DR. ALEXANDER MOREIRA (ESPIRITUALIDADE E SAÚDE MENTAL) - PODPEOPLE #166

our guest today is a psychiatrist, professor and director of the research center dedicated to spirituality and health, nups and also coordinator of the spirituality session of the Latin American psychiatry association, he is known for his investigations into the intersection between health and spirituality at the Today we will address topics such as the impact of spirituality on physical and mental health, the relationship between science and spirituality, paranormal experiences and how spirituality can influence people's clinical treatment with you Dr Alexander Moreira Almeida Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of pod people a place where we meet to

see and hear people People who Do People who happen People who inspire our guest today is a psychiatrist specialized in spirituality his name is Dr Alexander Moreira Almeida all good my dear all good Ana it's a pleasure to be with Here with you, it's my pleasure, thank you very much for accepting my invitation because I'm a fan, admirer of your work and I want to learn a lot from you here today, so for us to start, I wanted you to tell me a little about your career as a psychiatrist and why this choice, right? go

to this interface mind brain spirituality and that has enchanted us so much the way you do this work so Eh since adolescence let's say I've always been very interested in science in reason I've always loved studying science things Scientific dissemination and everything else the search of Reason, philosophy of science and everything else and at the same time a lot of interest in the issues of religiosity and spirituality as well, you know, as a good Brazilian, it's a mix of, uh, an upbringing with Catholicism, Umbanda spiritism, and having contact with these various experiences, so that's always

brought me together a little trying to bring these things together and in medical school Then 30 years went by a little more, I started to study in depth and I really started to be interested in seeing what medicine could say about these aspects of Health and spirituality In fact, it was very interesting because in medical school, it was in the same year, in 95, almost 30 years ago, there were two articles about spiritual cures here in Brazil, two in Brazil, two articles from major press agencies here in Brazil, one in the same week, totally favorable

Saying that it cured everything, which was wonderful and the other article saying the opposite, which was quackery, which was trickery that didn't work, I was a little shocked by that and soon I realized that the two articles were preconceptions and he had a pre-formed opinion because Neither of them proved what they were saying, I thought, well, someone had to do some research on this, right, so that we could have a healthy discussion, exactly not what I think and not what I think a priori and that's how it was, I was doing scientific initiation with and

antibiotic damage to a rat kidney, these things, I talked to my advisor and we started to do some research, including these questions about spiritual surgeries to evaluate, interview people, take a look at the material that people supposedly take in these surgeries to see what happens if you were a diaper if you weren't and that was our first introduction to this then I went to do my psychiatry residency at USP and there were two there are two professors who were already Pioneers in this area of ​​spirituality and health research who was Professor Jorge Amaro Professor Francisco

Lotufo Neto and there we set up in 99 felt right Here there are people I can talk to exactly and we started in 99 the first we know about the first research group on Studies in spirituality and psychiatry of a Brazilian university institution And that was it, trying to understand this human dimension, not in a naive way, but not in an arrogant and denial way, an intellectual humility to try to understand this human aspect that can no longer be neglected in a real care of being human, which is the spiritual dimension, it's not exactly that

and people sometimes confuse the spiritual dimension with religiosity, which can even be translated in some way. A person can ah, my spiritual side, I take care of with a certain religion but spirituality everyone has it, spirituality is a whole concept, well, there are a lot of doubts about this concept, but for the most part, if we look at the following, what do all spiritual traditions in the history of humanity have in common? take Buddhism Hinduism and anomis in Brazil Christianity all say that there is a transcendent spiritual dimension of reality that transcends this material world

that I live in there is something that goes beyond this world that we live in this dimension that Some call spirits Ancestral gods whatever for is the basis of all the spiritual traditions that we know, so aaee, but all the traditions say that this transcendent dimension is something fundamental, it is the most important of all, so it would be the truest of us, exactly, spirituality would be this transcendent dimension and Sacred of the human being who can be in a group of people who share beliefs and practices this is religion for the majority of humanity

spirituality happens within a religion But it is possible to have spirituality outside a religion which is a human condition, right? interesting nowadays we know since the cave paintings 30,000 years ago we already know that there is a demonstration of spirituality spirituality is with the human being since the human being is a human being there is no culture a civilization nothing in which spirituality has not had a very important role, impressive, what you're saying because I really like Philosophy and when you read philosophy, it's there, you know, you'll always see this transcendence as the world, the

material universe is almost illusory, that there is a greater transcendence, right? did this happen in a natural way or did something happen in your life so that it awakened even more, no, I wouldn't say that there is a phenomenon, a specific fact, isn't it really? I've always had this interest both in the area of ​​the Science of Reason, philosophy and knowing this spiritual dimension comes more from this idea of ​​trying to unite these things and not let spirituality stop being addressed, also understood by our rational side and everything else, that is, I don't need to

choose between one option and another I can use aaaa my rationality to the scientific tool to also explore these aspects of spirituality a little and when you put this Alexander you had people questioning and saying that it wouldn't be a more appropriate way because we within medicine are very oriented towards being practically atheists, right? don't believe this happened to you, this is very interesting , right? Because I started doing this a little over 30 years ago, and at that time we didn't learn anything about this at the Faculty of Medicine, right? blood was what we

learned and luckily, right, in this generation, now in 30 years these things have radically changed, but yes, there have been several situations since this study that I started doing in medical school, our work was selected for presentation at a conference and had criticism In this regard, after our work began, also at USP, and in the work investigating spirituality, many people thought it was a mystical thing that science could not approach, nowadays, fortunately, this is all overcome, right, nowadays, it is very impressive and positive to see how the medical and scientific environment as a whole is

very open to this type of discussion and do you think that this, for example, has impacted your patient care so completely I think that sometimes we have a vision, a training As you said doctor scientific very limiting first we assume that we already know that we are nothing more nothing less or nothing more than our neurons activating our neurotransmitters etc electrochemical activity of the brain nothing more than that nothing else makes sense and I am determined by these reactions, this often generates a somewhat passive stance on the part of people when faced with problems and

also a rather pessimistic view of things that is empty of meaning, this is actually a false idea in relation to Science, science doesn't actually say that right that life has no meaning that life has no purpose that I'm just a bunch of neurons cells and neurons science doesn't say that science says that the brain works like that but not that I'm just that and nothing more than that so I think this understanding helped me aaaaa escape that vision most limited of the human being and Be careful not to neglect the patients' experience, which I think

is the most important thing because the patient obviously doesn't want to be treated just as an object or just as a brain or just as an unconscious person, he wants to be treated as a person and taken seriously I talk to my students Genuine interest in the patient that person who is in front of you with the wealth of experiences they have and in this wealth of experiences they have their intimate world they have their spirituality, I think that It makes all the difference, it's so interesting, you're talking about it because I remember it like

that, when I answered the phone. Right at the beginning, right, 20 and a few years ago, there was a sense of people talking like that, ah, you want to talk about religion, spirituality , so you work there with Dr Beatriz and then people say like this, there are all religions, I said no, I welcome them all because within spirituality and it was so interesting because the patients said things that when they knew we wouldn't judge that we didn't I was going to limit that or make any kind of judgment they revealed such wonderful things that

made the treatment much easier, nowadays we know there is research nowadays showing that you just ask the patient if they have a religion or spirituality how this influences in his life and what positive resources he can take from this. This has an impact on the patient evaluating that he was better attended to and improving the patient's evolution and we do hear many patients complaining that they have already had therapy with psychologists, etc. when they bring up this issue Or they were directly disqualified saying no this is not a rational mature thing or they realize that

the professional is uncomfortable moving in the chair and changing the subject the patient is not stupid about that either and I don't want to know the patient is not stupid and it is very common o the patient getting to PR people like this talk like this Doctor What is your religion when he asks this question he often doesn't really want to know your religion He wants to know the following, are you going to hold on to what I'm going to tell you, that's basically it, you're going to hold on to the what I'm going to

tell you Or you're going to freak out or you're going to think I'm crazy, right? So, when we show the patient that whatever they bring will be welcome, we'll try to understand and welcome them with respect and try to help them. It is essential to see how this can be useful, helping him in his recovery, because as a professional I have an obligation to know, of course, the physical part of my patient, the environment he lives in, his family, his work, his sexual life and also his spirituality we usually say that in the past Taboo

was sexuality you couldn't talk about it nowadays you talk freely but spirituality is sometimes Taboo you're embarrassed to talk about it exactly it was as if it were like this I'm crazy, right like There are people that says No, this is something that is invented in the head, right? It's not like, for example, the EKM, right? The Near Death Experience, which was something that doctors started to report because their patients started to report it, right, how do you see that, so I would like to maybe even Going back a little to another question about this

vision that we learned many times throughout the 20th century was basically the following, science proved that we are just this body, the electrochemical activity of the brain that generates your mind is dead, life is over, there is no meaning PR is over, everything is over, life has no meaning, it has no purpose, meaning is just something that I attribute that I create fancifully to be able to deal well with the problem because I don't have the guts to deal with reality, so religion, spirituality would just be the immature way of dealing with the raw and

raw reality the way it is, the person doesn't have the chest for it, they create in a somewhat mature way the idea of ​​God, life after death, etc. and the idea is that this would disappear over time As science advanced, rationality and more and more these spiritual religious beliefs were not only disappearing but were harmful, causing neurosis, this was the idea that predominated in the 20th century, but fortunately, research began to emerge at the end of the 20th century, 1980 and onwards, quality research began to emerge that all this before they were opinions of famous

authors but they were not research What research nowadays shows clearly Firstly, spiritual religious children are not disappearing, they are still very prevalent throughout the world, secondly, it is not true that these beliefs are only held by people with less education, with less and eh, cultural level, etc., this is false, thirdly, it is not true that these experiences, in general, these beliefs are linked to neuroses with problems and personality maturity, unlike people with psychoses, right, because there were more of them, you even associated them with psychos, in reality, the studies show that In a very clear

way, we also see in clinical practice how much the highest level of healthy spiritual involvement of people improves their mental health, so nowadays this is already commonplace, but here comes a question, as you said, we know that nowadays, spiritual religious beliefs and practices are frequent and in general they are healthy world psychiatry society we were part of the world psychiatry committee of spirituality we do action Brazilian psychiatry already recognizes all these factors this is very calm but one is coming central question, but what about these spiritual experiences that people describe, right ? they claimed memory

of past lives, this has always been the case, just to give you an idea of ​​the near-death experience, Plato in the book The Republic has the case of soldier R who was injured in a combat field and he has the MCM, which means Plato describes a ekm 300 Years Before Christ and with characteristics very similar to what we see today so they are phenomena that have always existed And here comes the big question what are these experiences And then comes another important question if I am restricted in vision that the human being is nothing more

than chemical electrical activity of the brain there is nothing more than that if someone reports that they were compared to something cardiac and saw themselves outside the body and saw other things I have to think that this is necessarily a Hallucination that necessarily It's a defense method for the person's mind to deal with the problem. Of course, this is a plausible explanation and it has to be investigated. Certainly, but I can't a priori say that I know what it is without investigating it in depth. So the experiences of near- death are one of the best

studied areas today of spiritual experiences, they are universal, all cultures have these experiences, right, and the people who experience them have a very clear notion of the reality of that, so Ger, we have a notion of exit from the body of being in another dimension of going through a vision of a dark place into a light of meeting spiritual beings, often people who have already passed away of going through a moral ethical assessment of the experience that he had, among other things, a sense of deeper understanding of reality and then a return and this is

cross-cultural this is in China 500 years before Christ This is well described in all areas and those who experience this, for example, we just finished a survey with 200 cases in Brazil, 99% of these people were sure that it was true and not a mere imagination and the majority referred to it as being something very important among the most important experiences of their lives, impacting increasing belief in life after death with less concern for material things, competitiveness, that's another thing. This experience is quite interesting, despite being completely different situations from the EKM, right, because one

