Utkarsh Narang (00:01.442) My guest today is a scholar, is the author of five books, is a therapist, is a yogic philosopher, is someone who bridges the gap between sacred and scientific. He's someone who's exploring things where fertility and how that meets our divine intelligence come together. He's someone who I was intrigued when I had that inter-call with him. And I think if you're someone, as a listener, you want to understand. that there is this forgotten link between spirituality and fertility and how your body is really divine technology, then you should spend this one hour with us. Welcome to the conversation, Dr. Stuart. I'm looking forward to this. Stuart Sovatsky (00:43.099) Yeah, thank you. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah. Utkarsh Narang (00:46.638) It's intriguing to me this idea about fertility, spirituality, and how our bodies intertwine all of this. And I'm looking forward to understanding more through that. But the first question that we ask our guests, Dr. Stuart, and to put them into the deep end of the pool for our listeners, is that if that eight-year-old Stuart, wherever that eight-year-old little boy was growing up, if that Stuart would come and meet you right now, What kind of a conversation do you think will emerge between the two of you? Stuart Sovatsky (01:22.427) Well, since my life-long meditation and commitment was to fertility, human fertility, meaning families, people choosing to create children, the mystery of gender and generativity, for me to talk to my eight-year-old self or vice versa, I think it would bring tears to that little boy's eyes that as my adult self, I never forgot. where I came from, where we all come from. We all came from parents and families and childhoods and adults. He would be proud that as an adult I never forgot that and actually my whole career was to be sure that the flow of life, it's sad when we get into it, you know, that I did see that life fertility was left out of the picture and even left out of the picture as spiritual traditions from India, which was my field, which are saturated with fertility. But by the time it came to the West and even to this day, it's been 50 plus years, fertility is not understood as so core to yoga and meditation and Buddhism and so on. So I think my little self would have tears in his eyes and me too, that I stayed true to the origins and blossoming of children into adults and parents and grandparents and great grandparents. Utkarsh Narang (03:11.158) As I'm listening to this, there's a very interesting sensation going through all of my body because I'm just reminded of how we all grow through life and yet so many times we forget how connected we are to our roots, how we were born, how we were raised, how those early days were. And yes, we can come out and we should come out of if you have had trauma in that life and if you have had joy to build something new throughout life this life. What's your connection with that 8 year old self? Stuart Sovatsky (03:51.431) Well, you know, I take the fantasy you're describing as my eight-year-old self would have seen what happened since 1949, which is when I was born, and 1950s when I was eight, and 60s when I was a teenager and in college. It's something happened that we would have never thought possible, but now has become just the way of the modern world, and that is that fertility would be controlled and it would be called giving particularly women, but women and men, a certain kind of freedom to suppress fertility, suppress the ovulation cycle and create a de-fertilized sexuality. And it's, when I say things like this, it's kind of shocking because this is what we call sexual freedom. And I'm saying I lived before the sexual freedom. when fertility was not controlled, it was part of life. I mean, in the green ecological environment, we want sustainability. But in terms of the human being, my younger self would see, oh my God, I'm glad my older self was paying attention. And I did, I did in college, you know, the original research on the contraceptive pill when I was in pre-med. Like many students, you're assigned lab research. And so that was not by choice, but by the course I took. So I've been tracking the results, the impact of that. Now I see it as arbitrary. The world just accepts it. Like we accept the existence of abortion and contraception and that it's unquestionably a good thing or... there's an opposite point of view and they can't get along. So really with my younger self and what I, in my study particularly of world, not just religions you could say, but going back to the first religions which were the pagan fertility cults, we've all probably heard this phrase that the earliest spirituality was in Europe was called fertility cults, pagan fertility cults. Stuart Sovatsky (06:14.639) And actually we find in the translations that I come up with that yoga is a fertility practice. Sun moon is male female in a very cosmic way and we're dealing with the fertility of regeneration of vitality. So fertility has two parts, not just creating babies, but mitosis, which is the reproduction of every cell, which is something like 4. 9 million times per second, our cells divide. We don't even are taught that simple mathematics. I think it's 4.9 or 4.7. know, it's about millions and millions of times per second is our actual life. And so this is fertility. This is DNA. We talk about DNA, but not the living experience of DNA. So yeah, I think my younger self and my Utkarsh Narang (07:03.661) you Stuart Sovatsky (07:13.979) would say, wow, you really stayed true to the path of life itself. And yet, from a scientific point of view, was never left my origins, even though I changed majors, but from pre-med to studying religions and then staying in touch with the scientific literature in which fertility went sideways. And I'll stop right now because there's a lot more to unfold than the simple introduction to, we have to get back in touch as liberals, not just as conservative people with a kind of arrows. If I can go one more step, the great treat that I found is there's, you could call it a second level of erotic liberation. in which fertility worship is a much more profound type of sexuality by letting the fertility back into our bodies as either mitosis or meiosis and ovulation and for that matter spermatogenesis which is also a 40-some day cycle. We don't even know that but it's quite true it was known in Indian Aryavade but also now in western science as well. So we have a living fertility going on and we know very little about it and what kind of sexuality comes when you're with your partner, your girlfriend, boyfriend, or your wife, your husband, and you're revering them because you know that they are the source of life and they too about you. So that's just a little glimpse of the resolution and my younger self would go, wow. you're doing a huge service for humanity because childbearing has become like ambivalent. A lot of people don't want kids. want, know, they want to abort is more of a preference if they get pregnant. And I'm saying, wait a second, there's a whole sexuality that is poorly understood as tantra, which so far is not that much different from Utkarsh Narang (09:16.301) Hmm. Utkarsh Narang (09:33.101) Mm. Stuart Sovatsky (09:37.851) or de-fertilized sexuality, contraceptive sexuality, abortion requiring as a