I saw people levitating – anthropologist

SS: But is it really worth going through that journey - it’s a thing that you dedicate yourself when it’s a transpersonal journey - is it really worth going through all of that if you can just love without doing all these things that you did? I mean, I love my friends, I love my family, I love my job… 

DV: Sure. Neuroscientists tell us that we produce roughly between 70 to 80 thousand thoughts per day. And our mind produces these thoughts of which we have pretty much no control. Of these 70-80 thousand thoughts what goes through the barrier of unconscious and makes it to the conscious level are 10% - roughly 800 thoughts. Of these 800 thoughts we interact with 10%  - 80 thoughts roughly. Of those 80 thoughts only 10% are positive constructive thoughts that are based on co-operation, love and kindness. So 7 out of 70 thousand is a staggering number. The rest of our mental activity is I won’t say garbage but is definitely not as good as it could be. 

SS: But those 30 percent that are based on love and co-operation - what does that give me in my everyday life?  Why should I strive towards that 25% being 50, 70, 60 hundred etc. - what does that give me in my everyday life that I don’t already have? 

DV: When the content of our mind is changed there are physical alterations at the level of the brain, the brain has the form of plasticity, it can rewire itself - not just the brain but also the rest of our body responds to that. And if we can change deliberately the content and the quality of our mind with certain exercises we change the function and the physiology of our mind and our body. When, for example, Matthieu Ricard, the French buddhist man who also happens to be a biologist went under invitation of Dalai Lama to be scrutinised and analysed, they did all possible things - MRI scan and everything, and they could actually measure that when he does whatever he does, meditation, for example, on compassion or love, or a different kind of meditation on stillness of the mind or focus, there are actual neuro-physiological changes that can be measured. And he has been named “The Happiest Man in the World” because what the scientists saw was just completely off the scale. Everyone can just research this. And we have hundreds of thousands of papers of people that undergo a serious process using proven practices and techniques, protocols and methods (if it’s just the techniques but you don’t have the protocol and method the techniques won’t work), and if you then go and actually check you will see measurable changes. 

SS: Ok, you’re a scientist and you do this cool discovery about a human brain, but you don’t see your lab ending up as a pilgrimage site where followers sleep and eat and follow you everywhere. Why does the esoteric realm attract so many cunning teachers, gullible followers? What is it about the esoteric realm that is so… I can’t just point out what it is, why do they end up with all these crazy people being attracted to it and not to the reason of science, for instance? 

DV: I think, this is because it offers a magical thinking, a simple solution to the deep needs and suffering of our society and of the individual minds. Everybody like to put a very simple hope into an object of faith and their belief. And this one goes a long way, we could refer to it in most cultural and religious traditions. And I think, this is what’s very sad, as you’ve mentioned before, when people speak out the words ‘practices’ or ‘spiritual meditation’ there’s this negative association. In fact, I can tell you that if you properly do these practices you don’t need to change the way that you dress, what you eat or your sexual life and anything like that. If you need to do these changes, for me there’s a big suspicion that who teaches you or what you do is probably not the best possible choice.   

SS: Were you during these journeys ever sceptical of the mystical sides of what you were learning or doing? Were you ever like “What am I doing?! This is just crazy!”? 

DV: When you’re under the rain waiting for days to meet one of these holy men, sometimes I say: “What am I doing here?!” It’s like the National Geographic explorer waiting to catch the monkey emerging from the forest and staying for 3 days under the rain  waiting… Sometimes I do have these doubts - why am I here, why am I trying so hard to see something or to witness something, or to have the world to know something? Yes, I did have that. But I never had the doubt that whatever I was researching or exploring would be purposeless or meaningless, this I never had. 

SS: What is, like, one of the most mind-blowing things, memories?You’ve said that all of that is, but some must be more vivid, important and deep than others - from all those incredible people that you met, studied and lived with? 

DV: One of the most miraculous things that I’ve witnessed in my life has been Mother Teresa. She was a very old woman when I met her just a couple of years before she passed. At that time I was really looking for this supernatural stuff - levitating kind of people, telekinesis and this kind of stuff... 

SS: Does it exist really? Can people levitate? Just yes or no? It’s a serious question. And we’ll get back to Mother Teresa. 

DV: Yes, it’s possible. 

SS: So why haven’t we seen it? We live in an era of video, it’s all around us, you can just film it on iPhone and it’s out there in the internet. 