has it because it is a cardiac arrest. The other has it because he suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. The other has it because he suffered a head trauma, so they are different physical experiences leading to exactly the near-death experience, it can be triggered by serious situations that threaten your own life, so how can it be a cardiac arrest, a hemorrhage during childbirth, anesthesia, a surgical complication or even an accident in which the person does not suffer any injuries, the car rolls over for example and she leaves and Lesa and she can have this and the person

has it and the most interesting thing is that this is different in ICU conditions where we see patients who are confused and disoriented in the ICU. important thing that the patient has and the most challenging and interesting thing is that in many of these cases the patient describes events that really happened during the period he was unconscious and this is one of the most challenging and interesting things in history, which is almost like something that makes that is a fact Because how does the person know, for example, who entered the room, that is someone who

visited at what time or at what time because then you can say that it is a Hallucination Ok, but a Hallucination that sees a real fact exactly in which the person would not have condition to see, I will tell you two cases that are very interesting, one which is a classic case, I like to tell it because it was published in the Lancet magazine, the best medical journal in the world, a Dutch cardiologist, Pin Lomel, He studied dozens of scenes of cardiac arrests and had in there wasn't, etc. and so on and then there was

one of the cases and the person was walking down the street there in Holland, he had a cardiac arrest, he was taken to the hospital, he arrived there dead, stopped, it was noted that the pupil was completely purple and fixed mydriasis, right for our audience, the pupil, the girl of the eyes when we shine the light the pupil contracts showing brainstem reflex when the pupil is not reacting it is a sign that not even the most basic part of the brain is working so the patient arrived in midras and fixed the pupil did not react

purple stopped dead they started to resuscitating the patient shock resuscitation etc and so on started to take so long that they almost lost heart but after half an hour of resuscitation the patient's heart came back the patient was still in a coma then he went to the ICU then in the u he came back to consciousness he became conscious in the in the infirmary and one day he is in the infirmary a nurse arrives he looks at the nurse and says do you know where my dentures are the nurse looked at his face like this

yes you were there when I arrived and he describes were you the doctor was there when you were going intubate me You saw that I had dentures you took my dentures off at the time of the emergency room when he arrived, he took them off and put them in G in the drawer of that cart full of pots on top of a stop cart, the nurse was completely impressed because it was true that it was him It was true, it was just him and the doctor , it was true about the dentures and he said

it but I saw if people were dead, his brain wasn't working, he was in fear and fixed. you and there was a time when I got very nervous when I saw you talking saying that you were going to give up and I was shouting no, no, no, that I'm alive, no, no, that I'm alive and all this happens So this is an example There is another case just to illustrate, in which Bruce Grayson, a professor at the University of Virginia in the United States, is the biggest ekm weigher in the world. He says that he

was motivated to ekm precisely because of that he had a very serious patient and he was hospitalized and he was eh in a cafeteria and he got ketchup on his tie and he was embarrassed and he covered it all up. Then the patient said he saw him in the cafeteria and saw them getting ketchup on his clothes, that is, the person describes it and there are several reports to that effect. right, showing by going there until the da da da of the environment where he was strict. Where he is, it's as if he had broken

the border of what he was exactly and there's another interesting thing that if there is a scale that evaluates the quality of a memory, separating it from fantasies, there is a standardized scale in Av's world separates memory from fantasy and if found, there are two studies that took patients with ekm and scored the patient's memory of ikm, the memory of a real event in his life and fantasy memory that he created within the expected fantasy memory scored less real memory scored more but memory deem scored more than real memory real memory and it has to

do with the patient saying what I'm experiencing is more real than reality I'm perceiving something deeper and more real and that stays and there is another interesting fact this same Bruce Grayson He studied ems 20 years ago analyzed the cases then he re-entered these patients 20 years later he applied the same scales and the stability of the memory is impressive, a much greater stability than conventional memories that We have to say that if it were something invented or fantasized, it doesn't have this stability, nor do our usual memories stabilize so much. It's more stable than

the real memories we have from day to day, so to speak, this is proof, you can call it that. of a scientific proof Yes, we call it what we call it nowadays, it's important to explain it to the public in Science. Nowadays we never have a definitive proof of anything, we don't have that in Physics, Biology, in Chemistry instead None of what we have is an accumulation of evidence in a certain direction, so for example the eqms, firstly, it is not a mere social construction that we learned on television because I saw it because nowadays

in film, television, we all see cases of km, but there are studios even showing that these descriptions were popularized in the 70s before they became popular in the 70s and afterwards, these descriptions happen in the same way in all cultures. cases that don't even have hypoxia and the person also has it, it 's not evidence that it has to do with mental illness, the person can be religious or non-religious, whether or not they believe in life after death. They also have this experience. Furthermore, this experience differs a lot those confusional states of a brain, right

with some metabolic change, everything converges, this memory is stable, this memory has a very strong sense of veracity, this memory brings true information that the person would not be able to access by normal means, in other words, everything suggests that it is. it is very likely that this experience is actually an experience of consciousness that the mind, the soul consciousness that we give to this is active when the brain is not active and often active outside the physical body itself, this is so interesting because it ends up contributing to those beliefs were even philosophical, you

said Plato, but several philosophers before Christ already spoke about this thing about a unity of life beyond matter, which was much more real than the material life we ​​led here, so you can see that it's me I usually joke that when it's a truth, it's spread everywhere, it's not from a country at one time, it's everywhere, it's how the world is, you know, it means our idea as a scientist, I say this a lot to people like scientist I can't cut reality to fit my theory I have to expand my theory to fit reality so

for example there is a report of an ekm my theory is that the brain that generates everything in principle okay I may want to explain yes, but I can't ignore the facts that go against this theory, this theory, I need to go after them and what you said is exactly that, in other words, they are facts of nature, they will happen everywhere, you will notice them, and there are in all eras about these spiritual beliefs of a transcendent dimension there are two fundamental theories a theory that says the following these beliefs are distortions and the

person creates this because they have a Hallucination or because they want a defense mechanism to deal with the hard life they fantasy, these things, there are these beliefs, this theory, but there is another theory which is that these beliefs of a transcendent spiritual dimension are the result of the experience that people have throughout the history of humanity and research shows this after an experience of near death, for example, the person has a much greater belief in a spiritual dimension, less a materialistic vision, but a spiritualist vision, in the same way, other experiences, right, the person

has that experience of an out-of-body experience, the person has the experience of seeing a relative is deceased and sometimes not even knowing that he passed away, there are several cases described in this sense. For example, you have a vision of a friend of yours there at that moment, shortly afterwards you discover that he passed away at that moment that you saw and you have a vision of a very strong way that is very different from the person's usual way, so there is a series of experiences that people have and that in the world, throughout the

history of cultures, people say, look, it really seems like we are something beyond that. Besides, right, you're talking That's not enough to be a MM, right? I believe this issue of you seeing a relative, right? And that relative almost tells you that they're leaving, right? I remember that, my grandmother had this gift, so it was very interesting because I was in a On Sunday, I must have been around 7 years old at her house, in a little while she moved to the backyard and then I looked at that, she said that but you, you already

went, didn't you, I said, she's talking to herself, right, but as a child I was wondering when she came back. I said who was talking to, no, so-and-so came to tell me that he was leaving and that didn't make much sense to me and I told my mother, my mother said, your grandmother has this gift of people coming to say goodbye, that for me was one thing, then I went seeing that there were already other situations that were told about this same grandmother and describing it, So-and-So came to warn us and it really happened so

Exactly this, these situations when we open PR people talk, eh, people talk, people are a little embarrassed to talk about it, right? one is shame and another thing is a certain modesty too, you know, you're not going to expose what's very sacred to anyone in any way, right? So these experiences are interesting because we 've been talking a lot about this also in the scientific environment when we put this in the scientific environment it is very interesting the queue of people at the end to be able to tell tell there is a has a very

interesting story I was called a few years ago to speak at a large physics center in Brazil of the most important physics centers of researchers from physics of Brazil on this topic I was like, right, I'm going to tell those physicists C absurd, right, and so on, I said, finished, there were two questions, bequet tref, and stopped, I said, wow, no one liked me, I thanked, I thanked, oh, but when we stopped for lunch, they lined up to tell story but in public no one told it but in the end they lined up to tell

the story because they are human experiences that people have, people have a lot of difficulty making sense of it and what is the problem we learn that experiences cannot happen and that a rational intelligent person cannot have and cannot believe that they can be true Exactly this creates a dissonance or a conflict in people and many people suppress this or live Two Parallel Lives and fortunately this is not necessary, right? Eh, you said it from the beginning origin of western philosophical scientific thought in ancient Greece, contrary to what is imagined Pythagoras Socrates Plato Aristotle were

not spiritualists, on the contrary, they had a completely spiritualized view of the human being, they did not see a separation between reason, logic, the exploration of nature and the question of understanding spirituality, as well as, contrary to what modern science imagines, with Galileo Kepler Newton, they were all deeply religious, spiritualized, what we propose is the following, reality, it can be composed, in addition to particles and physical material forces, the mind, consciousness soul can be another fundamental aspect of reality and science can use this into consideration as well science does not need to hold back on

explaining everything necessarily by particles of physical forces Consciousness is another element of reality that has its laws that need to be studied and they are nothing Supernatural we call this expanded naturalism we expand the concept of nature to also include the mind and this has to be studied and fortunately this has been heavily investigated by numerous universities and researchers in Brazil and abroad, perfect and the difference right, how do you evaluate the difference between brain, mind and consciousness? I think this is important for people to start thinking because when we talk about the brain, people

mix brain with mind with my brain decided that C I decided, so exactly people attribute human functions to the brain, right? It's an animism, right ? reality what you are saying, right Ana, is one of the most challenging issues in the history of humanity that are still not well resolved today, which is the mind brain problem, what is the mind brain problem, we have it, everyone knows, there is the brain, the brain that works, that there are neurons, synapses, etc., etc., there is the brain, and there is the self, consciousness, that which thinks, that feels,

that it has a will, that it has desires, that it suffers, etc., then there is the self, the mind, consciousness, and there is the brain, we know that they are linked But how are they linked there are two main theories There are many but I will summarize two main ones a materialist theory in which the brain with electrochemical activities generates consciousness the thought such is the fruit of the brain's activity this is an idea and it's over the brain is over consciousness mental activity mental activity that generates mind that the activated brain generates mental activity

what I think I sit over it's over AC ready there is another idea which is the following the brain it doesn't generate mind the brain is an instrument for the mind to manifest itself the mind is something that exists beyond and will manifest itself through the brain in this world that we are in, for example who is watching us on this screen on a cell phone on a tablet on a computer whatever it is, computer, eh, when I When I was little, I thought that on the Capão Amarelo farm, Emília and Hide lived inside the

television, I thought that the television generated them. When I grew up, I discovered that they weren't inside, that the TV was just a tool for them to express themselves perfectly. So this is same thing I'm not inside this screen this screen is an instrument to manifest Alexander and Ana and you can destroy the screen and I will continue to exist I can manifest it in other ways So that's more or less the idea, that is, I defend and with other researchers, pains that the brain has this function, this function of being an instrument, so of

course, for example, if your device has a problem, you won't see me properly, the sound will stop, sometimes everything will disappear, the problem with the device's device won't be of me exactly you exist exactly so the brain can be a tool for the mind to manifest itself and sometimes brain lesions in the case of dementia etc. for example, it gets in the way of the mind manifesting itself that instrument It's as if I were a violinist and the Violin is missing a string, it's out of tune I try to do what I can but it's

not necessarily that So this is one of the possibilities, it's an instrument, right? The brain is an instrument of manifestation of the mind, right? And you make the separation of mind and consciousness I have no at first so we try and tend to unite everything like this mind consciousness soul whatever name we want to give it we tend to use this first person experience what you think what you feel There are other people that propose differences but I prefer to simplify this, you separate the material from the non-material exactly in this other aspect, in this

