a question mark, and then, um, he
sends back a link to something in The New
York Times, and the flight attendant says,
"You have to turn off your phone now." So,
two and a half hours.
Devin Martin: Oh, my God.
Neil Theise: And I land, and I turn on the
phone, and there's the link and the thing,
and it's like mind-bogglingly beautiful.
And you're probably expecting a little
Devin Martin: blurb with your
name in it, but it's this-
Neil Theise: Yeah … full interactive
Devin Martin: explanation-
And it's this huge
…
Neil Theise: of your work.
Um, right.
And all the millions of texts and
emails and phone calls from everyone.
It's The New York Times.
Everybody saw it.
So, so that was fun.
Yeah.
Devin Martin: That
Neil Theise: was
Devin Martin: a funny experience.
Yeah, I, I, yeah, I reached out to you to
schedule this, uh, before that happened.
Mm-hmm.
And then I think the telepathy
tapes came out, and that came out.
Right.
And I was like-
Neil Theise: Yeah, yeah
… "
Devin Martin: Oh, he's
Neil Theise: probably getting
bombarded." Yeah, it's been a big season.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's, but, uh, this is the…
You know, and, and to be honest,
um, I say no to a lot of things.
But you got in early, and when
you asked, I couldn't not say yes.
Devin Martin: Well, thank you.
This, this has been fascinating.
Um, I love how wide your mind is,
and in, in my personal opinion,
how scientific your mind is.
Because you don't throw-
I try … away data.
You don't throw away experiences because
you don't have a good explanation.
Right.
You're willing to sit in the mystery.
And so I do think more scientists
should do koan practice and- Yeah.
Yeah … and psychedelics, to be honest.
Yeah.
But I, I think koan practice- Yeah,
yeah, no … would get them pretty far
Neil Theise: I, we'll talk about
my ayahuasca experience one day.
Uh, but you know, that's a whole…
I'll come back.
But, um-
That
Devin Martin: would be amazing.
I would love to hear
Neil Theise: that.
Yeah, yeah.
The, they just, um, just be open to
what's in front of you, you know?
That's what being a scientist is.
See what's in front of you.
Don't dismiss it just because
it's not what you expect.
Devin Martin: Yeah, yeah.
And look for your bias and just
be willing to throw it away.
I think that's- Yeah.
And so I think you're a living example.
Thank you.
Keep doing the work you're doing.
Thank you.
And I would love to have you on- I'll try.
You, too … any other time.
I, I wanna hear the-
Okay … ayahuasca story.
I'll share mine as well.
Neil Theise: Oh, good, good.
I, you know, 'cause… Yeah, I wanna
hear yours 'cause mine was like, "Meh."
Devin Martin: Mine is more like
your stories with your mother.
They were confirmed
psychic phenomenon that-
Neil Theise: Right
…
Devin Martin: broke open my worldview,
and I ha- spent a couple years grappling
with, how do I integrate this other stream
of information that I had been clearly
just blocking out because I had bias?
And now- Mother Aya-
it's confirmed.
Neil Theise: Yeah.
Mother Aya basically told me,
"This path is not for you."
Devin Martin: You know,
I got that after my-
Neil Theise: Nothing happened.
Devin Martin: I did three journeys,
and on my fourth- Yeah … journey, I
got the message, "You're done here."
Neil Theise: Yeah,
Devin Martin: I, yeah.
Like, "You've been given the insights.
Go do something about it." And I
got it repeatedly when I went back,
and so I haven't gone back anymore.
Neil Theise: Right, and that was my…
I tried mushrooms 'cause I th- did she
mean all plant medicines or just hers?
No, she meant all.
Devin Martin: Oh,
Neil Theise: all.
So yeah, apparently.
Devin Martin: Apparently your
mind's already open enough.
Neil Theise: I r- whatever.
I'm really envious of you, so.
That's a whole other conversation.
Devin Martin: All right.
Well, let's let, let's connect again.
But thank you again- Okay … so much.
This was wonderful.