Thanks for sharing this story! First-person investigation of experience is something that's invaluable to not only understanding the mind but also understanding health, so I'm glad its importance was highlighted here.
In one of your Energy X spaces, I shared some thoughts/questions my research brought to mind about the relationship between intrinsic health, mitoception, and interoceptive capacity/resolution. My work involves using a field-based framework to explore the physics of consciousness and experience, and the biggest source of insights have often come from the massive amounts of data collected by eastern spiritual systems, such as the Yogic Sciences. The data that's been collected through these systems after centuries of first-person investigation of experience is so unique and valuable because the practitioners who immerse themselves in these systems and devote their lives to expanding their awareness have trained their interoception to a level that changes the phenomenology of their everyday experience, much like how the "renouveau" you experienced after your bout with food poisoning allowed you to perceive both your inner and external environment differently.
The resolution of a person's interoception is important when considering one of the three pillars of intrinsic health: communication. We know that impaired communication can dysregulate the human system and hinder its ability to maintain dynamic equilibrium, and interoception is how we're able to perceive that communication. Impaired interoception hinders our ability to perceive our system's internal communication, which consequently hinders our ability to engage in restorative interventions. However, what would it mean if interoception is no different than our body's physical muscles that have to be exercised and developed?
If these monks are like the spiritual equivalent of body builders who have trained their interoception to levels the average person hasn't, that means they've gained access to their system's internal communication that the average person hasn't. And the centuries of data they've collected from observing this communication is what's informed their understanding of the human system, health, energy, mind, and the nature of reality itself. Because as open systems, our cells don't just communicate with each other; they communicate with the environment as well. And if all of these different eastern systems have come to similar conclusions about the nature of the human system, health, energy, mind, and even reality, that tells me that there's a disconnect between what western academia considers to be impaired communication and impaired interoception and what these eastern systems would consider to be healthy communication and healthy interoception.
The relationship modern Western society has with the environment is much like the relationship a cancer cell has with its environment. Michael Levin's research on cancer helps illustrate this from a physics perspective. Levin has shown that cancer isn't fundamentally a genetic story but rather a communication breakdown. When cells lose their bioelectric connection to the collective, they lose access to the morphogenetic goal state that tells them what to be and how to behave in relation to the whole. Without that connection, they default to an ancient unicellular program: prioritize individual survival, proliferate, and consume resources without regard for the organism. The "selfishness" of cancer is what cells do when they can no longer hear the field that coordinates them.
Now consider how modern Western living mirrors those exact conditions. Chronic social, environmental, and spiritual isolation. Sensory environments designed to overstimulate the external senses while drowning out internal signals. Lifestyles that systematically strip away the conditions for coherent communication between the individual and their environment. It seems as though what we're looking at is the same physics operating at a different scale, especially when you describe intrinsic health as a field-like state emerging from energy, communication, and structure. A society that has severed its communicative relationship within the living systems it depends on is exhibiting the same organizational breakdown that Levin observes in cancerous tissue.
And this is where the need for bridging inner and outer science becomes more than philosophical interest and turns into a necessity for understanding the science of health. The communication architecture that keeps a living system coherent doesn't just need to exist. It needs to be perceived. That's what interoception is. And the centuries of convergent data from Eastern spiritual systems aren't just interesting historical artifacts; they're the most extensive empirical record we have of what becomes accessible when that perceptual capacity is developed to its full potential.
The challenge is that integrating what these traditions have observed with what Western science has measured requires the right kind of framework. One that can hold both field-level coordination and first-person experience without reducing one to the other. I think field-based physics offers that bridge, because it gives us a shared formal language for the organizational dynamics that both traditions are describing from different vantage points. The outer scientists measure the field. The inner scientists train themselves to perceive it. Neither perspective is complete alone.
Love your presentation. Human being is the most evolved form of life. Yet from the present experience of the world at large, one can say that it has also become the most dangerous enemy of life. In the western society, the spirituality is ignored or considered as a weakness. The life is governed mostly by materialism and related pleasure. We can learn from our own body that has many different cell types, performing different functions and yet through the mutual cooperation and dependence keeps the body alive. This same message has to be practiced in society as well as the nations and the world at large. Live and let live..".Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" that means "The world is one family"!
