AWAKEN with Ryan DeJonghe

Philip H. Farber: Ritual Magick, Neuroscience, and the Meta-Magick System

• Ryan DeJonghe, Founder of TranceWell.help • Episode 33

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In this episode of AWAKEN with Ryan DeJonghe, Ryan explores the intersection of ritual, consciousness, and neurolinguistics with Philip H. Farber, a master hypnotist and licensed NLP trainer with over 30 years of experience. Phil is the creator of Meta-Magick, a system that blends traditional magical practices with contemporary neuroscience to help individuals "reprogram" their own neurological experience.

The conversation centers on Phil’s book, Brain Magick, and his philosophy that magical invocation is essentially a "ritual technology" for accessing peak states of consciousness. Phil explains how he uses NLP to deconstruct ancient rituals into practical, repeatable exercises that allow anyone—from novices to adepts—to take control of their own internal "story". They discuss the "Way of Woohoo," the role of intentionality in change, and how to use the body and breath to anchor transformative states of mind.

Key Takeaways & Meaningful Quotes

  • "The core of the work is asking yourself: how much do you want your own story to rock? If you can get the brain to say 'Woohoo' to a new possibility, the old limitations start to lose their grip on your reality."
  • "Magick is essentially the art and science of changing your own internal state on purpose. We use rituals not because they are 'supernatural,' but because they are highly effective ways to speak to the unconscious mind in a language it actually understands."
  • "Invocation is about bringing a specific quality or entity into your current field of awareness. Whether you call it a 'spirit' or a 'neurological resource,' the result is the same: you become more capable, more passionate, and more present."

How to Connect and Work with Us

Connect with Philip H. Farber: Phil maintains a private practice in New York's Hudson Valley and offers workshops and training in NLP, hypnosis, and Meta-Magick.

Work with Ryan DeJonghe: Ready to explore your own transformation through hypnosis?

SPEAKER_03

Welcome everyone. It's great to be here with you, our guest, and we have a special guest with us, Phil Farber. Philip H. Farber, if you go by his book, Brain Magic. Welcome, Phil.

SPEAKER_00

Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so groovy. And this isn't your only book. The reason I am holding it now is because a fellow friend of ours was promoting it, and it had such a cool artwork and title. And I'm holding it up to the camera. Unfortunately, those that are listening can't see it, but just trust me, if you look on Amazon, Brain Magic, M-A-G-I-C-K, Philip H. Farber, it is a beautiful cover. And so far, I'm not quite finished with it, but it's a beautiful book. So thank you for gifting us this book. Yeah. So the first question off the top of my head is and I still don't really understand it because in reading the book, I love how you mixed a lot of cool stuff in together. You mix NLP, you mixed hypnosis, you make mixed a little shamanism, and you look at it from different perspectives. And I love how you go about with a scientific approach where you're like, this is a method, test it for yourself and see if it works. I'm wondering in your definition, what is magic? Especially with this spelling. M-A-G-I-C-K, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Um, well, let's see. To start with, I I give the scientific approach on things. Um hang on, I will get my voice here eventually.

SPEAKER_02

That's all right.

SPEAKER_00

We're having kind of a uh, I don't know, it's a stormy day here in New York and uh getting to me a little bit. Um the uh uh I I grew up uh as a scientist, really. Uh both of my parents were working scientists, my dad was a physicist, my uh my mom was a biologist. And so basically, I I look at the world through a lens of science, right? I mean, this is sort of uh what I learned to do as a kid. Uh when I was in college, I studied biology and so on. Um, so that's kind of that's that's my bias towards things. Um when I was well, let's see, uh taking it back even further. Um my dad, uh who I said was a physicist, he worked his way through college as a uh as a stage magician. And the voice will, I assure you, the voice will will return here in a moment.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and as he's drinking water, for those listening, yeah, it's it's cool.

SPEAKER_00

Uh excuse me. I could do my my Milton Erickson impression.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, there you go. Get it, get it out, get it out.

SPEAKER_00

Anyway, um my dad worked his way through college uh as a stage magician, and um part of his thing was uh he had a little bit of a a stage hypnosis routine that he did. And um so uh I became interested in that. There was a shelf of books in my house of hypnosis books and so on, and I read them at a really early age and uh started recruiting my friends in junior high school to to you know be willing uh participants in hypnosis experiments uh and so on. Um when I was 15, 16, I was 16, uh, I had a uh bicycle accident and uh where I coming down the hill a little too fast, it was a little muddy, I went over the handlebars uh and hit my head, and that's how I lost my voice.

SPEAKER_01

No, I'm joking.

SPEAKER_00

Uh the uh but I had a near-death experience and and kind of a classic one, bright light. I was looking way down at the things that were going on, and a voice, you know, or something said to me, you know, it's not your time, go back. You know, the whole the whole thing that you you know, uh I I know you also had a near-death experience.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, so that's interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So following that, I I had this conviction that just you know, there's more to life than than just the things that are apparent to us, right? That there are, among other things, states of consciousness that uh we don't normally experience, and some of them quite remarkable, like a near-death experience uh and life-changing. And um, you know, I had already had a little bit of a background in uh in hypnosis, like I said, from an early age. Uh, so I was always very interested in uh from that point on altered states and uh hip, you know, more about hypnosis and uh other traditions, religious traditions that use trance and altered states and things like that. Uh when I was in college, uh a friend who was visiting accidentally left behind a book uh in my apartment. And I'm a voracious reader, let's say, or uh even more so back then. And if anything that got left in my apartment, or even today, if somebody leaves a book in my house, um, I will read it.

