Brain Health & The Eternal Witness

What happens to the human soul when the physical brain begins to unravel? Is a person their diagnosis, their memories, and their ego—or is there a silent, untouched awareness sitting behind the hardware of the mind?

In this groundbreaking episode, Swami Purnananda, a Vedantic Monk, sits down with Dr. Yasoda-Mohan for a profound dialogue at the confluence of modern neuroscience and ancient Vedantic philosophy. Moving far beyond the rigid constraints of 17th-century materialism, they explore dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease not just as tragic biological organ failures, but through a deeply spiritual, holistic lens.

Together, they bridge the gap between hard clinical realities - like the vivid dreams of Lewy Body dementia - and the ultimate timeless truth: that while the physical lightbulb may flicker and fade, the foundational electricity of pure cosmic consciousness remains entirely flawless, whole, and beautiful.

If you are a caregiver, a medical researcher, a seeker of truth, or someone navigating the heavy waters of cognitive decline, this conversation is an invitation to step away from the panic of trying to "fix" and step into the radical, compassionate space of holding presence.

📌 Key Topics Explored in This Episode:
The Willpower Fallacy: Why behavior in dementia is a structural organ failure (like a heart pump), entirely divorced from a patient's character or willpower.

The Splitting Lens: How space, time, and dimensional deficiency fracture our perception of a single, unified cosmic totality.

The Three States of Consciousness: Exploring the waking state (Vishwa), the dream state (Hiranyagarbha), and the deep sleep of pure, unbothered peace (Sat-Chit-Ananda).

Decolonizing Medicine: Merging modern Western allopathic care with thousands of years of indigenous knowledge systems, from the Amazon rainforest to Ayurveda.

Naturopathic Rapture: Shifting medicine from "diagnosing inherent brokenness" to identifying and removing lifestyle obstacles so the body’s natural harmony can thrive.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Well, happily I'm joined by Anusha Mohan, who is uh currently managing uh a national dementia research program called Emerald Louis, funded by the Health Research Board aiming to improve diagnosis and management for people with Lewy body dementia. Um but also, of course, I should mention that she has a bachelor's and master's degree in biomedical engineering. I should mention that she has a doctorate in uh communication sciences and disorders, specializing in order to neuroscience and tinnitus. But she has abiding interest in brain health and communicating all that to the public, and we hope to discuss some of that. And uh so she is the co-founder of a creative workshop called Brain for Movement, which is teaching complex neuroscience topics to primary school children through creative movement. I have to say, when I first met her, she described herself not of any of these things, but as a dancer. So I take you as a dancer, all right. Uh but I think you have shifted your focus from um to litists and so on uh to be part of the global brain health leaders scheme, is that right? Uh by the Alzheimer's Association, the Alzheimer's Society UK, and also the Global Brain Health Institute. So, and you have an office uh as it were in um Trinity College there.

SPEAKER_04 1:55

Yeah, that is correct. But I'm I've not so much shifted my focus, uh Zwamiji. I think it's more it's an expansion of the focus, if you may, because uh there's quite a bit of research that uh suggests that there is a connection between uh hearing disorders and dementia. Uh and so I've sort of widened my focus to look at brain health and its relationship with auditory disorders. So I've not left tinnitus. Tinnitus is still is still my passion, and there's there's definitely work going on uh in tinnitus as well, but but more so widened that focus into the dementia.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Now, broadly speaking, um uh for in kind of a lay audience, you know, we talk about Alzheimer's, we talk about dementia as if we understood the whole thing and we don't so maybe a brief summary of what is the distinction between Alzheimer's and dementia. Um I mean, I my understanding is that uh Alzheimer's is to do with uh proteins in the brain cells, that kind of thing, amyloid uh giving flex and so on. And uh diodes as it call, I think, which forms a kind of neurological tangle or something like that in the cells. But and causing damage and loss. But uh if you could give a nice summary, um, including, you know, who might be at risk in terms of age range and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04 3:25

So that's yeah, that's a great start. Um Alzheimer's is not the same as dementia. I think that's one of the first things that we should say. Dementia is more of an overarching umbrella term for uh loss of cognitive function, uh, it can be um thinking, it can be um planning and executing tasks in everyday life, uh, dressing, uh it can also be memory, uh, it can also be um other kinds of cognitive faculties that uh decline. I think it's best to begin with um the uh the thought and the concept that Alzheimer's disease is not the same as dementia. Dementia is bigger than Alzheimer's disease, dementia is uh a broader, overarching term for uh the loss of cognitive faculties, and that can be thinking, that can be memory, planning and executing everyday activities, uh washing, dressing, um, and just moving through the world on an everyday basis. Um but Alzheimer's is one form of dementia, and dementia is progressive, it's neurodegenerative, meaning that people will get worse by the definition of the disease itself. Um, Alzheimer's, as you mentioned, is one kind of dementia. It involves uh uh the accumulation of misfolded proteins, as you said, um uh amyloid and how-tang angles uh in the brain. So that's one kind of protein that's that can get misfolded. And the reason I think we have this uh conflation of the terms Alzheimer's disease and dementia is because Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia. It affects about 60% of people with dementia, 60 to even maybe 70%. So another very common form of dementia is Lewy body dementia. And Lewy body dementia is a misfolding of other kinds of proteins called Lewy bodies, and Lewy bodies can accumulate in the brain, it can accumulate in the body, and so depending upon where it accumulates, it has different kinds of symptoms. Lewy body dementia is also very different from Alzheimer's dementia. Um Lewy bodies can start either as everybody knows Parkinson's disease, so it can start as Parkinson's disease, and currently the research states that anywhere between 60 to 80 percent of people with Parkinson's disease can progress. They don't have to, but they could progress into having dementia. So Parkinson's disease, as people know, is a motor dysfunction. People have rigidity in motor uh abilities, they are unable to walk, they have constipation, swallowing issues. Uh, but usually people don't present with changing cognitive faculties or dementia. But, you know, it's could so there is um after about 20, 30 years, people could present with cognitive difficulties. Um, and this is called Parkinson's disease, dementia. But sometimes um these misfolded proteins called Lewy bodies can accumulate in the brain, and a lot of the symptoms don't involve memory loss. So in Alzheimer's disease, one of the main uh symptoms is memory loss. It starts as memory loss, people forgetting the names of everyday objects, people forgetting to turn off the stove, or people forgetting uh people leaving their keys somewhere and not remembering it, people forgetting the names of, and usually, oh, you know the you know that thing that we put on um this and we uh we use it to clean our teeth. What is it? So that's usually so they can't remember the name of toothpaste or they can't say toothbrush. So that's usually how Alzheimer's starts with these loss of memories. But dementia with Louis bodies or Louis body dementia, um uh dementia, especially dementia with Louis bodies can start with hallucinations, starts with um delusions and changes in reality of the world. Uh, it can start with uh sleep disorders, people kicking in their sleep.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

So if I can ask, is there any correlation with uh schizophrenic states and this?

