Microscopes, Telescopes And Consciousness

A fascinating interview with Dr. Gary Greenberg and Dr. Tom Vendeitti about the correlation between looking within and seeing more in the universe.

Dr Greenberg has Sold over a million books with his fascinating look into micro microscopes with the book, Grains of Sand. He has patents on groundbreaking new microscopes, and he talks about the origin of life.

Transcript

I love being able to talk about inspirational events and I'm so grateful to Dr.

Tom Venditti who loves being able to bring you inspirational events and to the wonderful Dr.

Gary Greenberg.

I've been doing this for about 35 or maybe even 40 years I'm not sure.

1990 was my first patent and I'm writing my 20th patent right now.

Wow.

And it is an addiction I'm afraid but there you go.

And and but there are worse addictions I would say.

Absolutely.

Than this one.

And I've been looking at little tiny things for for 40 well I'm a developmental biologist so my my career was looking at at cells and living tissue through the microscope.

But then I got fascinated with looking at everything through the microscope.

When I started making microscopes I was interacting with people in every discipline because I was selling them to to to people who used industry stuff or people who were using all different kinds of techniques.

So I started looking at many different things through the through the microscope and got absolutely fascinated by the micro fabric from which everything is made from.

So I started looking just at ordinary things like sand or flowers and looking at them through the microscope.

And they're an entirely different they're completely different once you look at something like you know 50 times magnification it's a whole different world.

It's a whole different world.

You know Gary and I know you know Tom if and I've studied Zen and I know you have.

In Zen if you look at a lot of the haikus a lot of them are really talking about that microscopic look.

How many haikus have been written about the drop dew drop with the moon you know reflected how many.

So so this inner look also it's inner and outer because as you go within you start to see how amazing life really is and you see that outer with the microscope.

Microscope how did it affect your inner dreams your inner vision from seeing what you were seeing and through the microscope.

So I was even before I became a microscopist I I wanted to be an astronomer when I was younger.

But I never really found a path forward for that but I was very I had a I had telescopes and I was very much amateur astronomer.

But then I got the ability or the opportunity to do become a developmental biologist and go to a top-rate university and do research and and teaching.

And so this talk that I'm doing now combines the two of these looks at the universe.

One is to looking out into the cosmos and the other is looking inward about who we are.

Now the amazing thing about this is that over the last 25 years since the turn of this century this millennium microscopes and telescopes have shown us things that we can never imagine about the universe we live in.

It has answered questions that human beings have had since the beginning of us sitting around a fire in a cave.

Who are we?

Where do we come from?

Where are we going to?

What are the laws that rule the world that we live in?

Telescopes and microscopes are answering these questions in the most amazingly beautiful way and sending pictures back to what it all looks like.

So we have the James Webb telescope has taken pictures of the very first stars and galaxies that were ever created in this universe 13 billion years ago,

12-13 billion years ago.

And our microscopes can look right down into every atom in our body.

We know every part of our body and how it works.

It's absolutely incredible.

So when I started looking into this idea and putting these two together,

I started looking into the origin of life,

Which really,

I had never really studied that and never thought about it that much.

And it turns out it's a real miracle.

Life on earth is the most unbelievable miracle ever possible.

So my mission is to try and show people what this is.

So I've just had lunch with another wonderful scientist on the island today,

Jeff Kuhn,

And he is from the Institute for Astronomy here.

And he's making a telescope on the Canary Islands that is looking for life in outer space,

Life in planets that go around other stars.

Sorry about that.

That's okay.

And he's looking to build this telescope that will be able to see a planet going around the Sun and know if there's life on that planet.

How?

Because there are signatures of life.

There are biochemical and chemical signatures of life that we can see.

So when we get light from telescopes,

We can look at the spectrum or the different wavelengths of that light and that tells us what that stuff is made of.

But it doesn't tell you what kind?

No,

It would not tell you what kind.

So my thought was this,

As we were having lunch today,

If we found life,

You know,

They say if we find life in outer space,

That would be a game-changer.

My mission is if you can just appreciate and be aware of the miracle of life on Earth,

That would be a game-changer.

That would be a real game-changer because it's such a miracle and it's so fabulous that we are a part of this web of life.

And the thing that amazed me was that when you look at life as it was formed in the early oceans four billion years ago,

It evolved over four billion years into all the plants and animals.

So,

Oh no,

I forgot.

No,

You're talking about the millions of years ago.

So millions,

Four billion years ago,

When life started to emerge on Earth in the primordial oceans,

It turns out only one cell survived and evolved into all the plants and animals that exist on the Earth.

And if you look in evolution,

There's only one tree of life.

