As Above, So Below with Dr. Bernard Beitman

[Music] This is synchronicity! [Music] [Music] Welcome to synchronicity! I guess this week is Dr. Bernie Bightman. I was on Bernie's show connecting with coincidence, which is a pretty cool show, kind of in like the coast to coast vein of checking out coincidences and synchronicities and why certain things seem to be the way they are. It's really cool. I had a really good time moment and it actually spawned an episode that I've gotten as much feedback as I can remember getting the psychosis and synchronicity episode, easy for me to say, that came out a few weeks ago last month. My conversation with Bernie really kind of, it was the genesis of the whole thing because I was reflecting back, projecting back into the past of this experience and getting another kind of psychological and psychiatric slant on it and it really was just a fun conversation for me with him. Go check that out on his show connecting with coincidence.

That was a month and a half ago I want to say. Really good show toot my own horn there and his, like out weird, quickly. But this episode, you get some more perspective on who he is, where he's coming from, what he's kind of learned, not only as a psychiatrist and going through the medical profession, but also just in his life and being fundamentally interested in things like synchronicity and he talks about being, even in the, what was it, the, it wasn't the OTO, it was basically the Alistair Crowley shoot off, you know, esoteric occult, little club cult things they were doing there. He had some direct connection back in the mid 60s to that scene. So he's had a very interesting life and it's always fun to connect with people. We've been doing this for a while and like, you know, still something fascinates them and they realize there's some subtle reality.

What's very cool about this conversation and most of the conversations I've had with him, it's been about a few now, is we come at these same phenomena and topics in a very different way. I, as you can tell, allow my thoughts to kind of just flow naturally from kind of an elevated standpoint, I like taking a macro look at a lot of things. Very kind of, I don't want to say new agey, but I'm a little looser with the constructs of reality when I approach thinking about these things at least conceptually or theoretically. You know, I give intuition a big kind of very prominent place in my own psyche.

Dr. Bernard Baitman, I don't know why I chose to call him a Dr. Bernard Baitman there, but I did go in with it, comes at it from a very pragmatic, logical, kind of more grounded, what we'll call a grounded approach. And there's an image, I believe it's a young image, something he drew, where it's a tree that reaches out into like the heavens and like, you can see it in the moon and it's going to the sky. And then there's on the other side a root that goes all the way down into the ground. And it shows the duality and just kind of interconnectedness of the whole organism of understanding and wisdom and what the fuck is going on, trying to grapple with those types of questions.

And it's really valuable to get multiple perspectives on this. So what's cool about our conversations is that it is kind of like a meeting in the middle of two different approaches and kind of coming to the same conclusions, which is very interesting. So yeah, that's this conversation. Go check out his show connecting with coincidence. You can also go to his website coinsider.com and there are links to all of this. The episode page and the show notes, you know what it is. I also want to thank Forsegmatic. It's a Forsegmatic shout out episode. The Mushroom Elixir, it's the immune support Mushroom Elixir.

I am very much a fan of this. And I like, one of the things I realized I like, why am I drinking these Forsegmatic things? Not just because they're paying me to talk about it, although that's nice too. It's that you can just tear open these little packets and pour them in a cup and then you put hot water on them and they're done. For anyone who, I'm not a huge coffee drinker, but when I do drink coffee and make it with like, you know, you pour the water, you put the filter and you pour the water over it, what is that called? Press some type of, I don't know what it is, but anyway, you do that. And you got the filters, you got a thing and the whole, it's a whole thing.

Yes, I may be lazy, but I do like that. I can kind of just rip it open, pour it in there and it's got mushrooms in it. And I think the one, this one I'm doing Chaga. Yeah, I think it's the Chaga Elixir. So if you want 15% off, go to Forsegmatic.com/sync. That's sync and you get 15% off first order. Maybe all orders, I should probably look into that. Go do it, it helps the show, it helps them. If you're into it, don't do it for, you don't want it, but do it if you want it because it's cool stuff. They're promoting a lot of, and sponsoring a lot of shows on MindPod Network, so I like to give back and encourage people to support them.

If you like it, try it out. If you don't like it, I don't know what we can do. So that is my very concise plug for Forsegmatic obligation completed. That's it for this week. Oh no, no, it's not. What am I talking about? Spotify playlist. For those who have been listening to the show for now, over a year, I used to do these Spotify playlists where I put together 13 songs, release it and say, "Hey, here you go." These are 13 songs I like. I didn't do that for over a year, for whatever reason. I just did another one. Number 14, you can go check it out. It's on the website, syncpodcast.com. You don't have to sign up for anything.

You don't have to do anything. It's just there as opposed. You can find it. Spotify, you can look me up. And I publicly post these things. It's a cool idea. I find the more that one microdoses LSD, the more inclined they are to make playlists. Who also like, who doesn't like, I feel bad for the kids who didn't get to make mix tapes or CDs? Like, mix CDs. Like, oh man, what a joyous thing. Making them for someone. That's the true sponsor of today's episode. Make go make a mix playlist for your friend or someone you like about. It's such a fun thing to do. Now, what songs you think they like or you know they love or that they haven't heard, that they will love.

That's a cool thing to do. So go do that. That's what brought you by this show is that horrible sentence. Let's get to the episode. Without further ado, here is Dr. Brown. Alright, cool. Thanks for coming on, man. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. It's nice to do this, Steve Reverse. Yeah, I know the feeling. It is always kind of nice when you're not in charge of running something and doing things. Although, I will say for this podcast, at least, it's so much more like a conversation than like, you know, when I first started out, I had all these questions I would write up. And now I just kind of like get a sense of who someone is and just kind of let the conversation take it.