aspect because mind and consciousness, however it may be, if it is separated, it is not a material thing exactly, right? Eh, as you said, it is inside a matter that is the brain manifesting itself, right, but it exists outside of that, perfect and how was the creation of the nups research center in spirituality health spirituality and health nups I loved it so how did the story go more or less quickly eh So I went like me I commented I went to USP to do my PhD residency and I also did a PhD in the area

of ​​spirituality and health research. We investigated the mental health of spirit mediums, precisely that question, is it psychosis? Is it not that the person hears voices, sees things, you? did a study in this sense, then I went to the United States to Duke University, the main weigher in the world in the area, Harold Conig is a psychiatrist, has more than 500 articles published in the area and I had the opportunity to do a postdoctoral with him and from there I returned in 2006 to the Federal University of Juiz de Fora where I graduated. I joined

as a professor there and in 2006 we founded the NUPs spirituality health research center which is the nucleus of the medical school linked to the postgraduate program in health there it is inclusive Today we have the honor of being a Caps grade 6 program which is an international excellence the Caps grade 6 and 7 maximum grades the programs of international excellence ours is a concept six we are very very proud of this and our program is an interdisciplinary program we have people from the area of ​​Medicine psychology nursing history philosophy statistics from the most diverse

areas and people do their training there they do their training and researchers who are from there and from many different philosophical and religious backgrounds We have Catholic Evangelical Umbandist Jewish Spiritist Agnostic What unites us what unites us is respect for this human manifestation and The Great Challenge in this area is to unite Rigor We are very rigorous we demand greater Rigor than any other area because we know that we have to walk straight because there is a lot of nonsense, there is a lot of nonsense, right? Rigor, but at the same time a non- dogmatic

and open vision, so we unite this . phenomenon, so at NUPs we have scientific initiation students in Master's and PhD post-doctoral researchers from the most diverse areas investigating the most diverse dimensions of the religiosity of spirituality in science and health, that is, what unites is what is most essential in That's what it's like to be human, as if everyone was there looking for the true meaning of transcendence, trying to understand, right? It means how we can use the best tools we have, scientific rationales and everything else to understand this human side, what we do We

can't just pretend that this side doesn't exist, it's no longer possible, I have to study and reach conclusions, whatever is positive or whatever is negative, our priority is the truth, this is a fundamental thing, we also work a lot with critical thinking. we are currently teaching a course in postgraduate studies, me and a fellow philosopher, Humberto chubert Coelho, of critical thinking means How to evaluate evidence in a rigorous critical way but in an open way that is also perfect and ends up covering everyone, which is why there are so many people from different religiosities ,

exactly, you published more or less 190 articles, that's it, I'm sure about the topic, how this productivity was so great in research, reviews, or phenomena that were occurring, were being reported, or all of this together, it's all together, right, we have a concern As I said, you know, about carrying out this research and submitting our research to the best cryo that exists in the world, so we submit it to the best journals, the best conferences, and researchers from the most diverse areas can even criticize us to help us improve our research. our goal is to

seek knowledge So this is fundamental So we are really very concerned about generating knowledge so we do these researches these 190 articles All chapters in scientific publications they are the majority of them original studies even though we have been studying since for example, the impact of a person's religious involvement on depression in patients with bipolar disorder, for example, the study of terminally ill patients having end-of-life experiences, there are even philosophical studies on how philosophers dealt with the possibility of scientific investigation of life after death. death so all of this we are investigating, largely these studies

have to do with studies carried out with our post-doctoral Master's students, there are also national and international partnerships that we seek to develop and the idea really is, is, It is to expand the range of research as much as possible to submit it to the scientific society and then bring it to society , which we are doing here now, returning to society the knowledge that we were able to generate. that you liked writing all of them is obvious but there are those What you said, this gave me a little greater joy, there are a few,

right? There are several that we all have, of course, we have one. I also don't write for the sake of writing, I never do that, right? And this is what caught my attention, we also have this, another thing to do. We are very strict there, so there's no such thing as going in as an author just because you're a friend, that doesn't exist, understand, that doesn't exist, I don't even ask for it or let anyone in, that's not how it works, it's Rigor, right, it's whoever really collaborated that goes in. as the author of the

articles, this is how it works, whoever helped break the stone comes in. That's it, that's how it works. That's what it has to be, right? That's it, right? Because if you do what you believe is important, you end up giving it your best it gets exciting and it grows, it becomes more quality and life works that way, right? So one of the articles that gives me a lot of satisfaction is an article of ours that I wrote during my postdoctoral studies, we were invited to the Brazilian psychiatry magazine to write a review on the topic

was my first article that I wrote in somewhat macaronic English, so you're scared to death and doing a super vision there at Duke University on how to improve my English and this article nowadays has more than 15 international citations, that is, an article is an article that reviews the impact of religiosity spirituality on mental health is one of the most cited articles in the world in the area of ​​religiosity spirituality sa ambental Why is it I like it a lot and I like it a lot because it gives a general overview it helps to lay

the groundwork What is the evidence of the impact of spirituality on health and fortunately people liked the article it made sense and in that period more than 1500 scientific citations from the world another 1500 means the following more than 1500 scientific publications cited this article It means that it came to hand if we put each person read the article and each quote took 10 people to read it and it's PG you have no idea how many So this is an article that gave me a lot of satisfaction, right? we have and what caught your attention

the most in this article in relation to spirituality and any specific mental disorder anxiety depression bipolarity one of the things that most in reality before a little of this is and what kind of is the mode of involvement religious spiritual that the person has uhum there is an American researcher Gordon Aort, already older, a psychologist, he explained how religiosity can be used in a negative way in a positive way and he even saw, for example, in the United States in the 1950s, United States in which there were religious people who supported racial discrimination and at

the same time the leaders against racial discrimination were religious Luther King was a pastor, for example, and his argument was a religious one who said I have a dream, I have a dream in which people they would all be seen as children of God and Sitting at the table of Fraternity The owner, the son of the slave owner and the son of the slave that people would be judged by the color of their skin, the strength of their character and not by the color of their skin So how that he can and on the same

side there were religious people who supported discrimination and he realized a concept that he calls intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation the intrinsic religious is the one he wants to experience his religion he wants to do the best he can to adapt your life to these standards to these goals that in a way generated spirituality it pulls you up it puts you on a higher level so you can climb so you want to adjust your life to the spiritual vision you have that is the intrinsic thing extrinsic is the opposite, I adapt religion because it interests

me, I want to benefit from it, what requires a lot of work, I take it, I only take what interests me, Alport said then that while the intrinsic lives to serve God, the extrinsic lives to be served by God AG now that comes the most interesting thing, the person who entered into religiosity extrinsically to be served is the one who does not gain the benefits, the person has more anxiety, has a worse quality of life and more intolerance, dogmatism, racism, the one who goes to religion without expecting gain will to donate and seek the better,

this one has a better quality of life, better well-being, less depression and more tolerance. Interestingly, what you are saying is that there is no point in seeking a religion if it is not coupled with a genuine desire to be a better human being and to transcend oneself Even this idea , I mean, is not something I can use myself, right, we see this a lot There is a religious search that people have for what satisfies me, what accommodates me and justifies what I do, a lot of people , and not what Sometimes the person goes,

like in a fast food place, I take a little piece here, a little piece here, but only what accommodates me, that starts to demand Ah, this here is too much, this here is radicalism, this here, I don't want it, and in reality This is one of the great Secrets You know, Vittor Frankle, Vittor Frankle, an important psychiatrist who studied at He lived through the Nazi concentration camp, right? He says something very interesting about the biggest causes of unhappiness is the direct search for happiness, because when I'm just looking for happiness, that's what which is good

for me at that moment I lose my macro vision and I make mistakes in my calculations and end up creating a problem when on the other hand I forget, I take it out of my goal and I look for What are my talents, my positive points How can I use them in a constructive way to me and for the people around me, when I do this, happiness is a side effect, it happens, a consequence, right ? even with this self-transcendence, then yes, you achieve balance, well-being, such as meaning and purpose, right? He still talks about

Vitor Fran, talking about the ultimate meaning, right? That's what it is, take that step towards being a better person, right? Knowing why you're living? knowing where you 're going is exactly, right ? scientific article was this desire to expand this communication, so there are both, the one that is being put there now, in reality, it is a book that we published by the University of Oxford there in England, this book for Health Professionals, in reality, this book is a summary of the most up-to-date information about the impact of spirituality on mental health and how to

apply this in clinical practice because This is the big question nowadays, professionals already know that spirituality is important and you have to address it But there is a problem I don't I learned I didn't learn this in college and the person starts to get stuck or doesn't approach it or approaches it inappropriately. We always talk about how to approach it ethically and based on evidence , better research. more than 30 authors from 13 countries around the world the main authors in the world writing how to apply it in practice That's cool, so this one addresses

understanding the patient's problem and how to approach it in practice and then the other book that we launched now, more recently, which is Science of life after death, for those of us who are here, this is what Science of life after death is, this book already has another perspective because this is the big question, we know nowadays that spiritual beliefs and practices they are frequent in general they are not pathological you have to stimulate and help patients with this etc but the question is and where does it come from these spiritual experiences and what are

these spiritual experiences and all these spiritual traditions in general they talk about How I said we are something beyond this body beyond this matter and until we survive after death every spiritual tradition PR we talk about this as a science of life after this then it comes to this so this book is a book written based on research also directed for the general public it is made for the lay public and also for the scientific public What is there research on this about Science of life after death many people think no this is not a

science topic science cannot study This study Mat doesn't matter, that's just religion or philosophy, what we show in this book and it was important that it was published by Springer Originally this book came out in English Springer is the main scientific publisher in the world it also came out that we saw it comes out in Spanish it comes out in German it comes out in Portuguese and we published it on purpose in the main scientific publisher in the world Springer Nature eh for and it was according to our knowledge the first time that a major

international scientific publisher published a book on evidence of life after death, so this is an opening in the International standard and the most important thing that people will learn is that there are 150 years of scientific research on this topic that involved many of the best philosophical and scientific minds in history so there is a lot of research in this area what do we do so first we show that it is possible to investigate the phenomenon why how do I bring it to science to be science I have we have to have facts to observe

So if there is consciousness the survival of the mind after death I have to have evidence that the mind is working when the brain is not working exactly So we will see is there evidence of memory of mental age when the brain it's not working spiritual experiences claim that it does, for example out-of-body experiences near-death experiences apparition experiences mediumistic experiences people who claim past life memories So what we do is review what scientific research there is on each of these topics we show what the research has, we show the most common hypotheses, it could be

fraud, it could be the person's unconscious, it could be a psychiatric problem, it could be manipulation, all of this could be conventional explanations, but what we will see in very rigorous studies, these Conventional methods in general do not account for the totality of the phenomenon, then two other possible explanations arise, extrasensory perception, which, for example, is the telepathic ability to capture other people's minds, and the survival of consciousness itself. and trying to see what they suggest, so we show this to the readers, we try to put it in a very accessible way for everyone, but

for those who want to advance, almost every sentence has two three research references in the book, there are 350 scientific research references justifying each one of those things It's not just what you're thinking here, there's 150 years of history here and the idea is to give people research so that people can have an opinion, even if they form an opinion that they think exists that doesn't exist, but it's an opinion well based because as we said at the beginning of the story, many people have strong opinions about the topic but have never studied the topic

in depth, so the idea is to introduce people to this topic and then they can form their own conclusion and not adapting realities to what the person wants Because this is one of the things that most happens today in the world today is everyone wanting to adapt a reality to what they want exactly and one thing is that you put here in the book that I already I gave a little fairy here Chico Xavier that you bring about Chico Xavier that I think that Chico is a Brazilian heritage, because it's difficult for anyone who doesn't

like Chico Xavier and I'm not talking about whether you accept what he said or not, but I I feel that in Brazilians there is a fondness for the figure of Chico Xavier as Divaldo who is still alive, right at 90, if I'm not mistaken, 92 or 94 years old, what do you bring Chico Xavier here, so hey, we're like I said, we analyze different types of evidence and spiritual experiences and Studies that were carried out in the case of people of mediumship, what is mediumship, remember that mediumship is not the property of any religion, nor

of Spiritism, nor of anyone, it is a human experience since man has been a man, there are reports of contact with beings who have already passed away, right, if we, for example, I recently read the book The Fall of the Sky by Davi Copena of the Yanomami in Brazil, they have reports of this all the time, we see throughout history countless reports of people who had contact, had sub influence, they claimed, this is just influence, people have already passed away, it has always existed, okay, and we give the name of medium to these people who

are the ones who can see these phenomena. these perceptions then comes the doubt, is it something in the person's mind, is it a real spiritual perception of a consciousness outside the body and then we analyzed two mediums that were studied in great depth by many scientists, one Leonor Piper who was in the United States investigated, for example, by the founder of scientific psychology William James for 30 years studying and he was convinced that it produces phenomena and information that cannot be explained by conventional means that it actually has access to another type of information and

we analyzed the Chico Xavier, because he is a Brazilian, Chico Xavier as everyone knows him, right? He was a Brazilian medium who won the Brazilian over a lot due to his humble way of helping people, avoiding confrontation but firmly bringing a message of peace, charity and fraternity, so he It's kind of unanimous, yes, eh, in Brazil as one of the great spiritual leaders in Brazil who brings this aspect and at the same time he became famous for his mediumistic experiences and what there is to study about him, Leonor was also a mediumistic activity, that the