Fantastic learning shared here. I have explored the Buddhist meditation technique of Vipassana. Presently, I am practising a specific yogic technique taught through the inner engineering program by the Isha Foundation. I am noticing how operating from the space of awareness is so incredible for myself and others. The key point here is exploring your inner self. A lot of focus is put of intellectual pursuit and quest for knowledge. However, without experiencing for yourself, it still remains theoretical knowledge and does not become experiential wisdom. What I have experienced in the past month of my regular practice is profound.
I say this while acknowledging that I am about to defend my PhD in clinical sciences, exploring the role of non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation in chronic pain management, immune system and autonomic regulation. Science quenches intellectual quest, but spirituality allows for an inner experience that intellect often doubts, questions or debates with.
Looking forward to reading your book and following your research with great intent.
Thank you for starting this Substack account! This resonates with me and my own experiences. I'm a social behavioral scientist, but I'm also a spiritual seeker. I've explored many religions, only to conclude that below the surface of dogma and theology, the same common thread is there... consciousness and awareness. We are only beginning to realize the extent of the influence. A few weeks ago, I came across a quote from ACIM that I think you will appreciate as well: "...the Great Rays remain forever still and undisturbed with me."
What an incredible journey, mitochondrial research meets Buddhist biopsychology. Thanks for this journal-style post, this type of blending needs deserves attention in formal education.
When Khandro-La describes the eight layers of consciousness, she is describing a phenomenological map built from millennia of systematic first-person observation. That is data.
Western medicine dismissed interoceptive intelligence as subjective noise because we lacked instruments sensitive enough to validate it. The ālaya-vijñāna, as a reservoir of biological memory, has a striking resonance with what we understand about epigenetic inheritance and how allostatic imprints accumulate over a lifetime.
Rex's point about interoception as a trainable capacity rather than a fixed trait is spot on, and it reframes contemplative practice not as spiritual luxury but as physiological rehabilitation. The monks are learning to read the body at a level of resolution most of us have never reached. That is a clinical insight with real implications for how we think about healing.
You know, ever since I found you accidentally on the web, right before Martin's Andrew Huberman podcast appearance, I feel weird connection to you guys.
Also got food poisoning, on the 2nd of April, I think it was from green buckwheat or something else. :D
"Have you, after a bout of illness, experienced a sort of “renouveau” in your life? A kind of renewal that lets you see things around you, or the thoughts in your mind, with an unusual distance. Or with a new contrast."
Yes.
That is exactly what happened to me.
Subbed to Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche youtube channel.
I call "interdependence" - interconnectivity.
Started to ask questions early too, similar to Khandro-La.
At kindergarten I once asked while looking at my hand:
"How can I move my hand in the directions I want when I want it?"
or
"If God created everything who created God? Other Gods? Who created them? And so forth."
A wonderful journey, reminds me of the one I planned many years ago, Nepal visa secured, requisite innoculations done, but life intervened. You have done what I wanted to do: secure the link between objective Western science and subjective Eastern knowledge, therein lies the path forward, Martin, pursue it!
Dysentery is a profound and humbling reminder of "bottom up" experience. Just who is in control here anyway? I look forward to more research into how the microbiome communicates directly with their brethren "domestic" mitochondria - or, this aspect of "bottom up" experience.
Thanks for sharing this story! First-person investigation of experience is something that's invaluable to not only understanding the mind but also understanding health, so I'm glad its importance was highlighted here.
In one of your Energy X spaces, I shared some thoughts/questions my research brought to mind about the relationship between intrinsic health, mitoception, and interoceptive capacity/resolution. My work involves using a field-based framework to explore the physics of consciousness and experience, and the biggest source of insights have often come from the massive amounts of data collected by eastern spiritual systems, such as the Yogic Sciences. The data that's been collected through these systems after centuries of first-person investigation of experience is so unique and valuable because the practitioners who immerse themselves in these systems and devote their lives to expanding their awareness have trained their interoception to a level that changes the phenomenology of their everyday experience, much like how the "renouveau" you experienced after your bout with food poisoning allowed you to perceive both your inner and external environment differently.