So it's not too much work, but it's nice being a guest. I totally appreciate that. So I thought a cool place to start would be since I was on your show connecting with coincidence and we spoke a lot about synchronicity in particular, but especially related to psychosis to the point where I was actually inspired to go do a solo episode just on that topic. I'd be curious. I know we spoke off air too. Like, what's been your trajectory from a younger person? You're around during like the pre-hate Ashbury days and the hate Ashbury days to evolving into a psychiatrist, but also still maintaining kind of an avid interest in some of these more subtle realities and kind of events that we experience.

Like, what was that transition or kind of like career and interest arc like for you? You want me to start now? Yeah. Okay. Before I got before I saw I started seeing lots of them in the hate Ashbury, I'd had a bunch of them before. My life has been a lot of coincidences and probably because when I was like four, my mother looked in on my bed looking up at the ceiling and she thought I was depressed. I was really just watching the events of my mind. I still do that. And so I was tuned in to what went on in there and it became a little more easy to connect what I thought and what happened outside because I knew what was going inside.

And the biggest one was like when I was eight or nine and I came home from school and my mother was standing out in the front and I said, "Where's Snapper? Snapper was our dog. I thought he was my dog." And he wasn't there and she said, "I don't know." And she said, "I still smile at this." She said, "Go to the police station and see if they know where he is." To me that was now a deviation from having to admit she wasn't watching him. I thought I was pretty clever so I didn't know it then. I just believed my mommy. So I got on my bike and I rode back to school and crossed the big road next to the school and parked my bike in front of the police station and walked up the stairs and got to this big desk and some big guy behind the desk and I said, "Have you seen my dog?"

And sorry son, no, we haven't. I haven't. So I was just heartbroken and cried a lot going down the stairs and got on my bike. And instead of crossing back on the big road, I just stayed on the sidewalk. And lo and behold, coming towards me was Snapper. There he was and he jumped up on my leg as if to say, "Where have you been?" And we went home. And that really struck me. And years later when I looked at the roots each of us had taken, I had taken one wrong turn. He took four right turns to get to where we ran into each other. And you know, look about dogs finding masters. And so I don't know how it happened but I was so glad to find that puppy.

I was so glad, you know, boys and their dogs. But that dog was my buddy and I was so glad. If I could, I taught him how to jump from the sidewalk or the parking lot in the open window of the driver's seat of a car. So I jumped in and he jumped in and thought, "We did stuff together like that." And he'd listened to me when I was messed up and listened carefully. So that was the first one. But that's not the only one. I played a lot of football and baseball. And in baseball, I imagined hitting the first pitch of a game for a home run. And I did that in a playoff game. American Legion and playoff game.

North against the South and Delaware. And it was the first pitch. And my brother said that the center fielder didn't get to it until after I'd rounded second base. And I like that story. And that was one and another. I wanted to run open and kick offs back for touchdowns. Yeah, yeah. I loved doing that. And I did that twice. I even have a video of one of them when I was in college. And that's making imagining things and having them come true was a big part of this. But then the one that really got me was a much smaller thing maybe it would seem. But my senior year playing football at Swarthmore College, for some reason on a Thursday, the day before, or two days before, we were going to play Johns Hopkins at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

I went off to the side. I got off to the major part of the football field, put up two tackling dummies next to each other, grabbed a football, walked about five, ten yards away from the tackling gummies, crouched down with a ball between my arms, turned around and sprinted through the two tackling dummies two times. And then trotted back to the practice. I didn't know why I did it. It was just kind of an automatic thing. And then finally on the field playing against Johns Hopkins, their punter wasn't kicking the ball very far after a couple of punts. And then finally he let a good one off and I was the receiver for punts and I had to turn around to catch the ball.

It was over my shoulder. So I cut it over my shoulder and turned back and there were two Johns Hopkins guys right next to each other coming right at me. And I ran right between them, surprising each of them, and went 90 yards for a touchdown. That was a form of precognition, the most dramatic I've ever had. And I mean, those experiences for people who've had them, where you kind of envision something or precognatively take an action that serves you later. I mean, those are hooks, right? I mean, it's hard not to kind of get intrigued and fascinated by those types of things. So what did you do after college, like did you always kind of want to be an MD?

Did you want to go through this whole process of kind of getting into studying the mind and helping other people? Or were these just kind of the early awareness of the power of the mind or maybe some subtle realities that aren't visible to everyone? I wish I could answer those questions more specifically, and there are good questions. I went to medical school. I did want to be a doctor. And I did a research project where the guy, anatomists, said, "You don't want to be doing this. You're going to be a psychiatrist." Oh, OK. But I was a Jewish boy also who didn't like blood, which was one of the reasons.

That's why I'm not a doctor, just to be clear. OK. Well, this is one way to do that without having to see the blood part. I had such trouble with kids being sick. That was another issue. But anyway, I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I wanted to understand, well, I don't know what I wanted to do. Freud, I just thought that was the thing I needed to do. It's the only option, but I was interested in psychological things. Anyway, that's walked into medical school and came out going to an internship at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco in 1968. What a time to land there. Yeah, that's a pretty auspicious time to be landing doing any type of psychiatric work.

