Hitendra, it's an honor to be here with you and thank you for inviting me to join in your wonderful gathering of Intersections, which I listen to and really get inspired so often by your work and the work that you really illuminate from other people too.

That's correct. This is just a few moments before its being birthed into the world.

Thank you for those kind words, and it's been mutual. I remember meeting at that gathering and I've loved the conversations that you and I have had, with Caroline and with your wife and our families having intersections with each other. It is a wonderful and an important friendship to us too and to me.

Well, thank you. There's a simple kind of stance or attitude one can take, especially when you're working in a field professionally that deals with people's joys and sorrows, the field of mental health, and then make sure that the professional explorations that you undertake, both with the people you have the privilege to work with, but also in the concepts you have that you're working with colleagues about how that actually resonates with the way you live your personal life. So, having the personal and the professional be distinct, of course. You have your private family and friends and stuff, but in your professional pursuits. But to make sure they're grounded in the same space of reality, if you will. That's a challenge sometimes and it's a journey, and no one gets it just right all the time. But the idea of presence and being there, has helped for me to be a guiding principle.

In my own career, when I started in academics and came up with a lot of resistance to certain fundamental principles like seeing the mind as more than just brain activity was not very popular in the university setting. Though for many years as an educator there, I tried to really work with that, there wasn't much interest or it wasn't welcoming. So I made a professional decision to stay on the course that seemed to me right even though Hippocrates had said, "Mind is only what happens in your head and your brain." And William James reaffirmed that in 1890 in the principles of psychology, that maybe that was actually true, but not the whole truth. Maybe there was a larger truth. It wasn't so much rejecting traditional thinking about the mind as what the brain does, but saying that's part of a much larger story, and by limiting our story, we limit how we can really support people's movement towards realizing a more fulfilling and freer life.

Sometimes, when you try to live in that kind of way of believing in some vision, sometimes it doesn't make you a popular kid on campus. And sometimes you have to leave the campus, which is what I did many years ago. It is a journey, but it's sometimes lonely because you break from the common cultural stance, and that sometimes makes you a pariah. But, if you stay true to a deep, disciplined way of challenging what you think then try to use a rigorous approach to thinking about these things, then the questions that arise can guide you. That's a long way of responding to basically saying thank you for your reflections and what's underneath all that is a lot of consideration that seems to just come out of me in these books. I don't even try to write them anymore. But, there's almost a need.

If you think about the derivatives of the word "Conversation" con is with, verse is to turn. So a conversation is turning together, turning with each other our attention. So, these books are really conversations. I think of them kind of as relational writing. If I can at least reach one person besides my mother, who at 93 still reads my books, I feel like it was worth taking the time and energy to write a book.

There you go. It's hard when you're a kid, even an adult kid, to just say, well, this is my father. Let me just have them stay a father, not a writer or a public figure or something like that. It's hard. I think, in my case, while my kids may not read my books, my daughter actually is the artist for my books, so she has to get the concepts. She'll read sections and maybe she's read the whole thing and just doesn't say it to me. But it's an interesting journey to make sure as husbands and as fathers, we don't bring whatever our professional world has. In my case, I'm mostly an educator these days, not just a therapist. But even as a therapist to make sure I'm not being a therapist or educator to my wife and now adult children. And so, if an idea comes up and I start talking too much, I need to get feedback in a very encouraging way, "Dad, thank you so much", "Dan, thank you so much, but this isn't a lecture hall." That's sometimes hard to hear. And also because I have so many ideas that I want to share.

What I mean by it is, the connected nature of the whole. I worked with some system scientists at MIT, and we went on a retreat to have some experiential journey into systems experiences. So we went on 3 days in a forest in Colorado on our own. When we all emerged from the forest and gathered together in the forest to speak to each other about what that 3 days alone was like, it was really more all one for everyone. People were using the terms like, "I was interconnected. I felt interdependent." They used Thich Nhat Hanh's beautiful term interbeing. They were interlaced, they were interwoven. And then it was my turn to speak. And as you note, I'm kind of a stickler for the meaning of words. I said, "Boy, I resonate with everything everyone's saying for sure, but I can't use the inter prefix because that implies a between-ness and the experience for this body, was that this body, the creek, the sky, the trees, there was a connectedness within the whole. So I wasn't really in the body connected to the trees. I was the whole of it all." And then there was a pause and I said, "Well, so I guess I would say I was intraconnected during these three days."