Leonor Pipe was a medium in Boston in the United States that was investigated for more than 20 to 30 years by many of the world's leading scientists at the time and the vast majority of them were convinced that it was not possible to explain what phenomenon it produced just by conventional means Ah, it's fraud or it's or it's and it's her unconscious producing it but it was as if it were clairvoyance she was mediumship she was in a trance She wrote things she spoke very similar to Chico, very similar to this and Chico What that

he has in him, he has several very interesting phenomena, the first one, remembering him, he was from the interior of Minas Gerais, you know, Pedro Leopoldo's super poor family had education until the fourth primary grade, he only worked since he was 8 years old, that is, in a city that didn't even have a library. internet had nothing just to be able to remember talking about 1920 1930 and so on when he was in his 20s he started psychographing and he published a book called parnaso de alent tomb a book in which there are poems attributed

to dozens of Brazilian and Portuguese poets deceased since Castro Alves Casimiro de Abreu Hello Bilac etc and what is interesting is there is a master's degree in Literature at Unicamp by Alexandre Carol Rocha in which he compared the literary style of the poet in life with the literary style of the poet allegedly by Chico Xavier and it is very impressive because for each poet, for Chico, this poet who communicates in some way, he knows the cultural repertoire, the knowledge of that poet, the literary style of that poet, poet for each of them, so, in other

words, Chico would have had access to dozens to hundreds of texts from dozens of poets, being able to understand them all and capture what the essence of each one is and reproduce each one of them, so much so that Monteiro Lobato at the time said the following, if Chico Xavier wrote these books himself, he deserves how many chairs he wants to join the Brazilian Academy of Letters, so it's a very impressive deal and Ah, there's an interesting detail and then this same researcher and from Unicamp, Alexandre Carol Roch, did a doctorate for which I was

on the committee, I was on his committee, Humberto de Campos Humberto de Campos is another writer Bras was not a poet but was a journalist writer who was also very famous in Brazil in the 20s and 30s and also a few years after he passed away, Chico allegedly wrote for him and it is very interesting because Alexandre read what Humbert supposedly wrote for Chico while he was alive and he saw that Humberto de Campos's texts for Chico were all the time making very subtle cross-references to countless texts by Humberto de Campos in Life, he had

to know the work very well and deeply and had another worse detail, Humberto de Campos wrote a secret diary in which he recorded the gossip of the time, he wrote a secret diary of gossip from the intellectual milieu from the Brazilian artistic milieu, but there was so much gossip that he ordered it to be placed in the safe when he died. of the Brazilian Academy of Letters chain and was closed for several years there, decades later, this diary was made public and there are texts from Chico allegedly by Humberto de Campos that clearly make reference

to things that are in this Secret Diary that was secret that was secret in the safe So this is an example of a phenomenon that draws a lot of attention to Chico, another aspect of Chico draws attention This was another research that was published by our colleagues from abroad, but in an international magazine in the 50s, when Chico Eh was psychographing, he talked about the pineal gland, which is a gland in our brain. it was useless, not even the hormone, melatonin had been discovered, I still didn't know anything, pineal melatonin was useless, but in this

book, allegedly by a doctor, André Luiz, a doctor disincarnated by Chico, he starts to say that the pineal has a series of functions, an endocrine function. a reproductive function begins to talk about various functions of the pineal, how it works and then this article that was published a few years ago compares what was known about your pineal to the time when Chico wrote in the 50s, he knew almost nothing and what is known today, so what is in the psychography tells what is known about the pineal today but was not known at the time, this

is another interesting piece of information and finally the other, perhaps very interesting piece of information from Chico that we published, I advised on both post doctorates in partnership here with USP on the letters written by Chico Xavier, Chico psychographs letters allegedly from deceased people to their relatives, and we then carried out an investigation into these letters to see what level of precise information he had and what the possibility was that Chico had access to this information We also published international magazines these results showing that from a Ger mod these letters had very precise information and

much of it was extremely unlikely that Chico would have access to this information, not even for example the family that went there to Chico knew Then they went to investigate people's names, facts, etc. and so on and found that what was in the letter was real, exactly, so Chico is, unfortunately, he was little studied in life, I think it was an absurd waste of the scientific community, but there has been an effort right, to rescue something in this sense nowadays and it's interesting, right, because yes, Chico talked a lot about reincarnation like Kardec, right, Kardec's

studies also contribute in this sense of this study of the spirituality of Health, so it was interesting that you mentioned Kardec It is interesting that in Brazil there is a basically more religious view of spiritualism as a whole, Kardec was actually a French intellectual, right around 1850 he decided to rationally study these spiritual experiences that were happening at the time and he proposed the idea of ​​using science to investigate these spiritual phenomena he said that there was no opposition between science and religion and that you should and could use reason and science to investigate these

F so Kardec is part of a movement that took place in the mid-19th century for investigation scientific knowledge of these spiritual phenomena Okay , and he has some very interesting ones, by the way, taking advantage of the opportunity, an article by me and two other colleagues investigating Kardec's method of investigating spiritual phenomena and There will also be an open conference for anyone interested in the end of November at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. for those who want to participate and uh and whoever wants to then join my networks we will be advertising on

my Instagram there I will put it So they will be researchers who completed a master's degree post-doctoral professors from universities who study Kardec as a Thinker so the Kardec Without a doubt he was an innovator, a pioneer in this area, I think that several of his proposals are quite interesting and can be useful for our exploration. This is because he started the movement of studying what was being described, not by of judging or or giving an absolute truth was simply observing the issue of reincarnation which is a lot of this thing Especially Chico's, right? I

think this was very important to us Brazilians, what kind of evidence could it be a truth or or No Great, so the idea of ​​reincarnation, the idea that we can't come back in other bodies, etc. Our consciousness, our mind and such, firstly, it's a very old idea disseminated in ancient Greece, even Plato, for example, Pythagoras, were reincarnationists, it's currently more widespread in the East, right, Hindus. Buddhists etc and such in our region spiritualists although in Brazil just to give us an idea data from Data Folha show that half of Catholics in Brazil believe in reincarnation

exactly ex it is a very widespread thing well what research there is on this of course is a belief but that there is research, he is the main researcher in the world in the area, he is called Ian Stevenson, a professor of child psychiatry, University of Virginia in the United States, Ian Stevenson, Ian Stevenson, he passed away a few years ago, what happened, he saw him as a child psychiatrist, he I saw that there were children who claimed Memories of past lives Of course it could be fantasy she will think she is a princess who

is a queen etc etc etc the child can think these things but he started to see that there was a consistent pattern, well I will shorten the story today in day at a stage, right, not there, because I'm going to get there Well, then, I'm going to shorten the story, we just published it, I can talk as much as I want, please, if you let me, I'll really talk, I'll really talk, talk and gesture So, look at the Over time, more than 2,500 cases have been studied academically on the subject at universities in Europe, Oceania,

Asia, the United States and Brazil, we also have them. Now I will also talk about our recent research here in Brazil on cases called suggestive of reincarnation, we published recently a review article has been scientifically published about this and in the book there is also the following: children who, as soon as they start talking, at the age of 2, already start talking about a past life, I lived another life, I had Another mother, my name was like that, often says how she died, I often died from violent deaths, I died like that, etc., etc., but

of course it could be the child's fantasy, but first of all, it's a fact that draws attention. These Ger children don't fantasize that they are rich, famous, beautiful, none of these are very common lives and often tragic deaths and the most interesting thing is that you often find a person who fits very well into that phenomenon. psychology professor from Iceland in Europe He studied a case of a girl in Sri Lanka this girl, around 3 years old, had an accident near her house where someone died after being run over by a car, she didn't know

the person who died, she didn't just see it She heard the conversation and she had a very intense reaction. The parents thought it was strange. Launch Kelania's time she looked there and she said I already lived there then she started talking about that time ago there is a river I lived behind that river and I made Incense And I made Ambica brand incense iG picha the mother thought it was strange because where she lived there was no incense of this brand iG picha was the name of a store nearby there I was traveling on mayonnaise

and I was going on my bike to sell incense at the temple And then a big car ran over me and I died and ended up here again or less there is more but that is the essence of the story was to investigate and in fact CE, being that the temple that was there was many kilometers away, it is true that it was discovered that in fact behind the time of a river they discovered behind the river a maker of incense that he had a brother-in-law who was his partner who made incense with him and

who made ambica and Geta picha brand incense and this brother-in-law was going to sell incense on his bicycle and was run over by a truck, the brother-in-law the brother-in-law was run over by a truck and when they showed the girl the pot and envelope of incense she said but you changed it because that wasn't how it was and the packaging had even changed, the packaging and the most interesting thing was it had a brand of birth, people usually have birthmarks compatible with the fatal injury from the alleged previous life Uhum She had a mark, some

white spots under her rib, since she was born with white spots under her rib, if she had access to the incense maker's autopsy report, he died when the wheel of the truck passed through this region where the ribs broke and penetrated the spleen and Basso's hemorrhage years of age compatible emotional reactions so you understand that exaggerated reaction of hers when someone was killed by a car, which is like children having phobias and everything else related to the death situation, she had memories that were specific to that person, she has compatible birthmarks, so these are examples

of well-studied cases that are difficult to understand. Of course, there are cases that are not so robust, but there are hundreds of cases of this type, you know, and there is a cross-cultural pattern. we also analyzed 18 cases of children and adolescents with alleged memories of past lives in a very similar way, including an article in which the thesis has already been defended. The article is in the final phase of evaluation in an international scientific journal in which the boy allegedly remembers that It's a great uncle, it's a case of the same family, they're more

fragile because they can pass on information within the family, but the boy brings up a series of questions and, for example, he called his mother by a nickname that no one ever called his mother. only his great uncle called him for decades and no one called him chav anymore and he died with his great uncle with a gunshot to the head. The boy says no one ever told that to the boy because even this death of his great uncle's is very traumatic, it was many Decades ago, questions of crime, a hell of a mess, everyone

suppressed it, it was hushed up in the fam, they don't like to talk about it and they don't mention that he died from a gunshot that was caused by some bandits and it was really a question of a crime where he worked and everything else where he messed with cars and who was shot in the head and the boy has a na and he the guy really died from a frontal gunshot and the boy has a birth injury a ba a flattening in the posterior region of the skull we even have the MRI showing this

that it would be compatible with the exit hole of a projectile, unfortunately we were unable to locate the necropsy side that disappeared, also for reasons that are there, but hey, so these cases are very described So these are examples, right, of cases that are very interesting and these are these cases called suggestive of reincarnation And you are saying something so interesting when I worked with children, I had a couple of similar cases as you are describing and I began to understand that it was much easier in childhood this happens until the age of five, the