It was. And to back that up, I came prepared for H Street in 1968. I came prepared because the nice thing about going to Yale Medical School in those days is that unlike most medical schools, they gave us the summers off. We didn't have to be there. And it was a light not being in New Haven in the summer. And they gave us money to go places. That's awesome. They wanted to create researchers. They were interested in independent study and helping create people to think for themselves. And really, I was lucky really to be there. Harvard wouldn't have been the same. Yale, they were encouraging research.

So, the first summer I got some money to go to Beverly Hills Hospital. Cedars was Sinai Hospital. Now it's Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles. Got myself a motorcycle. But on the way to Los Angeles, I didn't know where I was going to stay. That's pretty good planning. Getting to Arizona and not knowing where I was going to stay. And that's when you get coincidences when there's like ambiguity happening. So, I contacted one of my classmates from college and she gave me the guy's name living in 36 in Vermont in Los Angeles. And he let me stay there for a day or two. And I was talking to him. He's lived in the back of the house and I was talking to him.

He said, "Oh, the woman in the front from whom I'm renting is a mystic." I said, "What? A mystic?" I heard about that. So, I knocked on the door and this woman answers in her 40s. And she says, "You're the second one." The first one I did a dentist. And she invites me in and said, "Would you like to have a mystical experience?" And I said, "Yeah, I heard about that." And I came back at midnight and a couple of days later and took a glass of milk with this blue liquid at the bottom. And she called that liquid LSD. And I saw lots of things that I remember as seeing energy fields between my hands.

Green and gold energy fields, kind of like cats cradled, but energy versions. And then some woman puts her hand between my energy fields and moves them about the same way a prowl of a boat would move waves. Which gave me the idea that these things really do exist. Was that your first psychedelic experience? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so when you're, I mean, who knows how much you actually got dosed with, but I'm sure it was good. Whatever it is, when you're getting to the energy fields, part of the trip. So, I mean, at this point, prior to taking psychedelics, I mean, for me at least, it radically altered every aspect of my life.

I mean, how could it not? It wasn't just kind of an isolated incident that was, oh, that happened and moving on. Did it have a similar effect for you that you're kind of seeing now these unseen things otherwise? What did that do for your psyche at that time? How old were you? This was during a summer in college? Summer in medical school after the first summer. I was 23 skidoo. I was 23. That was a transition time. 23. 23 was my football number. 32 was my house number. 23 followed me around for a long time. And that was a year of transition. That's what 23 means to me. Transition. And I like comparing your experience with mine because they're going to be illustrated, illustrated for illustrative for each of us.

Because you asked me how much did it change the way I think and not as much as it did you. Well, you know, in some ways that's surprising because you have memories of being a four-year-old kind of watching the inner workings of your mind. I mean, I can tell you pretty confidently until I did psychedelics at the age of 15 LSD as well. I kind of had my head up my ass. You know what I mean? Like I was kind of like thinking I was the center of the universe and just this is how things are without really putting a lot of cognitive or intellectual or conceptual thought into it. So that maybe isn't that unusual given kind of where we came from for these experiences.

Yes. And also the age difference. Yeah. Yeah. That's six years worth of difference and I've been in school. I've been rigorously studying at Swarthmore College where I played football and baseball and captain of this and that. And also was one of the best medical students coming out in my class. So I was working hard. I was focused and organized and Swarthmore really increased that. Yale opened me up. I got away from that. But so that's that age difference and there's all the different experiences I had between your 15 and my 15. Yeah. I could see how it would break you open at age 15. You're more easily opened.

Yeah. I mean, your psyche is still developing, right? I mean, you're just trying to figure out what personas you're going to try on and present to the world over the coming years, coming out of adolescence. Yeah. It's interesting because it had a destabilizing factor in terms of identity, but it also kind of solidified a facet of my being in terms of the profoundness of the experience itself. Do you know what I mean? Why don't you explain that a little bit more? Well, like I was saying, when you're an adolescent, when you're a teenager, you know, you're trying on different identities. This is related to social groups. You may be hanging out with media. You're engaging with friction or harmony with your family.

So you're trying on a lot of different things, whereas, you know, by the time you're kind of a functioning adult out in the world, even if a young adult, you've kind of assumed your personas for that time period. So for me, I was still in the midst of that kind of transitional trying on personas thing when this experience happened in 15, which is like, alright, there's no real time for any of these personas to fundamentally crystallize into one thing that, you know, is going to be assumed and then discarded. But on the same token, the experience itself, from the very first one to some much later, not much later, but later ones, was such a profound and impactful kind of occurrence for my consciousness that it solidified that aspect of my being of kind of buying into the idea that it's almost like my identity was acknowledging that there is no fundamental identity. If that makes sense, it's basically a dissolution of the idea that there is this static being.

But acknowledging that, you know, you're obviously still a person who has to do things and relate to the world in a way that's not completely off the wall. So it's interesting that for my experience, it had, you know, kind of a destabilizing with identity, but also stabilized one component of my being. But for you, it kind of was like something you would have been correct to assume that it added kind of another dimension to what you were already experiencing in the world. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I, this idea of no self that you experienced at age 15 with LSD, that is intriguing that you got to that so early.

You're telling me, man. Because I'm still kind of getting there with that. And it's more and more emerging that my way of doing all this has been like incremental. And I think there's a lot to be said though, with the kind of gradual incremental process for this because, yeah, there are people like me who I assume that the reason I have these experiences is because this is the type of experience I would need. I'm the type who needs to be slapped in the face with a sandal by an enlightened master, rather than, you know, slowly recognizing things around me. So it's interesting that, you know, we kind of get what works for us because, like, on the same token, I've seen people have very intense psychedelic experiences.

