Episode 108 - Too Obvious Conclusions

As we resume our regular podcast series, the Better Angels Publishing Company is about to embark on its next phase which will feature our newest release, “The NeuroHarmonic Approach,” with its catch-phrase, “Harmonize Your Intelligence - Transform Your Life.”

            Now, obviously, that’s quite a mouthful, but this is a significantly powerful and innovative program and it’s evolved quite a bit over the past year, so, I’d like to give you quick overview of where it stands now and I think you’ll be fascinated by the information. Also, as with everything that we produce, our intention is to create a resource that you can use to help you achieve your highest goals as you continue along your own path of personal growth, which is by nature, in a constant state of evolution, expansion and change.   

So, let’s dig into some of its basics. And as we do, I suggest that you engage in what is often called the “Beginner’s Mind,” which means approaching the material as though you’re hearing it for the first time - even if you’ve encountered similar concepts before. When you do that, you naturally let go of old frameworks, open to a fresh perspective and new insights tend to appear. I know that’s always been my experience over the years.

To put it into context, the origins of the NeuroHarmonic Approach began with some extremely deep experiences that I had many years ago, so let me offer a bit of the backstory, to help you get a sense of how this work came to be, which might help enhance the overall meaning of the material.

As you may be aware, the central focus of my adult life has been the exploration and practice of what we’ve come to call personal growth, which is a path of self-discovery that emphasizes the deepening of awareness.

The seed of this pursuit was planted several decades ago, with the sudden death of my father. At age sixteen, it was a devastating shock for me, but it was also accompanied by certain experiences that, for lack of a better word, I can only describe as being metaphysical. I’ve talked about these before, in my memoir Wilt, Ike & Me, and in some earlier podcast episodes, but for the purposes of this introduction, I want to touch on them here again, briefly.

First, the night before he died, I had a vivid, precognitive dream of exactly how I would learn of his death. In precise detail, it included the exact time and place, as well as all of the people who were involved. Then the dream came true the very next night, exactly the way I had dreamt it. Living through those moments is still one of the most unusual experiences I’ve ever had, because it was like going through a strange blend of past, present and future, almost like being in a déjà vu that lasted for several minutes.

Then, about six months later, I had another remarkable dream. In it, my father appeared to me - joyful and full of life.  When I asked him about his death, he smiled and told me that he It wasn’t real. “There is no death,” he said. “It’s just a public relations stunt that God came up with to get people to think about Him. That’s all that it is.”

At that point in the dream, he had me give him back his ring, which I had been wearing regularly since his passing. When he touched the ring, the whole room turned into light and I woke up. Then in waking life, just a few hours later that same day, his ring mysteriously disappeared from my locker during gym class - even though the locker was clearly locked and undisturbed, and everything else inside was untouched, including my watch, my other gold ring and my wallet with some cash in it.

Although I’ve described these circumstances many times, I’ve never been able to truly express what they really did to me. But in hindsight, it’s obvious that these events marked a time when some seeds of deep change were planted within me, even though they would take several years to unfold.

After some time, I came to two powerful conclusions. The first one is that there is far more to this life than meets the eye. Even though we think we’re in an advanced society, we actually understand very little about what’s really happening here. Thomas Edison once put it this way, “We don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything.” And this was from a major genius who is still considered to be one of the greatest inventors of all time. The fact that this was his point of view should speak volumes to us.

So I began to ask myself – Even if it was just in a dream, how could I have experienced a precise visual precognition of events that hadn’t happened yet? The details in that dream had been crystal clear and when the events happened in reality, it was 100% accurate. What does that say about the nature of time? It was completely confusing tome, and of course I’m not alone. Even Einstein himself once said that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Now obviously, I’m no Einstein and probably neither are you.

Also, I had to wonder - how could my father’s ring have vanished into thin air when I knew without question that the locker was locked and undisturbed when I got back from gym, let alone the fact that my watch, my other ring and my wallet with cash in it were all still there. It made no sense. It simply defied all logic.