The resolution of a person's interoception is important when considering one of the three pillars of intrinsic health: communication. We know that impaired communication can dysregulate the human system and hinder its ability to maintain dynamic equilibrium, and interoception is how we're able to perceive that communication. Impaired interoception hinders our ability to perceive our system's internal communication, which consequently hinders our ability to engage in restorative interventions. However, what would it mean if interoception is no different than our body's physical muscles that have to be exercised and developed?
If these monks are like the spiritual equivalent of body builders who have trained their interoception to levels the average person hasn't, that means they've gained access to their system's internal communication that the average person hasn't. And the centuries of data they've collected from observing this communication is what's informed their understanding of the human system, health, energy, mind, and the nature of reality itself. Because as open systems, our cells don't just communicate with each other; they communicate with the environment as well. And if all of these different eastern systems have come to similar conclusions about the nature of the human system, health, energy, mind, and even reality, that tells me that there's a disconnect between what western academia considers to be impaired communication and impaired interoception and what these eastern systems would consider to be healthy communication and healthy interoception.
The relationship modern Western society has with the environment is much like the relationship a cancer cell has with its environment. Michael Levin's research on cancer helps illustrate this from a physics perspective. Levin has shown that cancer isn't fundamentally a genetic story but rather a communication breakdown. When cells lose their bioelectric connection to the collective, they lose access to the morphogenetic goal state that tells them what to be and how to behave in relation to the whole. Without that connection, they default to an ancient unicellular program: prioritize individual survival, proliferate, and consume resources without regard for the organism. The "selfishness" of cancer is what cells do when they can no longer hear the field that coordinates them.
Now consider how modern Western living mirrors those exact conditions. Chronic social, environmental, and spiritual isolation. Sensory environments designed to overstimulate the external senses while drowning out internal signals. Lifestyles that systematically strip away the conditions for coherent communication between the individual and their environment. It seems as though what we're looking at is the same physics operating at a different scale, especially when you describe intrinsic health as a field-like state emerging from energy, communication, and structure. A society that has severed its communicative relationship within the living systems it depends on is exhibiting the same organizational breakdown that Levin observes in cancerous tissue.
And this is where the need for bridging inner and outer science becomes more than philosophical interest and turns into a necessity for understanding the science of health. The communication architecture that keeps a living system coherent doesn't just need to exist. It needs to be perceived. That's what interoception is. And the centuries of convergent data from Eastern spiritual systems aren't just interesting historical artifacts; they're the most extensive empirical record we have of what becomes accessible when that perceptual capacity is developed to its full potential.
The challenge is that integrating what these traditions have observed with what Western science has measured requires the right kind of framework. One that can hold both field-level coordination and first-person experience without reducing one to the other. I think field-based physics offers that bridge, because it gives us a shared formal language for the organizational dynamics that both traditions are describing from different vantage points. The outer scientists measure the field. The inner scientists train themselves to perceive it. Neither perspective is complete alone.
Such great points, Rex.
Love your presentation. Human being is the most evolved form of life. Yet from the present experience of the world at large, one can say that it has also become the most dangerous enemy of life. In the western society, the spirituality is ignored or considered as a weakness. The life is governed mostly by materialism and related pleasure. We can learn from our own body that has many different cell types, performing different functions and yet through the mutual cooperation and dependence keeps the body alive. This same message has to be practiced in society as well as the nations and the world at large. Live and let live..".Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" that means "The world is one family"!
Fantastic learning shared here. I have explored the Buddhist meditation technique of Vipassana. Presently, I am practising a specific yogic technique taught through the inner engineering program by the Isha Foundation. I am noticing how operating from the space of awareness is so incredible for myself and others. The key point here is exploring your inner self. A lot of focus is put of intellectual pursuit and quest for knowledge. However, without experiencing for yourself, it still remains theoretical knowledge and does not become experiential wisdom. What I have experienced in the past month of my regular practice is profound.