And they do not come out of them better, you know, at any point, it still is kind of a source of trauma for them in their lives. I wouldn't say that my typical association with psychedelic experiences, but it certainly is one that I'm aware of. So there is a lot to be said for kind of the approach of gradual step-by-step incremental awareness of this. I mean, I sense some level of maybe I'm wrong. Would you like these kind of broader, no-self experiences, or are you comfortable with the kind of incremental approach? I know that's what I'm reaching for. And part of my job, I mean, it's fun to hear more and more people saying, "My job on earth is so-and-so." I mean, I've been thinking that for a long time, but I also know from study of coincidence that if I'm thinking that somebody else is, you know, so it's nice to hear each of us has a role to play, not everybody, but a role to play in kind of helping develop the consciousness.

And my role is to be able to use all this education I've had. I mean, this is like college and medical school and residency, and also I was chairman of the psychiatry department for 15 years, and that was educational and also kind of mind-dumbing being in that bureaucracy and being part of it and making things happen. So I've learned how some part of the world works so that my job is to make what I'm learning about coincidences and what they can teach us, make it accessible to the general public. It's like, this is Bernie's report. This is Bernie's report to the world about what I've learned being all the things that I've done.

You know, I've been observing and reporting and drawing on your experiences and academic training to kind of translate this to a wide variety of people. And I think that's admirable because too often, especially from the psychiatric community, you know, these things are kind of either dismissed or looked at kind of aberrations, or they're not, you know, functioning aspects of reality because they can't be observed in a cogent empirical way. I mean, I really appreciate that you have kind of maintained and acknowledged its interest throughout your life about this. I'm very curious, because you've made it a focus of your life in a lot of ways.

I mean, what are some of what are some of the key takeaways that you've learned when it comes to identifying either the meaning or actual occurrences of coincidences or synchronicity. Oh, gosh, I know there's a lot, but give me your highlights. I'm going to go. I would like to be able to go back to some of the history. Yeah, some of my history in this because I think it informs an answer to your question. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because what happened when I walked into the house and took that asset for the first time in 1965. Her name was Jean Breit, B-R-A-Y-T-O-N. And I say that because she was, she was trying to start a new branch of the OTO, Alistair Crowley's organization.

So what I got from there was an access to something called Turocards, and Turocards were like new to me, and they had Hebrew on them. And there was something called the Kabbalah. And I never heard of that. I got bar mitzvah and went to Hebrew school. What's this? Where's this Kabbalah in this thing? So I opened my mind up to just a facet of Judaism that I had known before. So I spent a lot of time studying Alistair Crowley's Book of Foth card deck. They sent me Xerox copy. It was black and white. And I just studied them and tried to see how things connected within them. So by looking at those cards, I became more fluid in making connections among and between things.

And that gets closer to the kind of question you ask. It's making connections that don't seem like they are there. But then on a card, they're put together purposefully. So can I then generalize to the real world from what I'm learning from the Turocards? The Turocards taught me a lot. I did Turocard readings. I had a deck in my holster, and I'd pull them out and do readings and see things that would happen. So the cards got me to connect the external with the internal, because the cards were external, and they connected to the internal of the other person. So like the Yi Qing, they were ways of getting into what looked to me like a river, a river of information. The Tao is another name for it, I think, among other things.

And these cards flipped up and became mirrors of what was going on in the present. So the cards became partially an answer to your question about what I've learned, which is that what goes on in your mind and what goes on outside of you are much more related than you realize. Yes, I'm so glad you mentioned this. It constantly reminds me of one of my favorite books, and one of the densest books I've read, which is "Psychian Matter" by Marie Louise von Franz, one of Young's disciples and translators. And it lays out the case, much like you did there, that "Psychian Matter" are not two separate entities. They're interrelated at the fundamental basis of their reality.

And it's interesting that you mentioned tarot cards, because I know my friends who are steeped in that tradition. There's something so powerful about the symbols related specifically to that deck, and creating those connections. I hesitate to say the word "creating." It's kind of unveiling the connections that are already there in much the same way, and I'm glad you mentioned it too. The "e-ching," which is an incredibly powerful tool for use for divination, but also for ascertaining aspects of reality that aren't clearly visible to us. So I think it's really cool that you're in the OTO. Did you get initiated into the lodge?

Yep. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Out in the desert. It's another experience. Back to the cards and "e-ching," what I learned and what you're highlighting is that it's not about learning the future. I mean, even though it's there, it's about how does it work? How do these cards work? It raises the question that you're answering. There's some kind of relationship between our mind and what's supposedly around us. That concept alone is just radical, right? I mean, it's just not how we typically operate in life, walking through it, our experiences, our relationships. We're very Newtonian. We're very logical. At least we like to think we are analytical in terms of how we approach the world.

But if there is this kind of connection between us all, and furthermore, there are modalities in which we can kind of get some illumination on those things, that kind of changes the whole landscape of what this world and reality is. How has that influenced your life and work? This is a relatively young age in your life where you're getting exposed to this stuff, and you're also in the process of going to medical school. How did you hold all of this stuff in your mind as you moved through the traditional process of becoming an MD? Well, I had to figure out what happened in LA, take an asset throughout guards and stuff.

