A Neuroscientist on Manifestation, and More (with James Doty, MD)

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0:58Here we go. My guest today is neurosurgeon and neuroscientist James Doty. He is a longstanding faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also the founder and director of Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. Several years ago, he wrote the New York Times bestselling book, Into the Magic Shop. His new book, which we cover today, is titled Mind Magic, the Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything. Let's begin.

1:34Okay, so we're going to jump in here. I was so compelled when I understood the thesis of this book. I've always kind of believed in manifesting, but I also don't have a practice around it. And it was super interesting to read that there actually is a science behind manifesting. So I know from your first book in your life that you always kind of had these magic, if you will, moments that kind of put you very firmly on a trajectory forward. How much of those magic moments were, do you think you were manifesting? Like where, where were they coming from? Well, what I would suggest is the reality is we're all manifesting for good and for bad.

2:26And what I mean by that is I'm sure you've had the experience where somebody sort of finally stops and becomes self-aware and says, wow, why am I here? Why have I met the same partner three times who's abusive and an alcoholic? And the problem is that a lot of people don't appreciate the baggage that they carry from their childhood. and it so often shows up in every conversation, every partner they meet, how they react to people. And so this results in people oftentimes manifesting things, of course, they don't want. So the key is how to use the tools or the neuroscience of manifestation to manifest what you do want.

3:12And I think that's really the key. As you notice from the first sentence of the book, the universe doesn't give a fuck about you. I loved it. You know, it's funny. I was talking to John Hamm and he said to me, he said, I guess he used one of his lines from Mad Men. He said, at best, the universe is indifferent. But the point is that so many people look outside of themselves to find an entity, a magic, a thing, a God, a universe that somehow has interest in them. And if they just put their energy out there, positive energy, the universe will respond back. And it all sounds good, but part of the problem is, and I'm sure you've heard of this thing called the law of attraction.

3:57Oftentimes though, if what you wish to manifest doesn't work out, you get a guilt trip laid on you. Well, you just didn't want it bad enough. And if you'd only done X, Y, or Z. And first of all, there is no blame here. So I think one of the important things is, as I just mentioned, was understanding what you've already been manifesting to understanding that like any, and if you want to call it a sport or activity, it takes practice. It doesn't just show up and you go, okay, I want this. Okay, I'm waiting. And I think the sad thing is that many people get distracted with is this notion that if I have quote unquote success, that will equate with happiness.

4:45In my own case, I met this woman, Ruth, in a magic shop who taught me the fundamental principles of this. And she, in fact, had me make this list of things I wanted. And I did get every one of those. The problem was I was 12 when I made the list. I was poor and I had no self-awareness. So what did I ask for? Oh, I want the mansion. I want the big house and I want the Porsche and I want to be a millionaire and I want to have a successful career and I want people to admire me. And of course, that's what I did because I was looking at it through the lens of the baggage myself that I was carrying.

5:23And of course, one of the things you carry when you grow up impoverished or poor is you want to be rich because you think that if I get rich, all my problems are solved. And so I went on this path to get every one of those things. And I did. And I climbed every one of these mountains. And at the top of each mountain, I was by myself because I was looking for these people to say, Jim, you're so great. That's fantastic. And they did all say that. But it had no relationship actually to decrease my own insecurity or my own shame or my own fear. And it finally took calm crisis actually to get my attention.

6:05And what happened was in six pleasant weeks, I lost$80 million. Unbelievable. Yeah. But the thing is, here I had a beautiful home overlooking the bay in Newport Beach. I had a penthouse in San Francisco. I had a villa in Florence. I had a Porsche, a Ferrari, a Mercedes, a BMW, a Range Rover in my garage. And I was flying around in private jets and everybody was telling me how great my life was. but actually I was never more miserable than I had ever been in my life because that external affirmation did nothing for me. And I was confused because I thought, well, isn't that supposed to fix everything that's wrong with me?

6:49And as of course, it turns out the only person who can give you that gift is yourself. Absolutely. So what exactly, after you lost the$80 million dollars in dot-com and had to liquidate everything. Was that experience incredibly traumatic for you? And how quickly did it get you on a path to sort of this inner knowing where you were sort of returning to what Ruth told you in the store? No, I think that's a great question. It did put me on this path where I went back and tried to reflect on the lesson she taught me. And in fact, part of the book goes through me going down to my former home and sitting there trying to figure out what went wrong here.

7:34I did everything I was supposed to do, I thought. Actually, the turning point came after this period reflection. Here I am liquidating everything. I tell people, I had two sudden best friends, my banker, because I had borrowed$15 million and he would like that paid back. And my lawyer, who I had set up these different trusts, charitable trusts, during those conversations, my lawyer said to me, he said, you know, Jim, I have good news for you. And he said, it turns out we had not filed the trust documents. So the stock you were giving away, you don't have to give away at all. You can just keep it.