SPEAKER_03

That's funny.

SPEAKER_00

I don't care what it is, I will read it. And uh uh so uh this book was The Confessions of Alistair Crowley, and I started reading this, and I quickly learned that Alistair Crowley was excuse me, um a famous, if not infamous, uh occultist uh who uh had a a scientific background in what he did. He actually had had uh studied chemistry at Oxford in England. Uh this is in the uh late 19th century, early 20th century. And um from that he he came in contact uh while he was in at Oxford and so on, he came in contact with people who were doing what they call magic. And that was things like the Golden Dawn Society and uh the other uh sort of fraternal semi-Masonic kinds of uh Rossicrucian sort of things that were going on at the time in England, and uh so he dived into it with a more scientific approach. And uh he he developed a system out of it where he he had a kind of personal process of experimentation where the science, or nowadays we think of science as like you know, big science, uh to quote Laurie Anderson, you know, where where we uh uh where things need to be, it's things are developed by a team, it gets written up in a peer-reviewed journal, uh, you know, and so on. Um back then, science not quite as formal, uh, and he had a much more informal idea where you try things out on your own in the in the laboratory of your own consciousness. And um, so uh Crowley had his his good points, his bad points. Um, in uh from from everything I've read about him, he was an obnoxious son of a bitch who uh borrowed money from his girlfriends to survive and weird things like that. He was also a spy for British intelligence. He was uh uh a friend of Ian Fleming who wrote uh James Bond that was recruited uh into uh uh espionage activities against the Nazis and towards the end of World War II and so on. Um, so kind of a colorful and fun individual. Um, but anyway, he started using the term magic to describe what he was, this system that he was using, uh, which used ritual, altered states, yoga, uh and and whatever else he encountered, uh the the the Western things from the Western esoteric tradition. Uh and uh he he eventually ended up describing this as scientific Illuminism. It's uh uh a tradition where um we we use some of these very traditional techniques, uh, but we do it with a little little bit of a scientific mindset, right? That we're we are testing things out, not everything's gonna work the same way for every person. I mean, almost uh Ericssonian in the way that uh uh he was he was approaching it. Uh anyway, at the at while I was learning that, I got excited by the book, and I was like, wow, this is real stuff. You know, also I I should mention that he was, I mean, he was a uh uh a spy for British intelligence. He was a famous mountain climber during his life who who set records climbing uh uh mountains in the Himalayas, and uh he even held the he held the record for the the highest altitude climb without oxygen up until like the 1990s. Um uh he died in 1947 or whatever. Um so while I was learning that, I was getting very interested in that. Uh I also was exposed around the same time to NLP. And uh I started thinking about like, well, gosh, if they had had NLP back then, what would they have done? And then but more so it was uh, well, there's some really cool tools here and this thing stuff I'm learning, and there's some really cool tools in this section that I'm learning. How do I combine them, right? Do do they work together? Right, and so on. Now, when I started talking about this to people who were involved in magic at the time, they're like, No, no, you don't want to do uh which of course spurred me on even more. It's like, well, now I really want to do that.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00

And uh there were you know, there were things that they did uh in in the early 20th century, uh, you know, uh late 19th century, early 20th century, uh, under the rubric of magic, um, that were very, very much like NLP. Um and uh so so the pieces fit together very nicely as far as I I was concerned. And I I went on and I studied more more different kinds of hypnosis and uh got into Ericksonian hypnosis very much, and uh and other kinds of uh occult traditions, uh everything from I don't know, voodoo to uh uh uh shamanism to whatever, uh all kinds of stuff. And uh whenever I had the the opportunity, uh I would um I would participate in uh whatever, you know, if there were rituals going on or uh uh you know practitioners who were doing certain things and so on. Um I I took every for many years I took every opportunity that I could uh to learn and had some very unusual experiences throughout that. Uh crazy stuff happens. Uh uh the now my uh all right, I so while I'm doing all that, I I still have science in my brain.

SPEAKER_01

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00

Uh and so I'm I'm kind of evaluating things from that point of view and doing that sort of personal science where I test things out in the laboratory of my own consciousness and find out what happens. Um and and while I'm doing that, I'm also uh, you know, my my interest in science never wanes, and I uh I'm reading about neuroscience and uh you know a continued interest in biology and so on. And uh so I started to to like put all those pieces together, and so brain magic is really where it's the intersection of all of that, right? It's uh I'm I'm looking at the pieces of traditional occult work, ritual, and so on. I'm looking at the pieces of hypnosis and NLP that fit with that, uh, that can maybe make that a little bit more uh accessible or powerful or whatever. Uh, and then I'm also looking at the science behind it, right? Is there, you know, there's a lot of books on the occult or magic or uh or even hypnosis where they say, well, you do this and this will happen, right? It's like great, fine, right?