There's not two or three or four or five trees of life.

The one tree of life.

Every plant,

Every animal,

Every microorganism on Earth uses the exact same components.

We use the same RNA,

The same DNA,

The same enzymes,

The same ATP,

Which is the energy.

So the list is hugely long.

And yet we all look so different.

We've all evolved over four billion years.

We've evolved.

So my question is,

How come only once,

Why did only one cell,

Why aren't there two or three or four trees of life?

Yeah.

Why didn't other,

Now we don't know the answer to that,

But some people would say is because life was seeded four billion years ago from outer space.

I would buy that.

And that would explain why there's only one tree of life.

Yeah.

But that's all speculative.

Anyway,

This is what I'm talking about.

And I'm talking about the idea of consciousness was,

What is it?

Where is it?

Do cells have consciousness?

My feeling is individual cells have consciousness.

And this is a very important,

And then too,

Beyond the cells and outer space,

Does the black hole and consciousness and dark matter,

Does that have consciousness?

These are questions we have absolutely no idea about.

Absolutely no idea.

As you point out,

95% of the universe is dark matter and dark energy,

And we have no idea what it is at all,

Let alone does it have consciousness.

Maybe that's all it is,

Is consciousness.

I have no idea.

Well,

Then we'd really be getting Zen.

Nothing to everything,

Everything to nothing,

Right?

From no thing came everything.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

So then we'd really be getting that.

But the amazing thing is,

When physicists started,

Oh gosh,

Did we get all those movies that we got about physicists and the secret and all these things,

And how we tried to understand so much the fact that what you're seeing is creating,

And what you're creating is seeing,

And if you don't see it,

You're maybe not creating it,

But maybe it's nothing would happen if you weren't there.

And it goes down that rabbit hole,

Which is huge as well.

So if you start doing this and open up more doors,

Gary,

You're gonna open up the door to the cell,

And then we'll have the cell story.

The story of a cell,

And then we will have the cell speaks.

This is the story of the cell.

There's a cell that we call LUCA.

LUCA stands for Last Universal Common Ancestor.

Wow.

So every single cell on earth,

Whether plant or animal or whatever,

Came from this single cell called LUCA.

And this single cell called LUCA evolved to one day take itself to the moon and back.

Wow.

Now that's pretty mind-blowing.

Yeah,

It truly is.

And LUCA didn't have really a personality,

Did LUCA?

No.

LUCA didn't have an ID.

It was all possibility.

It was all possibilities that came true.

That's the amazing thing.

So Dr.

Tom,

As a psychologist,

What does that mean to you?

In terms of?

Of how you explain how we've evolved in the problems we are now facing in our evolution,

Which we think as we evolve.

Don't we always think as we evolve we're gonna get better?

Isn't that kind of human nature to think,

Oh,

We're gonna evolve?

And in a way we turned the word evolve,

Meaning thinking it's gonna get better and better and better,

Right?

Very interesting.

Maybe not the case.

The fact though,

Right now it's evolving very rapidly with artificial intelligence and where this is all heading.

And that's where,

Gary and I had this discussion recently,

That's where the ethics and morals have to come into the picture,

Or again it could get way out of control,

Right?

So in terms of things,

Consciousness,

In my opinion,

Is also related to perception.

Because we create our own reality in terms of the way we think and perceive things.

So it varies with individuals.

And as a psychologist,

Again,

I'm always working with a person's perception in terms of the way they're perceiving their world.

Because if you walk around thinking negative thoughts all day long,

You're gonna be depressed,

Right?

But you have to be aware that that's even occurring to change it.

So perception is a big part of what we're talking about,

Too,

Individually.

And also the question,

This is evolving so rapidly,

You know,

In our world,

That,

You know,

Gary and I will discuss that,

Probably in the panel discussion or whatever,

Where is it all leading?

Yeah.

Well,

If you look at consciousness,

What consciousness to subconsciousness to super consciousness to group consciousness to cosmic consciousness,

You know,

Where does the cosmic and where are the conscious and where does that end?

I mean,

We're living in an infinity of sorts,

Right?

The thing that's interesting to me is the idea of collective consciousness,

That every species has a collective consciousness.

You know,

Human beings have a collective,

You know,

We're conscious.

If you have a dog,

You know that dog is conscious,

But it's doggy consciousness.

It's not human consciousness.

But it's not necessarily self-aware.

Well,

I think,

Well,

Maybe it is.

Have you had animals?

Oh,

Yeah,

I know.

Do you think they're self-aware?

I think they are,

Yeah.

But maybe it evolved to that,

Right?

So that's the question,

How did evolution lead to consciousness?