And it happened that I went to a talk at Yale during my second year where somebody was talking about the Good Friday experiment. And I thought that was interesting. The Good Friday experiment for our listeners was a 1961 Boston Cambridge, where the Divinity student named Walter Panky did his dissertation based on an event he created on Good Friday, where they gave 10 people psilocybin and 10 people nicotinic acid, and measured whether or not they had a mystical experience. And 10 out of 10 on psilocybin did, as the service came through, they were in the basement of a church. And one out of the 10 got a contact high in the nicotinic acid group. And so I was interested in that.

And the guy mentioned that the supervisor of that study, a psychiatrist named Jerry Clareman, had come to Yale from Harvard. And I knocked on his door and said, "Hey, Jerry, I was out there in LA and it took some acid." And I heard there's this Good Friday experiment. He says, "What do you learn? What did you learn?" I learned that there were dumb goys, there were Jews, and there were smart goys, which still is amazing for what I'm thinking about it. But that's what I said. And he said, "Okay." And so I said, "I'd like to go work with Panky." And I got money from Yale again to go to Boston to look at data that Panky and his colleagues had put together, giving psilocybin at Mass Metal Hospital rather than in a church, under guided influences.

Two people in a room, a rose and some Vivaldi or something, and psilocybin. And they had data, and I looked at the data and wanted to ask a question. Was there a relationship between their expectation for what would happen, and their experience for what would happen? And yes, there was. And I needed a research assistant, and I happened to see a young woman, 19, across a crowded room in Cambridge near Harvard Square, and got her phone number somehow, and went over, and it was something that happened between the two of us. And her parents introduced, I didn't met her parents, and her parents told her what I was doing.

And I said, "Jerry Clareman is my supervisor." And they said, "We know Jerry Clareman." That's a confirming coincidence. Those things, without going through it too much, happened to me. It's another coincidence, but I was used to those things happen. I kind of expected them. I still was surprised. And so I did that, and then the next summer I went around the world, went to East Pakistan, and worked at a Colorado Research Laboratory, and went into the Himalayas, and saw the world. And that was expansive also. Those three summers at Yale were very much a part of what we're talking about, where I was able to expand my consciousness in various ways.

I love that there's those multiple different kind of broad perspectives you can get from each of those. I mean, it's a very well-rounded kind of introduction into kind of mind-expanding concepts or experiences, which I don't think everyone necessarily gets the benefit of. What I'm struck by particularly is how well the kind of time-off and leniency that Yale provided you really helped you develop kind of a strong basis for investigating this stuff as you went on. You mentioned something that struck me too, which is this idea of kind of expecting those types of things to happen. And I've noticed this as well. I don't know if it's directly related to the act of surrender, but it does seem to be tangentially related to it, which is when you kind of expect these things to happen, not in a desirous or expectant way, but just that it's probably going to happen.

It does seem that the synchronicities and coincidence proliferate. Do you have any thoughts on why that is? Yeah. It's being relaxed in the world. And whatever word we mean by open. And there's a kind of a trust that this weirdness happens. And I have not been a highly social person. I've enjoyed my own company. I like thinking. I've written several books on psychotherapy and then a bunch of other books. And I like studying the brain. I've been a student for a long time. So being a psychiatrist, you become a student of the people who walk into your office. They become teachers also. And Jungians like to say that your problems walk into the office.

And that's that I found to be true. Not always, but sometimes. And there's reasons for it. So that was a continuation of what you're so nicely summarizing as my education into coincidences. That it wasn't just to row cards to be able to look at. It was the people I saw in my office to look at. Right. Right. Which implies a fundamental relationship between those things too to begin with. And I mean, I love the idea. I mean, something that it's funny, speaking of synchronicity, for my podcast today, I just released an episode with someone I did called student verse teacher. And one of the things we were discussing in the episode was how do you maintain a level of ethical responsibility and authenticity as you move into the world of consciousness as a business or as a part of your livelihood.

And I know a lot of people are meditation teachers, yada, yada, yada. And what he said struck me and it relates directly to what you said, which is he still considers himself a student. He says as long as he maintains this idea of being a student, whether it's beginner's mind or needing to go on 30 day of a passion of retreats to kind of just stabilize himself. The moment he switches into saying, yeah, I'm going to teach a meditation course, which he doesn't do, he says that cuts off an avenue of growth for your ability to understand something you're interested in. And I think it's so important because I think we live in a day and age, especially with social media and just everyone can be an expert on everything, that people are rushing to position themselves as the source for this.

And I think this is a very interesting person who knows about this. And it really does. It cuts an individual off to so many facets of understanding. And I mean, again, I think this is a reason that while we kind of have come at these topics from different angles, we resonate is because I very much sense your openness and willingness to be a student for all of these phenomena. And that's like kind of the prereq for actually making any progress into understanding them. So I love that you brought that up. You've been a believer and you've got to teach to learn as well. There is something about stimulating students that increases my own learning.

But it still has to be that I'm trying to learn something. That's the thing. It's not to say that teaching is bad and no one should ever be a teacher and that no one ever can become an authority on something. That dynamic kind of interplay, exactly what you're describing that when you have a skill set and you're teaching someone else to do it, you immediately get better at it. The more you do it, the better you'll get when you're teaching someone else. So it's kind of this acknowledgement and receptivity of being a student while being a teacher and your student being your teacher while you're being a student.

So it is something though I think that is critically important and shows the flexibility of mind that I think is sorely lacking in kind of today's discussion about this stuff. And I appreciate hearing you talk about this and kind of like I'm trying to learn. It's my pursuit to find out about why coincidence is happening. Something else you said earlier also struck me about the ambiguity. There's a lot of that for a minute because I want to respond to the teacher thing because I think they miss the subtlety of the interaction between teacher and student. When people contact me about coincidences, I can become a coincidence counselor.