SPEAKER_02

So test it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, right, right. So you test it, uh, but also what's the what's the basis for that happening, right? For most of our lifetime, uh psychology in general, but also hypnosis and all of that, um, it was kind of a a black box study, right? There's there there's this skull here, right? Right, and you know, what what's going on when we do these things? Um the only field of healing or medicine or whatever where you can't actually look at uh you know what was happening, right? I mean, uh a gastroenterologist, you could stick a tube down someone's throat and or you know, whatever, and uh uh and and see what's actually happening, right? If you're a uh uh a neurologist or whatever, you can put someone in an MRI and you can look at their brain or their nervous system and and actually see what's happening and prescribe things based on that. We always had to do it by observation, right? But now it's starting to it's starting to come around where some of the things, actually many of the things that we do as hypnotists or even occultists, um they were finding their correlates in in neurology and in neuroscience. Right. And um, so I do I document some of that. I mean, the book is uh the the first edition of the book came out over 10 years ago, uh, and a lot of neuroscience has changed since then. Um I rather than update the I don't think the science is out of date. There's just sin since I wrote the book, but there's just more of it. So I decided rather than try to like update the book to include all of that, we'd come out with the second edition uh of this book, and then maybe I'll uh if I move towards this in the future, I'll write another book with with uh right, even more science.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And you so I had two questions off of all that, which is great. One is about magic, and one I want to talk about, you talk about the occult part. So before you dive into that magic part, a lot of because I come from a Christian background, and then I influence a lot of people that call themselves Christians, and they hear that word occult, it scares them. So, how can you assure them that this isn't devil worship? Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I I am I'm an agnostic, okay. I don't I don't have any particularly strong beliefs about any particular deity, religion, etc. I think there's value in in all of those kinds of beliefs. Uh if if you get something useful out of it, if it helps you have a better life, more power to you, right? Um so uh uh and as an agnostic, I sort of take it both ways. It's it's not that I I you know I am skeptical about like there's about gods or gods, I'm also skeptical about there not being gods or gods. I I think uh the the probability that there's you know deities, that there's a god or many gods or whatever is as strong as there not being any of them, right? Right, it's a matter of pers perspective. Now that word occult, right, um it actually comes from astronomy and it actually means hidden, right? If uh if a star goes behind the moon, right, from our point of view, that star becomes a cult, it becomes hidden. Uh right now, in uh beyond the pejorative uh uh idea of it being superstitious activities, which is mostly stuff that we get from the movies, right? I mean, there's there isn't uh there isn't really any tradition, even you know the Bible doesn't say a cult is bad, right? Right, right there's nothing like that, right?

SPEAKER_03

This is this is stuff that we get from movies and right cheap novels from the 1950s, or yeah, whatever that's yeah, like I remember playing Dungeons and Dragons or Magic the Gathering, and people would be like, Oh, that's so like not godlike, you know, like they'd get mad. They thought, pretending I'm a wizard defeating a dragon makes me the devil. Or yeah, or even Harry Potter got took a lot of fault, you know, from the alt Christians, and it's like, dude, it's just fun, it's lighthearted. It you know, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00

And that stuff is just pure fantasy, right? I mean, it's it's uh it's there to entertain, it's there for fun. Yeah, it's not there to you know change anyone's mind, I don't think, other than you know, get them to, you know, buy more tickets and merchandise, buy more tickets through the whole movie, right? Um, so anyway, uh the idea of of things being occult. Uh now the first thing that most people think of when we when we say that occult means hidden is that there's some secret society that's hiding away the secrets of consciousness uh that they learned from the ancient Egyptians and uh initiated to the 50th level before they will reveal. That's not really what it means. It means that there are things in your awareness right now, or that should be in your awareness, that are hidden by your own consciousness. Uh in the 1950s, uh this is actually one of the roots of uh of NLP. There was a study that suggested that the conscious mind can only deal with seven plus or minus two pieces of information at any given time. However, the unconscious mind, it's far greater. The unconscious mind is uh it's absolutely unlimited, right? We can uh you know have our whole lives in there, we can have you know stuff that's in another part of the world that's part of your unconscious mind, right? It's uh it's things that are influencing you unconsciously. It's uh uh you know uh Freud and even Jung to some extent suggested that the well Jung Jung took the idea of the unconscious, obviously, and expanded it greatly into the collective unconscious, where uh we had uh you know the the symbols and the uh uh and the techniques and the knowledge and and so on that have informed humans since early times, right? That that we all share to some extent. And in Jung's idea, that's sort of that's where the gods and goddesses and everything comes from, from that part of our unconscious mind that we all share. Um the uh Freud's idea was much narrower that the unconscious or subconscious, as he put it, was was where you you shoved back the things that you were repressing, right? It's like, oh, I didn't like that, I'll stuff that away in my unconscious mind. And uh, you know, so Jung had to say, you know, that which you resist persists. Um but again, Jung expanded that idea far far more into uh all kinds of, you know, he he studied the symbols of alchemy and uh and other mystical traditions throughout the ages, and uh including Christianity and so on, and uh, and uh ascribed much of this to the to the uh the collective unconscious. Um so so really that's the occult part, that's the stuff that's that's hidden from your consciousness. Conscious mind. And it's something we deal with in hypnosis all the time. Right. That were, you know, people come into uh into your office and they say, well, uh, I'm feeling anxiety about such and such. And I, you know, and you know, we always learn in in hypnosis that the presenting problem isn't necessarily what what they're there about, right? Uh so uh and they don't know that either, right? The the clients don't necessarily know that either. And and uh hopefully we can dive into it enough they have an aha moment and and go, oh wow, I was, you know, uh, you know, it's it's because of that experience I had when I was a kid or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Um, so those are personal examples of things that become occult, that become hidden from our conscious awareness, right? So, and there's and there's a lot more. Let's say that you know, what you're aware of right now, right? Hearing my voice, looking at the screen, if you're looking at the screen, or whatever it is you're looking at in the in your awareness, the way your body feels, those are all in your conscious awareness. Everything else, everything else is part of your unconscious, right? Something that's happening on the other side of the planet, right? It's the influence that it has on your life may be you know so minuscule that we can't measure it uh or notice it. Uh but it's part of your I love that.