SPEAKER_04 7:44

No, schizophrenia is a completely different um psychiatric psychiatric condition. Schizophrenia is not neurodegenerative, so it's there is a loss of reality, there is a loss of um people hear voices, uh, people usually don't see things, but very commonly, but they can. But and that's and you've pointed out one of the major challenges that you know people, especially when they present with hallucinations and delusions, they go to a psychiatrist and they can be misdiagnosed to have a psychiatric disease where you've not taken other things into consideration. So one of the worst things that you can do for someone with dementia with Lewy bodies or Lewy body dementia is to prescribe uh certain uh antipsychotics which can be quite fatal and can um you know and can deteriorate people quite quickly. So it's important for us to for for especially clinicians to understand the difference between what uh uh general psychosis and uh uh psychosis due to dementia with Lewy bodies, and there's different ways of um uh um differentiating the two.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Okay. So if if somebody is seeing the symptoms or relatives even are seeing symptoms of let us say um dementia, what should they do? What is the first kind of action?

SPEAKER_04 9:13

The first protocol is to go to a GP, and um I think there's quite a bit of awareness in uh within gender practition amongst gender practitioners to um spot um signs of Alzheimer's disease for sure. Um other forms of dementia that don't look like Alzheimer's is a little bit more tricky. Uh but the first protocol is to go to the GPE, and the GP usually makes a referral to a neurologist or a psychiatrist or a geriatrician, and then we and then they take it from there.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Okay, so if we look at the Global Brain Health Institute and the programs that are going on there, uh what kinds of programs are going on there?

SPEAKER_04 9:56

So the Global Brain Health Institute is a gift from Chuckfini, um, who founded the uh who's one of the founding fathers of the duty-free stores across the world. So anybody who goes on um goes on the airplane and moves through duty-free do remember uh Chuckfini and his contribution towards the society. And he is one of those people uh whose mantras is um giving while living. And he was he is a great uh philanthropist who is not with us anymore. Um but Chuck Feeney uh founded many programs around the world, of which uh one of it is the Global Brain Health Institute, and we assist the programs in Trinity College Dublin and University of California in San Francisco. Um the Global Brain Health Institute is um the goal is to train leaders across the world uh about brain health and particularly responding to inequities in brain health. Inequities in brain health can look like um people living in um people living in very um uh desperate conditions, whether it is socioeconomically desperate con socioeconomically um uh poor or it is uh because of a lack of nutrition. Or it could be people who equity doesn't always have to look um through a socioeconomic or a societal lens. It could also be certain groups of people who may not be immediately thought of as uh having a brain health issue or having a risk of uh brain health issue. So it could be people who are living in well-nourished, well um uh who are living in upper middle class communities, but people who have uh people who may have had um uh a head injury or and who look okay now, or people who have lower body dementia, or even people who have tinnitus, for example, and who have anxiety and depression, and who may not, and there's there's definitely a certain aspect of stigma around a lot of these conditions, which can prevent people from seeking um help. And so people uh people don't usually talk about depression, and these are not people who are in uh desperate socioeconomic conditions. So it's important to understand, or it's for example, uh people who have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, uh diabetes, and these are not necessarily conditions that happen in low socioeconomic uh um uh conditions. But it's important for us to understand that brain health is not just about um the brain, but it's a holistic uh health where the the connection between the mind and or the brain and the body is uh very actively advocated for, and that it's not just a mask floating on the top of your head, but that it's connected with the body and what happens in the body affects the brain.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Okay, now where does your dance come into this?

SPEAKER_04 13:07

Dance is um, well, there's different aspects in which dance comes into this. I think from a health perspective, uh, dance is an Arabic activity. So, and dance or there's very little understanding of why people want to engage in dance rather than engage in, let's say, a physical activity or a cardio activity. But it is, we do see that people, when there is a certain social aspect to it, when there's an enjoyment aspect to it, people are definitely more inclined to stick to cardio routines, which improves heart health, which ultimately improves brain health. So there's a direct health aspect to it just because of dancing. So dance is in in another way, dance is also um it's it's quite fun doing it, and there is um we know that when you dance, it activates some emotional states. And when an emotional state is activated, there is a better chance of holding things in memory. So dance and creative movement also becomes a really interesting space that way for learning because you are activating these emotional states. So it can also be, and I'm a big advocate for using creativity and creative practice in learning in whether it's a school setting, whether it is um whether it is in a community setting, whether it is for adults, whether it is with adults of a certain age, um, it really improves and activates learning. And of course, there is the spiritual aspect of um the mind and the body. For me, per se, as a dancer, it's really the spiritual aspect of it's a form of a meditation, it's um it's it's it's really uh an avenue for me to elevate the mind.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Now you have a uh a kind of an art project going on there uh with a small group of people. Can you do you have an overview of the project?

SPEAKER_04 15:10

I mean there's there's there's a few people, uh there's a few art projects which are going on, especially with Emmerald Lewy. Um uh one of it is uh called the Keepsake Chronicles, where um I mean the the people who are um uh who are curating it's it the it's common knowledge. And currently there is uh an art, there's an exhibition going on in St. James's Hospital. Uh so keepsake Chronicles is uh storytelling through um storytelling of the lives of people with lowy body dementia and other forms of dementia. Uh it gives a voice for the person with dementia. Usually it's a voice that's not heard. Um, the care partner usually talks for the people with dementia because either it's there's a big stigma and there's a huge misunderstanding that people with dementia are not coherent, they don't, they're not talking sense. There's a lot of misconception around it. So uh Kate Irving, who's a professor of nursing, Alex Kornhuber, who's a photographer and fellow of the Global Brain Health Institute, and Kathy Foley, who's a poet, they've created this program called Keepsake Chronicles, where um Kate uh curates the entire thing and she takes care of the ethical aspects of things. Um Kathy interviews people with dementia around and she uh sort of probes stories around a keepsake object that they bring with them. And Alexis is sort of in the background taking pictures of these people while in the movement while they're telling their stories. And Kathy uses this particular method called found poetry, where she writes poems from the words of the people, the words from the interviews, and then there's this beautiful combination of a photograph of the person, a photograph of the object and the poem that becomes a keepsake by itself. And so there's an exhibition of this going on in uh St. James's Hospital, in uh in the Mercers Institute of Successful Aging. It opened last week and it will go on until July 24th. So if people want to go see what this looks like, they can definitely go see this.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

And uh in terms of the participants, what impact has it had on them?