Yeah.

Right.

To give you an example,

I was just recently in a self-driving car in Phoenix,

And the question is,

You know,

Is this car conscious now?

I mean,

What's this all about and where is it evolving?

And it was really strange,

You know,

Seeing no one behind the steering wheel on freeways driving us around and avoiding cars and getting us to our destination.

And is that,

Again,

You have to wonder where we carry that when we do go to the moon and where we carry that when we do go to Mars.

But there was a great movie,

Actually it was a series for All Mankind,

I don't know if you had a chance to see for All Mankind on Apple.

It basically said,

Well,

What would have happened if we didn't end the space race?

And it had,

You know,

Someone really knew what was they're talking about,

And they kind of basically said by now we'd be on Mars.

Very interesting.

Yeah,

And they showed the whole thing,

But the bottom line,

And which is what is happening right now,

I think with the test of how people can get along for a year if they're on Mars,

The bottom line was it didn't take away people's problems.

Stop,

Stop,

Haley,

Stop,

Stop,

Stop.

You know,

It doesn't take away,

So there were problems that were brought with them,

Just like you can't go away and expect your problems not to follow you.

So the biggest problem was,

I've got to stop this,

Stop her,

She just won't stop,

This girl.

But anyway,

You can't take away or stop people's problems.

And so if you have people going on to another planet,

You know,

What's gonna happen when you have different countries and different beliefs and people having to get along for survival and then having issues just like we have here on Earth right now?

You're not gonna find a better planet than Earth.

I got to tell you,

If you look at the solar system that we're in,

Earth is so different than anything else in our solar system.

I mean,

Not even close.

It's night and day.

It's all alive.

I sit in my garden and the leaves are waving at me.

I'm alive,

I'm alive.

Everything is alive here.

It's absolutely amazing.

Well,

But you know,

How do we know that?

We don't know that.

We don't know that there's no better,

Right?

We don't know there's no better,

However.

Yes,

We don't know that.

But my feeling is this,

After studying astronomy and biology,

I don't think there's any question that there's life on other planets.

However,

If you want to find them,

I'd suggest you bring a microscope with you.

The other thing I think is it's no better place for a human to be in this state.

That's for sure.

We're perfectly made for this.

Exactly.

We're perfectly made for this existence.

Yes,

We are.

We're perfectly made for this Earth.

But here we are in this place,

As you said,

And I do believe how wondrous if you have that consciousness where you see things as wonderful,

As miraculous as I love to see things.

And how can we explain all of the people suffering,

All of the wars,

All of the issues that we are having in this miraculous,

Beautiful gift that we have on this planet Earth?

This is the great,

Horrible question that is unanswerable,

Isn't it?

I don't know.

Maybe it is answerable.

We are not in a utopia.

But I think we have evolved intellectually,

Really.

We're advanced in a lot of categories.

Emotionally,

We're still very primitive as a human race.

And until we can,

Again,

Get a handle on and controlling our emotions,

Controlling things like greed and all of the things that can manipulate us in terms of being a society that takes care of each other,

Again,

That needs to stop.

This sociopathic type of energy,

Right?

But my point is that emotionally,

We're still very primitive as a human race.

Intellectually,

We've advanced and got ourselves to the moon and beyond that.

Yeah.

But fear.

.

.

When people come into therapy,

That's what they're dealing with,

Emotional pain,

Right?

Yes.

Makes them angry.

And if you allow that pain to go,

The emotional pain to advance past a certain threshold,

You just lose control.

And that happens.

.

.

But we haven't.

.

.

We've been seeing that more and more and more in the last few years.

And wherever there's a crisis situation like we've had here,

We see that increase.

Well,

That's kind of the collective consciousness.

Yeah.

And I think this is happening more and more because we've been separated from nature.

My whole mission is to get people in touch with nature.

The ideas,

I show them pictures of things that are ordinary,

And it gets them wondering,

How incredible is this stuff?

It's because we've been disconnected with nature.

But your other question about,

How is there such horrible things happening in the world?

And how are we living in haiku and frolicking in the Garden of Eden?

I guess Earth has both heaven and hell.

Yeah.

This is the deal.

And I'm not sure that will ever end.

Well,

I've had some people I've talked to that said,

That is part of the purpose of this planet,

Is the conflict and growth and lessons through conflict and war.

And I don't like to believe that because I'm an eternal optimist.

But if you look at things like,

This planet is a place you're going to learn how to deal with this and that.

And unfortunately,

Some people only learn through crisis.

Some people only learn through hard times.

Some people only learn through the challenges that come to them.