SPEAKER_03

And then like I like the example of the anxiety that they come in with, that's in front of them, so it's clouding or causing the the issue underneath is a cult. It's it's hidden.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And so that's a phenomenal. I love learning the the background of the word a cult. And going back then to magic, then you mentioned like Crowley out there doing these things, and you've seen some crazy things. What are some crazy things that you've seen? I see the big smile, and you're like, oh man, something's coming up right away.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Well, some of the some of the more interesting ones to me, I mean, all right, I I've seen I've been in situations where people were doing these kinds of rituals where things seemed to move on their own. Uh, I've been to voodoo rituals where people were possessed. Uh, and I mean, those are the sort of obvious crazy ass stuff that uh happens, right? Uh and uh, you know, but what what really excites me and gets me interested is when we have have some really neat synchronicities, when when uh results seem to line up very much with that. Uh uh, I've had uh I think I wrote about it in the book. Um uh I had one client who uh had a fear of flying, and uh I did did a little bit of work with her, and um where we do uh the the kind of work I did with her is called in magical terms, it's called evocation. In uh NLP terms, we call it parts therapy. Uh and uh so she she found this you know this thought form within her, uh, and and she took it out and negotiated with it. And when uh what when it was complete, it turned uh I think it was red and green and white, uh, something like that. And she was very happy with the result. She said, Oh, I feel okay about going on my my vacation, and I'll be fine getting on the plane. So she did it. She got on the plane, and she was having a little bit of trepidation, but she sat down on the plane and looked around and realized that the whole inside of the plane was red and green and white.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, fascinating, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um hypnotic experience, and so she was just you know totally pleased by this and had a wonderful flight. And that is cool, yeah. So I mean, uh had a lot of crazy ones like that. Uh, some of the weirder ones uh are when when we do things like that and people come up with names of entities that they couldn't have known about uh otherwise. Uh they'll come up with the name. There's there's a section of of traditional magic uh called Goesha, which is summoning spirits, right, to to give it the popular term.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um and uh although it's not quite that. It's it's more about uh aligning the it's more like parts therapy, right? Right. Like aligning the parts of your consciousness. And uh uh every now and then someone will will pull out one of these parts of themselves and uh you know communicate with it hypnotically, whatever, and uh and it will identify themselves with some name that we'll go and we'll look up later, right? We'll google it. And I've had ones with you know uh uh had one uh I don't know, biblical entities, uh names out of the Bible, um uh entities out of ancient magical texts and uh things like that. And you know, it's always always a little odd when that happens.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um but but sometimes it it's actually easier to deal with that with those uh than some of the more personal ones because uh hey, it's in the literature, right? Right, I could I could I can look it up and go like, oh, what what do I do when when this entity appears? Oh, really?

SPEAKER_03

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a meaning there. I've you're not the first to describe that phenomena. Other practitioners I've interviewed have someone and they're like that entity, as you call it, comes up and they say, I speak Spanish. It's like, okay, so and then they ask like the host for lack of better word, you know, do you know any Spanish? No, I don't know any Spanish, but then that entity can speak fluent Spanish. And you can ask you can ask the person that's sitting there, like let's say the the client is Mike, right? And they call for Sofia that speaks Spanish. And then you can ask Mike's wife, does he speak Spanish? No way, man. He doesn't. You know, she can validify it, and then there it is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So yeah, a number like that. I've had I've had a few where people have have given me at least phrases in other languages that they couldn't possibly have known. Uh and you know, we had to run it through Google Translate.

SPEAKER_03

Right. I love that you tested it as a scientist. You're like, let's let Google Translate see if this is legit. Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I always I always tap that stuff out. I if I I get odd names and things like that, I will I will Google them and and uh you know see what it is.

SPEAKER_03

And then what are those? Are they helping the person? Are they there? Like, why are they those entities involved with that person? Let's call him Mike, the client. Mike comes in, he has Sophia and them. Why is Sophia there?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's interesting. Um there's a number of theories, and uh they may all be right. Yeah. Uh I mean, I think there's I think there's a there's a variety of these kinds of entities and and things. Some of them are very much like the old parts there, NLP parts therapy thing where we say, you know, call on your creative part and right, right. Whatever, right? And and it's a an artificial division of consciousness, right, that allows you to get something done, right? Um do we have a creative part? Uh, you know, can you point to it? No, probably not, right? Um but you know, oh, it's over here somewhere, right? Right. But uh, so um some of these are more okay, there's there are traditional beliefs that there are entities that are external to us. Uh in in a lot of different traditions, uh I'm you know, in Judeo-Christian traditions, you have you know, you know, God and the angels and uh you know the devils, you know, whatever. They're they are entities that exist in the world external to you. Um a lot of these entities that we deal with, I talked about I mentioned the goetic entities. Um the uh the goetic entities were always, and and you see this, and they use them a lot in movies. Whenever you see uh, you know, a stupid horror movie where there's a uh an evil wizard who makes a circle and summons the demon, some gross thing shows up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um it's you know, it's it's not like that, right? Um, but but the symbols that they're using and the uh sorry, I'm messing up my equipment here. Uh the uh the symbols that they're using, uh uh the circles and so on, are they copied them out of a book on Goethe Magic. Um now in 1914, I believe it was, uh uh a the first English translation of uh The Lesser Key of Solomon came out, which is probably the the the book that has that most people learned this kind of magic from.

SPEAKER_03

And the book described 72 entities that you could call on and you could ask them to help you do things, you know, like you know, help me find a job, or you know, where's the hidden like like the Catholics have their saints, uh Saint uh help me find something lost, and the saint of help me travel safely, or the Hindus have their gods, the same versions, you know, this guy for that.