SPEAKER_04 17:27

Oh, it's gorgeous. I mean, it's especially with people with lowy body dementia, um, saying communication through words is a big challenge. And you so usually they don't talk much. Uh, you have to give them time, but they're very present, they're very different from people with Alzheimer's because they're very conscientious, they're very present. Um, the person, even in very quite advanced stages of dementia, the person is still very there. In Alzheimer's it's possible that the person has transformed into they don't know who they are, they don't know who the person is. But with Lewy body dementia, they know who they are, they know the relationship with the other person, but they just don't have a voice because of their uh challenges. So, especially for this person, it was beautiful to see people come alive with their stories and you you learn about people outside of their disorder. There's a person who was a clinical psychologist who funded their uh clinical psychology program by playing music in a band. Uh, there's another person who was a chef, so you really they you can see them reminiscing about their past and about their lives, and they and there is a contribution of knowledge, there's a whole wealth of knowledge in their lived experience. And for them, it's it's a they feel this uh moment of of sharing their stories, which is not related to their disease at all, and this and this moving away of this identity that people in the society see them as people with dementia, but there's so much more than people living with this condition. And there's whole lives and rich lives that they've led, and this is and they feel really happy about sharing these stories about their lives.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

You mentioned uh the connection between hearing loss or hearing difficulties, tinnitus, and uh the onset of dementia or the condition of dementia. Uh why do you think that might be, or is the jury out on that?

SPEAKER_04 19:35

Um there's much more of a connection um that is fully not understood, but definitely evidence for is between hearing loss and dementia. Um because there's multiple different reasons for it. Uh one is that structures of hearing in the brain are directly connected to structures of memory, um, which is the hippocampus. A lot of people would have heard this term hippocampus. It's a seahorse-shaped um structure which holds which um holds memories and stores memories. Um, and one of the things that one of the regions that gets severely disintegrated in Alzheimer's disease. So there's a direct connection to it. So with hearing loss, when you're receiving less input, less sound to the brain, the connection between the two can also get uh degenerated. So that's one of the reasons uh that people think that this might be happening. Another cause is also that with hearing loss comes social isolation, you remove yourself from the society a lot, which can also have a really strong impact on the brain. So these are a couple of reasons um why or how this might happen, but there's a lot of um um uh research that's going into it. The relationship between tinnitus and dementia is not fully clear. It's not we're not very sure if there's a link, but with people with severe tinnitus, you see that they have anxiety, they have depression, they have law, they have changes in attention and cognitive faculties. So it might be an indirect way uh that it may be related, but we don't fully understand. There's no data showing that there's any risk, there's not data showing that there's a link, but that's that's where the research is now moving towards is to try and understand with people, especially with tinnitus, who have hearing loss. Is it the hearing loss? Is it the tinnitus, or what maybe? But that's ongoing research.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

And is there in your uh understanding a link between, and I'm going to include Alzheimer's and dementia as well, although they're different, but um, so Alzheimer's is a form of dementia, so dementia is kind of the overarching term, yes. Yes. So i is there any um any uh proven links or uh data that relates general health conditions?

SPEAKER_04 22:00

in most cases in ch you know to these conditions absolutely so if you look at so there are about 14 factors that have been identified in different stages of life that may prov prev that may present a risk of developing um dementia whether it's Alzheimer's with other forms of dementia it doesn't matter so general all cause dementia as they say and some of it is definitely uh and I can um send you a picture of this if you want to add it into the um the talk itself into the podcast itself so there are about 14 factors of which uh cardiac health is a big one is a big one so hypertension diabetes blood pressure um and physical activity so lack of physical activity is a big big factor into which um can be modified so if someone has not developed dementia then it is possible to um modify these are modifiable risk factors uh diet is a big thing um hearing loss is a big thing um so protecting your hearing protecting uh our vision and mental health so depression anxiety existing conditions can also pose a risk of uh developing dementia so really you know um sort of a holistic whole mind-body approach to managing stress eating well eating healthy wholesome food eating well exercising well and keeping um sort of high keeping cholesterol blood pressure and diabetes under control taking care of our senses because our senses is really the gateway to the world so taking care of our hearing our our vision and also one of the things that doesn't get said enough is social community and social connection and really building that social connection and meaningful social connection. It's not just I have oh yes I have about thousand two thousand followers on Instagram or one million followers on Instagram is is not really what we're talking about here. But really quality social connections where you go engage and do something meaningful is uh also one of the ways of um at least to an extent of course there's a genetic risk for dementia there is a um there's other risks for dementia which is non-modifiable age is one of it but it doesn't mean that just because someone is 80 or 90 or 75 it doesn't mean that they have to develop dementia dementia is not a form of normal or healthy aging it's it's definitely outside of healthy aging it everybody doesn't have to develop dementia. But at the same time dementia is not also a um it has a certain image it's also not a um a disease of the elderly if you may there's young onset dementia is definitely on the rise people who are 45 40 35 even ha show very early forms or very early signs of dementia. So the age of dementia is also coming down um as we speak. So it is important to keep in mind that dementia can happen to anybody it can start at any time uh there's a there's a genetic risk to it but at the same time there's also a good preventable component to it and uh the Livingston paper and I'll send you the image is an image that is that is ingrained in everybody where you can can as a possibility of preventing it up to about 40%. So what is a lot that we can do.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yeah what what has been the impact on you personally working in these areas and also the impact on on others for me personally it's it's a big warning sign.

SPEAKER_04 25:53

Every time every time I eat ice cream I feel a little bit guilty but of course that's not the case but it's it's really a call to it's really a call to take care of my body a little bit better. Eat healthy and move um and that has been it's it's it's something that keeps coming back to me over and over again. But of course we fall into these everyday um activities and people lead stressful lives because we we're all very busy especially at this age especially between 30 and 50 people are extremely busy they have children they're they we want to we want to do something meaningful with our lives and so it gets really hard to think about nutritional balance and and balance of physical health and mental health but it is something that is a calling for me to take care of myself. With respect to others I think it has really opened up my mind in terms of knowing that people can have challenges dementia is a health challenge uh but at the same time it is um it doesn't define a person's identity just because someone has dementia it doesn't mean that we are losing this person their cognitive faculties there there is an aspect of degeneration there is an aspect of care there is an aspect of burden of care that is not talked about a lot um but it doesn't mean that uh this is the end of the life of this person because people with dementia uh lead full lives there is it's not a hopeless condition in the sense that there is a lot that the family and the person can do together and there's ways of coping around it uh and the arts become a very central way of coping around uh dementia now we we we we met in a very different environment first and uh so of course I have a certain outlook on these things um and uh so uh a certain kind of philosophical attitude i i it seems to me would uh assist others uh not uh directly telling me telling them about a a certain approach in life or worldview but just by your demeanor by your behavior by the outpouring of compassion and things like that you know um other other people in this area might not have those kinds of qualities so in your view where does all this kind of fit in the I when you mean this field I don't know which field we're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

No the field that you're in you know which is which is partly to do with communicating interacting research um assisting people in an indirect way and so on you know so all of this this key area of interest you know uh serves to assist people no doubt uh particularly this uh project that you have this exhibition which is currently going on at St. James Hospital but um I think probably in in the health and wellness sector and this is not directly in the health and wellness sector but it has the you know it's involved uh is there a certain approach that would be helpful for people who are doing what you're doing?