backup kind of sexuality. It's just less longer and is more intimate. But this is thousands of miles away from what I'm talking about and real, urdvarata, if I introduce a Sanskrit term, which is the blossoming of fertility. That's what urdva, upward blossoming, downward Utkarsh Narang (09:40.439) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (10:07.153) rooting like a plant of the seed, of the seed of the human fertility. And that's what yoga is, yoga postures, meditation is when the blossom happens in the mind, it's fully blossomed. And then is the creation of families or high levels of creativity, which I'll tell you my life story as an adult, which is a, it's a track record of the way I lived, which was exactly what I'm now talking about, revering fertility, meditating on it, and tapping the creative powers that humans can of the cosmos, which is endless. That's not just one generation. Fertility traces back thousands of, I don't know, millions of generations, Adam and Eve, something way back, and the potential forward is also theoretically infinite. Utkarsh Narang (10:38.349) Mm. Stuart Sovatsky (11:03.515) our children's children's children's children's children is a theoretical possibility. So that's the world I want to revive. The world of connection to the past and outside of the trauma world. Because what I also would make a little footnote to the side is that we got overly Utkarsh Narang (11:03.629) Hmm. Utkarsh Narang (11:16.094) Mm. Stuart Sovatsky (11:34.907) looking at childhood from the doctor Freud, the medical doctor. We look at what's wrong with the family. just as a little comparison, Walt Whitman is a good example, if you want to read his poetry, of us, when you look at fertility and life in a positive way, in humanity, from a poetic point of view. And so that's what I did. I followed Walt Whitman's approach to Utkarsh Narang (11:39.275) I mean... Stuart Sovatsky (12:03.835) even family dynamics and growing up in a family and instead of looking at pathology, yeah, I can see how people can see struggle and misbehavior and all kinds of things. But I learned how to see people trying and not only trying to do the best they can, but how to help them do better instead of tell them what their diagnosis is or their childhood pattern or the trauma. Utkarsh Narang (12:30.156) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (12:33.615) I was always committed to forgiveness and admiration and learning and growing. And so my 50 years as a therapist, which you mentioned, was filled with an alternative to what my colleagues were doing. They weren't divorces. were marriages, and now I'm 50 years into my career. Now they're having grandchildren. And my colleagues, they helped many people get divorced. and many are now single and they're 50s, 70s, 80s years old. you know, we even heard about it in the last election cycle in America that older women can have cats instead of kids. You know, it was a big moment in the debates of our recent election. So what I'm saying is, no, you can have a lot of kids, or not a lot, you can have children, one, two, however. And then 25 years later, they started having kids and your tears come to your eyes. You're a grandparent. And if you look admiringly at your parents, which takes some doing, because Freud taught us to look at them as sort of in a general way from he was saying, look at them as like the cause of all your problems. You know, that's all that you see. And if you don't see it, you're in denial. You're bypassing. They made up a lot of backup plans so that you're forced, you're shamed to look for the worst. You're a bypasser. And so even as a little detail on that, and I want to hear more of your questions, I know the guy that invented the phrase bypass, John Wellwood. And we're friends for 25 years. And you'll hear this from me over and over that Utkarsh Narang (14:20.941) Mm. Stuart Sovatsky (14:30.961) Historically, I know all the famous people, at least a lot of them, you know, or worked with them from the Dalai Lama, in this case, John Wellwood. towards the end of his life, we were hanging out. And I said, John, you know, my background, I have to say that the concept of bypass really hurt a lot of people because they were awakening and you were teaching, we have to go dig up things, you know, and not skip over their trauma. And I was saying, well, you can deal with it, but let's not talk about bypass. Let's talk about people surpassing themselves. And you're going forward. You're saying, yo, you can be inspired to have a family of your own. And if you have concerns from your own childhood, let's put it in the context of how to be equal to life, how to be equal to being a husband or a wife. Utkarsh Narang (15:06.637) Oof. Stuart Sovatsky (15:27.899) instead of, how hard it would be because of your childhood history. know, okay, a little bit, can rehash all that. But it turns out to be not that hard to learn how to be equal to be complimenting, admiring, apologizing, forgiving in the daily life of a marriage and a family with kids. And then I end up with saving a lot of marriages. So my emphasis is Utkarsh Narang (15:30.381) Yeah. Utkarsh Narang (15:53.453) Hmm. Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (15:58.955) on accumulating all the skills to have created a 55-year career in many different domains, not just in family work, in international work and writing books on yoga, Kundalini awakening, lots of other topics. But right now we're sort of dwelling on the beauty of family life and fertility. Utkarsh Narang (16:10.541) Hmm. Utkarsh Narang (16:23.607) Yeah. So I want to kind of pause us here because you spoke of certain words, which I think in today's world, whether we look at sexual freedom, whether we look at fertility, arousal, relationship between a man, a woman or like husband, wife, partners. But the world, I think right now does not understand them to the depth that maybe you are right now you've experienced and written about and read about and thought about. So how do we define each of these? what does fertility mean? And then what does having sex mean? And then what does sexual pleasure mean? And what does sexual freedom mean? Can you like simplify it as if you were to explain to a 12 year old boy who's getting in, who's in school, getting into a class where they're going to be teaching about these ideas for the next week and make them understand that you're about to get to puberty. How would you explain these terms to a simple 12 year boy or girl? Stuart Sovatsky (17:24.723) Yeah, let's say 16 year old, just a little bit older. A little bit older, but and I have to add in some degree of experience with psychedelics. Not that it's essential to life, but Utkarsh Narang (17:26.989) 16 year old, let's get to 16. Yes. Stuart Sovatsky (17:43.155) It gives many people who've had that experience of a psychedelic, whether it's MDMA, which is called an entheogen, or psilocybin, or LSD, these different things, it gives people an experience of an expanded state of consciousness. And in fact, when that happened in the 60s, I say that was the blossoming of what we call the interest in spirituality. It originated when LSD hit the college campuses and I was a college student then. I lived in that historical moment. So I would say to a 16-year-old, particularly if they've experimented and they've done, let's