SPEAKER_00

Except that when we started to define these, um and I believe it was Alistair Crowley again who said 72 spirits of the Goeisha are parts of the human brain. And that was a very provocative statement at the time because back then people didn't, we there wasn't neuroscience in 1914.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

The brain didn't have parts, it was a squishy mass of whatever. Um and uh the um the the traditional understanding of these entities were that they were you know like the like the Hindu gods or goddesses, they were things that were out there in the world who who would come around and pester you, or you could call on them to uh do this, right? Um now I when I first started teaching this like 40 years ago, uh the uh uh I used to correct correct that and say, well, you know, they probably meant the mind, right? The mind is a more amorphous concept, it's a metaphor for our thought processes and so on. Uh, but as the neuroscience started coming in on this stuff, uh closer to it being parts of the human brain, right? We actually do have neurons that we dedicate to understanding other entities. You you probably have a set of neurons in your brain that are dedicated to your mother or your favorite movie star or whatever. And when you think about that person, those particular neurons come into play. And we also have uh parts of the brain that are involved in what's called theory of mind, which is the ability to model other consciousness, right? To um, all right, you go into work and you you've got this this dirty joke in your head that you heard on the on the internet, and you you think, uh, how will my boss react if I say that joke, right? That's theory of mind. You're actually modeling uh the way that your boss would think. Uh that's even more obvious in states like dreams, where we have very, very detailed representations of people we know or you know, famous people, or whatever, and they act independently. And you can ask them things in your dream, in your dream state, uh, and be surprised by the answer. It's not something you thought of ahead of time, it's something that that part of your brain that's modeling this uh this personality, this this uh consciousness, uh came up with through the modeling process. Uh so uh there's other ways that the that the brain does that. Uh, I mean, there's people who have uh what's now called dissociative identity disorder or you know, multiple personalities, right? And that's a that becomes very obvious, right? And and they've actually put people in the fmri machine and uh people who were diagnosed with uh dissociative identity disorder, uh, and they can actually see that, like, oh, here's an area of the brain that's lighting up, here's another one that's lighting up, and they're doing similar things, but they're not connected to each other. There's no connectivity between them. So they're actually seeing independent consciousnesses in the brain, the brain playing host to them, I guess. And uh so to some extent, you know, who knows? Our our consciousness in general could be something like that.

SPEAKER_03

Our brain is really just modeling something and the you know uh right, or like a mix of all the parts are coming out and as our consciousness that's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, do you know that there's there is uh part of the brain in the the right parietal lobe that gives us the illusion of a continuity of consciousness? That it it it what it does is it just sort of keeps telling you, you are you, you are you, right, right? I am me. And uh uh uh even though we're we're not really the same person all the time. I mean, uh, are you the same person in the morning before you have your coffee uh as as you are later in the day when you're seeing clients or whatever. If somebody weren't looking at you and you were you were you know just like you know, iming them or you know, whatever, right? Um they might think it's a different person, right? If it didn't have your name on it. They go, who the hell is that right? Right, who's this who's this crabby ass person?

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Oh wait, no, nope, it's just filled without coffee.

SPEAKER_03

Interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And throughout the day, we go through different a lot of different kinds of uh of experiences of consciousness, and uh you know it's really when they when they've done experiments where they've disrupted that part of the brain, uh they they use uh transcranial uh magnetic stimulation, TMS, uh and they can disrupt that part of the brain uh that tells you that you are you. Uh and and if you look in the mirror while that's being disrupted, you won't even recognize yourself.

SPEAKER_03

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_03

Who's that guy? So that's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so so it's it's interesting. And um so to some extent, our identity, our personal identity is it's an illusion uh or or a gestalt, an aggregate of what's going on. And uh, you know, people do they shift through their lives, they uh people's personalities change and shift and and so on, depending on their experiences and you know what they do, and so on.

SPEAKER_03

So could we shift our projection of who we are consciously? Can we say, well, I want to be more like I don't know, you have an idol in mind. Like for me, the the thing that pops in my head is like when I was doing street hypnosis, I would take on the persona of Loki, the trickster, the god trickster, you know, like so it's like I have these special powers and I'm funny and sly about it, and that helped me in my street work. So I don't know if there's can we call upon these entities within us to become someone else differently?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Um in uh in traditional magic, there's there's what's called god forms, and that's exactly what you did with the Loki thing is you you step into that character, uh, and uh traditionally this is done um more with like deities. Uh I mean you did with Loki, which is you know absolutely a deity, uh uh uh but where you're I don't know, like let's say you uh you know you want to feel wise or whatever. So you you you you you create this image of Athena, goddess of wisdom, and and you step into her and you become her for a little while so that you're thinking like her. And so you did a similar thing with uh with Loki. Uh in hypnosis, we had that thing called uh deep trance identification, right? Where you can pick another person and uh and imagine that you are them uh in a deep trance state and and take on some of their abilities. Uh famously there was a uh a hypnotist who some listeners of this may know know who I'm talking about, uh, who wanted to be more like Milton Erickson. Right. And and so he did uh he did what would essentially you know deep trans identification, but it's essentially like a god form exercise where he I wouldn't say since it was Milton Ericsson stepped into it, rolled into Milton's uh Milton's form for a little while. Uh and yeah, his powers of hypnosis got way better. Unfortunately, he also developed some polio symptoms.

SPEAKER_03

Really fascinating, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And had to had to cease the experiment and uh uh have someone help him uh get back to normal.

SPEAKER_03

Wow, that that's incredible because that shows both sides of it. And my follow-up question to this magic was what is possible? And I'm thinking about like we know psychologically, hypnosis helps with pain, anxiety, some of these things. Physically, what's possible with this magic? That that person brought on polio conditions. So, what else can we do with it physically for people?