SPEAKER_04 29:27

Ah okay wow that's a it's a very deep question um I think for me my practice has been I think there's a lot that I have learned from from Vedanta and from uh from the sort of discernment and detachment to ego that has really helped me navigate this space. And honestly I think um uh there's a lot of of um outpouring of giving that has uh also come from of course people who I work with who are my senior uh who are my seniors in terms of you know people in senior management and leadership have also shown this sort of giving while living and really walking the Feamy way as uh we would say in the Global Brain Health Institute. I think for me the important thing that I keep in mind is that I'm not trying to fix people. I think I'm not trying to heal people I'm not trying to fix people. I think in the either in the health and wellness area or even in the medical sciences area especially with dementia uh one of the things that I have learned from clinicians who are good clinicians as you th they're good clinicians. I mean everybody's trying their best but I think from the people who have a very in-depth knowledge about dementia is really about letting go and letting people and providing space for people to live in the moment and what best we can make of this moment. And there's a certain aspect of dealing with uncertainty because with dementia there's no cure. So you can't make this person better. There are disease modifying therapies that are now coming which can slow down the process of dementia but you cannot cure dementia. Dementia once you have it is something that's inevitable you are the person is going to decline the person will lose faculties the person's uh families are going to suffer in the sense of that it is going to get worse. So there's nothing much that you can do about stopping or curing this person. So all you can do is step back, provide a space and really separate the ego of I and really think about the other person. And that has re- and and that is something central that I have learned and which also is something that I carry with me in other walks of life. And so this sort of healing or fixing this person is is is out and it's it's really about that creating that space and just being there for the person and understanding who this person is and really looking at a person's life outside of a condition. It can be dementia it can be depression it can be disability it can be anything it can be any form. Everybody has a challenge it can be trauma some disabilities you can see some disabilities you cannot see but everybody is living with a challenge and it's really about understanding this person outside of this challenge or with the challenge and kind of bringing this holistic view and just being there for this person as the person needs and meeting them where they are at that given point of time.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

But I think you're struck on well a couple of things firstly it's a good philosophy giving living you know that is a wonderful dictum regardless of the circumstances but also the idea we can never really help somebody our view would be well we can serve on the basis of a fundamental philosophy of holistic approach. Holistic being more than just material holism that is there of course but more deeper than that. On the spiritual level which is the most fundamental level from our point of view uh there there is not only holism there's oneness so that when you understand that the whole approach can change and also in our view the it has an impact without intending to do it what we see as any of these conditions might be incompleteness we might describe it. And when you assert the completeness as a kind of attitude of perfection the perfection according to the deepest practical philosophy that we have has its impact um now people might call that uh spiritual healing they might call it um they might call it miracle or something like that you know if we take the accounts of Jesus for example then we might say oh there's a miracle going on but I don't think that's from Jesus' point of view that's from the observer's point of view external observers from his point of view he only saw the perfection and if he was the embodiment of pure love that love comes through and has its impact even if it is on the social level and all the understandings the empathic understandings that you brought up because of as you said there's a social dimension to this there's a physical dimension to this there's a neurological dimension to this and there is also the idea of not understanding from the person's point of view because what does it feel like it applies to any condition if you don't have it. What does it feel like to have this um so uh the these are some of the approaches that our philosophy helps helps to deal with it yeah I mean there are vast institutions uh dedicated to to social works and so on and social and educational works philanthropic works and so on but we don't take it as philanthropy we take it as we take it as an opportunity a privilege actually to recognize the divinity there in the other and with that attitude do whatever's necessary whatever the natural response is to it I uh of course deliberately involve myself in naturopathy and so in in um doing taking measures preventative measures if you will for any conditions such as this um the the uh naturopathic approach which could also be called the yogic approach assumes that things are well it doesn't assume the opposite it doesn't assume things are bad and we have to correct it it assumes things are good perfect as they are we didn't notice it and when we reach out with compassion and penetrate penetrating vision and get to the essence of what is the other person and what is nature itself we have every confidence that nature knows exactly what it's doing and without our interference. In fact when we interfere we create a discord nature's working in perfect harmony it doesn't judge things in terms of harmony and discord part of its overall harmony is the pluses and minuses of it. You know we had an earlier discussion you know why do earthquakes happen and you why not? Nature is like that you know it's rough it's not meant to be smooth. Otherwise there's no contrast and in the moral and spiritual life of a person without that contrast you don't know what's good. You don't know what's moral you don't know what we should be doing. So all of the uh background to all scriptures regardless of religion will be to assert there is a difficulty somewhere but it's not inherent. It's just on the surface acting as an obstacle but from the divine point of view there are no obstacles actually so we just didn't view it from God's throne if you want to put it poetically we we looked at it from our point of view. So with that um I would I would assume that if it's consistent with our philosophy that that assists in people who are um have this condition of Alzheimer's dementia and any allied thing um so uh the body knows what to do if live free I suppose the difficulty is that our way of living our lifestyle uh is such and when I say lifestyle I'm also talking about uh the approach to life the how we view life and the way we view life is increasingly stressful and stress has an immediate impact on us. Absolutely absolutely yeah it's increasingly stressful because we are much more in touch with the world news and the goings on around us we're not sitting in blissful ignorance of whatever it is you know thousands of years ago people would have blissful in be blissfully ignorant about the wars in Gaul you know the Gallic wars and so on and the brutality happening there.