When we all came out of the forest and we all went back to our rooms, I got my computer out to take some notes and to make some reflections about what that experience was like, and every time I typed intra-connected into my little notes, it would switch it to interconnect. And I thought, "What's wrong with the computer?" It turns out, there is no word such as intra-connected. It doesn't exist. Then I thought, well, that's weird. If we don't have a word in the English language for the connectivity within the whole, then we probably don't have a concept and even a category, because concepts and categories are beneath these words we use.

Then I thought, okay, well then the term "MWe" I have been using, where you integrate by differentiating a linking where you have an inner aspect of your identity as Me, but you have a relational aspect of identity, connections to people, to the planet as a We, and who you are in many ways, if it's integrated, is both, Me and We, so it's not Me too, it's really Me + We and then when you integrate, you don't lose the differentiated nature of the components. So, the element of the M and the element of the W can combine and retain themselves as MWE. I started using that years ago and people would feel this incredible liberation in terms of feeling, that they didn't have to choose between the American extreme of individualism like I'm in a body versus the relational collectivism of we're all connected. I could have both with MWe and it's been fascinating and intraconnected would be basically the nature of me and we. So that if me is the interior, the inner identity and we as the inter, the relational identity, then MWe as the intra connected identity.

Yeah, exactly. That would be a beautiful way of talking about the practical implications of having a word for MWe, so that in the extremes in anthropology, we have individualism where I'm in this by myself. The body is the only source of self, and we can call that a solo self. Or, in extremes of collectivism, we just have to go along with the group. In my search for some balance of the two, of the interior and the relational, as MWe, the closest I can find so far anyway, is in the Indigenous writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer in the book "Braiding Sweetgrass," where she talks about the Potawatomi Indigenous peoples who have basically this cultural stance we are responsible for cultivating our own personal gifts. Maybe you're good at music. Maybe you're good at building things. Maybe you're good at watching and protecting people. Maybe you're good at collecting artifacts or whatever your gift is to recognize that's your individual gift, and the more we cultivate in the Potawatomi perspective, that gift, we give it for the greater good and we share that for the greater good. So that's the closest I could come in my search for MWe. But the interesting thing about the way you're describing it Hitendra is, that everyone benefits and this is where in wording, when we have a language like MWe or like the word intra-connected, two new words the book introduces.

With intra-connected, let's talk about the body example you're giving. I'm a physician and we were always talking about a system. Let's say the nervous system which is composed of neurons and their support of glial cells. Or, the cardiovascular system, the heart and the blood vessels. We could talk about the system and we might talk about the interconnectedness of the systems, but we didn't have a word for what the whole system is like. I mean, here we would apply the word intra-connected. One time I was in a conference with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and actually my son was 15 at the time and sitting next to me. I said, "Well, you know, please help us gain some insights into how Western culture is so individualistic and creating these divisions." He stopped me and he said, "Please do not call it Western." He said, "It's all over the world now." I said, okay, "Well, then modern culture." He said, "Yes, modern culture." So you'll see me refer to that, and my son kind of elbows me in the side and goes, "The Dalai Lama, got you, you know." But it was a really good edit. So unfortunately, it's all around the world. This solo self. This view of the self as only being centered in your body.