say, mushrooms, I'd say, you know what, your body creates its own hormones that have the effect of mushrooms. Your body creates the chemistry that is the same as ecstasy, MDMA. And the science, not to get too much into it, but to just say one word, salivary immunoglobulin A. That's a pretty scientific sounding word. In the Tentric tradition, it would be called madu or honey. That saliva can get heightened when we are inspired. There's plenty of research on salivary immunoglobulin A as a scientific secretion in the mouth that shows it increases when we feel love, we're inspired. The original experiment was watching Mother Teresa videos. Stuart Sovatsky (19:24.005) and then measuring the saliva in people's, that's SIGA went way up. Why? Because they were feeling awe and reverence up towards Mother Teresa, who this is, you know, like a saint. And you could pick any saint. That was just the one they did, I think at Stanford where this research was done, at HeartMath Institute. So what am I saying? Is I would say to this young person, your body can create the hormones that naturally elevate your consciousness like what we see over here artificially with mushrooms. In fact, in the Rig Veda they were taking mushrooms. That was what Soma was way back in the first religious text we have, the Rig Veda. But Soma was also studied in that text as a secretion of the brain. Utkarsh Narang (20:01.165) Mmm. Stuart Sovatsky (20:18.067) So the yogis were creating soma from what we would call the hypothalamus, the pleasure center, the sex center, that's what the hypothalamus is known in science. Six chakra, roughly speaking, in yoga. The yogis were creating this soma and getting very high, if I can say it that way. But it was normal. It would be what I call a puberty. Their bodies were normally living with that chemistry, just like a 13-year-old 14 year old suddenly gets fertile. I would tell a young kid, remember when you had your first menstrual cycle or your first emission of semen. You know, you're a 10, you don't 11, 12. Then somehow, you know, through nocturnal or self pleasure, you know, suddenly the sperm leaves your body or suddenly you're bleeding as a little girl and now you're like a teenager. That is a puberty. Nobody doubts it. It makes you suddenly capable of perpetuating life. Not just creating one baby, but like I say, maybe 25 years later we'll create a baby and then 50 years later there'll be a grandchild and a great-grandchild. So that's what is initiated in the teen puberty. And kids know this. I would just be saying, all the traditions speak of, they don't use the word, but it really is. Enlightenment is a puberty in which the Utkarsh Narang (21:35.383) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (21:47.863) consciousness gets bigger than the little ego. You know, it's a big ego or it's a big soul or something. You know, expanded consciousness. And yes, psychedelics show us this. But what I'm saying is our bodies create that same chemistry. And one of the ways that it creates it seeps into the mouth and into the what they call the sweet taste and the kisses sweeter than wine is Utkarsh Narang (22:15.873) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (22:16.177) based, it's a little, you know, kind of an analogy. And this starts to begin to be a shareable. So what the body creates are hormones that when you're in love, kissing is one way, it's easy to talk about, but when you revere your partner, you're not just enjoying or affectionate or enamored, but you start to feel that they're a source of life and they connect back a million thousands of generations. You're in the current wave of that many long lineage of her historical background. you are the current wave of all kind of ancestors. don't, when I'm awake to that state, it's magical. That's a way of personally saying it. I'm not being, I'm not making things up. When that state, when I tune in and I'm awake to that state, it's like reality and it's more real. than the news, it's way more real than the chaos of the news. We are generations of the wave of current wave of life. And so you kiss in that way and be kissed in that way. It's not the same. You feel somebody is revering you. Utkarsh Narang (23:16.503) Mm. Utkarsh Narang (23:32.631) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (23:35.123) Because all, like I said, the first religion was fertility worship. People were worshiping each other's fertility. And the sexuality of the kiss, people are weeping while they kiss you. They're licking this, madhu is the Sanskrit term, or we call salivary immunoglobulin. It's not a very attractive term, but it gets you very high. And the more you taste it, the higher you get. Why? Because it gets its alchemy. The hormone, gets stronger and stronger. It's like first it's a mild psilocybin, but by the time you've kissed it with more gratitude, gratitude makes everything a little better. And then you're receiving, giving this gratitude for the kiss. The salivation 10 minutes later is incomparably, I should say what, it's very clearly equal to something like a mushroom trip. In the beginning it starts out, we all know about it, it feels it's wonderful. Utkarsh Narang (24:16.653) Mm. Utkarsh Narang (24:31.02) Yeah. Stuart Sovatsky (24:35.017) But the kind of kissing that's connected to fertility, you go, wow. So it's built into the body, and it becomes a normal part of our endocrine secretion because we're capable of a puberty. First puberty is general fertility. The hypothalamic and pineal puberty is this, what would you call it, entheogenic puberty is what I call Utkarsh Narang (24:47.149) Mm. Utkarsh Narang (24:52.141) Hmm. Utkarsh Narang (24:56.439) Mm. Utkarsh Narang (25:02.989) So what we're telling that 16 year old is that your body is capable of creating these states of higher consciousness for which the world might tell you that you a mushroom, you need some drug to get you there, but your body is capable of getting you there. That to me sounds like a, and I'm being the devil's advocate here, that to me sounds like a big leap suit because in a world which has been fed this idea that bliss Madhu, nectar, all these beautiful words that you're saying, we are so far away from it. I feel like humanity today is just struggling for survival. And here you are presenting this idea of spiritual arousal, raising your consciousness, of feeling that bliss. How do you make them taste that nectar once as an individual to help them agree with what you and I talking about? Stuart Sovatsky (26:01.265) Well, one thing to say is that the tragedy is the world is as bad as it is because this knowledge is not well known. The final awakening is the world. You see it as one family because fertility makes us one species. Our DNA unites us as a single family. And Vasudev Katumpakam, as you're in the Indian tradition, we know, is the highest perception of reality. But it's not what we see in the daily news. And why so is because, I mean, it's a vicious circle. If we saw that we were one family, the Ukraine and Russian war would be impossible because they're all Slavic. I have the same blood, I'm Ukrainian and Russian blood in my body. with myself, you know, in some Semitic tribes, that's the Arabs and the Jews, they're of the same genetic heritage. And so when you're awake to this, I should say the reverse first, because we're not awake, people fight