SPEAKER_00

Well, uh just just recently, over the last I don't know, six months or so, um, I I don't know what how this started happening, but um, I had a couple of doctors who've been referring me patients who had had had recently had brain surgery and were having some after effects from it. Um and and they've been to, you know, I I don't just like, you know, oh come on in, you know, I you know, have you seen the neurologist? What did the neurologist say? Right, you know, I I make sure that that they have exhausted the the medical options before I get involved in any of this. Um so uh let's see, I had one guy who uh had uh he had had uh a tumor removed, and uh the side effect was that his left arm uh contracted and and became kind of useless. So where his hand was like oh uh and uh so uh doing some of these techniques, having him uh one of the things we did was I had him step into an earlier version of himself. Uh I also had him uh practice stepping into other people who he knew. Uh prior to his hand doing that, he was a musician, he was a guitar player, and so I had him thinking about being Al Demiola or whatever, and uh uh uh and yeah, his uh in trance in particular, his hands started to open up and and uh uh and move a little bit, right? Uh it's the kind of thing that we probably have to do it for like uh you know, nerves, nerves do regrow. We used to we used to think they didn't, uh, but nerves do regrow. It just it takes some time, right? Right. And uh that was a really good sign that uh his body was in the process of healing those nerves and so on. And I I suspect that uh with some continued work and uh so on, in in probably a couple of years, he'll he'll regain a good amount of of the function. Now, now, like I said just recently, I uh that was not the only one. I had several other uh neurological neurologically based uh patients come in uh with things like that. Uh and uh so yeah, there's there's definitely physical stuff that can happen. Um this is uh I live in uh upstate New York in an area where uh for a while this was the epicenter of Lyme disease. Lyme disease uh it does a lot of crazy things, right? Not only are there these these intense physical symptoms, uh, but there's also neurolime where it gets into your brain and uh and you start having you know very weird things happening. I had so I had uh one patient bring in their young daughter uh who had just been diagnosed with Lyme, but she was having just insanely paranoid. I mean, if you didn't know better, you you'd think it was paranoid schizophrenia, right?

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Uh she was just afraid of everybody. She thought that cell phones were were following her around and listening to her, which they probably were, but right, right. You don't have to be afraid of it. Um she wouldn't uh she wouldn't sleep in a room where there were any electronic devices and things like that. And uh um so I I let the doctors work with the with the Lyme infection, right? And I helped with the you know uh with some of the physical and and mental stuff that she was going through at the time, uh, which which which was fairly effective. And I I think as uh as the infection backed off, uh it was much easier to work with her, and and uh she she healed up pretty nicely.

SPEAKER_03

That is really cool. And as you're talking about, I'm picturing two, you're talking about picturing an early time for that guy with the hand, picturing an earlier time when he was young and could move it, and that's a lot like what Ericsson did when he was bedridden in Napoleon, picturing himself as a boy, and it was like to move again.

SPEAKER_00

And absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_03

Wow. So that's amazing, man. Um, what can people expect? Like, so you talk about these really cool phenomena, and you got the book here, Brain Magic. I'm holding it up again for the people watching. So, what can I expect in reading this book? Can they perform magic after reading it?

SPEAKER_00

Well, magic of this type, certainly. Yeah. Uh uh, let's just the the the spelling with the K on the end of it is really there just to distinguish the spiritual or or consciousness tradition of magic from stage magic.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Now I know people who are involved in both.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And uh right, there's uh the great Jeff McBride, who's like one of the the greatest stage magicians in Las Vegas right now.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, but he's also the other kind of magician, too. So he he mixes it liberally in his uh uh his performances, where he's there's illusions, but the illusions kind of lead your mind in a in a some different kinds of changes in in the way you think and consciousness and so on. Um some of which is really neat. Uh he he used to do one show called From Shaman to Showman, where he uh uh where he demonstrated how some of the traditions of uh illusion magic of ledger domain uh uh came from uh the shamanic earlier shamanic traditions and so on. Right?

SPEAKER_03

Oh man, that sounds like a cool I would love to see that show like live.

SPEAKER_00

He's he's a he's been a headliner in Las Vegas for years and years. He's he's won uh like every kind of magic award, yeah, you know, for that magician there. Um trying to remember when it was, but there was there was even uh NBC had a special uh like the great magicians or something like that. They devoted an episode to to Jeff McBride. So uh we're worth looking at.

SPEAKER_03

So like ideally, I wanted a show, like if I because I love entertaining and showmanship, and I did some of that like doing some mentalism and then going into a hypnosis show, and then that sets up nicely because people are like wondering what's possible, and their imaginations begin to open up. And I was thinking it'd be cool to have like almost like a healing thing, like you know, like you got the person that crutches coming up, and then yes, this type of thing could, I mean, it in the right conditions, right? Like, obviously, we're not gonna reset a bone, though you hear stories like Joseph Spencer and others that have healed their bones through thought or conscious magic.

SPEAKER_00

I'm not gonna claim any great uh great healing moments with I did used to teach a course uh in which I I broke down, I took the the heel the hands-on healing stuff that televangelists do.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Uh particularly Benny Hinn was uh who has the most dramatic thing. And it's very much like a stage hypnosis routine.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And so I broke it down in terms of like if this were a stage hypnosis routine, how would you do it? Yeah. And uh so I used to teach classes and how to do the the hands-on technique where you you go like this and they fall over dramatically, and yeah, uh stuff like that. But but we would people in the class would always pick uh you know silly deities of their own, you know. By the power of cabbage, I heal you.