Isn't the self just the individual or what is actually a self? We can talk about that in a moment. But, as I was writing the book, what emerged was the idea that if something is excessively differentiated, let's say, in the body and it starts growing with disregard of its being a part of the intra-connected whole, we call it cancer. So then it became clear that it could be that the construction of the solo self by modern culture is a kind of cancer of modern times. When we think about all the pandemics we're facing, not only how we mishandled Covid-19 or even its unfolding on the planet, but racism and social injustice, polarization and misinformation, addiction to digital screens, loneliness and the climate crisis; all of those are excessive differentiation, either of the singular solo self or the solo self that says people of my skin color and my background are the only ones in the in-group, or even human beings are the only important species in the rest of the Earth is a trash can. All of that comes from this solo-self mentality. The amazing thing about it is the mind constructs how it views what the self is and it is shaped by your parents, by your teachers in school, by your peers, by society at large. Even though we may feel guilty about that, the good news is, if the mind created it, if we name it correctly and look at it deeply, which I try to do in the book, we have the opportunity to use the mind to course correct. And it's not too late. It's like someone hobbling around with a limp and you say, "Stop the limping. Let's take your shoes off. Let's take your socks off. Oh, my gosh! There's a big splinter in your foot. May I remove it?" And the person goes, "Well, sure. I didn't know it was there." You remove the splinter and now the person stops limping.

We're limping through life as a human family, and we need to stop, take the sock off. Look at the soul of our experience, which I try to do in this book and then remove the splinter. And we're going to be fine. But we need to do that change in business as usual.

Yeah. It was a very painful time. But in writing the book, I realized that experience just before I turned 20 was an instrumental experience. The way it happened basically was, I was working for the World Health Organization as a college student. I had been inspired by an anthropology professor of mine who was studying different cultures. We went to Mexico to study. They were expanding a dam, Miguel Aleman Dam, and I was there to study aspects of the culture, in this case, the medical care that had been changed by the previous establishment of the dam and what might happen when the dam got expanded. So I studied traditional healers, curanderos. I studied barefoot doctors, which were kind of paramedics in the communities and also Western trained physicians. Part of my role there was to interview as many curanderos as I could. One of them was living in the neighboring state of Oaxaca. I was in the state of Veracruz. On the horse ride up to interview "Queen of the Mushrooms," who had been featured in the Netflix documentary on psychedelics, I was riding with two colleagues, and at a full gallop, the saddle of the horse got loose. It went and turned to the horse's belly. My feet were locked into the stirrups, and so my head was dragged across the rocks for about 100 yards. My colleagues thought I had died from such a terrible accident. And then when I was moaning, they thought I'd broken my neck, but luckily my neck was okay and I broke a lot of parts of my face. But the biggest breaking was I had no idea who I was. I didn't have language for the most part, for things, for naming things. And I certainly didn't have a name for this body. But I kept on asking the question, "What's going on?" But the strange thing was, even though I had broken teeth, broken nose and broken arm, I was in this state of joy and everything was kind of magical and sparkly and nothing had a prior established filter.

If someone gave me a glass of water, I could take the cup and the light shimmering around this circular edge was just beautiful and hilarious. It was an amazing time. And after 24 hours, the experience of knowing my name was Dan started coming back. The experience of knowing where I had been, that I was just about to turn 20, I lived in Los Angeles and all these things in the past, present and future came back. And years later in neuroscience, we'd learn an aspect of networks in the brain called the default mode network that allows this narrative of self of past, present and future. But at that time, my personal experience was just like, "Wow, I could be wide awake and aware, and yet, have no identity," and the loss of these top down filters of prior learning were dismantled or disrupted. And so in the present moment, things were really kind of magical and magnificent.

I have a family member who's a recovering addict, but at that time an active addict. So I had a psychological aversion to ever using medications or drugs that would alter my state of mind. So I didn't have any experience with that. But people who did would say, "Oh, you were stoned." And I said, "Well, I was dragged across the rocks, so I guess that was my own version of being stoned." But it's an interesting thing because studies have shown, in fact, that using psychedelics shuts off this default mode network and it actually may be a part of its use in medical treatment for things like depression and trauma. So that's a whole another story. But that's basically what happened.