Because when you have a comfortable,

Happy people,

They don't necessarily grow because they're in a happy space that's comfortably numb sometimes.

Yes.

If we all grew up dancing and listening to music,

And that was our whole world,

I don't know.

I don't know there'd be somebody out there to screw it up anyway.

Well,

You could go to Huelo and find that right now.

Yeah,

Right.

Right.

With the use of drugs.

But again,

Unless you're in like a war zone,

Like in Gaza right now,

It's guaranteed you're not going to be in a good mental health state.

But we have a choice every day here on Maui if we truly want to be happy or at least feel contentment in our lives.

And it's what we focus on.

If we focus on watching the news and all of that negativity,

I guarantee you it's going to sabotage your happiness.

Well,

It does.

It does.

But at the same time,

We have to be aware.

We're going to go into Super Tuesday.

We'll be broadcasting at the end of this show.

And you're going to be hearing all about the people in the boats and what's going on.

You're going to be hearing that.

But again,

My point is that we have a choice in terms of what we're going to do with that information on a personal basis.

A lot of the nation is addicted to this stuff right now.

They watch it all the time.

And they're going down this rabbit hole that's just,

Again,

Going to stress them out,

Ruin their day,

Where you can personally not do that.

You should be aware.

But again,

You don't want to sabotage your own happiness.

Oh,

Absolutely.

And as far as what you're saying,

I go walk out and eat your for lunch today.

I went up to E.

L.

And sat by the river.

And I have to.

For me,

With everything,

You live out there.

It recharges you.

Yes.

This is what gets you.

Nature is a healing.

And part of the talk,

And this is something that Tom and I have been working on,

Is consciousness and expanded consciousness.

And how does one get expanded consciousness?

It's not just drugs.

It's commuting with nature.

And in fact,

When you're on drugs,

It's probably because you're commuting with nature that makes you,

Gives you that expanded consciousness.

But more and more,

Going back to the 60s,

Tune in,

Turn on,

Drop out.

All the people who did that,

And there were so many millions,

Actually,

They had to come back.

All those people.

I mean,

I don't know if any of those original communes still exist.

Almost all the people that I knew in music that were going through that changed.

And then when you came back,

How much did you bring with you from that experience?

Yes.

And you can continually try to get high,

But unless you can integrate it into your life and try to do some good with it.

Right.

Absolutely right.

Then what good is,

What good is that?

Again,

The part of getting high,

You know,

For many of those people,

It's just having a party and getting,

We'll use the term high,

But it wasn't for any spiritual quest.

I can guarantee you that.

Yeah,

Well,

It was originally,

I think.

For some,

Yeah.

Oh,

It definitely was.

I was in Berkeley in 65 and people were taking acid and it was totally spiritual.

That's all it was about,

A spiritual journey.

Yeah,

Exactly.

But it did change,

Of course.

And well,

Anything,

You know,

So here's this inspiration,

This continual need for inspiration,

This continual need for people.

Tom and I had this talk before the show today.

He says,

I'm working so hard and I'm retired and I'm working.

Isn't it,

Tom?

I'm sabotaging my own happiness.

Me too,

Me too.

But Tom,

You know,

People,

I think people like you,

Both of you,

Have,

I guess,

A kuleana,

You have a little bit of a debt.

If you're giving,

If you are blessed with being able to experience these amazing experiences you've had,

Tom,

At the places you've gone and the places you've seen and created and what you've done,

In a way,

You have a debt to have to give back to try to do something.

Because if people like you and I don't try to do something,

Who is?

Well,

That's what this is all about in terms of it's a benefit to raise money to teach children in Bhutan how to play the ukulele.

And it's so gratifying when we've been to Cambodia,

Sikkim,

India,

And now hopefully Bhutan this coming November.

But you're correct.

That's what it's all about.

And that's the big point here.

How do you change the world to be more at peace and be a better place to live?

And it's through education.

And education is how you can influence the younger people and how beautiful our world is.

So I had the great,

Great privilege of being a substitute teacher at Kamehameha Schools for 18 years.

And I've been able to influence these fabulous young students to find the best in themselves and to become curious and to change the world for the better.

The more we do that,

You know,

If everybody went to school at Kamehameha Schools,

We would live in a different world today.

Let me tell you that.

There's no fighting.

There's no stealing.

They communicate and they work together.

All of these aloha,

Values of aloha are so wonderful.

That's what makes a great world is Hawaiian values are fabulous.

That's how you change the world.

And we more than ever have to remember that.

I saw a t-shirt when I was up in E.

L.

Valley a while back and it said,

Oh,

An Hawaiian young lady,

I don't owe you aloha.

