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Candace Pert on Larry King: Change Your Mind, Change Your Life

Posted May 22 2009 11:55pm

On August 2nd the following program was aired on Larry King Live on CNN. A portion of the transcript is reproduced here, with a link to the complete program (transcript).

Change Your Mind, Change Your Life

Aired August 2, 2008 - 21:00 ET

LARRY KING, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight, "Change Your Mind, Change Your Life."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The brain does not know the difference of what it sees in its environment and what it remembers.

ANDREW NEWBERG, M.D.: As far whether or not we're just living in a big holo-deck or not, it's not a question that we don't necessarily have a good answer to.

DR. JOSEPH DISPENZA, D.C.: Everybody has that that experience when they've made up their mind that they've wanted something. That's quantum physics in action.

KING: Can your head handle the possibilities?

FRED ALAN WOLF, PHD: Asking these questions opens up new ways of being in the world. It brings in a breath of fresh air. It makes life more joyful. The real trick to life is to not be in the no but to be in the mystery.

KING: Right now on LARRY KING LIVE.(on camera): We have an outstanding edition of LARRY KING LIVE tonight. We're going to explore the brain and all we're discovering about it in this fascinating look at what the brain does and does not do, and the brain and addiction. We have an outstanding panel. But we begin our first segment with a young lady who has appeared on this show frequently in the past. J.Z. Knight has dedicated over 20 years of studying the connection between mind and body, the author of her auto biography, "State of Mind," and the founder of Ramtha School of Enlightenment. Last time you were here, you said we are all addicted to our emotions.


KING: Explain.

KNIGHT: Most people do not understand that the greatest addiction in their life is their emotional addiction, emotional addiction to past experiences. We gain our experiences in our life that begin to define us by the time we're about 20 years old. Then we sort of go on automatic. Then we keep playing back the emotions instead of having a new idea and a new thought. So people don't realize that they are led every day by their feelings. They want another emotional head. So they keep reexperiencing the same emotion no matter people, places times, events, no matter who they are, who they meet, they are after the same emotion. It's the same addiction, Larry, as someone who is an alcoholic, as someone who's on drugs. And all those things do is to allow brain chemistry to happen because it's that high or that state of peace. People are addicted to their past, their past emotions. It's what -- if you have a past emotion you're addicted to, you don't have a future. How can you have a future if every day you wake up and you are living in your past?

KING: But with alcohol and drugs, you can go through a toxic withdrawal. You can break a habit by drying out. What do you do with an emotional habit?

KNIGHT: About a 27-day rehab from your past emotions.

KING: You do a rehab?

KNIGHT: The rehab is, instead of waking up every day and putting your brain on automatic, that your hardwired personality kicks in and goes, oh, this is who are you. Well, OK, this is who we are going to feel today, this is how we want to feel today.Instead of going on automatic, which everyone in the world does, you stop that and say, this day I'm going to create my day. I'm going to create a day with a new thought, a new experience. I'm going to create the reality of this day and, from the new thought that I create, the new sentences that I say I am, I will manifest that day. That day brings a brand new emotion, no old and lousy.

KING: Isn't that an Eastern philosophy?

KNIGHT: I think it's a human philosophy.

KING: But don't they, in the Eastern world, practice that?

KNIGHT: I don't know if anyone actually ever practices that because if everybody did, we'd be further into the future than we are currently.

KING: So we're just skimming here, the surface?

KNIGHT: We're treading water and we're -- we don't reinvent ourselves. We don't realize that our future is being consumed by our past. The day that we realize, we wake up and go, the reason I'm depressed, the reason I'm uninspired is because I can pretty much predict how I'm going to feel about today. I can pretty much predict everything I'm going to saying today. That's uninspiring. We were really created to be creators.

KING: Isn't depression, though -- if we can overcome that, of the mind, isn't it a disease?

KNIGHT: Well, all disease is from an attitude that pushes the button genetically that begins to create those proteins inside of ourselves that are mutated. Depression really, at the root of it, is that if our brain is hardwired like this and we have no neuroplasticity -- and that neuroplasticity means that thought can travel to other regions of our brain to where we analyze it and we get greater insight. A person that has depression does not allow the -- their brain does not allow the thought to go any further. So it's in a cycle of thinking emotion, thinking emotion, thinking emotion.

KING: Can we control our reaction to external things?