SPEAKER_02

Right, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00

And it would still work, right? I mean, it would still uh I I don't you know again, I don't know that anyone got healed, uh, but the the uh the I don't know, the the dramatic part of it, the falling over and the trans states and the and the so on is very easy to reproduce. Um and in hypnosis, it's uh you know, we call this convincer strategies, right? Where you have something happened, so therefore it must have been what I came here for. Right.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00

So there's there's a big element of that. Uh, you know, again, some of those televangelists they use shills and and right uh stakes, you know, somebody who you know they they handed out crutches to everybody in the front row.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly, exactly. It's the same wheelchair week to week. That's right, that's right. And and yet, still part of me, like you see, sometimes things happen that look like miracles, that feel like miracles. There's that healer in Montreal where it's a church and he wasn't in it for the money, just people. Sometimes they got healed, sometimes they didn't. I think his hit rate was like, I don't know, 10%, right? And it's not a great hit rate. If you're a doctor say 10% of my patients get better, you're not a great doctor. He has a healer, and then 10%. I mean, that's pretty cool. And then then your heart goes out. Well, he must not be real if 90% don't get anything.

SPEAKER_00

Right, right. Well, as long as he's not making claims that they all, you know, as long as he's being realistic about the the the claims of his hit rate, right? You know, I'm I'm okay with that. Um, I I have seen people who were uh very who were energy healers. Uh uh there's like uh what's her name, Donna Eden, who who wrote uh the energy medicine books. Um she's pretty amazing, and she does some stuff. I don't she she she's gotta be getting old now. I don't I don't think she's still out there doing her stuff uh as much these days. Um my late wife uh was also one of these people who could do that kind of stuff. Uh and she would we would go to events and I'd go, I'd teach my magic classes, whatever. She'd go and she'd do uh like a healing circle or something where people would come and they'd and they they would just sort of line up and they'd go, Oh, my my problem is, and she'd go, whatever she did. And and I I I literally did see one woman throw away her walker and start walking, uh like like you'd expect at a televangelist thing, but uh, you know, I don't know. She was far from being a televangelist.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so that's funny. So you've seen it, and you've written this book on brain magic. Did some of you want to like dissect why is it work for her and how do we reproduce it?

SPEAKER_00

Well, she studied her ass off. Uh she was he was uh trained and certified in applied kinesiology and energy medicine. Uh I mean uh she learned this stuff, right? I mean, she she spent most of her life uh studying it and learning it and practicing it with people. Uh, but she was kind of a natural too. Um where where she would uh I don't know, you'd walk in the room and she'd she'd walk up to you and poke her finger into one spot and go, over here, this is the spot, right? And and the person would go like, what? And she'd go, right, right. That that's that's the spot. They go, Yeah, it's really sore there. And she'd take her finger away and they go, Oh, my back pain's gone.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Right. I mean, you do just by, I mean, I I can I put that down to just the sheer volume of people that she worked with, where you know, she could actually like evaluate somebody based on how they were walking and how they were sitting and standing postures.

SPEAKER_03

Back to the subconscious of picking it up. And Ericsson was good like that too, where he just lied in bed and watched his sister and be able to like calibrate her every day, and then be like, okay, her skin tone's a little off, so I wonder what's going on there. And yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

And and I would mention that my my wife also had a lot of training in Ericssonic hypnosis, and she was an NLP trainer, and and so on. So she had she had a lot of those calibration skills, uh, along with the the energy healing kinds of things that she did.

SPEAKER_03

That's pretty cool. So, what's next for you, brother? So, you got this book out. I know you're working promoting it. What's going on in your world?

SPEAKER_00

Oh boy, um I'm sort of getting back to work. Um, like I said, uh uh my my wife is my late wife. Um, she she passed away two years ago. And uh I had spent the previous, I mean, she was very ill for a while. And you know, it was one of those things it's like the healer needs a healer as good as she is.

SPEAKER_02

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00

Where's somebody as good as she is to come and help her? Um uh, but I was taking care of her for years. Uh uh, probably all all told, probably close to 10 years, that I was uh helping her through her illness and so on. Um so I really wasn't I was still writing. Uh I wrote a couple books during that period, um, but I wasn't really seeing many clients, and I wasn't uh I wasn't doing uh teaching classes or anything like that. Um so now um I'm kind of I don't know, getting my life back on track.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And uh uh so I am uh uh well geez, uh just the this past year I announced that I was I was open for business again to see clients and I got swamped.

SPEAKER_03

Really? Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I got it, I got a lot of clients all at once, and I'm I'm kind of like working every working hard every day uh doing it. I uh I still do, I just graduated one client who who uh uh who uh I'd been uh talking to for a while. Um so so I am when when something like that happens, then I do have an opening for another client. Right. Um people want to contact me, they can uh they can locate me at metamagic.com, M-E-T-A-H-Magicwitha K dot com. Um, or just you know, Google my name. I'm I'm around.

SPEAKER_03

And we'll have the links to you on our description for both on Spotify and YouTube and Apple. So they can easily just click and contact you.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Um, I didn't do any during that period of time. I I wrote a couple of books, but the last few years I haven't written anything, and I'm so I'm kind of working at getting back towards uh picking up working on the book I was working on when I I had to stop. Um so uh you know hopefully I I enjoy writing. It's uh it's uh something I do for fun. I also write fiction. Uh so the the fiction is my own, I don't know, it's for my own self-satisfaction. I yeah, I write stories that I like, and I don't really care if anybody else reads them, I read them for myself.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh the the the nonfiction books though, the the magic and NLP stuff, um, that's written for an audience and for for people who are interested in uh in doing that. And that there were there will be more of that.