And it was a bit of the tip of the iceberg.

That was before the fires,

Right?

So we do have this.

And thank God there are places where Lekahi and the Kamehameha values.

I went and saw a beautiful concert up at King Keikaliki and there was a jazz teacher teaching jazz to 14-year-old students that were playing beautifully,

Amazing sax solos and trumpets.

And this guy would come in,

Always on his time off and work with them.

So we have to remember there is that.

And I truly in my heart of hearts believe there's more good than evil in the world.

There's more good than bad,

But we don't get to see it all the time.

We don't get to hear about it all the time.

I always try to find some of that good.

And that's why I get so inspired by people like you.

And Tom and I,

I mean,

There's a lot of people who are out there,

You know,

Kind of doing their marketing thing.

A lot of them I happen to know are kind of phonies.

You guys are not.

I mean,

Just from personal experience,

Both you,

Dr.

Gary Greenberg and you,

Tom Venditti,

Are the real thing who are really doing it for the right reasons and not for making money and not for getting likes on social media.

None of that involved is no ego.

It's really to do it to help people.

And it's its own reward.

I got to tell you,

Being a teacher,

It's just as rewarding for me as it is for the students.

And it's priceless.

Yeah.

It's priceless for you.

Yes.

And it's priceless for them.

Exactly.

But a lot of people,

If you had been as big as,

Well,

I won't name names because I'm thinking of people and then I'm going,

I'm going to get in trouble.

But if you've been as big as that,

You wouldn't have been able,

In your time frame or schedule or rationing the money that might have been involved in the other things and world tours,

You wouldn't have been able to do what you were doing at Kamehameha Schools.

Yes.

Because that would have distracted you from that.

Yes.

You know,

Gary actually went to Cambodia with us and did a presentation,

A 3D presentation regarding his sand.

And that was a beautiful experience for these kids in Siem Reap,

Cambodia.

You can imagine they were fascinated with the talk and the idea that a sand,

Grain of sand could look like that.

It looked like jewels.

It was absolutely beautiful.

And that book you did is,

How many people have had a chance to see your Grains of Sand book?

It's just marvelous.

I've been very fortunate in that my first TED Talk,

There's 1.

3 million people that have seen that talk.

So I'm really pleased about that,

That it got around that much,

That people were able to see some of this incredible vision of what the microscopic world is.

And you moved on to the flora.

And then I moved on to flowers.

I did two books on sand,

Believe it or not,

As though one wasn't enough.

Yeah.

And look at where it took you.

I mean,

It's absolutely miraculous,

As you said.

But now we're moving into consciousness.

And so that's going to be another fantastic thing.

I'd love to see not only this,

But maybe you and some physicists doing some talks or presentations on the consciousness.

I have a lot of discussions about this with Jeff Kuhn,

Who I just said I just had lunch with.

And he was the one who was talking.

He has the belief that life was seeded by outer space.

And he's saying the big question about how does it survive land coming through the atmosphere?

But I didn't see that as a question because meteorites have amino acids inside of them.

They're inside the rocks.

But when we talked about this idea,

There's only one tree of life.

It really hit me.

That's really good evidence that it came from outer space.

Otherwise,

There'd be three,

Four,

Five,

10 trees of life that survived from those early days.

Yeah.

No,

I absolutely 100% agree with you.

And to me,

It's not even strange at all.

But I love seeing other people,

Because I hate being called crazy,

But I've been called crazy many times.

I don't have the proof.

This is like from meditation and stuff.

You go there and you follow.

I wake up every morning,

Gary,

And I go outside because I wake up at four to meditate.

I go outside and I look up at the stars.

And that's how I start my day.

And I just try to look at the stars.

And then not just look,

I try to,

Hmm,

What's going on?

Is there anything happening?

Oh,

Which star is calling me?

Wow,

Look at that star.

Oh,

Look at that.

And then you connect with the stars.

There's nothing more inspiring than looking at the stars.

I used to do meditation as well.

And one of the meditations I love,

I have a big grass lawn,

And I lay on my back and meditate on the stars.

It is so far out.

And don't you realize that you feel like some of them want to communicate?

Oh,

You become totally connected with them.

It's unbelievable.

It's great.

Star meditation is one of the great meditations.

And we're getting there.

And wow,

Some time ago,

Wow,

That was that star.

And that was that star when I was not here,

And it's communicating with me now.

How's that possible?

Mind-blowing,

Right?

Yeah,

Interesting.

Reviews

Your talk gave me a better understanding to the cosmic connection. Thank you Rev. Cindy for the food for thought. I enjoy listening to you, and your meditations.🙏💖