SPEAKER_04 39:06

So there's nothing new in human behavior although you'd think there was except that it works in both ways that is that we are also seeing things such as you've mentioned that there's an increased understanding that there are new methods that can be employed that there are more enlightened understandings of it as opposed to maybe 100 years ago where maybe people suffering from Alzheimer's would have been put into a mental institution or something you know it's very it's very it's it's very possible and I think a lot and and there's we've definitely taken a lot of strides in at least in terms of Alzheimer's to and in terms of dementia even per se as an overarching term. We don't really we don't fully understand what dementia looks like because it's so different um because Alzheimer's looks a certain way body dementia looks a certain way there's vascular dementia there's frontotemporal dementia so all of these different kinds of dementia look different. Plus we have this image in our head that dementia is for an older person. Parkinson's is an older man who is a is a who has a walking stick but it doesn't have to be there are very young women uh particularly a person who is a v who's a big advocate for uh women in uh women having Parkinson's disease uh not not necessarily dementia but just Parkinson's disease as is uh and who was diagnosed with Parkinson's when she was thirty two before she had a first child or maybe the second child but before she had a baby. So it's the I think it's it's n it's important for us to understand that there's to to remove this this misconception of this image that we have in our head, which is also fed a little bit by media as well. So that it's not it's not necessarily an older person's disorder but younger people can have it as well. It's not necessarily a man women can have it as well. Um so I think it's important to understand this this bigger picture and that it's not a it's a brain condition and I think there's w a colleague from the art world who told me Anusha I think it's really important that people understand this is this is not just a mental health thing but it's a brain health thing that the brain is actively degenerating. It's it's exactly like heart health that the heart is a pump and it has you know it has mechanical difficulties. In the same way the brain is an organ where it can lose its cells and because the brain loses faculty that people people's behavior is different and people the way people present is different. It's not we it's not willpower it's not something that people can control. And so I think that all of that brings a certain level of understanding that okay this is an actual thing that happens in the brain and not just oh they're they're behaving a certain way because they they they just they are just inappropriate.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

It it's it's but of course uh during our conversation you did uh use in one sentence uh brain mind yeah okay I did I I I picked up on that a little bit I know I know so because um that's a huge issue of course uh which involves a whole uh new kind of science that incorporates neurology incorporates psychology incorporates philosophy uh consciousness studies and so on and but what you've highlighted is the fact that uh the brain is uh it's a physiological organ like any other organ a highly complicated computer like uh entity uh which actually is not just solely contained in the head because if you want to detach the brain you'll have to s sever the the spinal cord as well you know so there's a whole sympathetic nervous system that goes with it. And uh so of course our philosophy would be uh founded on the idea that consciousness is a foundational thing consciousness itself is the source and free will at the source is also the same as consciousness but not in the in the a local level in other words in you or me but it is a foundational thing from which everything comes and when that uh particular cosmic mind if you want to call it that makes its free will decision we then have the the mystery of what's called decoherence is solved. In other words at the fundamental level We have this most reliable physics, which is the quantum field theory. That quantum field theory provides us with the most reliable and most tested physics theory ever. And that puts us in conflict with the physics of tables and chairs and bodies and this and that and the other. And how does it transfer from one to the other? If you take consciousness as a foundational thing, it solves the problem. Because the free will, really the foundational free will, expresses itself. We use the language of quantum fields. And so quantum fields, that is what people are. People are, in fact, consciousness as quantum fields. And then expressing themselves. Now the ancient people knew all of that, of course. So the ancient yogis and Sankhya philosophers and so on, they had that language, and they called it mere elements, what we call quantum fields now, which exhibit a combined wave-like characteristic, undetected, very subtle, not unprotected, but it comes out as the solid things, as solidity, as liquidity, you know, uh couched in the language of earth and water and all the rest of it, radiance and fire and so all of these kinds of things were worked out, except probably nuclear forces. They didn't work that much out. But nuclear forces probably come within electromagnetism anyway. Anyway, we'll see. So they worked this out a long time ago, but the foundational thing was, and they never made any confusion between the connecting organism, the instrument, which is brain, and that which is behind it expressing through it. And so they made sure that they understood that states of consciousness, although had their observed effect on wavelengths in the brain, for example, you know, we have all these various waves, alpha and delta and all the rest of it, in the brain. But you can bring them into states of consciousness called waking dream and dreamless sleep. And they registered this early on to say, okay, these are expressions of consciousness in an objective way, with subjective consciousness sitting behind. Nowadays, when we talk about subjective consciousness, not really subjective. There are observed qualia, their observed feelings, for example. You know, the feelings come up and you can say, I I felt sad. Well, you observed it, you know. I felt happy, well, you observed it. Okay. Who's the observer? So the question about consciousness is who knows it. So when the organ has a malfunction, as it were, we won't be surprised that the outlook is different, that the what we see and feel and touch and taste is different as well. We know that. We know that you can block off certain sections of the brain, if you will, manipulate that. Uh, for example, in epilepsy, there's a certain area of the brain that seems to have a different effect during epilepsy and things like that. Um so I think uh some people within physiological science, well, not necessarily physiological science, but you can say the the philosophy of science have taken the materialistic view that consciousness is an epiph phenomenon, a product of the brain. And it kind of looks like that. It's like saying that light is the product of a light bulb.

SPEAKER_04 47:55

I see I I I understand what you're saying. I see what you're saying, but I think the question for me then as a scientist is so for a person who has um a change in reality and a perception of change in reality, so from what I understand, if I understand what you're saying correctly, to take the the the ancient approach of first first telling other people the the summary of what I have understood and then presenting my argument. So if I understand what you're saying, um Swamiji, you're saying that the brain and the um fruits of perception through the brain, whether it is thoughts or feelings or the perception of the external world, however, the fruits of the perception or the f or or the expression of the world through the brain, there is a there is uh the the cosmic consciousness that sits behind it, that is observing this change in um or the fruits of the brain, let's say for the example. So when a person says I feel sad, then the idea is that I am not the feeling, I am not the thought, but I am the person who is observing uh feeling sad. So I is uh not me, Anusha, as an ego, but as the cosmic consciousness, who is observing.

SPEAKER_00 49:26

There's a reason why we say my thought.

SPEAKER_04 49:29

Correct. So so I I have summarized that well, correct? Oh okay, good. So now when a person has um when a person is undergoing a shift in reality, um, say that they are saying, Oh, I see um I see um an animal walking in my in in my room and they believe that it is real, or they smell something that's not there, see something that's not there, feel something that's not there, and they actually believe that it is real, then what happens to the eye, the cosmic consciousness I?