feeling it gave me was that until the age of 5, it is until that time because between 5 and 7 is the time when the child begins to individualize himself, that Ego thing, he is no longer the mother's collective From the father, eh, and from there he develops, so at this stage , it's as if he's still kind of open to who he is or who he was. in a personal international scientific magazine from Virginia in which they analyzed children who allegedly changed sex from one Incarnation to another, you described a case of the girl

from And then they identified that and compared the cases of children who had and changed sex from one Incarnation to another who maintained the same sex children who report sex change and they have a much higher rate in childhood of gender dysphoria of feeling unpleasant about their body their biological sex uhum and compatible with what they experienced there and with her case but it's It's interesting that throughout this child's development, this gender dysphoria disappears from the relationship, it would stop a door, right? our group at nups by Eric Pires and he is a doctor and

we did the following in Brazil there was a researcher called hernan Guimarães Andrade who researched in partnership with Ian stens from Virginia cases in the same 70's approximately cases of children but no one knows What happens to these children when they become adults? Yes, it is reported that when they are 7 years old, they stop talking and so on , but no one knows that we did some detective work. He located around 20 of these children, now 48 years later, in average perfect perfect very interesting the work by the way his work has just been

awarded he had a meeting last week in São Paulo promoted by the science Pioneer of the pain network largest network of hospitals in Latin America it's about it's a journey of non-Ordinary experiences of Research non-ordinary experiences I had the privilege of opening the class there and the award-winning work for best research was this work by Eric What did we do then 48 years later we located these people and interviewed around 20 of them and then it was interesting the following, a good part had no memory, the majority of 70% did not remember anything, many did

not even know that they participated in the research because they were 3 4 year old children, you know, 3 4 year olds had to have a very beautiful part in which he found one of those researched and he got it because he, Eric, he went to the original research collection and had the photos and everything and one of those researched didn't have any photos of him with his father and he, the researcher, did and gave him PR to photo with his father 50 years later was very cool , right, but the fact is the vast

majority don't remember anything but around 30% 1/3 remember Okay, 1/3 have memories, some somewhat vague and some very intense, still vivid that, most of them had a normal life, no, it didn't cause any problems, basically, and they have a healthy life. So, this was a very interesting work that we ended up developing because if this is true, if there are signs or if there is and it seems that it takes a time for that influence to become smaller, right, in the sense that it's almost as if a portal of the idea, one of the ideas,

is closing. We have also been working on this, as well as from a scientific point of view, if the brain is a filter for If the mind manifests itself, this filter can be more or less porous, it can more or less allow the manifestation of the mind as a whole and if both faith, for example, people have greater perceptions, the capacity for greater spiritual perception, sometimes there is a more porous filter of understanding this other dimension of reality, which is the big question , right, reality is sometimes more than what we see through our eyes,

right? and if there is actually this issue of consciousness returning to the body, perhaps in that initial period, the brain is a little more porous, allowing other perceptions . you have to do it there Give meaning and purpose to this life and if there is another study also which is Sandra Maciel's doctorate, she just defended her doctorate, a psychologist, we investigated adults who claimed past lives in adult life, a sample of 400 more than 400 people, wait, what is it like for adults who claim current memories from a past life, if you're having them now,

you're an adult, you forget, because children it's easy for us to understand, so now we because this is a huge area that no one knows about, there's no study on it, much less it becomes much less understandable, there is no study on this And then we raised in Brazil with more than 400 cases a series of evaluation questionnaires and everything and it was very interesting because we had people from the most diverse socioeconomic and educational levels having these experiences, many they had a lot of difficulty with these experiences and I couldn't really understand that and

they were often somewhat traumatic memories, difficult memories of so many bad situations that they did or that they suffered. That's right, and these people had difficulty experiencing and understanding this and had higher levels of depression and anxiety as well. So it shows a need to take care and pay attention to this population, a new area that no one really knows about and many say that sometimes they have skills that they realize and that have a relationship with this her legacy memory or even attractions since she was a child, a very strong interest in alcohol and

drugs, for example, which she supposedly attributes to very early sexualization Uhum So, in other words, these are experiences that we are from a scientific point of view, starting to explore again in this research, we don't There was no way to investigate whether it was a real past life, whether it is an unconscious thing, but the fact is that people have these experiences and are underreported in dealing with these experiences. In reality, science is not there to say whether it exists or not. but the fact is that there are experiences that generate evidence that people people

First people have these experiences we cannot ignore that they have these experiences ready first thing they T this impacts people and of course we, in addition to understanding that they exist that they impact and how we can welcome and help these people we can study what they tell us about what a human being is what we have already said are we just an electrochemical activity of our brain I am Something Furthermore, I continue, there is a greater purpose and everything, and this idea of ​​the book is precisely this uniting, this is what there is in

this research so that people can have, eh, form their opinion. I can tell you a case, please, also of a research Wow. which has just been published is also a study with mediums that we did, which is a big challenge, right? It's you allowing people who have religious, mystical, spiritual experiences to have their experiences at the same time as you. You have to be able to control the research because, for example, if I am a medium and you come to talk to me, I have to be careful because you can say information and I capture,

I look for information from you and I speak or I look for it AH Ana will interview me, I will go on the social network I look for everything about her, about her life, about her family, about I don't know what there, so all of this has to be controlled because all of this can be a problem or else I say somewhat generic information. You 're in mourning, suffering, you're going, it's true, man. relative So all of this we have to control very well, we did research which was the following, we identified a postdoctoral fellow

who we supervised from Márcia Gid, professor here at FJ, in which we did the following, we identified a hundred and a few people recent mourners in the Juiz de Fora region, these would be the people we would study and we selected three mediums from Brazil who, at first, there was suggestive evidence that they produced reliable actions, there had been no serious study yet but we were looking for these people beauty and each one came at different times, of the 120 mourners in total, we had 20 or so letters for these people, most of them did

not receive the letter and it was very interesting that we tried to see what would be the predictor of the person receiving the perfect letter being a man being a woman to believe or not to believe being a Spiritist being a Catholic black white none of this made a difference Do you know what was the only variable that made a difference the severity of the grief the more serious the grief in a mourning scor standardized scor chance the more need she had the person was in mourning, more likely to receive the letter, it was the

only variable that worked very well. Then, as soon as the person received the letter, we asked the person a question whether they thought that letter was from their family member or not, etc. in fact 95% thought the letter was from him uhum then we relisted the person two A TR months later after that emotional impact had passed and everything did reduce the score a little but still 90 or so for continued thinking it was from your relative but of course it could still be a very subjective thing so we are now publishing articles with in-depth

analysis of the letters and how it happened ooooo the method was as follows so just to explain how we controlled against fraud the medium came to the city he didn't know where he would come in the city and no family member knew who the doctor was arriving so there was no prior contact and it was random And then what happened the medium arrived he went to a separate room he had to stay without a cell phone and after the research started he couldn't leave us for anything, not even to go to the bathroom, he had

to be accompanied, no, he didn't go before, after, he couldn't go during, he couldn't have any chance of getting information about the place Uhum E it was filmed all the time, someone from the research team stuck to him and it was filmed all the time and then he was allowed to have contact with the family member he received a paper with the name of the deceased person date of birth date of death and there was a brief interaction between them because they said the mediums need this to have a connection with the beauty spirit, let's

try, but then as we filmed everything, we know everything that was said, any information that was given, there was no photo, nothing, but So the medium could talk to him a little bit but the medium was supposedly a bit trans at that moment, great and we have everything possible summary of the opera I'm going to take a case of a boy so I explained more or less how it worked And then the boy and then the person talked the doctor spoke a little later he psychographed there was no other information Extra so everything that happened

there from the family member to the average we have control beauty one case a boy oo the pseudonym is Vittor he is a 12 year old boy who passed away of leukemia Ok the parents came to the meeting to be with him and then Gar ooo the medium the medium arrives he says he is under the boy's influence and he starts the first thing he says the following why am I seeing myself on the back of a motorbike, I'm seeing myself on a motorbike, I don't know why, then I'm going to talk to the parents,

the following happened. for him to spend with his family when he would go back to the PR hospital for final care and death and so it was when he went to the weekend with his family They went to a farm on a farm and the boy was very playful, very playful, despite he was very ill and he asked his father what his father could teach him to ride a motorcycle. The last happy memory the family has of him is him riding a motorcycle and screaming and he, the doctor, starts talking about the back of a

motorcycle, a motorbike, okay? Then the doctor starts talking like this: I'm seeing a rose, not who is Rosa ? Why is Rosa? Then we find out from the family that the boy was, during the period of several hospitalizations, he was cared for by several people. Rosália was an internal joke that he was talking about roses, this was an internal joke of theirs, okay, that's it later Ah, detail, the medium he said he produced we called 60 items of information 60 pieces of information but 30 of them we excluded because it was either mentioned in the

conversation or eh it was deductible I like video games That's not valid Men aged 12 we took it but 30 was specific information that the family gave that's not it 30 30 was excluded and 30 was specific and no one gave the information like the bike like it's just Rosa And then he psychographs and he starts psychographing father and mother to unlock Vito but this time we no longer need a password to talk to each other to love each other let's find out Vito was the house's default password for the internet for computers the password

they always used and he starts to unlock Vito obviously this was not mentioned in the meeting then he writes like this whenever I can I play Frozen clap makes no sense the word Frozen clap has no meaning Frozen knows about the cartoon L go and such but so clap makes no sense he he had a very specific way of making fun of his colleagues when he saw a colleague he wanted to make fun of his turn to say his little chicken he said Frozen and clapped his hands it was his very peculiar way of playing

uhum then he has other things I'm just illustrating, right and at the end he draws a car at the end he draws a car then we went to the family's house to interview and everything he loved to draw cars he has dozens of car drawings He loved giving car drawings to people, so what do I mean by that, this case in which we had total control, you know that fraud didn't happen, produced 30 items of information very suggestive of the continuity of the character of the personality and memory of the boy, in other words, memory

since the 100ha of the internet, memory since the rose and everything else, the somewhat playful personality, fundamental emotional aspects such as the motorcycle, Frozen and even the issue of drawing, in other words, this is an example of several others that show how much these experiences they bring very challenging and very suggestive information that in fact somehow the mind, consciousness remains active when the brain is no longer there and what is the Big Thing of these studies and what we conclude in the book are very different experiences, experience at the end of from cardiac arrest, as

we mentioned, to dentures, to mediumistic experiences such as this experience of children, as in the case of Purnima that I mentioned in Sri Lanka, are very diverse experiences that occur in all cultures in the world, investigated by researchers from the most diverse areas of the most diverse philosophical and religious currents that all these phenomena suggest in a very strong way to that person who experiences that it is that that thing there has a real ontological intrinsic veracity and that it is that it seems to us the simplest explanation for this set of phenomena by no

means boy , let's assume the boy there you say oh the motorbike could be by chance, it's by chance, although it's a very strong thing emotionally, okay, but then by chance he got it right, froze claps, I never, I don't know anyone who said Frozen falm in my life then because by chance he talks about Rosa by chance he draws a car, which means you have to add multiple And since this is a case then you have to take the case of Chico Xavier's psychographies plus the case of the pineal plus the case of the

girl but that is to say, you need to force the most materialist explanation too much to account for the set of phenomena of Not noticing that there is evidence that and they all fit together without forcing too much on the idea that consciousness would be something beyond and that remains remains an interesting thing, that's how If there was a timelessness in life, in consciousness, not in matter, not in the brain, right, as if it were walking along this timeline, which is time here, right, but it's as if it could make this one come there, right,

and manifest itself with the password, right? Frozen mine and And there's also a simultaneity there, a timelessness that if we think about it, we don't need to believe it, but it's a very dazzling thing, right? be the result I'm not interested Spending my life on this is not clear there are also people who may think that everything we are saying is not not convincing and it's all right also saying that in a serious scientific academic environment There has to be Rigor study and freedom to test the various hypotheses what cannot what existed until a certain