What was relevant about putting it in this book IntraConnected was, it really asks, "What is the self?" And goes through a way of looking at it from a scientific point of view that is consistent with Indigenous teachings that have been around for thousands of years. So in many ways it's really supporting what those traditions have been saying for millennia, and now just adding recent science to join that ancient invitation to realize that the separate self, the solo self, is a constructed illusion that we are not just separate. We do have a body, we do have an interiority. That's me. But we're not only a "me." The mind is not just what happens in your head. That's a long scientific discourse in my other books that I write. In this book, I wanted to really focus on self-experience, which we can talk about. But, that horse accident just illuminates that you can be filled with subjective experience, you can have a perspective and you can have a sense of agency that is not limited to your narrative self. So those three as an acronym of SPA, subjective experience; the felt texture of life, perspective; your point of view, and agency; how you act being the center of initiative action. That's kind of the core scientific view of what we mean by the word self. So it's like a center of experience across those three realms.

Once you see that, you go, Wow, you can construct a very limited identity lens that says, My SPA is only inside this body, and then you're very constricted. Or, you can learn to widen that identity lens and realize that you can feel like I did in the forest. You can see it from the perspective of the forest. You can act on behalf of the forest and then your center of experience, that SPA is intra-connected. You don't have to give up the body. You just expand the self.

Yeah, absolutely. You never know when you drop out of the vulnerability we have to see the self as a noun, like an entity. That vulnerability is probably because if we can see self as an entity, then we get an illusion of certainty that makes us feel like we can have protection from that ability to make predictions. To say that very simply, the drive for certainty makes us have an identity as an entity, a noun-like thing. But instead, as Rasheed, the artist whose quote is on the entry to the Brooklyn Public Library says, "Having discovered the flimsy fantasy of certainty, I decided to wander." I love that quote, because we all have a drive for protection. To get protection, we want predictions. To get a prediction, we need certainty. And then we want to think of our identity as an entity. So you can see where it all kind of fits together, and especially, under threat, especially these days, you intensify your nounification of identity.

In many ways that channeling you're talking about, Hitendra, is so beautiful because it's really saying, "I'm really not a noun, I'm really a verb." And in the verb like flow, I am not just this body of flow, not just this brain in my skull or the skin encased body. For me, as a scientist, its energy and information flow isn't blocked by the skull or skin, so then I become immersed in a kind of what Teilhard de Chardin would call a noosphere. We would talk about it from now as an energy and information atmosphere. Then, things just happen to go through you. The pencil idea from Mother Teresa is so beautiful that when we let that kind of thing happen, we then become the instrument. As I'm writing this book IntraConnected, it has a feeling like the first book I ever wrote, which is, there's an idea that needs to be expressed somehow, almost like a Cotton bowl inside of me that somehow is filling me up or something. It's just a feeling. I just have to make the time, put the fingers on a keyboard and see what comes up. In a way, I think of it as relational writing, see how the ideas through the words might be able to reach that one person who would take the time because we're so busy these days with very short attention spans. People now say, put out a video that's 30 seconds long, not 10 hours long. And a book, it takes a lot of time.

I really try to make the book very relational, and I think if the flow through this body can take a certain formation in its information, that then is a source of inspiration, that person will also channel it somehow. I really think of it as one relationship at a time, even with something as simple as a new word like MWe or intra-connected or something that just says, Wow, okay, we need to work from the subjective sense of perspective and agency, not only of the interior, but also the relational and work with it together in an integrated way. I really am very hopeful. Actually, if we've identified the splinter that we can stop humanity limping through its way of hobbling along with nature, and instead make it a dance, where we dance together in a beautiful way.

Totally. It feels right. It sounds right. And you're saying it so beautifully. Just to underscore what you're saying, it's about joining and not about directing someone. It'll be interesting to see as people read the book, if they have this experience. When I read the audiobook, the audio engineer was unable to do the engineering. We had to pause and I had to say, "What's going on?" He said, "I don't know. My whole sense of who I am is like expanding." And I said, "Okay, well that's fine, but I need an audio engineer right now." So I explained to him what the book is about and he was able to do it.