So, the two dreams – the precognitive one of his death, and the one where I gave him back his ring and then it mysteriously disappeared the next day, put the seeds of some deep thoughts in my head. Which makes sense, because as you can imagine, this sudden and major disruption of time, space and logic was a pretty big deal for an average sixteen-year-old kid.

Which brings me to the second conclusion I drew from those days. My father’s dramatic death was totally unanticipated.  The massive heart attack that he suffered took him instantly, and neither he nor any of the rest of our family had the slightest idea that a tragedy of this magnitude was about to befall us. For me, this rude introduction to your world being turned upside down by a sudden death drove home the undeniable fact that life can change, or end, at any moment. It happened to him and it could just as easily happen to me. So, like a thief in the night, the idea of the ultimate ticking time bomb got planted somewhere deep within me.

As I began to live my life in the new reality that followed, on a deep intuitive level, while I sensed that it was important to resolve the existential questions that were beginning to appear within my mind, the ticking time bomb kept reminding me that I better get on with it because I might not have that much more time. Of course, we’re all in the same boat on this, because regardless of external appearances, nobody has any guarantees here. These events happened nearly sixty years ago. This is how I felt about it all back then. And this is how I still feel now.  

            To continue on this track of early experiences that became critical to my interest in personal growth, during college, I took a course called World Religions. Now I wasn’t a serious student at all. In fact, it would be a stretch to consider me a student at all. Academics were more like a nuisance you had to deal with while you lived rest of your college life. The freedom of it alone was intoxicating. The times had gotten pretty crazy back then and as far as being a student, you could say that I had the attention span of a housefly mixed with the philosophical depth of a skunk, so the general odor emanating from my academic life wasn’t all that pleasant.  

            With that being said, I don’t even remember why I took World Religions. I’m sure I didn’t have any real interest in it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I took it because it might have been a “gut course,” which in the parlance of my esteemed fraternity, meant that it didn’t require much work to be able to get a good grade. As you can extrapolate, I had gotten in with a pretty smart bunch of guys.  

            Anyway, I ended up in this class and to my extreme surprise, after a little while, I became quite interested in it. We studied all of the world’s major religions and the teacher’s point of view was that in essence, they all had the exact same basic understanding, which was that there is one God, who is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. And as human beings, each one of us has come here to grow into the best possible being that we can and that individually we can grow out of the world’s chaos, emerge into the higher realms and ultimately merge with God, even while we’re still alive. In fact, according to him, you could say that this is the actual purpose of life here. 

            As you can surmise, the teacher was quite a learned man and taught that this universal truth that contained all of these deeper understandings, was generally known as the “Wisdom of the Ages.”

            Now one thing I’ve learned in my life is that you never know when something profound is going to come into our consciousness and take you in a new direction. You often don’t see it coming and you don’t know why or how it happens. It just does.

In this case, I wasn’t looking for anything other than just an easy way to get a good grade that would boost my cumulative average, so that I could get into a major law school. But without having the slightest idea about it, I subtly found myself moving down a completely different track, and unwittingly, this whole “Wisdom of the Ages” thing took up residence somewhere deep in the back of my mind.

There was just something new and gripping about the whole thing The concept that there was a universal truth that had been expressing itself through wise men and women in every culture since the beginning of human history was brand new to me. It was also the first time I had seen beyond the walls of different religious dogmas to the view that essentially, they all had the same basic message - that as a human being, you could somehow evolve your consciousness and then actually merge heart, mind, and soul with God. It was all deeply intriguing. Not to mention the fact that the wise ones said the bliss of living in this elevated state of being was beyond human comprehension. It really captured my imagination.

And on top of all this, the American status quo was crumbling from the mushrooming counter-culture movement, Marijuana and psychodelia seemed to be everywhere, fueling it along, and the mind-expanding music that played our soundtrack saw to it that we never missed a beat. You get the picture.

And I’d also like to add one of my favorite quotes about those days from the great comedic master, Robin Williams who always insisted, “If you can remember the sixties, you weren’t really there.”

Well, this is a great place for us to stop. We’ll continue the journey in the coming episodes, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.