These are people who are really caught up in a lot of coincidences and don't know what to do with them. And I think coincidence counseling can become a subset of counseling from what I'm seeing. And when I do that, what I realize is that I know some things. I know some things that I can tell them about what's going on with them. But then they have to use that principle that I can see going on with them to apply it themselves. So there's a place at which they're independent of me and I see what happens, but I can provide something that works for them. Yes, yes, yes. And I think that is kind of the best teacher, right?

One who can provide knowledge, information, wisdom or support for someone recognizing that they're ultimately going to have to take that and do something with it to be effective, right? That is where I think that that true and kind of honorable and ethical approach is at odds with a lot of the time of people saying, "Hey, here's the quick fix. I got the answers." And that's what I'm kind of contrasting here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and give me the money. And what you're talking about is really, really important. I'm glad to be articulating that with you, Noah. That you, I do have something that teachers do have something, but you have to then let them, let them, not, it's more than let them, but let them do it themselves.

You can't take over it. I've got a patient I was seeing for maybe five, six years, and I realized, finally, I have to let her go. She was very dysfunctional and interpersonally, and I have been like feeding her information as she needed it. And then I started being able to more and more tune into what my feelings are. And this is part of this whole process. I think you probably know it. Is to be able to fine tune the feelings so that you know which ones to pay attention to, which ones to help direct you. So I had this feeling, I'm getting tired talking with her in a way that I haven't been before.

I think I'm putting out energy that is not necessary. And I told her that. And she's going with it because it's that time to let go of being the one who knows to the one who does. Yes, yes, yes. I think that's really, I mean, what an astute observation to, which is this idea of, you know, mindfulness, typically the connotation is paying attention to these ideas and thoughts. But equally is important is being able to drop into a contemplative state related to your feelings and intuition. And that is something that we're not necessarily, excuse me, taught within school, right? We don't have the feelings class.

We don't have the intuition class. We don't have the how do you drop in and, you know, ascertain what's going on from like a felt standpoint. But it's something that's abundantly critical, right? I mean, that that really can get you to the heart of what's important or what action to take in some ways that the intellect can, or you passing on information to a patient where it's just kind of bouncing off or the energetic equivalent of a whole in a bucket. So I love that you've kind of, you're cluing into this and you're clued into that because, you know, typically with psychiatrists, not all psychiatrists, but it is a clinical and kind of empirical study often.

And it's hard to pin down feelings sometimes, right? I think the Buddhists have like 86,000 different types of feelings or something. And it's like, it's pretty crazy. So, yeah, I love that you brought that up because it's something that I've been subscribing to more and more and kind of letting not lead every one of my decisions, but at least passing it through that filter and not just kind of intellectualizing and analyzing things and just going only from that perspective. Great. That's what I'm doing. Yeah. And the way I verbalize this is that if my rational mind can tell me I shouldn't do it for a good reason, I won't do it. But if my feeling is that I should do it, like just contacting someone today, I didn't have a good reason not to.

Yeah. And I did. And it was a good thing to have done at the time that I did it. And I'm doing that more and more, being able to just, okay, I feel like doing this now. It seems like a cogent, real feeling that I can trust. Let me do it. I called up a friend of mine. It's hard to get to see. He's very busy and said, look, I got 20 minutes. I'd like to see you for 20 minutes. How about if I, you know, let's get together. Can you do that now? And he just laughed. After the text message, he called me up and says, Dr. Coincidence, he said, Dr. Coincidence, you just call and texted me at just the right time when I had 20 minutes.

Come on over. After it was, he says, do it again. Do that again. He really liked that. That's so important. And when you ask me, what have I learned from all this? It's to be able to sharpen, hone, trust these intuitive messages that we get. And what would you say to someone, granted, this is probably not going to be people listening to this podcast, but we'll play devil's advocate. What would you say to someone who's like, well, that's all well and good. Intuition is a good thing. But, you know, in the real nuts and bolts of the world, you can't trust your intuition all the time. What would you say is kind of the practical benefit or counter to that mode of thinking?

That rationality has its limitations, that you can't make some decisions just by going down a list of pros and cons that feelings need to come to the decision making table. I love that. It's something I really, I haven't heard it a lot. I saw psychologists and psychiatrists from a relatively early age. My parents got divorced. They wanted to make sure that I was coping fine. I was probably acting like a little kid in a while, but it's understandable. So I've seen them a lot. And what has always struck me is kind of this not always stated, but at least underlying sense that there is a right way and a wrong way to process whether it be trauma, intense experiences, psychological disturbances, where it kind of omits some of those feelings from being allowed in and parsed is true. No matter how kind of cockamamie they can seem at times, there is validity to them.

Talk a little bit, though, from your standpoint of when to trust the feeling as opposed to recognizing that maybe your feeling is born out of something not directly related to the event that's happening or circumstances, but it's kind of an overpowering feeling that kind of can color decision making, because I'm sure you experienced that as well. Absolutely. And that's an important distinction to make. Why don't you answer that question? Because I think you've got some answers to that. I mean, truthfully, in my experience, I mean, I have a lot of experience with overpowering emotions, particularly related to anger and impatience, and it's usually reserved for either my immediate family and friends or people on the road, but I'm driving.