8:13And I thought about this for a long time because the baggage that still stood over or on my back, if you will, was this idea of poverty and this fear of being poor. Do you think that was an obstacle? Like that fear was hamstringing you being able to manifest your full life? Yes, because I was focused with a belief that my poverty was the problem and I had to protect myself always. I told the lawyer to go ahead and give all of that stock away to charity, which turned out to be$30 million. What happened is on some level, I went from rags to riches in the real sense, but then back to rags again. But what I got was riches of a different type.

9:04And this changed everything. And in fact, it changed how I saw the world in quite a different way. Here, I founded the Center at Stanford, where we studied the neuroscience of compassion and have developed programs and techniques that have had an impact on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. It allowed me to meet the Dalai Lama, who became the founding benefactor of the Center. And from that relationship, I have probably met more spiritual and religious leaders than probably just about anybody who remained friends of mine who I am involved with. All while not believing in God. Don't bring that up.

9:49Well, I think it's a really interesting thing about you because here you are talking about manifesting and it's deeply spiritual. You're with the Dalai Lama and all these people. So, I mean, I think it could be characterized that that's believing in something other than just being an accidental mammal on a planet, right? Well, we're all accidental mammals, perhaps. That's going to be the title of my biography, I think. Yeah, that would be a good t-shirt. Accidental mammal. But, well, I think that's a good question. Isn't that praying, in a sense? Like, reading through your exercises in the book, in a way that, to me, the connection with that, when I meditate and I go into that meditative state, I feel so connected to something bigger than me.

10:45I don't know if it's God. I don't know what it is. But in a way, if you're trying to manifest, isn't there sort of like a praying element in that or no? Yes, you could say that. And here is how I would frame it. First of all, I have a deep belief that we're all connected. What the statement about being an atheist is that it's not so much that we're not connected or there's not something that binds us. But if you talk to any evolved spiritual or religious leader, and again, as I said, I mean, whether it's Pope Francis, Thich Nhat Hanh, Archbishop Tutu, all of these individuals live above their dogma.

11:27They're not trying to sit there and say it's my way or the highway and use ego and power to manipulate people. what they see about all of us is that there is a deep connection between each and every one of us which is frequently called common humanity right and i think that that is really the glue and if you want to call that god that's fine but it's not the god that is of the old testament or who is really particularly interested in what you did yesterday. And I think that's the difference. The other thing I want to point out, I was talking about sort of how I was chasing things. This also relates to what we call hedonic happiness versus eudemonic happiness.

12:20And the differentiator, I think, is that with hedonism or hedonic happiness, you're seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, but it's also actually, in some ways, is an insecurity. You have to have these things around you to have your identity. And as a result, this is, in some ways, chronically stimulating your sympathetic nervous system, which frankly, in modern society, is already stimulated. And with eudaimonic happiness, this is something that unlike hedonic happiness, which is shallow and transitory, eudaimonic happiness is deep and long-lasting. And this is when you find purpose and meaning. And if you look at how we evolved as a species, of course, our accidental mammal, us, we have small litter size.

13:18Our offspring don't run off into the forest or the jungle. We have to take care of them for 10 or 15 years. So we have a genetic... Well, I tell people I have a daughter who's 43, so 43 years. But that's right. So we have to take care of them. We are highly attuned to their suffering when they're hungry, when they're in pain. And so we are highly motivated to expend the time and resources to do that. But why? The why is because we are rewarded for doing so. We're rewarded because of neurotransmitters that are expressed, one of which, of course, you know, is oxytocin or the love bonding or affiliative hormone.

14:02That actually stimulates and rewards your pleasure centers in the brain, but it also activates your brain in the sense that it's functioning at its best, as well as your peripheral physiology. And this is the shift. I mentioned engagement of your sympathetic nervous system, which most of the listeners know is the flight, fight, or freeze response. But when you're able to shift over and activate your parasympathetic nervous system, your cognitive brain networks function at their best, and we can talk about that in a bit, but your peripheral physiology works at its best, whether it's heart rate, whether it's blood pressure, whether it's your immune system, whether it's the expression of inflammatory proteins or the release of cortisol or other stress hormones, all of these are improved when you shift into this mode of engagement of your parasympathetic nervous system, because that's how we were meant to live.

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15:44And for our Goop listeners, mention Goop to receive up to$500 off your next meeting or event reservation rental fee. This promotion is valid for all new clients on select spaces, booked and actualized prior to December 30th, 2025 and subject to availability. Convene for the moments that move your business. And so in our culture right now, everybody's in the sympathetic, right? It's like I am, you know, for most of the day, even though I have tools and I do my meditation and, you know, but things happen and things go off course and there are, you know, disappointments and cell phone and media and all this stuff.