SPEAKER_00 50:07

Yes. So the world is a product of it, and uh when we take these three states of consciousness, of course, dream consciousness is one of them, and it relies on image making. Now you can argue philosophically that this whole world is a product of our imagination, because what's happened is we've used our interpretive faculties, the sense organs, and the mind. What we call the mind in this case is uh is not the brain necessarily, the brain is incorporated in it, because the brain is part of the physiological senses, but the the mind is as material as the brain, and there we find different segments of it. So the one, if it wasn't like that, if it was truly our own identity, we'd never be able to make any judgments and we'd never be able to control it. We'd never be able to control passions, for example, we'd never be able to make decisions and uh have an executive faculty function. So uh this whole world really is a product of our wrong interpretation because we are dimensionally deficient. Now, when you change that, you'll see things also differently as well. So we can imagine many things and take it to be real. In a sense, we're taking this whole world and we're taking it to be real as opposed to being apparent. That's our problem. So when we when we only take it as apparent, then how would we view the world in a practical way? Well, it doesn't mean to say we don't deal with the world of tables and chairs and what have you, but what it means is that we also see it from the fundamental physics point of view as a play, in this case, of divine waves, which are there. And our only explanation why should it exist would be it's a kind of drama, a kind of play. And we can imagine many things. For example, if I suffer from paranoia, I can imagine there's a ghost behind every tree. If if I uh if my state of anxiety is so uh acute and astute, I can imagine many, many things. I can imagine that every person I meet is my enemy. And uh so that becomes difficult for me. But behind it all, somebody is observing it. Not only in one state, but the whole of the hallucination goes in a dreamless sleep. Just as the whole of this world disappears in a dreamless sleep, and the whole thing disappears when they get observ uh absorbed into the essence which when observing is called the witness. When not observing, we can't call it witness, we can call it essence.

SPEAKER_04 53:04

But there is so the part that I don't understand is that when there is a change in cognitive faculty, um even if we consider the mind as a uh material um effect of the cosmic consciousness, how does the plugging in of our material consciousness with the cosmic consciousness work or look like when our material consciousness is um is disturbed in the waking world.

SPEAKER_00 53:50

All of our waking world consciousness is disturbed. That's why that's why we we don't think we have peace. We think we have all kinds of disturbances and problems and difficulties. Um that's our interpretation of the world simply because the waking ego only appears in the waking state. That waking ego is only concerned with other people and place and events, and behind it is a survivalist attitude which says, I have to preserve this thing called I, consisting of a body and an assumed individual mind, and I have to protect it at all costs. That creates then a strategy. Part of the strategy could well be delusion. In fact, it of course it's delusion in the general sense, but in a more specific sense. So yeah. My light bulb is flickering, giving me uh a distorted view of things, okay. The the electricity that sits behind it is not at fault.

SPEAKER_04 55:05

It's the instrument which is that so from a disease perspective, from a from an understanding of um of what is changing in this person from a health perspective, actually, let's not say from a disease perspective. From a health perspective, changes in behavior, changes in reality, changes in um uh changes in consciousness in the sense that um that because especially when when I think of Louis body dementia or schizophrenia, Louis body dementia being degenerative, schizophrenia being non-degenerative, that there's an element of change in what is reality. And there's also it's not just about the change in reality, but also the effects of it, that there's this harm that the person can um can incur on themselves, especially with Louis body dementia, there's a lot of suicidal ideation that comes in. So changes in reality becomes quite um distressing for the person and for the people around them. So from a from uh a medical health research perspective, I think there it is important and it is important for people to understand that this is this is essentially a trigger for people to go seek help. But if we put this in a wider spiritual context, a person having um changes in reality or changes in cognitive faculty is also an expression of the divine. It's also an expression of the cosmic consciousness, which as a person, if I were to translate this to a practice, I would for me this sounds as a point of destigmatization and inclusion within the wider society, that this is a person who has changes in cognitive faculties. Yes, we have to seek help, but from a wider spiritual context of inclusion in a society, this is also an expression of the divine who has chosen to express themselves or express itself in this sort of change and faculty, which means that they are people with changes in reality, changes in altered perception are also very much the very much part of our waking world where it's just a different expression, it's just a different form. Was that was that is that operational enough? Does that sound operationalized enough? Because I think the the the difficulty what I feel and I think for me as a practitioner is I think it's important for people to understand from a practical standpoint that this is not because there's a lot of things where people, especially with schizophrenia, that oh, I am speaking with God is a very or I feel I I hear this voice that is that is um that is asking me to act in a certain way and I think it's really important to to tread that line carefully and say where no, this is this is not okay, that this is a this is something that a person has to seek help for. But from a societal aspect, from a societal perspective of shunning these people away and institutionalizing these people, from that perspective, I would I would sort of go back into thinking that no, from a spiritual angle, they are also as much of an expression of the divine as we are, or as the rest of us are who don't have this change in cognitive faculties, don't have a change in perception of general reality as it's we have to we have to deal with uh people on every level, but not forgetting that the foundational level is pure spirit.

SPEAKER_03 59:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

And then seeing seeing then what else has to be done, okay. So the just to use the simple example of driving a car, you see, if the car has a mechanical failure, you take it to a mechanic, you know.

SPEAKER_02 59:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:28

Um and uh same thing. But the driver, of course, is a sentient entity in the in the example, in the allegory. And uh so it is the driver that makes the decision. Let me do this, let me do that. And if the fault is in the instrument, then we have to attend to the instrument, there's no doubt.

SPEAKER_03 59:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:49

Uh so but it is always important to understand the deeper aspect of it because from there comes compassion, from there comes love, from there comes the deeper feeling of oneness, regardless. Because it's easy to attend. Well, let's take an example of somebody dealing with lepers, all right. Where most health workers, and it's been an experience of mine, where most lepers will be dealt with at a distance. You can't say that's compassion. They're just doing a duty to a social duty, that's all. Uh, but they would much rather help uh somebody who didn't have the skin complaint. But the point is, uh, God is dressed up in all of those instances as do as the depth of spirit that sits behind it. The expression of it is just on the surface, it's just the the the crest of a crest of a crest of a wave that they're looking at. We're all looking at that crest of a crest of a crest of a wave and not seeing the big picture. When you talk of holism, you're talking of the whole thing. And we cannot look at the totality because we're not equipped to look at the totality until we get away from the limitation of the instrumentation. That's through meditation and so on, basically purifying, clarifying the instrumentation called mind. And when we do that, we get the self-revel revelation of pure consciousness, which is already there and which gets revealed, as it were, to us. It looks like opening the curtains, it's revealed. Yes, okay, in a sense, it was already there. You know, it's not something to get. So I think that's important because it also has the practical dimension. And here I'm suggesting if you're a Jesus, you'll have all the social components necessary. You'll have compassion, you'll have uh love, you'll have no discrimination between the lepers and others. But behind it you'll see the perfection of, in Jesus' language, the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven with there. And be ye perfect as your father in heaven was his his uh dictum. Then that has a transforming effect, because the perfection then starts coming through, and we can call that spiritual healing, if you will. So that's another added dimension. That's true, holistic, a holistic outlook. Holistic outlook from a material point of view is there's only one matter and there's only one energy. From a uh from a mental point of view, there's only one mind. From a spiritual point of view, there's only one spirit. And when that oneness of spirit is truly understood, all the other things disappear, go away, by the way. Just as if I go into a dream, a de a deep sleep, what became of the dream? What became of the waking state? Dementia is only in the waking state.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:56

