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Book Introductions

Introductions to Published Books

Introduction to Mavericks of the Mind













Then when the telephone came along, with it came the switchboard operator models of consciousness. My first undergraduate psychology textbook had a full-page illustration of how the brain functions like a giant switchboard with telephone-like connections to all parts of the body. John Lilly was the first to apply the computer as a metaphor for understanding the brain in his book Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer. When I was an undergraduate studying psychology, the computer metaphor was just beginning to be entertained on the fringes of academia. Our brains could be seen as the hardware, and our culturally conditioned BS, language, and other memes would be the software. Since then cognitive psychology and cognitive science have adopted the model of the computer as a metaphor for how the brain functions, and this has now become the standard and accepted model.

All of these models help to shed some light on how the mysteries of the brain and mind interact, but they are also quite limited, and can be dangerously misleading. The brain is not a hydraulic system, a telephone switchboard, or a computer. But, as models, these metaphors give us a partial grasp of something that is otherwise too complex to comprehend. When we interviewed John Lilly he told us that he thought a human brain can never fully understand itself, because a simulation that modeled and mapped the entire brain would take up all the space in the brain, filling it to capacity. It would take a larger brain to understand our brain, and then that brain couldn’t fully understand itself.

The newest technology to act as a metaphor for the brain and consciousness is Virtual Reality technology. VR allows us to control the sensory input that channels into our nervous system and to determine what our experience of reality is. People like Timothy Leary, who prefers the term “Electronic Reality,” and Charles Tart have begun to see VR technology as a metaphor for the brain. Computer-generated simulations in Virtual Reality become acceptable to the brain as reality. This leads to the understanding that all we ever really experience of reality are simulations created by our brain out of the influx of sensory signals that we receive from our senses. We already live in fabricated realities. We each live inside a reality-generating apparatus called the nervous system. Timothy Leary dubbed this understanding “neuro-electric awareness’-the understanding that we are creating reality out of the sensory signals that we perceive. Buddha called this understanding “enlightenment.”

But to fully understand this concept we must actually experience it. We almost always forget that our perception of what we call the physical world is a simulation and not “reality itself.” William Blake understood the concept that we create our own reality when he stated, “That which appears without, is within.” When I had my first LSD trip at the age of 16, among other things I realized that the brain entirely creates what we experience as reality. I realized it by experiencing it. Everything that we think is the external world is actually a neurological simulation fabricated out of complex chains of sensory signals by the human brain. On that psychedelic experience it appeared to me as though all of reality was composed of points or monads, and that our perception of reality is like those connect-the-dots games that we play as children. The possible ways of connecting the dots are far more varied than I had thought, and can be done in countless different ways.

Carl Jung coined a term that helps to explain this called “Constellating

Power,” based on how we create constellations in the sky out of the massive tangle of stars. Once a pattern has organized itself in our mind’s “I,” it becomes hard then not to see it that way. Since the Virtual Reality created by the perceptual simulation process is one’s “reality experience,” it is difficult to not completely identify with the Virtual Reality as the “real” reality. Part of the motivation for putting this book together stemmed from our understanding that since we are responsible for creating reality-individually and jointly–what then are the most fabulous and interesting realities that we can experience?

Reality is defined as that which is real, and it is created through a blend of belief and experience. Several years ago, Virtual Reality pioneer Jaron Lanier told me that he thought that there were three levels at which one can change or create “reality”: (1) at the neurological level of the brain through neurochemistry; (2) at the sensory level through Virtual Reality simulation; or (3) in the external world through the atomic reconstructional possibilities of nanotechnology. But we can also change our perception and interpretation of the world through intention and will. Intentionally changing one’s attitude can dramatically shift one’s perspective and social relationships. Dreams also open up a frontier for exploring the possibilities of reality fabrication. When we asked Stephen LaBerge, lucid dream researcher at Stanford University, about using VR as a metaphor for lucid dreaming, he said that lucid dreaming was like “high-resolution VR.”

A basic premise that we had for this book was that–through cosmological time, biological evolution, personal development, and cultural transformations-consciousness evolves. From atoms to galaxies, amoebas to neurons, the evolution of consciousness seems an endless adventure. Terence McKenna told us that he thought the ultimate goal of human evolution was a “good party.” One thing is for sure. It is on the expanding edge of the horizon, where reality intersects the imagination, that we will forever find our new beginnings.