time is to say the following any non-materialist vision is necessarily superstition and pseudoscience take it out of the Field that does not exist that is dogmatism because even that is interesting look at how the question of dogmatism, how does it limit that, for example, when there is a mediumistic experience or a legacy, a past life or an apparition or an ekm, I am the one who accepts the possibility of a consciousness beyond the brain, there is no need to explain it that way to me, it could be Hallucination, it could be In fact, the first

explanation I will give is that it is from the person's unconscious that it is a fraud that is an illusion When these hypotheses begin to fail, I consider another Now if the person is committed to the vision with the materialist explanation, they are forced to explain it that way, she is limited in her way of explaining, she has to fit the phenomenon in any way to make it fit, I really like the philosopher of science Thomas Kun, you know, he is one of the main philosophers of Science in history he says the following Science is

a puzzle there are some pieces that are more difficult to fit but it's not worth cutting out the piece to make it fit no what I always say we have to have intellectual humility exactly among ourselves we already know nowadays about the material world that we have we only know 5% 95 of the material universe is matter or dark force that no one has the slightest idea What is it if matter itself we only know 5% of, you will say that you know everything that consciousness is, the human mind, less, right, I think, less, right,

let's lower our ball, right, humility, Intel, but Intellectual humility does not mean accepting anything, any mysticism, but at least opening up the possibility and seeing what scientific articles or literature there are to think about . form an opinion and we did that a lot with this book, for example, what we did, as I said, it was the first time that a major scientific publisher published about it and then it was opened because the American Psychology Association also published it the following year. in 23 a book also about exactly the same time so there are two

great scientific stories publishing about this and then what did we do with this book wanting to receive criticism wanting to sub because Of course any of us have our biases our blind spots as it is that science deals with the researcher's blind spot by presenting his research to other researchers and then he illuminates my blind spot and that's how it works so we sent the book to be reviewed in the best magazines in the world Brit Journal of psychiatry magazine published a review about it Brazilian magazine on the history of philosophy international magazines on Psychology

science of religion all reviewing it we are holding a conference on this book in all the main universities in Brazil we had it at USP Unicamp frj Federal da Bahia Federal do Rio Grande do Sul all the Grand universities in Brazil taking debates with the professors with the great researchers in the main Brazilian psychiatry congresses, American psychiatry, world psychiatry, taking to the debate and what has surprised me positively, Ana, the extreme receptivity, interest, I did not find, I honestly thought that If you were to find that hostile hostile thing, there was no place, but you

know why there is no place in the serious academic environment in Brazil and abroad, in the best we are taking in the best places all the time Aha, quite the opposite, of course, a natural doubt, normal questions, but zero hostility On the contrary, he said it's cool that there are people studying this and the most interesting thing I'll tell you, see, it's been happening, I'm also going to tell you two cases about this, one was at the Brazilian Psychiatry Congress, I'm going to tell you the miracle, I'm not going to tell Santos, but I talked

about it, we gave the conference about the book and a bunch of people came and talked to me, telling me, telling me, my mother, I don't know what good stories there are, and one of them told me the following: Look, I've been a materialist psychoanalyst for 30 years, but I'm going to tell you a story that now It made sense to me because it was my wife, my wife was always a calm person, never attacked anything like that. Suddenly we were getting ready to go to a party and I was naturally ready, waiting in the

living room, the woman had just finished. If you fix it, it's part of it, he's there, suddenly his wife screams in the room, she says what's that? She went crazy because she never did that, she got there, I don't know what's bad, she's talking about something bad, I don't know what's there I don't know what happened a few minutes later the phone rings her father was murdered my God and he said as Chicó says in the car I don't know I just know that it was like that I just know that it was like that

so that's what he said he said I suppressed his entire life But I can see that this exists, right? These things happen, people repress things, another case also happens, another one I met a colleague of ours, eh a high-quality researcher also in psychiatry, he also had a more materialistic view and when he read it he said, Look, I'm remembering almost out-of-body experiences that I had when I was a teenager, that started to happen and I suppressed that from my life I pretended it didn't even exist and now he started to revisit it, that is, it's

very liberating, at least you allow yourself to experience it and try to understand it and not cut it off, that's the big problem, I think this education is very, uh, there's coming a ideology that they call a materialist scientist who is a scientist materialism the mistaken idea that science has proven that there is only matter and anything outside of suction this is not Science this is nonsense This is a vision for a person to believe that there is only matter they have everything the right to think this, but to say that science has proven this,

anything other than this is superstition, this is false, I agree when you teach people and if you force this, you kind of amputate this experience in people, this dimension is amputated and the person is left in that difficult situation right And nowadays we see a society, right And that there is a lack of values, a lack of deeper perspectives, an existential void, a lot of people have abolished the spiritual dimension, you, God is dead, right, that God is dead, and let's be happy, that life is just that, it brings this Impact that I think the

illness is much greater, it's the loss of a transcendent sense of purpose in life, right? Life becomes a completely chaotic, meaningless thing with no random purpose, and if this is seen as if it were something for mature and scientific people, those who don't accept this are silly Alegre This is an absurd thing that people do to the exact people who may have this nilistic view, they have every right but to say that this is scientifically proven, anyone who is otherwise is silly Alegre an scientific that is not intellectual honesty which for a long time time

was what prevailed, Bru, let's go to the pipinho reporter, now the time has come, Alexander, we play the pipinho reporter, pipinho is my mascot, Zinho, that happy brain, Cotó with very small legs, but he only listens to good content on his headphone and we we have a community called sustainable human being that today has more or less 2000 people 1980 something they like are lay people who really like subjects and we always supply this community and they always have a guest with us 15 days before say, look, we're going to bring the guest here, you

go on Instagram, take a look, don't follow, otherwise the guy will say what crap happened in the world today that these people are coming here and then you guys take the topics and send in your questions. questions from this community we can start So let's go, why do some people report experiences that seem to transcend the brain in the final moments of life, so at the end of life we ​​have some experiences that are very common, a near-death experience, right, in which the person has that feeling of leaving the body etc. there is an end-of-life

experience in which the person Sometimes has the feeling of moving between this plane and another plane in which they see family members who come to pick them up Aqua history when a relative comes When You see a deceased relative who came to get it You can prepare that everyone knows this is true, right? And there is also something very interesting called Terminal lucidity, patients with terminal Alzheimer's sometimes no longer remember anything or anyone a few hours before After dying, the person regains Lucidity, sits down, recognizes family members, talks goodbye to them and then loses consciousness

again Lucidity, after all of this is academically researched, the explanation is not well known, one of the explanations for what happens, one of the explanations would be that if the brain is a filter for the mind to manifest itself in this final period when the brain is already somewhat failing, this filter function decreases a little so the c becomes a little more porous, more permeable to these greater perceptions. an Alzheimer's patient who had this happen to her, she was already about 3 or 4 years old, she no longer recognized me at all and the day

she was very ill I went there and she suddenly she looked at me and said my name she said wow I missed you I said what is this And then she stopped and we tried to resuscitate her I took her to the hospital I managed to get to the hospital but she died there look only 20 minutes after we entered Exactly that, but at the time I didn't even stop thinking about it because it stopped, we had to try to resuscitate and we are supervising a doctorate from Thí Oliveira, a Bahian psychologist, an excellent researcher,

also in which we studied 80 terminally ill patients and so many at the Hospital of Cancer of Barretos of the federal of Pelotas and here at the HC of USP and 80 patients with 80 family members and 80 professional caregivers in the health area about these terminal experiences at the end of life how wonderful and we saw how frequent they are how often they are comforting for people and how much people T have to talk about it the professional experiences it but he doesn't tell anyone because they will think he is perfect there is an

IMP pact of silence about these things it has to be broken exactly I didn't talk about that because I didn't remember now when you mentioned the issue of Alzheimer's Yes, I clearly remembered next Bru What are the positive and negative points of following a religion in excellent mental and physical health, we didn't even talk a little about it, right? Eh, so Eh, in general, the highest level of involvement Spiritual religion is linked to better health, what do you call spiritual religious involvement? Research shows that one of the variables that most predict health from religiosity is

the weekly sequence, a religious group has a Harvard group, Professor Tyler Vander Will, who is one of the greatest statisticians in the world Full professor of public health there are several studies showing, for example, a person who attends a religious group once a week, they followed these people for 14 years, controlling for gender, age, income, whatever you want, the person who attended died 50% less over the 14 years, he died from everything, anything, perfect, there was another study of him also only with 90,000 people for 16 years, the person who attended died six times less

from suicide than the one who didn't attend, but I think it's important to put at least I'm thinking here , Alexander has to point out that this religiosity is practiced in the sense of making a better human being and not that which is appropriate, right? unbearable people, that's it , but that's what's interesting and in this study they investigated only those who attend now, of course, in those who attend there is this group that uses positive and negative so probably Probably the group that uses it positively has an even more positive effect because the other

group It's disturbing the business statistics there, exactly, that's just interesting in this group of general mortality, which reduced mortality by 50%, it showed that these people who attended regularly had a better social support network, less use of alcohol and drugs, there was less depression, there was more optimism in life there are several factors so in summary from a positive point of view So let's go then spirituality factors have to do with frequency and trying to see life and difficulties from a perspective also spirit for example there is a problem that I am facing instead of

finding So God will solve it I'll cross my arms or else I control everything there is a middle way I do the best I can the rest is in God's hands this is a positive spiritual coping that we talk about there is another one too which is God gives the cold as the blanket if I'm going through something I have the capacity to deal with it and in some way it has some use some learning to be learned So these are examples of positive use of religiosity that Impacts what is demonstrated then for each The

thing I'm going to talk about is more than 100 good studies greater spiritual religious involvement lower overall mortality lower suicide mortality less depression or faster recovery from depression less use of alcohol and other drugs and better recovery from alcohol and other drug problems and better quality of life and well-being this is the average but there is, as always, Dart said, the black man of the force came rolling in. So there is Dart Vader here, there is no there, there is there behind you, Vader, that's it, there is Vader behind you, so there is Vader here,

and there is the black man of the force who Here's what is the negative use of religiosity that can generate a worse quality of life and higher mortality a passive stance God will solve a problem I sit idly by I stop my treatment because God will heal me is this harmful or an emphasis It is also, for example, People, a more intolerant issue of wanting to correct others, worrying about others and not about themselves or simply making use of it and I'm only going to take what interests me that benefits me and not an experience

of donation and growth or a vision also of feeling abandoned by God God abandoned me this notion feeling abandoned by God is something that also has a negative impact generating worse quality of life and mortality I'm going to tell you another interesting case about young people, we don't know but there are several studies showing that the spirituality of young people is greater than we imagine in Brazil today studies show that more or less 1 ter3 one in three young people attends a spiritual religious group once a week this is more frequent than going out to

a club at the mall center people don't know this but studies, several population studies show this and these young people tend to have less drug use, better satisfaction with life, better well-being, etc. we did a study that was Vivian haen's master's degree. We studied 200 something children aged 10 around 10 years old from the sixth grade our old fifth grade old fifth grader and us Look how interesting we asked the children to put from zero to 10 list order from 10 to 10 what they thought was most important in their lives there was a video

game football God family etc. and so on, the children alone considered that God and family were the most important things for them, more than the parents thought they were. the children were less spiritual than they really were, that's cool, second interesting point, the child who mentioned that a close relationship with God had four times more chances of having as many children happier than those who didn't think of a close bond with God, so there is a series of very interesting data that are positive, better than what we are thinking, there is a hidden mass that

we are not seeing and that perhaps it is people who can make a big difference and sometimes we have ideas that are kind of mistaken about things, we never see a story about young people or films that show the spirituality of these young people, we never see it in reality as if it didn't exist and rebellion, drug use is always false as if that were a certain thing happen and that's not exactly what it is, next Bru What is your view on the relationship between religiosity and violence in Brazil, what do you mean? Well, there