But other than that, I usually it doesn't come out. And I noticed a common theme when I do kind of get upset, whether I act on it or not, that it feels kind of like this lizard-like part of my brain, right? The amygdala is this super powerful force that once this tripwire hits, it's almost like I don't have control anymore. Whereas when I drop into a more intuitive kind of felt subtle sense of feeling, it's I wouldn't necessarily say clearer, but it doesn't feel as omnipresent and dominating, right? It feels kind of like a subtle tug that maybe you can tune into and feels a little more pronounced, but it's not something that's as heavy as kind of a very all-consuming emotion, like jealousy or greed or anger.

And I do use that somewhat as a barometer, but obviously, I mean, I wouldn't claim to have it all figured out from an emotional standpoint, so take it with a grain of salt. But yeah. That is a very good distinction there. No, the intensity. It's not 100%. But when it's really strong, be careful, be more careful than when it's more subtle. Yeah. That is, I agree with that. I hadn't thought of that. If I would have started talking, I wouldn't have thought of that one. But that's right. And one of my favorite ones to pay attention to besides anger is jealousy. Jealousy is a big problem for human beings. It appears. And to be able to let go of jealousy is to be allowing yourself to be freer than I had realized before.

Jealousy has a couple of things with it. It means I own you. It also means I don't trust our relationship. Yes, yes, yes. And it also means that I need to control you. And those three things are really fun to give up. That's a great way of putting it. That's a really good way of putting it, actually. Thanks. I mean, it's true, right? I mean, jealousy also comes in a lot of different permutations, right? It can be an envy type jealousy of you're seeing what someone else has and you want it to or it can be a possessive, like you mentioned type jealousy where you have something and you think someone else wants it or someone else is doing something.

You know, it's a common powerful emotion that I know in my life that when I've been very jealous at times, I have no clarity whatsoever. It's like the number one determining factor as to whether I'm making competent and cogent decisions is if I'm clouded by jealousy, they're almost certainly to be wrong. Like there's no, I've not made good decisions under that mind state. Is that, I mean, give me a broader kind of clinical practice. You know, it's rare that I actually get to speak to a practicing psychiatrist, you know, outside of a psychiatric office. But what are the main themes that you see people come in to your office about generally?

Anger, I mean, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder. And do you think there's a common thread at the root of each of those respectively or in general? Anger, anger, anger. And it's not always, but anger is a big one. A lot of anxious people ahead when yesterday was afraid of her anger, just really terrified. And being afraid of her anger, she gets anxious very easily because she gets angry sometimes. She can't experience it. Yeah, it's crazy to me that everyone on Earth here for the most part seems to have the same set of problems, maybe in different shades and degrees, but I find that very curious from a metaphysical standpoint in terms of what's going on.

So, to crack that note open up a little more, I mean, what do you think having had your life, your experiences, a substantial time to review and put thoughts together on this subject? Like, what do you think, not from only an individual standpoint, from a collective standpoint, what do you think cosmologically this Earth reality is? What are we here for? And I recognize I'm not holding you and pinning you down to an answer. This is speculative as much as anything else, but what's your kind of take on what's going on here? That's a great question, Noah. It's a great question. Because I've been trying to figure that out too.

Yeah. That's how I ask it. That's an important thing. And I'm writing a book that for the general audience, more than my previous one, it's going to be a lot simpler, not a lot of meta stuff, just kind of nuts and bolts stuff. In the future chapter, at the end of it, it's going to be like to answer that question. What are we doing here? It's a question people have been asking for a long time. And sometimes I like to say to a few friends, and I can say it on this podcast and see what happens. That I think I'm an intergalactic agent. And that is a position from which one can look at Earth. It's a place to stand as Archimedes once said, give me a place to stand and I can move the world.

The idea that you can step back and look. So from that perspective of an intergalactic agent, what is this planet for? Well, the biggest product that we can see at this time is human awareness. And if you believe in a teleological universe that we're drawn towards some future, which I kind of do sometimes, that this consciousness is part of an evolution that somehow is leading to some more steps, some more things happening. And what are the more things happening? Well, I can't get away from the idea that we could really be having a lot of fun on Earth. This is a paradise, potentially, that we haven't recognized is here. I mean, some people say it, but how to do it? How to make it so that, hey, baby, jump over here.

You can do some dancing, you can do some singing, do some learning. I think this is a place to learn and have fun. It's the learning entertainment place. And that's not for everybody. And that's what intrigues me. That's not everybody. I think there's a kind of exclusiveness or separation from those who want to have this place be what I'll call Earth University, a place where we can learn and have fun learning and have fun and learn from fun. It's not the way we usually think about it. Fun can be very educational. And it could be for lots of people if they wanted. But there are all these things that get in the way. Greed is one of the bigger ones these days and not recognizing what we have here.

And it's so simple to say and so accurate that it's this Yang destruction of the feminine that is represented by the Earth and represented by the women around us that is starting to change, I can see in younger women, and has to change. This this macho thing has a place, but it shouldn't be as dominant. And that has that yin and yang has to come back together again, but with what purpose so that we can keep making this place a great place to be. On the other hand, sometimes I think this is a place of constant duality. It's night and day, sun and moon, male and female. There's all this duality that's hard to do something with.

Maybe it's a way station to some other consciousness. I like that idea too. It's so interesting hearing you kind of explain your perspective on this because it's very much aligned with how I view the world. It's something that I hear more and more, not only in terms of good, this realities function and reality place, but also this idea that we are witnessing kind of a shift in rebalancing of these energies and agreed that it's not that we don't want male energy or aggressive macho stuff. There is certainly a time and place for that, but it's been so out of whack that we're kind of seeing the scales be shifted back to hopefully a sense of equilibrium, even if the pendulum swings back the other way a little bit at first.