DV: There are actually. The thing is that whatever you see it can be faked. This is all another topic for conversation… 

SS: We’ll get back to Mother Teresa, but this is important because when people try to study how much they can do, their powers, their limits, this is the first thing that comes to your mind  - “Can I fly? Can I levitate?” And this is the most common myth - if you meditate hard enough you will levitate. So have you actually seen it with your own eyes? I mean, I’m not asking “Have you levitated?” because then I’m going to ask you do it… Have you actually seen a person doing it? 

DV: I did. 

SS: Who was he (or she)? 

DV: A Christian monk in Romania, very well-known. People want to go and look for it. He passed already, but he’s sort of a legend - Father Justin. In the mountains of Romania there’s a group of kind of saints which are literally called the Flying Wizards, the flying monks, I don’t remember the Romanian word. And definitely it’s true. A few other people, Buddhist monks, African shamans…  

SS: So do they just take off on a daily basis? 

DV: I don’t know if this is those kind of things. To find someone who could repeat these kind of things at will  - it will be a truly breakthrough in science. And I’ll be very curious to start a scientific research on this kind of methods. To my knowledge it has never been done yet specifically for this kind of things. That’s what I can say. 

SS: So let’s get back to Mother Teresa shortly and then I want to ask you about science.

DV: Well, considering that at that time I was more looking for the miracolistic kind of phenomena of the human mind which in my view has never been a matter of divine intervention or anything. I’ve always looked at these things as a technology while it can be done. Somehow I believe that there are some ways through which we can alter the perception of ourselves and the reality around us, that certain things will become possible. I have to a certain extent mechanistic views on these phenomena. SOat the time when I was very focused on this Mother Teresa was the other side of the coin, something that at that time I missed, that sort of the greatest miracle - the miracle of love, and the power of all this is the power of love. And this is something that dramatically changed me because the search for perfection is always about me, myself and I - I will master my mind, I will do this and I can do that, - this is a very narcissistic and self-obsessive to a certain degree. Of course, some of the true great saints that display this phenomenon, they reached this phenomenon as me as a side effect, as a symptom of something else. This was my personal limitation at that time. And coming to see Mother Teresa showed me that there’s something much greater. It was many years ago and is probably still something that nowadays I go back to as one of the most amazing things I witnessed in my life although there was no levitation or anything. 

SS: But you’re so well integrated into the scientific community which is a paradox because people of your interest don’t usually mash well together with scientists. You do because you’re a scientist at base. Have you ever proposed to scientists who study human biology to hook something up to your brain to observe, to say: “Look guys, I breathe differently, I see things differently, something is changing around me when I do it the way I do it. Do you want to observe it and see what’s going on with the human brain?”? 

DV: Absolutely, I’m just a very simple person. As I mentioned Matthieu Ricard and many monks, specifically Buddhist, because Buddhism is not a religion, it’s a very science-based study of the mind, there are a lot of monks that have submitted themselves to very rigorous experiment and research. So we do have all this data and this is going to grow and grow. What is interesting for me is that ok, we do have these monks who have been meditating for 60 thousand hours and we can see some incredible neuro-physiological changes, personality changes, behavioral changes, cognitive changes, but can we speed up these results in anyone? So can we see some measurable changes in a person who comes from nowhere and starts to do some proper exercise, the proper protocol and training to immense the qualities and the content of their mind, their behavior and their recognition? My answer is yes, I believe it’s possible. And it’s my great desire that we have more data on this.   

SS: So when we speak about practice and meditation, and most of your answers lead to saying that people become more integrated, more accepting, harmonious with themselves, and it’s all about love. I believe if you do all this meditation in the right way you do get this natural, healthy sense of high which sort of makes you feel “wow, that’s great”. Doesn’t that take away motivation? Doesn’t that take away ambition? We all know that the biggest breakthroughs in culture, for instance, composers who’ve been alcoholics, suffering, tortured souls have come up with masterpieces, or writers or poets, directors, you name it… They are all tortured souls. If you give them that feeling of “everything is fine, love is all around me” wouldn’t that make them stop wanting more, making breakthroughs? Doesn’t practice take away ambition basically? 