is a Brazilian research by the USP group, also in partnership with a colleague of ours, Jancarlo Luket from Juiz de Besides, he also investigated the relationship between religiosity and violence in a Brazilian population and in reality, people with greater religious involvement had less involvement with violence uhum and even less domestic violence and it seems that domestic violence was due to less alcohol use, you know, domestic violence is very linked to alcohol as religiosity, so it's a large national study that shows this, now of course there may be people who use religiosity to justify violent behavior,

right ? evangelical traffickers, for example, right, so there are these things, these uses, these distortions too, but on average, without a doubt, on average, this is the exception, that is, because what makes the news is the negative exception, for example, while they don't show it, for example, including Sometimes the a Sometimes a more global vision, you know, is given a very negative view of Evangelicals, for example, when there is a case of something intolerance something like that goes something but how much for example do we have cases of people who really leave? They found the

issue of drugs of violence reorganized their life and everything else, we see this in practice in the clinic on a daily basis, right? This needs to be valued I also think that we have to start having an information channel other than the traditional media because the media needs an audience audience bad things give more audience that's a fact so there are many more positive things that we don't you see, this is cool, you col have a negative filter that does not correspond to reality, perfect, next Bru, what is your opinion on reports of anomalous paranormal

experiences, so, uh, the term Paranormal, right, we use it, that's an interesting piece of information, uh, I sometimes use it myself anomalous experiences means that it deviates from the Norm and so on, can you believe that we have a survey carried out here in Brazil with more than 1000 people and it almost represents the Brazilian population and we asked if you have had any deep spiritual anomalous experiences and everything else and so on we saw we saw that 94% have only had six, never had it, so what's anomalous is not having the experience, so you

have to take care of it, don't have the experience, you know, that is, in reality, these experiences are part of the human experience, right, the human being since he is a human being You have these experiences in a positive way of relating and sometimes you know when it is negative because the person cannot understand what is happening, they think they are crazy or possessed by demons. And then the person gets scared, we see this a lot experiences when experiences arise, sometimes outside the body of visual perception, whatever the person is, when sometimes the experience is

not uncomfortable but what it gives it generates doubt. Am I? Am I sane? Am I? I have a problem, is it the devil that is doing this , then does this generate a problem? When you start to understand that this is a frequent phenomenon, that this is not, in general, not a problem, it can be positive. There are many groups that understand this in a way human experience this This changes now, of course, important, I'm also not saying that there is no mental illness, I'm a psychiatrist You're also an ex, we know that there are

cases, right, of, for example, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, in a crisis where the person can have experiences that She thinks they are psychics that are spiritual but in reality they are symptoms that need to be treated and sometimes people stop treatment thinking it is just one thing and it is common. Sometimes the patient comes to me thinking that I am going to take away all the medicines they I'm going to say that everything is spiritual and of course another radicalism, right, as if you had to be this or that, I really like to say the following,

I have a patient with depression, for example, we ask Should I do physical activity to improve depression? Should I take the medicine Should I go to therapy? Should I resume leisure in my social life? Should I seek my spirituality? Do you have to choose between one thing and another? Another thing, research shows that if the patient takes medication correctly, he takes on his role, he also gets out of bed, starts doing physical activity, goes to his religious group, says his prayers, resumes the group with his friends and sometimes he will resume, half-heartedly, I usually play

a lot with my patient Look, you're a little sluggish, you know, we're going to give you the medicine, which will give you a pacifier, which will give the battery a boost, but the first time you turn the key, it won't start, you have to push it to catch it when it starts. you push it, take it in stride, then the battery starts to charge It's like this, so you won't start doing the things you're excited about, no you'll do PR, getting excited is that thing, right? In the middle of the way, the exact thing I

always say is that it takes that patient who lies in bed locked up completely filling up on his cell phone hoping to get well, you know it won't, it's not true, even because we have we have the physical mental spiritual dimension to we will have to realize take care of it a little bit, otherwise it won't work, so people and one thing enhances the other when the patient takes the medicine he does physical activity he resumes spiraling one thing improves another and one thing doesn't grow and the most interesting thing is then he seeks the

meaning and purpose that I am now able to I usually say the following when the patient truly engages with, you know, the professional that we are working with so that he can improve, he comes out much better than before he became unwell, he even matures I I usually say that depression, considered depression, is almost as if it were that Dark Night visit to Saint John of the Cross. Yes, you come back from there if you really allowed yourself to take care of yourself . circuits you come back better, I tell my patients a lot now,

after 30 years, you start to see things, seeing day to day, right? What's next, for the patient to really improve, he has to have three things, he really doesn't want it anymore. What's here is a drug depression problem, any other Inc problem, compulsivity, I don't want it anymore, I don't want it, I'm going to pay whatever price I'm going to pay whatever price it is to get out of this business according to assuming responsibility, blaming someone else than the father that the mother who the politician no one that doesn't work out if you treat them

correctly, give the person the medicine, everything you do doesn't have to work out, so it could be, oh, the situation in the country has gotten worse, that's all ok, but it doesn't determine that we can be happy despite this oooo Vittor frankl talks a lot about this, right about when he said this because he lived in his concentration camp, things are the worst thing you can imagine in history, right, he saw that it didn't determine that people were exes, including he has a passage that I I think his book in search of meaning is beautiful,

he says the following, he was uncomfortable when Freud said that they were both from Vienna, right, Freud and Franklin, when Freud said that in extreme situations like this, individual differences disappear Everyone turns into an animal, everyone is determined by their survival instinct, he said the following Good thing Freud only knows the concentration camp from the outside, I know it from the inside, I'm going to say it's a lack of respect say that inside everyone turns into an animal, he will say the following in extreme situations, it's not true that everyone turns into an animal in

extreme situations, both pigs and saints reveal themselves. Exactly that, right ? does all this, the patient sees his role, tries to learn from it and grows, he leaves much better than when he entered, he has everything to leave a lot, we call this, nowadays, we call this post-traumatic growth or post-stress growth, because after a I'm in a normal situation, let's assume there's some traumatic situation that happens and then I get worse What's natural, natural from there I have several courses I can get worse and continue to get worse I've developed a disease and such depression

addiction and so on I can go back and stay longer or at least I can go back to my previous level, which is resilience or I can come back better than I was, which is growth because growth and what I'm going to tell you is that I think that today everyone is starting to realize this, at least as a possibility, I want to go back best diss that it's worth it exactly perfect next Bru how do you distinguish from a psychiatric point of view a Hallucination from a spiritual experience That's good That was the topic

of the doctorate, right I said I did a doctorate already turning 20, staying in the old right, 2004, I defended the Dorado, we're getting a totally different vintage, 2000, 20 years ago, exactly, I defended the thesis about this, what do we know, right? This hallucination may be a symptom of a disease, in fact it may be a symptom of a disease and may not be a healthy spiritual experience for the individual. There are several criteria, including the Brazilian Psychiatric Association just published I was part of a guideline guiding psychiatrists on how to approach the patient's

spirituality, how to make the distinction, I also had the pride and satisfaction in the World Health Organization, the classification of diseases, now CD 11, CD 11, I did, I was invited to be part of the Sid Task Force 11 of dissociative disorders that precisely works with this distinction to make a distinction so basically it is clear that an appropriate professional needs to be assessed but in general the experience is spiritually healthy it does not bring suffering the person can get on with their life they can work study they are functional does not harm it does

not cause loss of functioning the suffering no longer exists or when it does exist It is because she is afraid but not because of the experience itself and most importantly she does not have other symptoms of a psychiatric syndrome so for example a bipolar patient He's in a mania phase, besides seeing him, he's accelerated, he's talking faster than he would speak. He's sleeping 3 hours a night, he's cool, he's not missing anything, he's much more sexualized, he's spending more money, there's a mania that's going on. or in the case of schizophrenia, the patient will also

have that affective dullness, there will be persecutory delusions, there are things here that are watching me, there will be others that are dysfunctional, there is no ISS, there will be other indicators ex PR people, it is very simple to extinguish it because there are people who want to put everything It's spiritual, everything is illness, but it's the big thing, I think one of the biggest problems of humanity and the academic environment is also the person who wants to see everything through a small window, through a small window, then it's very difficult to open a small

door and not open the other ones in health. mental everything is social if we don't change society we don't improve everything is biological everything is psychic everything is spiritual no my God everything together let's work to affirm one we have to deny the other we are complex beings With all these dimensions but everyone likes one simple explanation is not true but life is not like that everyone likes a simple explanation that is direct and easy and wrong, right, we have to accept the complexity of life and embrace it, humility to say this, look, we know

this, this, this, but exactly We don't know exactly how each part here contributes to this extraordinary phenomenon that is life and it's okay , right ? religious education between parents and children must begin from an early age or it would be more appropriate to allow the child to choose their belief later on, so this is a difficult situation because as a professional and as a psychiatrist I cannot recommend that people have religion or not Well, I can give you data and I can tell you about my experience, what I did with my life, with my

children and everything else, well, we know that children who have a religious education in childhood have better health. better mental development That's right , there's an old research Professor Paulo da Gondo, head of PS at Unicamp, is 20 years old . there was less depression and anxiety, so this is interesting data, there is one from Harvard from this same group that I mentioned before, that they took 5,6000 boys and girls aged 14 and 15 and continued until adulthood, 14 years later, they took it at 14 years of age it was up to 28 years of

age 28 people, young people who actively participated regularly in a spiritual religious group, at the age of 14, had half the chance of using legal or illicit drugs, but most impressively, 14 years later, in adulthood, young people had less, more sense, in life more sense of Mission less sexually transmitted diseases less pregnancy in adolescence it's an impressive business. So less drug use, the impact that this has seems to have to do with the impact not only of beliefs in the existential sense of clear values ​​of what I owe, what I shouldn't, but also a social

context of modeling healthier behaviors, okay, so this happens very clearly now, so these are the scientific data that we have, so in general, the impact is very positive and there is very interesting data recently published in an important psychiatry journal, jama psychiatry, which and Children, teenagers who are religious have less ideation of attempted suicide, but look how interesting the religiosity of parents is, when parents have deeper spiritual religious involvement, this has an impact on reducing suicidal actions in their children, even if the children don't have a spirituality. I understand, it seems like there is. to

do a little with the vision with the environment you create in the house with the vision of the world that happens and everything else so and I think now my vision now as a person, right It's because it was asked for you and for me as a person, right so I talked about science, now my opinion about Alexander, right? First of all, I think the role of parents is to pass on, like any educational process, to pass on the best that our civilization has achieved so far to the next generation so that they can move

forward, right? and we know that our spirituality is part of our set of vision values, I think we should pass this on to our children, my parents passed it on to me, I passed it on to my own, even sometimes they don't really want to, but let's do it, I don't ask my son if he wants to go to school, if he wants to be vaccinated, etc. It's part of the cultural civilization educational process package that I want to pass on to them, sometimes they don't understand, but luckily now they 're older, my son has

a girl, okay? At 16, the boy at 20 all incorporated, integrated and it's fine, I think that what she's describing as religious education, I think that more than anything it's an education in ethical values, which within religious practices tends to be quite focused, right? Yes, but there is a question, without a doubt, the question of values ​​is important, a question about the ex too, right? There's no point in me saying oh, it's great that you have this and that, but you don't do that, right? But there's also a fundamental question about the spiritual environment, which

is even the basis of the ethical question question why I should value my life why I shouldn't destroy my body using drugs why I have a deeper spiritual vision of this that Underlies these decisions also these reflections not wanting exactly always it will take this perfect next Bru how religious practice can influence the quality of life especially in times of crisis or illness excellent ah spirituality the way Ger religiosity will have several factors one is a worldview a worldview you see the world with other purposes So, for example, take a classic spiritual-religious view of our

environment , right, the world has a purpose, there is a Creator God and I'm here for a reason and I have positive potentials to be developed, and the things that happen to me have a fair and benevolent reason. to happen even though I don't fully understand what's happening and I'm capable of dealing with it because in the face of suffering. The big question is do I have any reason, any sense, do I have the capacity to deal with it and if that is temporary or is it eternal within of this spiritual vision in general Do