about things that are absurd. And so when you do get this awakening, go, wow, this is the missing ingredient. Now, the leap is not that big, but you have to just have a couple more steps from the sweet. And this is, at least in my teenage years, it's a little more complicated. But the kiss, the first kiss, you know, is very excited experience. know, contraception didn't really exist. an easy thinking of how you're going to have sex because there wasn't much preparation. There's a little training, condoms and stuff, but it was a little bit dicey. So kissing though we can talk about. Stuart Sovatsky (27:59.727) Everybody enjoys kissing, I think. I hope I can find a first step that is non-debatable that we know I'm talking about. And so all that you have to do is kiss in a way where you start to revere your partner. In other words, you admire them, you don't just love them. You admire, think they're a wonderful human being. You add in more elements to the sensuality of who this person is. We call it intimacy. Intimacy is when there's something special between two people more than just what can be through anonymous contact. you actually know each other. So, so the more of this that is part of a kiss, people, I mean, I'm not making anything up. Billions of people know what I'm talking about. Only thing I'm saying is when you feel that we're, the cells are reproducing at millions of times, that how lucky we are to be alive. That's, that's also not too far flung. We, if we can feel we're lucky to be alive, we're lucky to have met each other. It's, it's a great, Utkarsh Narang (28:41.292) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (29:13.524) wonderful synchronicity or gift or high school, whenever it might be, wow, we trust each other. You know, we have to revive romanticism, if I can put it that way. That's a casualty as well. Is the romantic view, I'm not saying it's zero, but sexuality became so dominant that romantic love is in the background. And so, I mean, you can go on and on about, you know, Utkarsh Narang (29:37.069) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (29:40.837) Romeo and Juliet, you know, your lips are sweet as wine and you know this type of language, poetic language of, you know, what is it, I looked, Juliet is the sun, I looked to the east and Juliet is the sun, you know, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou? You know, all this longing and romanticizing of love itself, sentimental, you know, it used to be vigorous, I assume it isn't, I mean, I'm not, like talking to millions of people. But you know, from a distance it looks like there's less emphasis on romanticism. So we could go on and on, but I just try to give a glimpse of that. It wasn't far away in 30s. Watch movies. Watch movies from the 30s and 40s and 50s. You know, and you see, you know, very charming couplings. And I'll just mention, since it's getting a little back to fertility, Utkarsh Narang (30:19.98) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (30:40.661) the musical carousel. It's a historically useful play and movie where a guy does fall in love and his girlfriend says I'm pregnant. And firstly he's not very excited about it, you know, because it's going to change his life and he's kind of a wanderer. He's not like, you know, ready to settle down. But suddenly he sings this beautiful song about his son to be. My boy Bill, I encourage everyone to go on YouTube and listen to this, your criteria. And then he says, if it's a girl? And he sings all beautiful songs about being the father of a little girl. And it's a very important musical because back in the day we were just celebrating fertility. But now it's kind of a wake-up call. And what is it based in? Romantic love. Everybody should know as a starting point. And we need to prize, we need therapies, if I can call it that, which is what I did, therapies that were focused on romantic love, not on boundaries. Boundaries take care of themselves when people respect each other. You don't have to talk about boundaries. You talk about the intimacy of seeing your partner, you want to protect each other. So the concerns of the pathology-focused people are handled, but... Utkarsh Narang (31:42.541) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (32:09.851) by being hyper attuned to the goodness within basic love. And once that is being a starting point with if you have a therapy or education, it isn't that many steps. And suddenly you do feel these kisses sweeter than wine. That goes back to the Old Testament. I believe it was King... Solomon or something, the songs of Solomon, know, your kiss is sweeter than wine. So it's nothing, you know, original. Utkarsh Narang (32:44.301) I'm stuck on the statement that you said. You said how lucky we are to be alive. And I think if all of us were to look at life from that lens, just, there's bliss. There's just nectar. There's nothing else. And I understand that. But in today's world, Dr. Stuart, where we want instant gratification, where we feel relationships are disposable like devices and where we feel that that my space of my device or where I'm at is much more pristine than me having a relationship with someone. How can couples who are listening to us right now, how can they reawaken that sacred dimension that you're talking about? And then a follow-up question is, what would marriage look like then? Stuart Sovatsky (33:37.617) Well, it's ironic because it's never very far away for any couple, even couples that are having a hard time for that matter. mean, when I would do counseling, people were paying me money, wasn't because they were almost divorced, and three of them were already divorced, three couples. So what I would learn to do is say, what do you love about each other? So the therapist never asks that or rarely starts with it. I start with it the first five minutes of the first session, no matter where the couple is. say, we're going to come, I need to come from strength. need to know your strength and I'm going to take that strength and solve your problems. So the first thing to do is with your partner is revive what you love about each other. The character traits, the gratitude, what you've lived through and you're glad that you had your, you knew your partner. Utkarsh Narang (34:04.205) Mm. Stuart Sovatsky (34:30.225) and how your life has been uplifted and you get really attuned to this and you start reviving memories. You can talk about this for an hour and you find out that we're not practiced in tuning into those memories. And then when you hear it, I mean, I have to always say this, it's not just what you do, your partner's doing this back to you, with you, and you're hearing stuff that you may never have heard before. I've had this conversation, guided it with couples, and been in marriages for 40 years. And I said, what did you, what do you, and they say, I never knew that you thought that highly of me as a mom. I didn't know you remembered our first date. Utkarsh Narang (35:14.775) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (35:18.343) You know, it's, you never forgot it after five years, three years, 40 years. And so it's, it's buried these good memories. So that's the first thing. And then the second detail is you have to make eye contact while you're speaking. And you will see the tears welling up in your partner's eyes. And when you