I really, it's so encouraging to hear that independent of each other, people are coming to these realizations, which really, for me at least, gives it a lot more weight and credibility. It's one thing to have these ideas as you know, even if you feel them in your soul as an individual. Even if you've come to them through many experiences that are inexplicable, that there's no logic in the way it could actually work that way, but you come to these things when you hear other people through a completely different set of circumstances with maybe some similarities, some differences, come to the same conclusion.

I find that to be very profound and meaningful, just because it really does get created into this idea of consciousness, kind of proliferating and expanding through time and this teleological sense that you're mentioning, which I also, at times, you know, very much feel, you know, it does certainly feel that we are being drawn to some future state of maybe open possibilities, but that we have an active role in shaping as well. So, I just love that you put it together so succinctly in that it really resonates with me on a very deep level. And I'm very happy to hear that you are finding not only you, but other people thinking this way. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I can safely say no bullshit that a lot of people, a lot, a lot of different types of people kind of subscribing to this and surprising people, too, right? I mean, looking at the cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, you could easily find like, well, this person is not going to subscribe to this idea, but no lo and behold, you know, from the backwoods and swamplands to the urban kind of city dwellers like there are people who are really cluing into this idea. So I just love it, man. I got to wrap up. I got to get my son. I know, and I want to go to the future with you and get out of here because I got to go to, but the future that what I have been doing is fairly isolated in a sense from other people and getting support from other people from it. But my experiences are with the support that I have. My passion, my belief, so I'm going to finish this popular book, I call it in a couple of months, and I'm going to be ready to get out there and try to be part of a movement that we're talking about and make it more palpable, make it more real.

What are some of your ideas about what that movement can look like and what my role in it might be? Yeah, man. I mean, as I think we spoke about author last time, I mean, truthfully, I really think that this is something that is taking shape this year. Even in subsequent conversations since I last spoke to you, a lot of people are putting me in touch with people or finding me or I found them and I reach out, and it seems like something is brewing and kind of coalescing as we speak. My role, I know that something that I've been able to do successfully and help people with is amplify voices that I think are powerful, resonant, but also authentic. I mean, because it's very easy in this world to kind of ape other people and say things that, you know, sound good and people get attracted to.

But I do believe dropping into kind of that intuitive aspect of being that if you put enough of those people in touch with each other, if you start kind of doing community-based events around these topics and just good people getting together in space and time, that seems to be where it's moving for. I mean, I can say this related to your writings and your books and anything you want to do, let me know. I mean, I say the same thing to every single person and some people take me up on it and some don't. I am literally, I have an open door policy with people who are doing this stuff. Like, I am, it is my, I do view it partially as my job and responsibility to amplify these voices and make sure a different subset of people who may be, you're normally reaching out to hear what you're talking about because it's important. It really is. So that's, that's what I can offer at this point.

I wish I had more concrete. That's good idea. That's good enough. But, but I started thinking as you were talking of Bill Graham, I used to do the Fillmore in San Francisco. He was a producer. He produced shows. And that's what you began to sound like, a show producer. God help me. Well, I probably will. Probably will. So I end with three questions, three quick ones, and then one open ended one. So here we go. What is your favorite color? Purple. Nice. What is your favorite number? 23. Yeah. What is your favorite animal? Dogs. But, but I, but I would add trees. Oh, trees. I communicate with trees too. So that is such a good answer. And I think it's the first time anyone said it and I totally accept it and endorse it.

Last question. What's a practical tip that's helped you in your life that you could share with people who are listening? Could be anything. Keep honing your intuition. I love it. I love it. Bernie. Thank you so much for doing this. If people want to find out more about your show or you just give them a quick kind of little where they find out more about you. I have links and everything to, of course, but where could people go if they they've been digging this and want to dig a little deeper into Bernie and his excitement. Just put connecting with coincidence in your web browser and you'll come up with my radio show, my website, my book, and my psychology today blog. I love it. Thanks so much for coming on, man. I really had a great time.

Thank you for having me on. No, it's great. Talk with you. All right. We'll talk again soon. All right. Bye-bye. And that's the root of the norm. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Thanks for listening past the music. Go check out Dr. Bightmancoincider.com and the Connecting with Coincidence radio show, just a really pleasant fellow. I just had some cool experiences and a really cool guy. Nice to talk to you. Someone, one of his former people he's connected with through his show, you know, reached out to me who had had similar experience to me with synchronicities and manic states.

And it was a very informative conversation. It's really interesting to hear people and a lot of people continue to reach out. And if you're a listener of the show and you've reached out recently and I haven't gotten back to you, let me clarify. Because I've gotten some pretty extensive long emails from people. And I used to just right back. Thank you. Yadda yadda yadda. But now when you're sharing some personal things, I like to take the time to actually respond thoughtfully. And, you know, if there's something that I think I can offer in terms of perspective, I will do that. So if I haven't been back, it's just, it's truthfully.

I'm just writing, waiting for the right circumstances to emerge to get to that email. They are seen. They are heard. You know, sometimes I'm getting more open to the idea of being patient and waiting for the right conditions to emerge before doing certain things. And that is what that category is in. But of course, don't think I am ignoring you because I am not. Okay, that's it. And I will see you next week.