The hope would be that these words, whether it's in a book or the conversation here on Intersections, that they start to have someone join with this conversation. This is the experience I've had so far, people start feeling like there's a kind of relief that I've been kind of living a lie that I didn't even know I was stuck in. And I feel almost like I'm being liberated from it. That's been so deeply touching to hear that, because it's almost like we are living in this kind of sadly, perhaps lethal lie of the separate self and people scramble to try to find meaning in life, to try to find happiness. And yet, underneath it is a false statement that who you are, the self, the center of experience is only in the body. Just like in my field of mental health, we say, the self is the individual. And then we've worked for decades for self-actualization and self-realization, and we haven't gotten that far because I think we've made a big mistake to equate itself with the individual. Yes, you have a body. That's your individual personal body. That's where the ME is. This isn't like saying forget you've got a body. No, you do. It's really important to exercise your body, feed your body well, and sleep well. Know the history of your body. Fantastic!

The MWe and the intra-connected says, there's an interiority that is absolutely real and really important and there's a relationality that is absolutely real and also really important. When you put them together, you get them MWe. The liberation of that is that people aren't given a false forced choice. From a science point of view that's kind of fun about it is, once you start seeing who we are is, the flow of some which I call it the energy and information flow, then you realize that the illusion that your skull or your skin encased body is somehow blocking that flow from happening is just an illusion. The thing we're talking about is not confined by skin or skull. And then you start going, "Whoa, this is awesome." Because, then you can really start exploring how this kind of stuff just seems to happen. Then, there's a process called integration, which in the interpersonal neurobiology field that I work in, we see as the core basis of well-being. And in that integration, it arises from a generator of diversity. We call it a plane of possibility. Basically it's a sea of potential. In physics terms, the formless source of all form. When you bring all these different fields together, we call it consilience. E.O. Wilson brought back that term from the 1800s. It's what we do in interpersonal neurobiology. And then you say, "Wow, if they're all pointing in independent ways, using different vocabulary, different strategies, but to the same process, maybe there's something solid about that way of viewing the process, because everyone's pointing there. That's called consilience." And that's what we do, that's what intra-connected tries to just say, "What's the consilient view of self from contemplation, from indigenous wisdom, from science?" Whoops, it's not consistent. The modern culture is saying, "Okay, why don't we actually go with consilience rather than the constriction of a solo-self?

Yeah It was so central as you're pointing out. I have it as an appendix in the book. You can go to our website and do it for free. It's basically two conciliate ideas. One is that integration, as we're saying, is the basis of well-being. The other is that consciousness is needed for change. With my patients years and years ago, I said, what if you combine those two conciliate ideas. An integrated consciousness. There was a table in our office, there still is, which has a central hub, it's glass. An outer rim, which is wood. And my patients would then say, "What are you doing?" I say, "We're going to integrate consciousness, we're going to differentiate the knowing, and let's put in this metaphoric center of the table, and no one wanted to call it the Table of Awareness, so it was the Wheel of Awareness. So, the center hub of that wheel is a metaphor for where we put the knowing of awareness. Like, if I say, "Hello, Hitendra," You have the knowing that I said hello and that would be put in the hub. But, on the rim we'd have several aspects of the rim. Four different segments. This would be sound coming from this body called Dan to that body called Hitendra. For anyone listening, sound would be a form of energy. Its sound waves or molecules of air moving, and so, there would be the sound Hello. So that would be put on the rim.

The rim is divided basically into energy flow from outside the body, like sound and light and things like that. Then the next segment is, energy flow from inside the body, the sensations of muscles, bones and organs. Energy flow is probably inside the head brain like emotions, thoughts, memories, hopes, dreams, longings, desires and expectations. Then in the fourth segment, you've got the relational sense, our sense of connection to people on the planet. And then in an advanced step, you actually take this spoke of attention, a singular spoke, and you've been moving around the rim from the hub. You now bend it around into the hub itself and you explore pure awareness. I did this before the viral pandemic with over 50,000 people in person in different workshops and got people who were willing to write down their experience or take a microphone and share and record the findings. It's from that finding that we have this really interesting notion that awareness itself is related to this formless source of all forms. It looks like when you drop into pure awareness, it's like a portal through which integration arises.