David Jay Brown,

Topanga, California

Introduction to Voices from the Edge











David Jay Brown

Ben Lomond, California

Introduction to Mavericks of Medicine

By David Jay Brown


Conversations on the Frontiers of Medical Research
What’s Wrong With Modern Medicine and How Can We Improve It?
Pearson told me that this is simply because many people in the FDA are financially intertwined with the pharmaceutical companies. According to Pearson’s partner, life extension researcher Sandy Shaw “…right now the FDA favors drug companies. There’s no doubt about it. The drug companies are in bed with the FDA. The FDA is in bed with the drug companies.” What this means is that the FDA generally supports patented drugs over natural dietary supplements–regardless of the scientific evidence–because the drug companies can’t profit off them.
Pharmaceutical companies are seen by many as being motivated primarily by profit, and a lot of people are concerned that this motivation adversely effects their research agendas and marketing strategies. To help solve this problem, retrovirus researcher Peter Duesberg suggested that we “Generate a free market for scientific ideas in which funding depends on logic, scientific principles, and useful results, rather than on approval, or better yet the blessings of “peer-review.” Since the “peers” represent the established scientific monopolies their self-interest demands “science” that confirms and extends the status quo–rather than innovation, which threatens their considerable scientific and commercial investments.”
When I spoke with natural medicine advocate Jonathan Wright he offered some insight into why the research agendas of the pharmaceutical companies might be off track to begin with. He said, “So far as medicine in general goes, our very biggest mistake…started in the early part of the twentieth century, and it continues to this day–and that is, relying on patent medicines to heal the body. This has been an enormous mistake, because the condition necessary to patent anything says that it can not occur in nature. But out bodies are made of materials that are entirely natural…The best it’s going to do is suppress symptoms, and yet the medical profession has gone along with this for over a century.”
However, Dr. Wright told me that he thought that the solution to this problem was very simple. He said, “Everything we need to do can be summed up in these two words: copy nature.” For example, research has shown that when engaging in hormone replacement therapy it is essential that one use hormones that are biologically identical to those found in the human body, if one wishes to avoid the potentially deadly side-effects from taking patented synthetic hormones. The scientific evidence certainly suggests that we should avoid that which is unnatural to the body, and that an important secret to health and longevity is simply to mimic what nature does. Others point out that this is a good place to start, but that we can also significantly improve upon nature.
Our conventional medical system is entirely oriented toward the treatment of disease, illness, and injury. Little attention is given to making healthy people healthier and for improving physical, sexual, and cognitive performance. However, there are now many drugs, herbs, and nutrients available that have been shown to improve physical endurance, cognitive abilities,  memory, and sexual performance. In the pages that follow, I discuss these drugs and dietary supplements with Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, Jonathan Wright, Ray Kurzweil, and others.
These performance-enhancing supplements appear to compensate for some of the decline in performance caused by aging. If cognitive and sexual performance can be enhanced in the elderly then perhaps other consequences of aging can also be reversed. Understanding and reversing the aging process is another important theme in this book.
Reversing the Aging Process and Life Extension Research
Although there are some good theories of aging, and a lot of progress has been made in terms of understanding why we age, the aging process is still largely mysterious. Some of the most important theories of aging–such as the free radical and cross-linking theories–are discussed in this book, along with proposals for how we might halt and reverse the aging process.
When I spoke with Leonard Hayflick, the microbiologist who discovered that healthy somatic cells can only divide a finite number of times (now known as the “Hayflick limit” ), he defined aging as “…the random systemic loss of molecular fidelity, that–after reproductive maturity–accumulates to levels that eventually exceed repair, turnover, or maintenance capacity.”
British biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey told me that he thinks that there are seven primary reasons why aging occurs. He said, “These are intrinsic side-effects of metabolism, of being alive in the first place, and they are things that build up throughout life. Although these side-effects are not the cause of aging, they start to become harmful once they get to a certain level of abundance. Once there’s enough of them around the body starts to suffer from them and eventually it suffers seriously.” Dr. de Grey believes that this process is reversible, and he has assembled a master plan for doing so that a substantial number of other life extension researchers are taking seriously. In the pages that follow, Dr. de Grey speaks with us about this.