16:24and I think it becomes difficult to stay in the parasympathetic you know you you you really do need to have a practice there so in the book you have kind of different I guess I'll call them meditations if you will right for sure yeah manifest different things like Like, I'm super curious about this idea of being in the parasympathetic when you're not meditating, when you're not in. Like, how do you, do you toggle back and forth all day? Do you return? Do you catch yourself? Like, how is the way back to the center? Sure. Well, first of all, let me say something. because somehow people think that people who write these things or say these things have some magic trick that separates us and we're superhuman and everybody should flock to see us to give them the light.

17:21And I'm a frail, fragile human being who has fucked up more than once. And I'm not perfect. You could say I'm perfectly imperfect. So first of all, attachment and grasping and craving. Those are the causes of suffering. But I think that these types of things always put you off kilter, and it usually has to do with ego. But what I do is, first of all, you have to be able to emotionally regulate, and you have to be able to have metacognition. And what I mean by that is you have to be able to see yourself and see how you're heading off track, right? And I'm sure you've read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

18:07Indeed. Yes. Now, of course, there's a quote that everyone uses, which actually Viktor Frankl did not say, but Wayne Dyer did, which is between stimulus and response, there's a pause and within that pause lies your freedom. And I think one of the things is you have to understand how things sets you off. And as soon as you're sensed that, you take a pause and you may do a breathing exercise, but you take a period of time until that feeling leaves you. Our sympathetic nervous system, which is ancient, of course, evolved to deal with life and death situations in that moment, not to be chronically activated.

18:52And so if you can do as your best to regulate how you respond to things, that has a huge, huge effect. And again, I think this is hard, but you have to look at the world through a different lens. And this gets back in some ways to meditation practice. So many of us in this world are hypercritical of ourselves. And regardless of our success, we still go around with. I'm an imposter. People are going to find out about me. I'm not worthy. I don't deserve. It's not possible. And when you look at the world through that lens, it clouds everything. Because one, when you say a statement to yourself, I cannot, it is not possible, that actually becomes truth.

19:45Your mind does not know the difference between truth and untruth. The other aspect is when you're hypercritical of yourself, you look at the world through the lens of being hypercritical. And oftentimes results in huge mistakes. And we look at others, and we also talked earlier about the people, everyone is carrying baggage within themselves. And so we believe oftentimes when people may come on aggressive to us, that it's about us. And oftentimes it has nothing to do with us. It could have been an argument with a spouse earlier in the day, or actually maybe they had some food that disagreed with them.

20:28And so when you change how you look at the world, where you start being kind to yourself, then you start looking at the world and understand on some level that everyone is suffering. And the greatest challenge though, is to sit there and it's easy with your spouse or your children to have unconditional love. Of course, as you start going out in these concentric circles to actually people you are indifferent to, or frankly, you don't like, it gets harder. I'm sure you've been driving along and somebody cuts you off, right? And of course, you have an immediate reaction. And that typical reaction may include a hand gesture or maybe a comment.

21:14But if I said to you, you know, the person driving that car, his wife is next to him. She's nine months pregnant. Her water's broken. She's bleeding. He's trying to get her to the hospital. What happens? In a microsecond, you become kind, thoughtful, gentle, accepting, and you're no longer pissed off. And you see, that is the choice you have every second. Yeah. Well, you haven't been in a car with me, but I'm hoping that I would convert to the compassionate, empathetic. Well, listen, none of us are 100 % perfect, but we strive to be that person. But my point is that another thing that so many people don't appreciate is the power they have within themselves to change themselves, and that's through the power of your mind.

22:09And when we're looking for an outside agent to make life better, there is no outside agent. What you do have, though, is the ability to change your life through your mind. And the first aspect of that is being able to shift into your parasympathetic nervous system. And what I tell people is when you make negative comments about yourself, it's as if you're laying down a brick to the walls of a prison that you're creating for yourself. and the walls get higher and it gets darker. Yet, you always hold the key to liberate yourself. And through these types of practices, which I outline in the book, it gives you the tools to, one, understand what you've been manifesting, two, to have clarity of your intention, three, to let go.

23:00And then this allows you to actually get to where you will most benefit. Now, one of the other problems, though, for a lot of people is, one, they want instantaneous results, like all of us. Yeah, you say in the book that changing, I wrote it down, you said changing your brain takes time. Exactly. And this is what the statement, what fires together, wires together. And this is why repetition is so critically important. So is that how you change the brain? By stopping an intrusive thought that's saying something bad to you about you and replacing it? What are the mechanics of changing the brain?