you have an idea that suffering has a cause has a cause Fair and beneficial of some learning in this sense I have resources I'm not alone God gives the cold as covered I have the ability to cope and that It will pass somehow, so this already helps. Besides, I have other resources to deal with the prayer practice itself, I'm nervous, desperate, instead of staying, I'm going to stop putting the ball down, say a prayer, do a meditation, I'll sing a song, a hymn, praise and that Serena, for example, in the person so she can deactivate

the limbic system. The whole thing is to lower the ball and open up for a connection a complex a higher understanding another thing also activation when I sometimes go to a place to do voluntary work it helps I stop focusing only on my problem see other situations So these are some of the strategies that have already been well demonstrated that help people, some strategies then summarizing some spiritual strategies that are well demonstrated that help to face a more comprehensive understanding of the existential meaning and the problem because if I see a why I almost face

any how I deal with things, right? What kills us most is the lack of I feel like it's a chaotic thing, right? So then I have a broader vision. There's a purpose. Furthermore, I'm going to try to have moments of prayer, do my reading, meditate, elevate me, I'm going to look for the group that Shares my beliefs, my practices and experiences that with that collectivity the voluntary work itself the emphasis on virtue also forgiveness how many times people suffer carrying bitterness for decades and that eating away inside and the emphasis on forgiveness for us to

free ourselves from that burden we suffered that we don't need to forget but you disconnect from that you don't need to plus carrying that hot Ember in your hand so that the person can't keep looking in the rear view mirror all the time of course it's difficult no one is discussing this but what are you gaining from reliving it exhaustively so the practice of Alismic Forgiveness this decentering of yourself to something broader And then when you least notice it you recover the existential purpose, happiness and well-being, it's that philosophical thing, right, values, virtues and wisdom

for us to be able to do, I put a lot of emphasis on us too He works a lot at the Federal University Hospital of Juiz de Fora, right, with many patients who work in various outpatient clinics there, for example, patients with chronic pain, patients with various limitations, you see that there are some patients whose life is unfortunately restricted. to be sick his role is to say he is a sick person of such a thing that stops being a part of his life it becomes the person's life because Try to help the person say yes

you have it that is difficult it is bad it is true but let's put that as background noise and your life has to go on that doesn't exactly define you that you are not that you also have this but you are not that you are a very person that goes for anything in the world today what queer identity do I I'm not alone and I'm a man or a doctor or a Brazilian or whatever or anything I have milp I am I have all of this but I am Alexander I am much more than all

of this Exactly this is fundamental next Bru, near-death experiences are reported in several cultures What is your perspective on these reports and their scientific value we talked about this, right, do you want to add some more details, I think it's a lot, right, next Bru, how spirituality can influence the treatment and support of people with Suicidal thoughts Wow, very good. In fact, we are taking part, right? By coming here, I was helping to review the material of the Brazilian psychiatry session in Yellow September. We are doing a very strong job, right? meaning and everything and

I'm now supervising a master's degree precisely on how spirituality impacts suicide prevention suicide, come on, the idea of ​​suicide is when a person is suffering a lot they want to be free from that suffering, basically that's it, right? I'm suffering a lot from In general, I see suffering that I don't see the point of, eh, I don't think I can handle it and I want to get out of it, I want to live without that suffering, but at the time of suicide, the only path the person sees is to end the life because there is

no way he sees that exaggeratedly great suffering with no resources to face it and that will not pass uhum this very closed limited thinking and ends up leading the person to suicidal thinking and everything else and so on which helps spirituality in this aspect Firstly, it helps by reducing risk factors, for example, as I said, most suicidal patients have depression, alcohol use and others. Drugs, religiosity reduces these things, so this is a factor, another important thing, and the whole spiritual tradition, as we already said, says that there is something beyond this body that we survive,

so the person cannot kill themselves, they kill the body. but as a soul, consciousness would continue to exist and all religions speak in a more suffering way, it is not an appropriate thing, so there are studies showing that belief in life after death reduces the risk of suicide by around 40% because the person thinks they will not First of all, we hear this from patients, we hear it in clinical practice, patients said this, I think about killing myself, but I know it won't help if I'm still alive. morality to suicide, there are studies, moral objection

to suicide, I mean I don't have the right to do this, morally it's inappropriate, it's not up to me, only God, that option isn't on the board, there isn't that option, right? suicide is not acceptable in any situation, this behavior for me, right, there is the idea that there is a perspective of life after death, religion also offers social support in general, people who listen, you can sometimes do it with friends of yours. spiritual religious group talking about deeper things than a gym friend is naturally not true so there is this aspect and there is

this question of the meaning of life and suffering itself, knowing that suffering is part of life, right, but it has a one one one objective, I have the ability to overcome and every spiritual tradition will have models of people who faced suffering, right? We will see from Mary, mother of Jesus, suffering, seeing her son, wanting, right, seeing her son's pain and how she overcame it or when Maria receives the announcement that she would receive the Messiah in that fear and she says Behold, here the servant of the Lord be done in me according to your

will she gives herself to be able to do it and let's take an example Chico Xavier as we were commenting with the former illness these varied ones he had angina he had glaucoma poverty and examples of overcoming Suffering he sof was abuse in childhood and then we will see in all the examples and in all traditions examples of overcoming Suffering both in the traditions and in the people we live with so in these aspects as a whole, it forms a support network in this sense and I see this very clearly, so if people look around,

I think that by changing the perspective of vision, you can see this, and there is an important thing, right, people, when the we deal with something something very difficult comes up for example the person receives a diagnosis of a very serious illness uhum the risk of suicide is greater Right after the diagnosis ex because the person catastrophizes than we imagine in reality how many times we go through situations of life that I thought I would never be able to cope with, our elastic is more elastic than us, how many times have I gone through things

that I thought I would never be able to face my ex and now we have overcome this, it will be one more time, it will pass, right? This idea of ​​what is going to happen is extremely important, this will happen soon Bru Is there any explanation or spiritual approach to understanding or dealing with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder? As I talked about mental health, how to deal specifically with these conditions now, I really don't know, I don't think it must have been that question, I don't know, because there are several reports of

religious leaders attributing this to a satanic manifestation, I don't know, I think That's what's been happening to me, I really don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I do n't know . If something happens, we become anxious, we imagine being worried and there is the cognitive part of worry and it ends up manifesting itself with adrenaline, the heart accelerates the hand gets cold, it starts to shake, it's like heaven's mechanism, it starts to have this whole reaction, then we happen to know how

spirituality can help in this sense first and another thing with anxiety because we have such an idea of ​​catastrophizing like wanting to have control over everything, I need to have control over everything, nothing can be out of my control. Spirituality will help in a way, first understanding that you don't have control over everything, right ? But at the same time, it's not like everything is Let go too, you will do what I said, one sentence , the rest can be in God's hands, I think this understanding, right ? the rest is in God's hands, I

mean there is an idea of ​​faith This is interesting ex the word faith that we use it comes from the Gospels which was written in Greek the word for faith is called pistis in Greek pistis means trust is not a specific belief, it is a trust in Divine Sovereignty, trust that there is a Divine Sovereignty that watches over and sustains things, everything is not abandoned and this trust that generates the hope that you hope that something ultimately positive will come So this pistes this trust allows you to do your part and the rest trust the

best thing will happen which is trust which is trust, right so I think it has this role So this is the first point second point that spirituality can also help are meditation practices of prayer that also helps to reduce anxiety, I think these are some of the possible mechanisms, meditation, which is this thing where you can reduce these stimuli around you, it's nothing, there are people who consider meditation as a thing, Paranormal, it's not a reduction, it's meditations, meditative practice arose from religious practices, you know, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, etc., an attempt to calm the mind,

to calm the mind, even to better capture these external perceptions because the idea is often that our mind is as if it were a river or a sea that will reflect a divine light when it's very messy it doesn't reflect properly when it's calm it's a esp you can reflect better search for a silence that interior to better capture things exactly next Bru ah we're here now at the moment pipinho which is the following pipinho is this very cute brain that listens to everything so he listened to our entire episode and he throws words at

me here which are very simple whatever comes into your head you respond if you don't want to respond it didn't come to me nothing on his mind he will also understand okay he is polite a love love I think that eh eh love is this this dedication for the good of the other I think that love is when you really want maximum flourishing full development happiness No In the best sense of that person you love perfect two gratitude gratitude is having eyes of seeing to recognize so many things so many people that we owe to

being here in every situation eyes of seeing perfect three spirituality spirituality is this connection Ours with this deeper transcendent dimension and Sacred of existence four if you could enter a time machine would you choose to go to the past or to the future and why to the past why Because I would like to talk to some people for example I like to talk to Jesus this is my desire to talk to Socrates there are several people before he goes to the end welcoming, I think it is recognizing the Plenitude of that human who is by

your side who is also seeking and his life is fulfilled and we welcome and seek to help him on this perfect journey six happiness happiness I think it is a state of Harmony when the we can fully develop our potentials with a deeper Harmony there, divine and of the perfect universe almost epithet almost seven Complete the sentence to transcend is to stop looking only at our navel at what is around us and look at what really matters eight God is the source of everything and the destiny of all of us, nine I miss my brother

Anderson and 10 indicates that a book I can recommend for you, don't recommend the book If you want It's good to have our book Science of life after death science of life after death but there are many books that I really like to recommend one of them like I said about Vittor Frankle the search for meaning search for meaning I usually play with my students with friends I read the book if you don't like it I I will return the money you spent buying it unless it touches you existentially, right with dedication Read it willingly,

right? I think this is a book that I would strongly recommend, my dear, thank you very much, it was an honor to be able to talk, learn from you, I wanted it here Oh, give you a gift: the book Happiness, which I wrote during the pandemic, depressive minds, windows of the mind, which are fictionalized stories from patients I treated, and Vertical Horizon, which was a partnership with a college student, which is a perspective of looking at the portals of life that there are portals that we don't look at, there are doors that we don't open,

gratitude, also calm, that we still have here, look, this is an ecobag, it's ecologically correct, from pod people, we have it here, make it happen and inspire how you 've been inspiring people pod people me I went and here you have a notebook to write down all your dreams that will come true and we also have a mug here so you can drink a tea a coffee something to remember us to send good energy to us and now I wanted you If you used that camera there, you don't even need to look at me and

give all your messages to anyone who wants to find you or the course that wants to do everything you want to say very well to anyone who wants to know a little more about this topic, you know, health science mental and spirituality first follow us on our social networks Alex P nupes nupes de pai S nupes Alex nupes we are always posting events news research reflections to stay up to date second tip look for our channel on YouTube TV at our university's spirituality and health research center Federal de Juiz de Fora TV nupes on YouTube

there are more than 300 videos with more than 80 researchers from more than 15 countries from the most diverse areas, delving into different topics about Science, health and spirituality. In the description of each video there are links for those who want to delve deeper and whoever wants To find out more, I would also like to invite anyone interested in delving deeper from a clinical point of view, how do I approach my patient's spirituality in the clinic in an ethical and evidence-based way? We are also coordinating a postgraduate course, we are in the sixth class postgraduate

course by EAD so integration of spirituality in clinical practice with in partnership Our with ne ISM is also on our social networks also this postgraduate course itself including oooo that we acquired from of of of of of gain is entirely reverted to research from the nups of our research group as well, I think that basically These are the main messages that are there, messages, right? Thank you very much, dear ones, we are finishing another episode of the kite pod and today it was with this wonderful guy who I already admired, followed Dr Alexander Moreira Almeida,

if you don't follow I suggest you start doing this now @alex nupes and on YouTube TV noops I guarantee you that you won't regret it It's always good for us to remember that here in the pod pipo community we believe that knowledge self-knowledge is the only way for us to truly walk towards happiness and seek our meaning and purpose, if you liked what you heard, share it with people, don't forget to subscribe to the channel, ring the bell and also recommend it to other people, thank you very much and see you the next POD