Well, uh the with yes, um, but in Louis body dementia, you also have very vivid dreams.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:03

People because whatever happens in the waking state filters through, no doubt, and formulates that, yes. But we from a waking state say it was only a dream, and we dismiss it as an unreality, but the criteria that applies to it, namely time and space and motion and activities and uh causation, it all it's all there in a waking state as well. So it's there in a waking state, it's there in a dream. The only place where it's completely absent is when you go into the deep unconsciousness, which is called a deep sleep or dreamless sleep. The only thing you can say about it is it felt peaceful, there was a peace afterwards. But all of that, so that is why in dealing with these three states of consciousness, uh universal appellations are given. In other words, it is Vishwa that rules over the dream, over the waking state. It is the same entity performing their role. And it is uh Hiranjagarbha, that is that is the golden womb, that rules over the dream state, because it's cosmic mind operating over its outputs. And then, of course, in terms of dreamless sleep, it's Pratna, it's just the shining one, is consciousness, being unconscious in a sense, because the pure consciousness itself is standing as a witness, and when these three states are gone, there's no witness, we can't call it a witness anymore then. All we can call it is existence, consciousness, and bliss, even that with an apology to say it's these are not qualities, these are actual actualities. So the view is that is the world. How is it that we see it differently? Because we take the apparition to be real, regardless of how we see it in a general way that everyone else sees it, or how we see it differently. And if there was a if if we had that area of the brain that controls sight, visibility, uh if that is in some way damaged or defunct and not operational, then our world is seen very differently. Seen in inverted commas, understood, interpreted very different.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:32

Oh, even seen. Even seen.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

Yeah. And if we had additional, supposing we had additional faculties, such as x-ray vision, I'd be complementing you on your bone structure. But we don't have it. So we are constitutionally, dimensionally deficient. We can only see certain things suitable for an interpretation which gives us a function. And when any of these gets disturbed, we'll see things.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:03

I think one of the things the conversations with you and and sort of uh engagement with Vedanta gives me as a researcher is to is to dive a little bit deeper and see what how can what is how can how can we what are the research questions that we should be asking in the scientific world to really understand if if these if the two if the two philosophies can come together. And I think I'm I'm a big believer that I mean science is evolving and we know it's not just a believer.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

Well I think they Yes, I think they are. There's a man called Frederico Fe Feigen, um who is in fact really the inventor of the microprocessor and the computers um metaphysicist to boot. And through his own personal revelation of things, he changed from a materialistic point of view, which is typically the scientific approach, from the from the 17th century, it became an orientation toward this world, materialism, and so on. That's lingered on and becomes a kind of badge of honor, if you will, for modern scientists. Um, in some countries the majority of scientists are theists, and in other countries the majority of scientists atheists or agnostics. Because there seems to be this separation between material and spirit. This is Descartes' fault, that's all. Because he he went into this dualism. But uh these kind of scientists are looking more at, and they're just labeling it differently, panpsychism, uh, solipsism, what mind, uh consciousness as the foundation of being rather than an epiphenomena. You see, if you're a materialist, you have no other choice, that consciousness has to be some kind of byproduct of the brain, and there's no other alternative that you have, but it's because you approach the thing with a bias, not an open mind. And it doesn't make any sense that consciousness can come from unconsciousness. It doesn't make any sense that that um you know uh that uh um these uh that uh that something can come from nothing. It doesn't make any sense that sentiency can come from insensiency, and so it spills over to the biological world because you now you have to have an abiogenesis theory which says that coming from chemicals you can get organic life. And nobody's managed to do it, of course. You know, there's the old story, you see, of the scientist approaching God and says, I think we know how you did it. Oh, how did you do it? Well, we took you, we set up a laboratory, yes, good, good. We created initial conditions, yes, yes. We created kind of simulated lightning and uh, you know, a volcanic condition, this and that and the other, you know, and the the uh environmental conditions of carbon, oxygen, whatever you know. That's interesting. And then we took some mud. Oh, wait, wait, hang on. Get your own mud. Because where's the mud coming from? Where are all these conditions coming from, you see? So it doesn't really help. There have been serious attempts to try and do it, good uh good, serious attempts. The Uri uh experiment, you know, was uh was very exciting, uh saying, okay, we produced some things, some amino acids and what have you, but uh really it's no longer relevant because those were not necessarily the conditions of the early universe. And furthermore, how do you get amino acids to be cooperative and develop into cellular activity? Even if it were the simplest kind, you cannot do it. It's too complicated. So it still remains a problem for the materialist, it's not a problem for us, because we are starting off with a drive, an unfolding consciousness, and uh which seems to unfold. Why does it seem to unfold? Because when you take this totality and introduce time and space, these dimensions, and then make a space-time from it, well you're looking at it through a splitting lens. And when you do that, you're not seeing the totality, you're seeing the individuality. It's like trying to understand handwriting by examining it closely and seeing the dots or the pixels. You're missing the whole thing. So, a holistic point of view, the person who really used these terms in this sense was um uh David Bohm, who was a physicist, much maligned physicist, no doubt, but much respected by the same token. And he he he got his ideas, he really was impressed by conversations with Krishna Murti. Then he realized, and then he used language such as, you know, um implicit and explicit. He made these two distinctions. There is something that is implicit that rises to the surface and becomes explicit. That's the world we have. And the whole thing is a holistic thing. You deal with things from a holistic point of view. Now, this is catching on more and more, as it must, because firstly, it's common sense, but also it's nothing new. It's just a rediscovery of these old investigations and truths that came back thousands and thousands of years ago from what we call the Rishis, who themselves were scientists in this sense. They examined the external world and collectively found, oh, it's a changing thing. They have a there's a term for it, it's called Dagat, the thing that's always changing. And it didn't take them long to think, if you observe something changing, there must be something that is changeless. What is that? That's the inquiry. We won't find it in the external world, because that's a changing thing. We won't find it in the internal world either, because that's also changing. Because the brain is changing, the mind is changing, the uh thoughts are changing, feelings are changing, opinions are changing, there's a whole changing thing, and there's a whole arrival and departure lounge going on. So there's a whole airport of incomings and outgoings with no announcements. And then the what is behind that? Well, you can access that through techniques more than introspection, you go into inspiration derived from meditation, and from there you get the answer, ah, there is one stable changeless entity from which everything else must be coming. And there's a kind of border. So how does the changeless get into the changing? How does the be the uh the uh the being enter into becoming? Well, you can draw draw if you want to put it as a graphic, you can put a little dotted line there, a kind of border, and that border is made from uh three things inertia, electrical energy, and gravity, actually, and it requires time and space to understand it and become the field for it. And as soon as you understand that, everything else falls into place. So I think we given give it another 10-15 years, the whole of this scientific outlook will change from an emphasis on materialism to something much more than theism. It'll come to a deeper understanding where the foundations of these of these questions provide the foundational answers to.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:39