23:46Well, one is, now I will suggest to you that you will never get rid of every intrusive thought. And the reason is, is because of what we call negativity bias, where negative things stick to us. Because what gets our attention is things that put our lives at threat, and that's how we're design. But yes, I mean, one of the first things is to get you into the right mental state. And the other is it's like a type of exercise. You don't run a marathon by waking up in the morning and running the whole marathon. So change in your brain does take time. And I would suggest that you do baby steps. And what I mean by that is if there's something you want to accomplish, You start out, as an example, with running a marathon.

24:30You wake up in the morning and maybe you walk to the corner. And that's enough for that moment because the brain has to get used to something occurring over and over again. And after a few weeks of doing that, that actually becomes a habit. So what you need to do is to create a habit. It's just also creating a habit of how you see the world. How are you manifesting from that place? So say, I mean, I have so many friends who say like, I manifested this job or I manifested this partner. Is that real? Yes. So tell me about that and the science behind how you know it's real. So are there coincidences that just happened?

25:13Yes. And can some people confuse that with manifestation? Sure. But if you want to maximize your ability to manifest, you have to activate different brain networks. Because what you need to do is something called value tagging. Okay? Okay. And we have about 10 million bits of information coming into our brain, so our sensory organs at any moment. And yet, on a conscious level, we're only able to process 50 to 100. So on a conscious level, how do we embed our intention? And that is through this idea of value tagging. you have to make what it is you want to manifest salient. So the way it works is there are basically four primary brain networks involved here.

26:04One of those is what we call the default mode network. And that's what happens, or that system is activated when you're mind-wondering, daydreaming, it's self-referential and it paints pictures about who you are to yourself. And once you paint a picture of how you want to be or what you wish, then of course, you have to activate another brain network, which is called the salience network. How do you make it salient in the sense that you want it, you need it, it has to happen. And once you embed that, and I use the analogy of a file clerk and a bloodhound. Once on a conscious level, you embed that, or you have the file clerk put this into this small file, the bloodhound, your subconscious, is activated 24-7 to make it happen.

27:00So the bloodhound realizes that that file is important. Then it's working your subconscious 24-7 to have that happen. But you have to be able then to direct your attention to what the salience network has identified is important. Once those two things happen, then this is where synchronicity occurs. 24-7, the subconscious is looking for opportunities to help you manifest. As an example, I'm sure you've been at a party and a bunch of people are talking. and you can hardly hear anything, but somebody says your name and you immediately turn, even among the din of all of this, because your identity is deeply embedded within you.

27:50Or another example, as a neurosurgeon, I see patients with a variety of conditions, but let's say somebody has a meningioma and they'll sit there and they'll say, you know, I have never heard of that before. That must be really rare. Two months later, I see them and they'll say, the most amazing thing has happened. I've run into five people who have the same thing. And because now their subconscious has been activated. And I'll give you another example. A few weeks ago, I was in a coffee shop and there's a fairly esoteric project that I'm working on. And it's very loud, very noisy. All these people are chit-chatting, irritating me, frankly.

28:27But here I hear somebody actually using terminology associated with the project. Even though it's really loud, I would never have looked at them. And I go over and introduce myself, and it turns out we're working on the same thing, and now we're working together on it. And this is the nature of synchronicity, and I'm sure this has happened with yourself. All it's doing is putting the sensory organs that you have on alert to be attentive to situations that are outside of yourself that may give you the opportunity to manifest your intention. Now, what I would suggest to you is be careful what you ask for, because oftentimes, and it gets back to a selfish narrative, if your selfish narrative is, I want to be seen with this hunk next to me and all the other babes to look at me and tell me how great I am, then that is a path to unhappiness.

29:24Because unfortunately, external beauty shockingly has no relationship to internal beauty. And so finding what you think is the perfect guy from this sort of self-serving narrative can be the worst choice you can make. And in some ways, when what you wish to manifest does not happen, it's not necessarily because of you or it's your fault. But on a subconscious level, there's a realization that it shouldn't happen for very good reasons. versus if your motivation is to say, I would like to meet a person who is a kind person, who's a handsome person, who would care about me and be interested in making a family together.

30:10Those are two different conversations you have with yourself. And that's why you see people who say they manifest and they can, as I said, as a child, I manifested everything and I was absolutely miserable because I did not have the self-awareness, understanding, or the ability to medicognate, if you will, to see myself. And so when you look at it from a much more objective point of view, how do I fundamentally activate these brain networks to bring me gifts, if you will, that allow me to be of service to make the lives of others better, which then make my life better? That's a completely different narrative.

30:56yeah when i was my grandmother told me i don't remember this but she told me when i was like nine years old i told her i was gonna win an oscar i don't even know how i knew what an oscar was at that age like nine or ten and when i won one she reminded me of this so is that a version of manifestation that's somewhere in my subconscious like how how could i possibly have manifested that if it relies on so many external factors to happen? Well, again, one could be this was just coincidence, and the other is that you repeated - A cigar is just a cigar. Well, that perhaps is a different conversation.