see that it's automatic, your eyes will well up as well. You see somebody like that glistening eyes, Utkarsh Narang (35:31.437) you Stuart Sovatsky (35:48.431) and your eyes glisten immediately. And what I have to say is your partner sees that in you, what you're seeing in your partner. And so now it's more like a reverberation. And sadly, very few, if any, I've been doing this for 50 years, no therapist has looked at this interplay of when you give a compliment, and I'm just picking the tears of the eyes, there's also blushing, people tap their toes, their eyelashes, if you look really carefully, people's eyelashes actually curl when they're given a five minute compliment. That's why people, women, they put a mascara on their eyelashes. They curl them because it simulates what the eyelashes naturally do when you're appreciated for more than five, five, 10, 15 minutes. And if you watch for this, you'll see it blushing, smiling, tearing up. So you see this, but likewise, as soon as you see it, this is what happens in your body. Your eyelashes curl a little, your eyes well up and your partner sees this. And all this has to be described that you're seen by a partner not just seeing your partner. People don't even know the most basic reality that they're seen while they are being seen. There's a lot of uproar about I need to be seen, I want to be seen. But when you are seen, you have to notice that they're seeing you. You have to see them seeing you. And when you see them seeing you, they have a look on their face. if it's about admiration or appreciation, it's about you. I have to tell people this. That look of love on their face that, it's so sweet, is about you. And they go, my God, I never thought of it that way. And then they get very shy. And then I say to the other person, look it, they're letting it in that you love them by the look on your face. And look at the effect because they didn't know how to let it in. They didn't know to let it in. Stuart Sovatsky (37:58.277) And then I say to that person, look at the impact you have on your partner just by smiling. And they say, I didn't know I had any impact. So people talk and they stop at the process. want to be seen. And I mean, I was the president of my national therapist organization for 16 years, I think it was. And I've given this talk hundreds of, maybe 500 times worldwide. And none of the therapists have ever done what I'm now describing, the interplay. And it's automatic. It's nothing you have to leap into tantra or anything. It's just paying attention and understanding that you're seeing somebody giving you a look of of gratitude, and then letting it affect you. And then the other person has to see that they had an impact on you by how they saw that they had an impact on you. Utkarsh Narang (38:55.885) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (38:56.143) It's harder to put into words. It's like ping pong. It goes back and forth. And then you go, yeah, wow, nobody's ever mapped this out. Zero! They mapped it out. So therapists don't have even the simplest understanding of the entertaining change of being admiring, being loving. And then what happens? I mean, that's just the basic. You start to, my God, there's more nourishment. Utkarsh Narang (38:59.821) All Stuart Sovatsky (39:23.825) The chemistry can go further until it gets to a very high point where you see, we're one in love. To give and receive love is the same thing. You give and you're immediately received back and then you immediately give back. Now this gets another element called real time. Real time is constantly alive and impermanent. And you have to be awake to it, because new things are happening as a result of what just happened. Conditioned causality, I think, is what Buddha called it. You have to see that everything is caused by a condition that just happened. And it's relentless. And so when you get into this flow, the history and the obsession, I would now call it, that Freud and 95 % of my colleagues, they're obsessed. They're not just processing the past. They can't get out of it. They're not in the flow. Because this is what the flow would look like, this interactivity. And if they are, they like to talk about negatives so you don't get to the strengths. So any couple can give a compliment and make eye contact, say thank you for the beautiful compliment. And after that, you should read my books. Like I say, it's cumbersome to talk about, but it's not that hard when you start doing it. Utkarsh Narang (40:41.409) Hmm. Utkarsh Narang (40:45.773) As I'm having this conversation with you, my hypothalamus is getting aroused. getting, like I can sense goosebumps. I can sense what you're saying. I like a deep part of me is getting moved because of this conversation and because of things that I feel as you're saying, they're very simple to achieve. Again, I'm playing that devil's advocate because I'm sure that there's someone listening to us saying that I can do all of that. I've been with my partner for 15 years, 18 years, but I hate that about her. I hate that about him. And my ego comes in the way and my ego stops me to express catheter and my ego stops me and my need to be always right rather than be seen or see comes in the middle. What have you seen work there, Dr. Stewart? Stuart Sovatsky (41:38.001) Yeah. It's important to bring this up. You know, the problems of a relationship or of life, mistakes, jealousy, flirting with someone instead of your partner. You know, there's all kinds of things that happen in real, in the bigger picture. This is the perfect idyllic, you know, in our rapport. But yeah, these things happen. The main thing that I say is we're going to work on those kinds of issues for our whole life. and make it better. But things keep happening, new different things, aging, new things happen as you get older that are challenges. And so we have to embrace real life, which you're asking me to do. Beyond this very concentrated meditation on love. And so what I have to first say is not to make a big deal of like, why is this happening? And then look to the past too much. A little bit, your family, your parents, okay. But it's part of life. Even most perfect marriage is going to have... crises, whether they're monetary or becoming a parent or employment and in-laws, there's all kind of like what you're getting at, know, dislike and, you know, so we have to work on those and accept that that's part of life. Why is this important? Because many people, one thought comes to mind is I want a divorce. I don't like this person. And so we have to learn to develop unconditional love. In fact, when you talk about hypothalamus, Stuart Sovatsky (43:14.613) great article, I love you from the bottom of my hypothalamus. It's about, I think, five, six years old by now or maybe older by now. And it debunked fight or flight. Fight or flight was like hardwired into the brain. That's what we thought. That's what we were told. But the research now, that article had 90 articles in its bibliography. And that's been years ago. I should recheck it. You know, it's debunked. The brain can develop unconditional love. There's circuitries in the brain that are beyond stress reduction, that we get stronger through stress. Loyalty is a good name. Loyalty is through thick or thin. And so one thing to tell couples is, you're staying with me even though I'm like this. I'm