I say this while acknowledging that I am about to defend my PhD in clinical sciences, exploring the role of non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation in chronic pain management, immune system and autonomic regulation. Science quenches intellectual quest, but spirituality allows for an inner experience that intellect often doubts, questions or debates with.
Looking forward to reading your book and following your research with great intent.
Thank you, Ankit.
Thank you for starting this Substack account! This resonates with me and my own experiences. I'm a social behavioral scientist, but I'm also a spiritual seeker. I've explored many religions, only to conclude that below the surface of dogma and theology, the same common thread is there... consciousness and awareness. We are only beginning to realize the extent of the influence. A few weeks ago, I came across a quote from ACIM that I think you will appreciate as well: "...the Great Rays remain forever still and undisturbed with me."
Thank you, Cathy. So glad this Substack resonates with you.
Can't wait to share what's in the ENERGY book with you and the community.
What an incredible journey, mitochondrial research meets Buddhist biopsychology. Thanks for this journal-style post, this type of blending needs deserves attention in formal education.
Fascinating and inspiring!
When Khandro-La describes the eight layers of consciousness, she is describing a phenomenological map built from millennia of systematic first-person observation. That is data.
Western medicine dismissed interoceptive intelligence as subjective noise because we lacked instruments sensitive enough to validate it. The ālaya-vijñāna, as a reservoir of biological memory, has a striking resonance with what we understand about epigenetic inheritance and how allostatic imprints accumulate over a lifetime.
Rex's point about interoception as a trainable capacity rather than a fixed trait is spot on, and it reframes contemplative practice not as spiritual luxury but as physiological rehabilitation. The monks are learning to read the body at a level of resolution most of us have never reached. That is a clinical insight with real implications for how we think about healing.
Yes, experience is data.
The human mind the instrument.
Awareness and interoception feel key to healing and flourishing.
You know, ever since I found you accidentally on the web, right before Martin's Andrew Huberman podcast appearance, I feel weird connection to you guys.
Also got food poisoning, on the 2nd of April, I think it was from green buckwheat or something else. :D
"Have you, after a bout of illness, experienced a sort of “renouveau” in your life? A kind of renewal that lets you see things around you, or the thoughts in your mind, with an unusual distance. Or with a new contrast."
Yes.
That is exactly what happened to me.
Subbed to Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche youtube channel.
I call "interdependence" - interconnectivity.
Started to ask questions early too, similar to Khandro-La.
At kindergarten I once asked while looking at my hand:
"How can I move my hand in the directions I want when I want it?"
or
"If God created everything who created God? Other Gods? Who created them? And so forth."
Speaking of the inner and outer,
I got inspired and made a poem recently "Mystery call" check it out: https://substack.com/@sefray/note/c-237393385?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=3gzuyw
Thanks for sharing, Sefray. Love reading your comments.
Nice poem!
What I love is that both keep arriving at energy exchange as foundational. The language is different. The territory isn't.
From a physical perspective, energy is the ultimate consilience point.
Foundational, indeed.
Agreed. It's not that they are saying the same thing, but that very different kinds of thought keep ending up in the same neighborhood.
A wonderful journey, reminds me of the one I planned many years ago, Nepal visa secured, requisite innoculations done, but life intervened. You have done what I wanted to do: secure the link between objective Western science and subjective Eastern knowledge, therein lies the path forward, Martin, pursue it!
The path is never easy. However lucky one is, life always ends up putting challenges in our way—nudging us in unexpected directions.
But the path is always the way 🙂
Dysentery is a profound and humbling reminder of "bottom up" experience. Just who is in control here anyway? I look forward to more research into how the microbiome communicates directly with their brethren "domestic" mitochondria - or, this aspect of "bottom up" experience.
Sounds like a good dose of GDF15 early in the trip!
🤣
Loved reading about your experience. What is the title of Chapter 13? 👀
Chapter 13: Mitochondria and Mental Health