Perhaps the most compelling reason why radical life extension is possible is because not all animals age like we do. In fact, it appears that some animals don’t age at all. When I interviewed John Guerin, director of the Ageless Animals Project, he told me about rockfish caught off the coast of Alaska, that were hundreds of years old, healthy, and fertile. Whales have been known to live for over two hundred years without showing any signs of aging. A male whale that was over a hundred years old was harpooned while it was in the midst of having sex. Guerin believes that by studying these types of animals we can learn why they live so long without losing vitality or fertility and then apply that knowledge to extending the life span of human beings.
Technology theorist and inventor Ray Kurzweil spoke to me about how nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and robotics will eventually allow humans to live for indefinite periods of time without aging. Dr. Kurzweil thinks that “nanobots, blood cell-size devices that could go inside the body and keep us healthy from inside” will be available in about two decades. So, Dr. Kurzweil believes, if we can just stay alive for another fifteen or twenty years we’ll be able to live forever.
Nanotechnology would not only allow for radical life extension, but also for a dramatic improvement in all physical capabilities–including brain functions. Dr. Kurzweil believes that the line between biology and technology is going to completely blur together in the decades to come, and that nanotechnological brain implants will substantially increase our intelligence and dramatically expand the power of the human mind. The power of the mind, and it’s relationship to medicine, is another important theme in this book.
Mind-Body Medicine
When I was in college during the early Eighties, my maverick mentor Russel Jaffe told me that the most effective tool discovered by modern medicine was being overlooked by the majority of physicians. Dr. Jaffe was, of course, referring to the placebo effect, the power of the mind to effect the health of the body. Numerous studies have demonstrated that what we believe about a medical treatment dramatically effects how we respond to it. This is why when pharmaceutical companies develop a new drug it is always tested against inactive sugar pills–placebos–that are known to improve symptoms and facilitate cures simply because the patient and/or the physician believe that the new drug might work.
However, ironically, when I studied psychobiology at USC and NYU, I was taught by most of my professors that the placebo effect was simply something to be controlled for in experimental or clinical trials. In other words, it was like a nuisance that interfered with our understanding about the effects of a new drug or procedure, and most researchers and healthcare practitioners simply shrugged the placebo effect off as simply irrelevant. This was in the days before we really understood that what we believe not only directly impacts how we feel, but it measurably effects our physiology as well. We now know that the mind and body are simply two parts of the same inseparable system, and each dramatically effects the other.
Candace Pert, the neuroscience researcher who discovered the opiate receptor in brain, (and who I interviewed for my previous bookConversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse), brought about a paradigm shift in modern medicine by pioneering research that revealed an intimate relationship between the mind and body. Her interdisciplinary research into the relationship between the nervous system and the immune system demonstrated a body-wide communication system mediated by peptide molecules and their receptors. Dr. Pert believes this to be the biochemical basis of emotion and the potential key to understanding many challenging diseases. Dr. Pert’s research provides a basis for understanding why cancer patients can measurably reduce tumor growth through the process of visualization, and why placebos can cause measurable physiological changes.
In his practice as a general and pediatric surgeon, Bernie Siegel began recognizing common personality characteristics in those patients who did well and those who didn’t. In his bestselling book Love, Medicine, and Miracles, Dr. Siegel describes how exceptional cancer patients survive because of their attitude and beliefs. When I spoke with Dr. Siegel he told me, “You can’t separate thoughts and beliefs from your body. In other words, what you think, and what you believe, literally change your body chemistry.”
Studies confirm Dr. Siegel’s observations. For example, a PET scan study conducted at the University of Michigan showed that people who believed that they were receiving a pain killer actually produced more pain-killing endorphins in their brains and experienced less pain.
A relatively recent branch of medicine known as mind-body medicine addresses this fascinating and important topic of how the mind influences the body. In this collection, I speak with Bernie Siegel, Andrew Weil, and Larry Dossey about how we might be able to use this understanding to improve our health. I also speak with psychopharmacology researchers Raphael Mechoulam and Rick Strassman about the therapeutic potential of cannabis and psychedelic drugs. Many hallucinogenic plants–such as peyote and ayahausca brews–have a long history of shamanic and medicinal use in healing practices around the world, and may enhance the strength of the placebo effect (i.e., the power of the mind) because of their consciousness-changing abilities.
When I interviewed Dr. Weil he told me about how he had become completely cured of a lifelong cat allergy during an LSD session when he was twenty-eight, and that this experience had a profound influence on his medical perspective. He said that he would use psychedelics in his medical practice if they were legal. Dr. Weil said, “I think they’ve been a very profound influence. I used them a lot when I was younger. I think that they made me very much aware, first of all, of the profound influence of consciousness on health…Psychedelics can show you possibilities…I think they’re potentially tremendous teaching tools about mind-body interactions and states of consciousness.”