staying with you even though I have these issues. I'm loyal and yeah, you're with me through thick or thin. And then yeah, you work on these different traits, whether it's, you know, you're always late or you don't clean up as well as I do, or you don't listen as well as I do, or you don't give as much admiration, you're too critical. Yeah, there's many habits that we try to get better at and we make mistakes before that. And so what we want, and I'm just saying the science is there, And it's maybe the most important thing I'm sharing is that fight or flight and they've added to it, know, faking and fawning and all kinds of things, but it's all bad. It's been debunked. And you can read the article and it talks about, yeah, character. We don't just have an ego, we can develop character. Character means you have strengths, we have depth, not just an ego. And one of the great traits is loyalty or commitment. Stuart Sovatsky (45:08.877) And it's hardwired into the brain. It's not just a principle of some sort. It's hardwired that when you forgive and process and don't break up all the time, these circuitries outside of the so-called fight or flight are there to awaken. And those brains are different. And you see it in many couples, if not all, that are married and they have attained this loyalty. And they're proud of it. Many times, I'll tell you a sad thing, many people have had tremendous lives and they're not giving themselves credit for it. Utkarsh Narang (45:52.269) Mmm. Stuart Sovatsky (45:53.777) You know, they're a father or a mother and Freud, all these people, our culture doesn't think that well, at least in parts of it, of being a parent. know, parents are in the Indian religion, as you can remember, that people bow to their parents. They touch their feet. I mean, that's unthinkable in America, but it's not unthinkable. And so that can be done like namaste is Utkarsh Narang (46:11.735) Yeah. Stuart Sovatsky (46:21.785) is better than shaking hands, namaste, I bow to you, but actually touching the feet. Adults, you know, why? Because they gave us life. So you start to, again, revive who we really are as parents and husband and wife and whatever the gender preference may be. There's special conversations about all of that. But basically, You get more maturity by, yeah, I did this, I forgive. And then simple thing is how are going to do it next time? That's all we have. We have the future, more important than the past. How are we going to do this differently next time? And as a team, because mostly people who've been hurt, want to watch the other person change. Utkarsh Narang (47:04.749) Mm. Stuart Sovatsky (47:20.421) And it's not codependent. Atlante thinks to work on it together. One special case is drug addiction. Life is a big thing. There's some areas that are special. Drug and alcohol problems involve chemistries outside of the human body that are way more powerful than the chemistries of the human body. Utkarsh Narang (47:39.575) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (47:43.719) Those I just can't talk about. That's a whole topic. But I just mentioned that it takes special attention for those problems. Utkarsh Narang (47:43.767) Mm. Utkarsh Narang (47:52.91) I just had a mental orgasm because when you said what you said this idea of unconditional love Utkarsh Narang (48:03.583) And then for me to understand that there's this process that brain can get to this wiring, I think just, just helps me clarify so much personally for me. And when you said namaste, I heard this from someone I deeply admire. He, he was in a large crowd speaking to them. And he at the end of that large crowd in the U S, did a namaste and he's someone from the Indian origin, a shout out to this person if he's listening. and he explained it to us saying that the divine in me. bows to the divine in you. And that's what namaste means in the Indian culture. And if we can imagine doing that to each other, then this idea of Vasudeva Kutubbam and this we as world as one family, it just solves so many beautiful, beautiful things. Utkarsh Narang (48:54.817) But I want to go back. You said fertility and reproduction, they're two different things. And I think there was somewhere you were ideating how the world has shifted over the last 50 years on how it understands fertility, sexuality and spirituality. Utkarsh Narang (49:18.007) What have you learned about these topics that you can summarize to this 40 year old, not even to the 16 year old? Stuart Sovatsky (49:26.071) Okay. Yeah, you know, like the reason I've written, you know, five books is it takes a lot of words to really do justice. So the first thing I would say, read my book, Your Perfect Lips. It's a short book, it's a hundred pages, and it's poetry, meaning it's not intellectual, it's very emotional, and it's real. I wrote it when I was in the highest year-long version of what I'm talking about. Utkarsh Narang (49:35.02) Yes. Stuart Sovatsky (49:56.155) And I thought, I can write, I'm not gonna write a scholarly book, I'm gonna write from my heart. So, and when I read that book publicly for maybe a year or two, I cried every single time because it was alive. And I hope that people can read it like they read poetry and have it bring tears to their eyes. And that is the most holistic way for me to answer the question. Read that poetry book of the love affair in which all this just happened for real. And I describe the Sanskrit and all the theory, but in a way that fits into a love story. So that's for future reference. For a podcast, like... making a commitment to 10 minutes every day or whenever you can get around to it, to admire and thank your partner mutually with each other. That changes lives right there. And then to, because it leads to when you're apart, you're thinking well, you're remembering what you said. Most people are thinking of the worst thing that they can think about their partner. and the worst thing that happened and they play it and replay it in their minds endlessly what went wrong. So that's what they live, their worst memories. And you never talk about it, you never get around to talking about what I'm saying. It's irony. So you interject this habit and then you start thinking new thoughts, you start seeing your partner in new ways because you've kind of thrown out the habit pattern of complaining. and worrying and being all caught up in the negativity. It's there, but it doesn't get better much, except for the couple of things that I tried to lay out a couple minutes ago. Utkarsh Narang (51:55.457) Yeah. Yeah. Stuart Sovatsky (51:57.659) And then the fertility, you know, that's where it's a new concept. You have to let the fertility be real. Like I say, modern life is based on suppressing fertility. Contraception and legal abortion is like, makes who gets to be on the Supreme Court in America is their position on abortion. It's a very contentious topic. Because there's nothing, there isn't the kind of sex that I'm talking about. Because when you're, Utkarsh Narang (52:07.405) Mm. Stuart Sovatsky (52:27.705) admiring and solving problems and getting loyalty and feeling proud of your loyalty as the years go by and proud of being a parent and grateful for motherhood and fatherhood with each other and earning a living and going to work every day and, you know, dealing with traffic and whatever it is, all the ordinary