SPEAKER_02

Good, good.

SPEAKER_00

Uh meantime, I'm I'm going around, I'm I've got some uh some classes to teach in different places, uh, and so on. The one that I do every year, um regardless, that I actually did through all the hard times and everything, uh there's an event called the Starwood Festival in uh now in Ohio, uh, which is a big uh used to be run by an organization called the Association for Consciousness Exploration. Oh and uh they uh always just like for many years the the the top people in consciousness studies and stuff, along with a lot of live music and yeah, like a uh over the course of a week, 150 different workshops on various subjects, and right so it's a lot of fun. So I've been doing that for I don't know, uh 30 something years. Um uh the the festival itself has been going on for 40 some odd years. Um and so I'll be doing that this uh this summer. You can go to Starwood Festival, I think it's Starwoodfestival.org or or dot com, one of those.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Starwood Festival.

SPEAKER_00

Cool.

SPEAKER_03

So thank you. Yeah, that sounds amazing, a lot of fun. Now I want to go to the Starwood Festival. That sounds like a fun trip. I'm from Ohio, so that makes sense for me. Where in Ohio is it?

SPEAKER_00

Uh it's near Athens. Uh a little town called Pomeroy.

SPEAKER_03

Pomeroy. Cool. Are you familiar with Pomeroy?

SPEAKER_00

I am not, and I'm going to be googling it after this, so it's you're you're not familiar with it because there's nothing there. Right. It's it's out in the middle of nowhere.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's similar to where I'm from, a town called Brookville, and it's just cornfields all around. Cool. So in a moment, we'll do a little hypnotic gift for the listeners and viewers. And before we do that, I was wondering if there's a message that bubbles up for you if I ask, what's one thing you would like the entire world to know?

SPEAKER_00

What would I like the entire world to know? I don't know. Um it goes back to my childhood, uh, one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. Be excellent to each other.

SPEAKER_03

Be excellent. That's right. I love that. All right, and thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. I'm going to call you, I'm give you, give you your Dr. Phil. You're the real Dr. Phil. And then, yeah, so for those listening, watching, just I encourage you to be safe and be in a place where you can be comfortable and not disturb for a little while. Of course, don't be doing anything crazy like flying an airplane or dismantling a bomb while you're listening. Or driving a car.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

In in general, don't dismantle bombs.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Let's, yeah, unless that's your job. Run away, right? So, yeah, yeah. All right. All yours.

SPEAKER_00

All right. So uh so just you know, be seated comfortably, put your feet on the floor, let your hands relax where they are, and take a nice deep, comfortable breath. And as you continue to breathe deeply and comfortably, you can continue to pay attention to the sound of my voice. And also notice whatever other sounds are in your environment right now. Maybe there's sounds within the room where you are, or distant background sounds from outside. And as you listen and relax, notice whatever it is that you see now with your eyes open or closed. And notice any colors you might be aware of, and any movement or stillness. And how bright or dim the light may be. And as you continue to listen and look and relax deeply now, you can be aware of how it feels to be sitting where you are now. The feeling of the seat underneath you the temperature of the air on your skin. And you may already be aware of which muscles have already begun to soften and relax all the way. Think about sometime recently or in the past when you had an experience that lets you feel very pleasant and empowered. Right? A good feeling. Right? And just kind of let your mind run through some of those experiences and pick out a pick out a real good one that's 100% a good feeling. And when you have that Remember what happened. Remember what you saw at that time. In particular, remember the feeling of pleasure and empowerment itself. What kind of feeling is that? Where in your body do you have the feeling? Okay, so for most people those feelings are along the center line of the body, but it might be off to one side or another. Everybody's a little different. And as you continue to remember the details of that event, allow that good feeling to increase. And noticing where it is in your body, you can ask yourself if this feeling had a color or colors. And apply that color or colors everywhere in your body that you have the feeling. So at this point, you can be aware of having a kind of 3D colored shape somewhere in your body. And when you're ready, take a nice deep breath. And using your hands are just in your mind, take that colored shape out of you and flip it around to face you and lock it in place in front of you there, just so it's not going anywhere. And just breathe deeply and comfortably. Breathe into it, give it some energy, some breath, some attention, and notice what it does. As you breathe, it may change shape or size. It may start to look like something very different. Okay, and when you've noticed any kind of change, open the lines of communication in your mind. And first ask this entity if it has a name or a symbol that you can use to refer to it or call it back again at some other time. And again, the first thing that pops into your mind is usually just fine. Okay. And next thing is ask this entity what it has to teach you that it hasn't already. Maybe it can teach you how to feel good like that more often in your life. How to bring good feelings and joy and so on to the people around you. Whatever it is, right? They'll give you a moment to learn what the entity has in mind for you. Right now. Okay, and for now, whatever it is that you've learned, whatever the entity has imparted to you or not, thank it for its help, and then bring it back into you back in its original position. Okay, that's right. And when you're ready, I'm going to count from five down to one. And you can come up out of trance feeling refreshed and alert with the understanding that your unconscious mind and whatever entities and parts of your consciousness are involved in this can continue to integrate this information and to make it wonderfully useful to you in the coming days and weeks and months. Five, four, three, two, and one. Come on back.

SPEAKER_03

We are back. Thank you again, hello much. Philip eight, Harvard, for being here. I'm excited to see what's next, and hopefully, I'll catch you in a high little for some consciousness. That sounds good, man. Thank you again. Have a good day, everyone.