KING: Can we determine to how we'll react to the fire in the house?

KNIGHT: Yes. Instead of being a reactive person, to be a master of the reality, even our house, even our family, our workplace, our greater place of enjoyment. That instead of reacting in the old ways, that we absolutely cultivate the ability to create new realities. We really are.

KING: You've done some work with Selma Hayek?

KNIGHT: Selma's my best friend.

KING: I mean, does she work with you on this concept we're talking about?

KNIGHT: She is a student in the school. She created her future.

KING: You changed her?

KNIGHT: Totally.

KING: Changed you?

KNIGHT: Totally, Larry.

KING: We're joined in West Palm Beach by Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo 14 astronaut. He was the sixth man to walk on the moon, and founder of noetic sciences. Were you affected at all by walking on the moon?

EDGAR MITCHELL, APOLLO 14 ASTRONAUT & FOUNDER, NOETIC SCIENCES: Well, not so much by walking on the moon but taking a look at the cosmos from a different perspective and starting to get a big-picture point of view, a much bigger picture than us humans have had before.

KING: Did something happen to you on the way back from the moon, Edgar?

MITCHELL: Well, just seeing the larger picture and having some insights as a result of that, I call it an epiphany. And the short version is just seeing the earth, the sun, the moon, all from a different perspective. I would say the big-picture of perspective, like a mountain top experience, or peak experience.

KING: Edgar, you, I imagine, you have led a happier life?

MITCHELL: I think so. I have a very satisfied life, Larry, and it's because of the experience and because of the desire to make a contribution. My whole attitude toward life and for being of service and towards pushing the frontiers has expanded and there's great joy in doing that.

KING: And I salute you. Thank you, Edgar. J.Z. Knight is with us. More to come. Don't go away.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where do we come from? An immense quantum mechanical...

DISPENZA: You're brain doesn't know the different between what's taking place out there and what's taking place in their.

WOLF: There is no out there out there, independent of what's going on in here.

MICHAEL LEDWITH, PHD: It's like positive thinking. It's a wonderful idea, positive thinking. What it means is that I have a little smear of positive thinking, covering a whole mass of negative thinking. So thinking positive is not really thinking positive. It's disguising the negative thinking that we have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)KING: Exploring adventures of the mind. J.Z. Knight remains with us. We're now joined by Dr. Dean Radin. He is senior fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and Dr. Candace Pert, the scientific director of Rapid Pharmaceuticals, Incorporated, author of "Everything You Need to Know to Feel Good." All right, Dr. Radin, first of all, what is noetic sciences?

DR. DEAN RADIN, SENIOR FELLOW, INSTITUTE OF NOETIC SCIENCES: Noetic science refers to the idea that there are multiple ways of knowing. We usually think in the Western world that we know rationally and that's it. But other people and actually many people experience intuitions, psychic experiences, mystical experiences, and so we look at these other ways of possibly knowing about the world.

KING: You study that?


KING: You meet people that have such gifts?

RADIN: Well, we do. But we actually, in studying people over many years, we see that virtually everyone has multiple ways of knowing.

KING: Dr. Pert, do you agree with what J.Z. Knight has said?

DR. CANDACE PERT, AUTHOR & SCIENTIFIC DIRECTOR, RAPID PHARMACEUTICALS, CORP.: It's ironic because I'm a neuroscientist and I studied all the years studying the brain because I thought, by studying the brain, I would understand how to feel good, how to lead a happy life, unlock the mysteries of the universe. But now what I'm really interested in is in consciousness. And what my research at the NIH revealed is that, yes, the brain is important but consciousness is beyond the brain. I mean, in fact, you know, looking through the microscope and studying the molecules of emotion. And this comes from real hard science, looking through the microscopes, seeing the receptors for all of the emotional chemicals.

KING: You can see that?

PERT: That's what I spent 20 years on, mapping these endorphin receptors, et cetera. But they are not just in your brain. They are in your body.

KING: Dr. Radin, do you agree that you can be addicted to an emotion?

RADIN: I always defer to Candace when that comes up. But what I could say though is whether it is actually true that the brain and mind are the same thing. Now, in standard neuroscience, the answer is yes. The brain equals the mind. The kind of research that I do, and I think J.Z. would agree, we have evidence that the mind and the brain are actually not exactly the same thing. read entire transcript

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