things have a deeper meaning because it's to support our lives and our families. And so, grahas, you know, it's a path to enlightenment. Utkarsh Narang (52:53.325) you Stuart Sovatsky (52:57.619) When you see family life this way, it's not just Buddha who gets enlightened, it's people who see their family life this way. Buddha, you know, left his family to do a special path. But we're all looking for that type of enlightenment. as you know, grahastha is much more common. And what is that enlightenment? You see that family is like holy. Utkarsh Narang (53:21.453) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (53:21.667) know, Ram Dass, if I bring up the famous Be Here Now author, you know, he said, family life is a melodrama. But then something like in his late seventies, somebody came to him and said, I'm your 40 year old son. And he said, my God, I don't want that. You know, I want a DNA test. And so it came back positive. And then he said, not only that, I've got like a little kid who's your grandchild. Utkarsh Narang (53:37.549) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (53:48.485) And Ram Dass taught, family life is a melodrama. If you want to see if you're grown, go be with your parents and see how you do. You know, and then he started saying, he saw his little grandchild, the tears came to his eyes. He said, I made, I really messed up my friends. I really, I use the F word if you don't mind. You that's what he would have thought. I really blew it. I was teaching that family was a joke. And now I'm looking at my own child. He said it, you can look it up in my writings. There's an article, know, Ram Dass has a son is a famous online article and I wrote an essay about it. You know, he said, I made a mistake. Family love is spiritual. He says that this is in the 2000s after teaching the opposite for like 40 years and billions of people misled, billions misled. Utkarsh Narang (54:39.51) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (54:40.893) That family life is just, and Freud, he was coming from Freud, family life is a big hassle. So it would all be very different if we were at this new starting point. And I hope the future will be that people will look at their parents this way. Yeah, yeah, we look at the world, seems like a million miles away what I'm talking about. But my whole life has been like that. I was the first person to build green. You know what green is? Utkarsh Narang (54:46.679) Mm. Utkarsh Narang (54:53.131) Yeah. Yeah. Utkarsh Narang (55:01.589) Hmm. Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (55:07.803) Sustainable architecture, solar panels. Utkarsh Narang (55:07.916) No. Stuart Sovatsky (55:17.499) recycled materials to build the thing. The Green City Lofts, you know, in California, we've heard about green and recycling and all this. Well, I took it seriously. But point I'm making is nobody done this before. Likewise, people knew about meditation and now they're interested in getting it into prisons. I did that in 1976. Utkarsh Narang (55:36.171) Mm. Mm. Stuart Sovatsky (55:38.515) I don't know is that 50 years ago. You know, I've done many things first ever. I did the first research on DMT at Princeton. know, there's, you know, ketamine therapy is illegal, you know, and people, ayahuasca is, you know, very interesting. But 50 years ago I was doing it. I have had a career, many times I've done the first thing ever on them, certainly in America. and positive therapy, know, yeah, Steve Seligman, my colleague at the APA, he also created positive psychology. Never been done before, because they were medical model. So what I learned is that, yeah, breaking ground is not that easy because Utkarsh Narang (56:12.109) Yeah. Yeah. Stuart Sovatsky (56:23.827) the vast majority is dealing with the problem. But if you come up with a solution and you pick up a good one, like I did, meditation's in every prison and probably almost in the world, back when I was, they laughed at me. when I introduced it to juvenile lockups, you know, and then I taught it to one guy and he opened his eyes, I'm going to give you $75,000. That was, I don't know how much that would be, know, lots of money. That was back in 76. I think it would be now about, I think it was 15,000 he gave me. So in any event, you know, it was, like impossible. The guy laughed at me when I talked about meditation and lockups back then. So, This, what I'm talking about, that's why I give podcasts on this, is for the sake of the future. It might not be your listeners, but if your listeners raise their children this way and their children have heard my podcasts and read my books, yeah, this starts to be definitely for real. This is a big breakthrough for me. Princeton University, you know, it's the number one rated university in America. Utkarsh Narang (57:27.756) Yeah. Stuart Sovatsky (57:34.321) Rating Systems, that's my alma mater, I was invited to present exactly what I'm talking about, in smaller version, at a very esteemed event called the Faculty Alumni Forum in May. Utkarsh Narang (57:41.965) Yeah. Stuart Sovatsky (57:51.923) And it's going to, if it goes well, this podcast will seem, you'll be able to say, I interviewed him just before that happened. know, things that happened at Princeton, they hit the big time. And the guy that invited me, he got a Pulitzer Prize. You know what a Pulitzer Prize is? It's the highest award a journalist can get. Ray Alworth, you know, he said, came up to me, said, Stuart, be sure that you submit your life's work to Utkarsh Narang (58:06.113) Yeah. Yeah. Stuart Sovatsky (58:21.043) our project, because we want, and then somebody else says, we want you on the faculty alumni forum. You know, we'll see if that can happen. If it can't, we're going to let you speak somewhere else. You know, so I've been talking like this, yeah, for 50 years. And now the time has come and everybody in your, you have your, everybody has their own mission or their own. Utkarsh Narang (58:27.713) Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Utkarsh Narang (58:35.851) Yeah. Yeah. Stuart Sovatsky (58:43.463) whatever they're discovering. And if it's world changing, it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to happen little by little, but five years, 10, in my case, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, because I stayed to my original interests and deepened them. The world is catching up with me. Utkarsh Narang (59:01.613) What gave you the courage to be persistence on the path Stuart? Stuart Sovatsky (59:07.697) Well, one thing is I respected my family, which was anyone else would call it dysfunctional. My father was schizophrenic and in a mental hospital for 20 years. So he was not, I probably talked to him 20 minutes in my whole childhood, because he was hallucinating most of the time. My brother was developmentally disabled. He had Down syndrome and I was taking care of him a lot. But no one told me that I had a deprived childhood. I never thought of it that way. And I resisted seeing it that way as I was trained to be a therapist. Instead, I saw it as really noble. Like, wow, my father was in a war and it devastated a lot of people. PTSD, I did a lot of work on PTSD. And so I thought of my father as a hero, an ordinary life hero who was in a veterans hospital, you know, and he deserved to be respected, not just given authority. So I