Yeah, I think it it I for that I think we need we need a confluence of different knowledge systems. And I think we're Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:51

I mean the pro one of the problems is in the air of science, there's so many special areas.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:57

Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's specialist areas in science, but I think even fundamentally, science is one knowledge system.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:04

I think that's something that we all well this new found this newfound kind of scientific investigating the consciousness is more a multidisciplinary thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:15

Yeah, I mean, but it's still scientific. It's still scientific.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:18

Yeah, you're doing away with the specialist area. Let's take, for example, um the assumptions that are behind many, many areas of science which are not proven, uh, which are just theoretical, just mathematical, and therefore symbolic, and yet accepted in a factual way. You know, I in discussion with some people say, of course you know there's a multiverse. No, I don't know that. Can you prove it? And there's a great, great uh scientist, uh, George Ellis, who happens to be a South African, uh, who has collaborated with Stephen Hawking and others, and Roger Penrose and so on. Um, well respected, but he's saying, let's stop all this nonsense. This is metaphysics, it's not physics. Who said that there was a multiverse, you know? You can provide a theory for it, no doubt, but theories are just theories. You need something more than that. And they're just ad hoc ways of getting around problems. Science used to be different. Science used to be the suggested solution to a problem. And then that is a theory, and that theory has to be uh proven or falsified. So it has to be engaged in laboratory work. Today you can upgrade it, you can make computer simulations, as long as you don't fall into the trap that the computer simulation is reality, because you can change parameters and get a different result. Depends what parameters you plug in. Uh, but um uh then it has to be endorsed by other parties, it has to be reproduced a number of times, it has to be proven mathematically, and it has to be proven in terms of its predictions. That and it all is all around observations, and if it doesn't fit the observational evidence, you can't just put something ad hoc in there and say, I have a theory. Um because that has uh now resulted in millions and millions of theories, literally, all with the idea, oh well, one day we'll get a kind of Nobel Prize. As long as we produce academic papers on it. So there's a kind of industry now in the academic world of producing academic papers, all linked to funding, and a number of other things, uh, resulting in many, many thinking scientists say, enough of that, uh, the well has been poisoned, because the outcome of that is nothing creative happening. The other outcome of that is that no nobody is thinking outside the box, so to speak, and producing novel ideas, which themselves may well provide good solutions. And historically we've known that that works. Einstein, for example, and Murray Curie, and you know, all those great, great people who had the who were not bound by finance and not bound by opinions. Um although they were there. The great scientist Boltzmann, for example, he got driven beheld by his peers because he suggested there were little tiny sub things called atoms. And they said, Oh, we don't want that old Greek democratic idea. And then the year of his death, I think even the month of his death, I'm not incorrect, out of frustration, he had already a depressive tendency, but he hung himself. He couldn't stand the ridicule of his spears, you know. And yet many of his ideas, most of his ideas, are considered something like a genius, you know. So thank you so much for joining me and telling us all about uh this um this area. It was very interesting, and um has the opportunity, gives a person the opportunity for the practical application of not only philosophical principles, but the implementation in terms of service.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:46

So I think it brings a lot more questions to to the scientific world, this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:53

I think for me it's it's one of those. I think for me a lot of the learning, even from I mean, from the Global Brain Health Institute, but also from uh from our conversations, is that science is one one knowledge um stream. There are other knowledge streams, there are other knowledge systems that are more indigenous. One is of course the Eastern philosophical knowledge system, there's others in the world, especially in Africa, in South America, in Australia, in and in other in Ireland, for example, in other indigenous communities where indigenous communities hold thousands and thousands and thousands of years of knowledge that is um that is bound by certain bound by their belief systems, bound by um something different from science. And I think the more colonial view has been to um to look at one stream of knowledge as well I don't think it's I don't think it's any m any trivial matter that all our pharmaceuticals more or less um have their origin in the Amazon rainforest.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:12

Known to tribal communities.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's uh that's a whole other avenue of of debate and discussion. But but now I think the world is is definitely I hope the world is moving towards respecting other knowledge systems, and even us who are born and raised in indigenous communities have been educated in in the post-colonial world. And I think there's a lot of unlearning that even we have to do and which will probably do a lot of good to the world in bringing respect and respecting other knowledge systems.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:49

Well, I mean, uh China, for example, holds conventional or what some people call alleopathic medicine, along with acupuncture. Uh as you know, in India and even in the Ramakrishna mission clinics and what have you, they have Ayurvedic clinics along with homeopathy, along with aleopathy.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:13

So uh they it seemed to be complementary. And in some countries, and some well, in some countries they would re recognize that you can certainly claim medical expenses for homeopathy. But the the interesting thing is naturopathy is for me is a kind of prerequisite to health, because not only from a philosophical point of view does it say things are working well except obstacles are in the way, let's remove them. So medical um attention is a question of identifying and removing obstacles rather than diagnosing from the point of view inherently, if you have a body, something has to be wrong. Not necessarily, you know. And so we remove that obstacle. And I'd be quite keen for that to work in the area of Alzheimer's dementia, which says that there are some preconditions that we can make to see how we could avoid the thing in the first place.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:18

Absolutely, yeah. I mean it's that's that's the whole idea of modifiable risk factors that and that that's where, you know, naturopathy or uh, you know, just the the holistic living of uh eating right and exercising and practicing mindfulness and and changing the way we approach life is comes before we hit the we before we hit dementia rather than after.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:48

Supposing we were to make every single second a joyful motion uh moment, a kind of internal rapture, moment to moment, what would the cellular body look like? With that we leave it. Okay. Thank you so much for your time and your inputs in telling us all about this. All right, good.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:12

Thank you so much, thank you for having me.