Perhaps even more fascinating than mind-body medicine is a transpersonal phenomenon known as “remote healing.” It seems that what we think may not only effect our own health–it may also directly effect the health of others. When I interviewed Dr. Dossey he told me about numerous controlled, double-blind studies demonstrating that “prayer” can have measurable health effects. The effects of directing positive intention have been demonstrated in dozens of controlled laboratory studies–in people, animals, and even bacteria. Dr. Dossey also told me about studies that demonstrated health benefits from engaging in religious practice, and spoke about the integration of medicine with spirituality. Reflecting on the integration of medicine with spirituality brings one to the notion that sometimes healing the essence of who we are, and reducing suffering, may mean letting go of the physical body.
The Right to Die
Just because medical technologies give us the ability to live forever doesn’t mean that we have to do so. The late psychologist Timothy Leary was one of the first people to start promoting ideas about life extension; he began doing so in the late 1970s. Attaining physical immortality, he believed was one of the “goals” of biological evolution. Dr. Leary’s enthusiasm inspired longevity researchers and helped to popularize ideas about how science would soon conquer the aging process and allow us to virtually live forever.
However, when Dr. Leary was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer at the age of 76, he said that he was “thrilled and ecstatic” to hear that he was going die. As much as Dr. Leary loved life, he not only accepted death–he embraced it. In the end, he even decided to forgo his plans for cryonic suspension. I think there is an important lesson in Dr. Leary’s dying process about the importance of facing the mystery of death with the same openness and sense of adventure that one faces life.
In other words, attaining physical immortality in a human body may not be the final stage for evolving consciousness in this universe. Numerous spiritual traditions–such as Hinduism and many forms of shamanism–assert that healing the spirit sometimes involves transcending the body and moving on to whatever is after death. However, regardless of whether or not consciousness survives death, not everyone may wish to hang around until the final collapse of the universe, and certainly people who are in chronic pain, or who are suffering greatly, should be given the option to leave if they wish.
When I asked Dr. Weil about his views on the controversial issue of euthanasia he said, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for doctors to be involved in that, although I think patients should be able to discuss that issue with doctors. I think that for people with overwhelming diseases, for whom life has become really difficult, that they should have that choice, and that there should be mechanisms provided for helping them with that.”
Dr. Jack Kevorkian, on the other hand, believes that physicians should be able to perform euthanasia, and he is currently in prison for second degree murder because he assisted with the last wish of a patient who was suffering from ALS. When I interviewed Dr. Kevorkian about voluntary death I learned that, despite the U.S. government and medical establishment’s opposition to euthanasia, eighty percent of the public support a patient’s right to die and one in five physicians has admitted to practicing euthanasia at some point in their career. Why, then, is euthanasia illegal? “I think that the U.S. government, medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies are opposed to euthanasia for monetary or financial reasons,” Dr. Kevorkian said, “To help correct this situation there has to be an organized public response and outcry–which I believe is now occurring.”
While the goals of contemporary Western medicine are healing disease and treating injuries, the goals that one aspires to in the pursuit of optimal health are much larger and more encompassing. This may involve developing an immortal, nanotechnologically-proficient, self-repairing super-body of our own design, or it may involve gracefully transcending this world entirely and discarding our body like a pile of used clothing–but, either way, I think that the primary goal that medicine should aim for is the reduction of human suffering. I think that if we make the reduction of human suffering our number one priority, then the future of medicine does indeed appear very bright.
The Future of Medicine
We are living in truly astonishing times. Although our current healthcare system appears to be crumbling around us, we are simultaneously witnessing a rapidly-advancing biotechnology revolution that promises to forever change the course of human history. New possibilities are emerging everywhere we turn, and there is enormous cause for hope. When we look out onto the frontiers of medicine we see an incredible vista blossoming with possibilities that stagger the mind and border on the miraculous. New advances in medicine promise to help humanity end countless generations of suffering and deliver us into a golden age where disease and aging are merely subjects that we learn about in history class, and the boundaries of our physical capacities are limited only by our imaginations.
The following interviews shed some light on where modern medicine may be evolving. They provide a treasure-trove of practical suggestions that anyone can use to improve their health today and they offer an exciting vision of what’s to come. These mavericks of medicine provide us with bridges to awe-inspiring possibilities, and they offer us the hope that we can all live longer, healthier, and happier lives.