One of the most common things people say about that hub is what they experience there is a connection like they'd never experienced before. This open awareness and love. Love is what people describe. Love is a thread of the tapestry of reality, that opening and awareness that gives you this experience of letting love happen.

Yeah, that's on the website. The book "Becoming Aware" would teach you how to do it in three weeks. The book "Aware" gives you a deep dive. On the website you can do the wheel for free.

Well, there are 6 parenting books I've written and 2 children's books. "Now Maps" and "Now Maps Junior" would teach kids directly these ideas. "The Parenting from the Inside Out" Which I wrote with Mary Hartzell, four books with Tina Payne Bryson "The Whole Brain Child," "No-Drama Discipline," "The Yes Brain," and "The Power of Showing Up." Then, a book for adolescents to read themselves is, "Brainstorm."

Those would be the books for the whole journey of parenting.

Yeah. That's what the publishers tell me. I try not to focus at all on that number or The New York Times Bestseller Business. It's hard. You want people to know about a book. And so if it's a bestseller, people think, "Oh, then I'll read it." Since you're the advocate for the book, of course you want to let people know about the book and you're like a parent supporting the book. I think my feeling about a book is, it's a relationship. If I start thinking, "Oh, I have these New York Times Best-Selling books, I hope this one gets there." Then, it stops the process of it being a relationship, and it's more about some imagined view of what is going to sell a lot of books.

I really need to make sure whatever aspect of me may be concerned about that goes to the side, and when I'm with the manuscript that I'm really thinking about the imagined reader and what this reader is going to experience starting from the beginning of the book, diving into it, the sequence of things, the stories, the emotion that might happen. In this book, I even put moments when it might be helpful to pause and just soak it in. So I think it is relational writing. And in that sense, as I mentioned, if I can reach one person besides my mom, I'm going to feel like this was really worth all the time and effort. And if that one person then can share it with maybe one or two other people, then there can be an exponential expansion. If each person that gets in the conversation gives it to two, that's a pretty good thing.

Well, I think the secret is, which is always a work in progress is to differentiate. We have our different roles at the Mindsight Institute, and Caroline has been in charge of the whole online presence. So when you see this extensive educational program we have and please come join us, that's all Caroline's doing. I may be the teacher, but she's the mastermind behind the whole presence we have online. We differentiate there. And even in the journeys we take in our personal lives, we really differentiate in our connections with our two adult children. Trips we take, I just was in the Grand Canyon. She chose not to come. She's going on another trip. I'm not going on that one. We feel inside of ourselves that differentiating and linking is kind of the art of having a harmonious relationship as best as it can be, because it's hard to actually work with your romantic partner. It's really hard. And so, we need to make sure at a certain time of the day, it's time to stop talking about work. It's a beautiful relationship and she's a beautiful, wonderful human being. I feel really honored that we're partners together. I'm so happy she has a good connection with you and with your wife. It's beautiful!

Yeah. He got very inspired when he had a chance to meet with Ravi Shankar, who before he passed. That was such a beautiful meeting, where he really inspired Alex. If you want to listen to his music, he is Alex Siegel.

She's doing the artwork even though she's a graduate student, getting her doctoral degree in environmental science and engineering. She's a scientist and she's a beautiful artist and human being. My inspiration is through her artwork. The drawings and stuff in the book. I listen to Alex's music and I get inspired by Maddy's drawings. It's great to be immersed in and get consultation from Caroline. So it's a whole family experience.

Thank you, Hitendra. It's good to be with you at the Intersections of everything. Even if we're not in one of those places being fluid verbs connecting with one another.

Thank you, Hitendra. Thank you for being you and thank you for having me.