DV: I understand. Well, you’ve touched a very good topic. In the scientific study of the mind, which I bring back to Buddhism of which I’m openly a great fan, motivation plays a key role. So again, a proper training of the mind doesn't take away motivation. It changes motivation. I could have the motivation to do something for you, for the world, for the project or something based on a reptilian scarcity-based, fear-based mind of motivation system that is taking more. Or, if I’m doing properly what I’m supposed to do by training my mind, let’s call it meditation although mind training will be better, I would still have that ambition but the motivation behind changes, and it’s starting to be the motivation of a higher order - less self-centred, less fear-based, less-greed based, and more based on a higher order of values. So the motivation simply changes quality. It is as powerful as. So when I ask you “Why are you doing this interview? What is the motivation?”, and the motivation can we different. Why am I here? What is my motivation to be here? So mind training doesn’t take away motivation, it just changes the quality of it. 

SS: Obviously, the truth is meditation and practices have long stopped being something marginal and it’s a mainstream thing. Everyone does that, especially in the West. A lot of successful people do that. You worked with a lot of powerful people, you’ve been their personal guru, their personal coach… 

DV: Don’t use that word with me. 

SS: Sorry, how do you want me to put that in words? You’ve been their life coach - what do you call yourself when you help them get into practices and practice the right way? 

DV: Very simple. At that moment I play a role of a teacher, of an educator. 

SS: Ok, so you’ve been an educator to many powerful men, whether it’s businessmen or politicians. What do they need you for? These people have been super-successful, very rich, very busy, very ambitious. Why would they spend their precious time sitting down and meditating? 

DV: Even if we look at the way our brain has been evolving we started from a reptilian stem which we still have, we have the mammalian part, and then we have a very new part - the neofrontal cortex that’s started to develop very recently. And what is very interesting of the neofrontal cortex is that it grows and develops until our thirties. So until our thirties we’re actually not fully developing conscious identities. So if it is true that in nature this drive towards evolution from reptilian to mammal, to that neofrontal cortex brought us to a society which is largely more regulated and less violent, and to a certain degree more compassionate it only makes sense to believe that the evolution of an individual follows the same steps, so we go through life through a process of evolutionary development. So a powerful person that already has everything still is driven by that need of development. Because he or she already has everything the question is what next. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a king, a president or a businessmen, you have all power in the world, when you go to sleep at night anxiety, fear, anger, revenge, jealousy turn around your mind. It doesn’t matter how much you have, that ultimate deep seeded suffering is still there, the turning of the mind didn’t stop. And everybody wants that to stop because it keeps you, it bounds, it limits you. Everybody wants to say: “I want to know what I can be, what I can do without it.”     

SS: People in power always had and have spiritual leaders. There was this story just recently, like a year ago, when the South Korean president was impeached because she had a “spiritual leader”, and according to people that spiritual leader would have an impact on her decisions for the nation. So people aren’t still accepting of that side when it comes to politicians. Why do you think having a spiritual advisor isn’t maybe that beneficial after all for politicians, because people think it’s dangerous? 

DV: It is a very good question. It is like choosing a good psychologist, you have to make your choice very wisely. The more your level of impact on the world, the wiser and more critical is your choice in relation to the people that you surround yourself with, that you listen to. Because there’s ignorance, because many of these things are based on magical thinking, because the science of the mind didn’t become mainstream people still make their choice not based on rigorous criteria, so they fall prey of charlatans or people who maybe have good intentions but have limited views and wisdom. If I may, one of the advisors of the Russian royal family was the famous Rasputin - this is one of examples you may find in your culture. From what I’ve read people are very divided: some people are his great his supporters and believe that there was true mystics in there, others say maybe it wasn’t. 

SS: Ok, you obviously guide people in meditation, you meditate yourself, can you tell if a person meditates or not without knowing that person? 

DV: No. But I like to believe from what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard that your President does. 

SS: You think Putin meditates? 

DV: Well,  again, for me meditation is a word that is also a synonym to prayer after you contextualise the meaning of it. I heard some stories of some great monk in Buryatia that he went to or some Christian monks and advisors that he has, and his own personal dedication to these things, or martial arts or anything. And I believe that probably in his own way, without making any assumption or presumption, he found a way to meditate. I mean, the power of his mind, the clarity of his mind, of his view and vision is unmatched… 

SS: Which leads us to think that Trump certainly doesn’t meditate. 

DV: Yes, it’s a good point. 

SS: Anyway I thank you very much. It was really interesting chatting with you and good luck with everything. 

DV: Thank you Sophie.