saw my childhood differently. That was very important. Otherwise I'd be stuck, like most people, with a very bad story and you'd never get out of it. Secondly, yeah, I did well in school and yeah, I got scholarships to Princeton. So they knew me. The people that, that's when it was a lucky draw. I don't know how it happened. But the adult world, in my case, they are looking for people. Utkarsh Narang (01:00:29.165) Mm. Stuart Sovatsky (01:00:33.893) who can make a contribution. And in my case, they were right. They gave me full, they gave me a big scholarship and I took it very seriously, you know, and I learned all that I could. And then I started, when I left Ivy League, all my colleagues and friends, went and became doctors and lawyers. I went and worked in juvenile delinquency for $3,000 a year. They were making, you know, 10 times that amount. And now they're making 100 times that amount. But, you know, so I was committed Utkarsh Narang (01:01:01.933) Mm. Stuart Sovatsky (01:01:03.817) to what I thought was the truth. We should work with the people most in need. And so my character was different. Utkarsh Narang (01:01:10.636) Yeah. Stuart Sovatsky (01:01:10.887) And Princeton knows this, everybody who knows me knows this. Yeah, Princeton graduates, they have a ticket to high income professions. Here I am working with lobotomized adults. That was one of my early jobs in psychiatric homeless shelter, homeless hotels. I was working with the lowest rung of the ladder, you could say. People that were not gonna get better almost. could say they were not able to make use of therapy. But I learned it gave me character, you know, because I and when I moved to other areas, you know, I know we're the full spectrum. And then I still I still work with shooters. Without even we didn't get into that topic. I wrote a book about how you deal with profiled shooters, people who want to kill other people or commit suicide. So I've worked with low, you know, very desperate situations and I'm very good at it. And so that's courage. Utkarsh Narang (01:01:45.974) Hmm. Utkarsh Narang (01:02:07.041) Yeah. Yeah. Stuart Sovatsky (01:02:10.517) Why did the courage come from? Because I had a method that works, which was not trauma. You know, I help people with their homicidal, suicidal situation through admiring them, giving them a life worth living, not a trauma life that you feel sad for them. No, giving them, I look up to my clients. I look up to myself and I resisted traumatizing, know, pathologizing myself. And I did it over and over. So the world started recognizing me. Utkarsh Narang (01:02:14.541) Hmm. Stuart Sovatsky (01:02:40.437) So that's one way to say track record gives you confidence. Utkarsh Narang (01:02:43.021) Amazing. Yeah, it does. It does. Thank you for sharing. Such an enlightening, enlightening conversation and so much I've gained from it. But as we now get to the closure, Dr. Stuart, in a few years from now, your 80 year old self is going to look back at you. And if that 80 year old self comes to you right now in this moment and gives you one piece of advice on how to lead the rest of your years on this planet, What would that 80 year old self say? Stuart Sovatsky (01:03:17.715) Well, I would say, even if you do nothing more, the contribution that you've made up to this age that I now am, it's only four more years till I'm 80, by the way. people who know you can't believe all that you've done. And you're not famous by intention. You intentionally wanted to, you thought humility was better than... Utkarsh Narang (01:03:30.422) You Stuart Sovatsky (01:03:46.521) advertising. so the gods and goddesses of all the realms, they're very happy with you. The Lord is happy with you. And so you don't have to. But what we think you will do is the crowning of your work. The world will and is and has been, and it will benefit And that will be what you do, is see the fruition of everything you've been teaching and got expert at from creating conferences with the Dalai Lama to creating $34 million dollar green projects to preventing murders and suicides to consulting in war zones, which I did after the Bosnian war with President Dronavšić. know, the world will link all these things together and people will be inspired. almost not have to do anything new. Just let the word radiate and the world will catch up and has been catching up. Yeah, everything that you look at from psychedelic medicine was illegal in the 60s. Now there's like clinics everywhere doing ketamine and mushrooms and all this. You know, you can just, what's the right word, bask. Utkarsh Narang (01:04:37.111) you Utkarsh Narang (01:04:58.591) Ugh, Matt, can you- Stuart Sovatsky (01:04:59.183) and hopefully be invited to inspire young people because I'm not the be-all and end-all. We need millions more people to take themselves seriously and commit for 50 years to their projects. Utkarsh Narang (01:05:09.665) Yeah. That is some wisdom. To everyone who's listening an hour into this conversation, take yourself seriously and commit to projects that mean for 50 years, if that is what you need to do. What we learned is that people who know you, know you for what you've achieved and that's what's important. Be committed to your truth. and stay true to your character. Family love is spiritual. When we namaste, we bow to the divine in you. There is something called as unconditional love. And if we all can experience that, will have the right hormones be released in our body if we start to operate with that lens. To couples who are struggling and Sit down with yourself, sit down with each other and ask what do you love about each other? Make eye contact, be heard, be seen, value them, see them and hear them. If you can learn to revere your partner and see them as a source of life, that'll just amplify who both of you are. The final awakening that we'll have is when we see the world as one family. Utkarsh Narang (01:06:40.321) And as you look back at your beautiful 80 year old self, there'll be tears in that boy's eyes, girl's eyes, and there'll be, there'll be beautifully seeing what you achieved on this planet. So be full of joy and be in service of that 80 year old self. Thank you, Dr. Stuart, for this hour. I deeply loved our conversation and I'm looking forward to you enjoying the rest of the glory. Keep staying on the mission because you've inspired me today and I'm pretty sure that you inspire the listeners as well. Stuart Sovatsky (01:07:18.237) Well, thank you. And you're very good at what you do. I want to add that in. I've done many podcasts, but you stay with everything I say. You recall it, and you make me glad that I was on the call with you, which is a high compliment. Utkarsh Narang (01:07:34.765) Thank you. I truly appreciate that. To everyone who's listening on a podcast platform or on YouTube, if you're listening till this moment, that means you've spent one hour of your life with us. Don't share it with anyone. Keep it to yourself because not everyone's ready for this kind of wisdom. And if you feel there's someone in your network, in your group, in your company, in your friendship who will value this conversation, then send it to them right now. If you can leave a comment or follow us, subscribe us. know what to do, appease to the algorithm gods, then we will truly appreciate that. This is Utkarsh and Dr. Stuart, signing off.